Bill Bates, Diane Greenwood, and Lisa Kahn in Any Number Can DieAs I watched Friday's performance of Any Number Can Die at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, I tried to remember that there was (probably) a time when Fred Carmichael's script was considered hilarious. As a spoof of murder mysteries of the 1920s, this 1965 work may originally have been fresh, poking fun at the plays that audiences were used to seeing. Now, though, with so many comedies poking fun at murder-mystery clichés - and with one seemingly presented each year by Playcrafters - the jokes at the expense of the clichés have themselves become cliché. Still, Carmichael's script and Playcrafters' production of it are amusing enough to make the show at least tolerable.

Tom Walljasper, Sandra D Rivera, Tristan Layne Tapscott, and Erin Dickerson in Are We There Yet Five Extraordinary Ensembles

An actor friend of mine says he always wants to be the worst performer in everything he's in, because if the rest of the cast is doing stronger work than he is, that means the show is in really, really good shape. With that in mind, any actor worth his or her salt would be thrilled to be the worst performer among these five ensembles.

 

Sandy Stoltenberg & Jean Lupoli in The Trip to Bountiful Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful - which is opening the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2008 season on an awfully sweet note - is a lovely piece of theatre, but it's such an earnest, delicate little play that it requires all the effrontery and sass it can get.

Let's hear it, then, for Jean Lupoli, who takes what could've been a shrill, one-note caricature and fills it with such winning good humor and welcome meanness that she's utterly irresistible; despite much fine work by her co-stars, the production is practically unimaginable without her. The actress, so fresh and funny, gives Foote's small-scale, big-hearted elegy a true shot in the arm, and in all honesty, it frequently needs one.