More than a third of the area productions I attended this year - a whopping 35 of them - I saw in the 91-day span from May 17 to August 15. And more than half of those shows - 19 in all - were produced by a combined five theatre organizations: Rock Island's Genesius Guild, Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (CAST), Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, and Davenport's newly established Riverbend Theatre Collective. My experiences with this quintet formed a fascinating theatrical journey, one boasting plenty of highs, occasional lows, randomly bitchy Web-site comments ... .
I didn't think there was much wrong with Sunday night's presentation of Genesius Guild's Romeo & Juliet, aside from the fact that I didn't feel much of anything at it. But in terms of this particular Shakespeare play, isn't that a pretty sizable issue?
A preface for those at Sunday's Genesius Guild presentation of The Comedy of Errors: You know that horribly rude woman who talked, and talked loudly, on her cell phone through the first two minutes of the play, even after repeated shushings and one verbal request to shut the hell up? I sat three rows behind her.
The Green Room's production of the comedic drama The Melville Boys features a great deal of charm, some dramatic heft, and more than a few laughs. Yet it's difficult to describe precisely where the charm, heft, and laughs stem from, because the show's finest moments have little to do with Norm Foster's script, and lots to do with the inflections and invention of its performers. The playwright's offering is, at best, perfectly pleasant, but the Green Room's acting quartet of Jonathan Gregoire, Andrew Harvey, Colleen Winters, and Abby Van Gerpen - under the lively direction of Donna Hare - oftentimes lends it authentic depth of feeling, and that depth results in warmer, more honest humor, and more earned sentiment, than even Foster may have anticipated.
Rating its Degree of Difficulty on a scale of one through ten, I'd give Genesius Guild's opening-night performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It... hmm... about a 27.
A leading actor tortured by the inability to play a role he can't feel. A narcissistic starlet unashamedly flaunting her sexuality. A group of second bananas complaining about the sizes of their roles. A sweet-faced ingénue enduring the advances of an older sponsor. A clueless playwright convinced that his pedestrian dialogue is marvelous.
Regardless of style or genre, entertaining theatre has a way of putting audiences in great moods - I've personally smiled through well-staged productions of such varied, inherently tragic shows as Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire and Hedda Gabler. And despite their seriousness, Genesius Guild's Seven Against Thebes and Antigone were a terrific time; the shows may not have had the knockabout power you hope for from Greek drama, but they certainly were enjoyable.
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most magical offerings - a wildly theatrical concoction set on an enchanted isle populated by fairies, sprites, and spirits, and governed by a benevolent (yet easily enraged) ruler in possession of a supernatural cloak.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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