The Playcrafters Barn Theatre's production of The Fox on the Fairway is a bit of a conundrum, as the script isn't as consistently funny as much of playwright Ken Ludwig's other fare, specifically Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. But his tale of rival golf clubs duking it out at their annual tournament remains riveting nonetheless. While the laughs were there during Friday's performance - and those laughs were oftentimes hearty, if not as plentiful as they could've been - it was the uncertainty regarding which direction Ludwig's tale would go, and the outcome of his plot, that maintained interest in this story.
Sydney Crumbleholme, a freshman at Moline High School, plays the title character in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's current Anne of Green Gables, and I doubt there has been a better, more inspiring piece of casting on area stages in all of 2008.
Choosing a favorite line of dialogue from A.R. Gurney's Sylvia is nearly impossible, as the playwright's hysterically clever and insightful comedy offers almost too many choices; some of Gurney's best jokes here are so spectacularly subtle that you barely register them. ("Just close your eyes and think of England" is an especially sharp throwaway.)
At Thursday's preview performance of Quad City Music Guild's Thoroughly Modern Millie, I seated myself in the third-to-last row of the Prospect Park theatre, yet even at that distance, I found myself distracted by an intense, nearly blinding illumination shining from center stage. It turns out, though, that this wasn't any kind of technical glitch; it was just Melissa Anderson Clark grinning at us.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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