Thursday's audience certainly enjoyed the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Leading Ladies, judging by their loud snorts and uninhibited guffaws. Ken Ludwig provides plenty of fodder for laughter, as do director Tom Vaccaro and his cast, who hit the comedy's high notes pitch-perfectly. As for me, I didn't just giggle but laughed heartily right along with the rest of the crowd at least a dozen times.
The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's The Last Romance is, for the most part, a refreshingly lighthearted romantic comedy. Watching Friday's performance, I was delighted not only with much of playwright Joe DiPietro's script, but also with the tempo of director Tom Morrow's production. The characters' conversations are quickly paced, though not unnaturally so, and maintain the piece's joyful energy, but Morrow also gives his cast moments to breathe when appropriate, allowing the play's emotions and humor to sink in before the fast-talking exchanges continue.
So far as melodramas go, The Curse of an Aching Heart: Or, Trapped in the Spider's Web is, for me, one of the more tolerable and entertaining works in its genre. Not being a fan of this brand of comedy, I still laughed quite a bit during Thursday's performance at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, as playwright Herbert Swayne's clever wit and director Tom Morrow's pleasingly on-the-verge-of-over-dramatic tone made for an amusing night of comedy.
The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Death of a Salesman marks one of James Driscoll's most powerful, effective, fully realized performances to date, which is saying a lot given the actor's résumé, which includes roles such as Long John Silver in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Treasure Island and his multiple characters in last year's Anton in Show Business for New Ground Theatre. During Friday's presentation, I was awed by Driscoll's ability to shift from sanity to a mental confusion bordering on insanity as his Willy Loman transitioned from his vision of his past to a moment in the present. Driscoll accomplishes this both through physical gestures, such as rubbing his head as if sweating, and vocal inflection, as his voice becomes more frantic and emotional during his state of confusion.
You know a comedy is in trouble when its most engaging scene features an elderly woman's description of her escape from a German concentration camp. You know a comedy is in serious trouble when it uses that description merely to goose its tinny excuse for a plot.
For my money, California Suite is the ideal Neil Simon play, as it's actually composed of four independent one-act plays, giving you far less chance to grow exhausted by his characters' persistent wisecracking.
Actors frequently speak of performers who "raise the bar," whose personal performance standards are so high that they challenge - and inspire - their co-stars to match them. In Death Takes a Holiday, the comedy/drama/supernatural romance currently playing at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, James Driscoll raises the bar so high it's practically celestial.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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