I love Yasmina Reza's 'Art.' My infatuation with the playwright's script started four years ago when the piece was produced by the Curtainbox Theatre Company, and it brought me great delight to hear that the QC Theatre Workshop and director Tyson Danner planned to stage the play with the same cast that performed the material for the Curtainbox.
The women of The Two Gentlemen of Verona shine in the Prenzie Players' latest production. Maggie Woolley's effervescent Julia and Catie Osborn's enrapturing Silvia - characters courted by the two gentlemen of the title - are especially captivating, thanks to Woolley's and Osborn's layered portrayals of ladies in (and later out of, and then back in) love. They're among a group of female actors here that offer dynamic, entertaining performances filled with notable nuance, aplomb, and, when called for, titillating humor. And they are a credit to director Andy Lord's vision for what seems to me one of William Shakespeare's weaker, less refined plays. The women help add emotional depth to the text, while Lord wisely places the comedic aspects of the tale at the forefront through his cast's energetic performances.
If you haven't yet attended a production of the show, Agatha Christie's murder mystery The Mousetrap - which has been running in London's West End for more than 56 years now - is definitely worth a look-see. Boasting ripe British caricatures and the author's signature brand of mordant wit, this clever, funny play is one of Christie's most enjoyably constructed contraptions.
A beautiful princess. A handsome prince. A wicked queen. And a friendly woodsman who, if he refuses to cut out his best friend's heart, will find himself turned into that most hideous of creatures: SpongeBob SquarePants.
Never having done one, I can only imagine the challenges and pressures inherent in performing a one-person play that lasts over an hour, and I'm betting those challenges and pressures exponentially increase when you're also the play's author and co-director. I therefore doff my cap to Adam Michael Lewis, whose solo vehicle Mono-Blogs: Suffering Fools - currently running at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre - is a 60-plus-minute verbal marathon of rants, diatribes, and (as crass-tastic auteur Kevin Smith happily calls them) dick and fart jokes that Lewis delivers with unwavering fierceness and intensity.
Dear Sarahjayne:
It takes considerable skill - to say nothing of nerve - to steal a show from the likes of Brad Hauskins, Adam Michael Lewis, and Eddie Staver III. But in the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's Empty Nest, actress Ashley Catherine Schmitt arrives halfway through the production, introduces herself to her co-stars, tucks playwright Lawrence Roman's comedy into her leg warmers, and all but dashes off with it. The play itself is too featherweight (albeit agreeably so) for this to be considered grand larceny, but it's certainly grand; Schmitt is like the guest you don't remember inviting who winds up being the life of the party.
My Verona Productions' last stage presentation premiered almost a year ago, so you could argue that the company is simply making up for lost time with its production of Christian Krauspe's Inside Out, a play within a play within a play (within another play, if I interpreted the climactic scene correctly). Yet based on its April 10 preview performance, the author's work-in-progress is still less a play than a stoner's conceit - "What if, like, everything we say and do is being written by, like, some unseen higher power who's, like, determining our actions without, like, our knowing it?" - and holds together about as well as most stoned ramblings; a few hours and a few bags of chips later, your "insights" begin to look rather dim.
When the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse last produced A Christmas Carol in 1998, the family musical's daytime performances ran concurrently with evening performances of Miracle on 34th Street. I was a member of Carol's cast at the time, and as I recall, we kind of thought the shows should have swapped positions; the chipper, candy-colored Miracle seemed ideal for kids, while the frequently dark Charles Dickens tale, with its themes of regret and mortality, appeared better-suited to a more mature crowd.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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