11
Jul
2006
Greek drama is designed to make audiences think and feel, and while I'm not sure I did much of either at the Saturday-night performances in Rock Island's Lincoln Park, I sure did grin a lot.
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.
A half-hour before Friday's performance of On Golden Pond at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, the theatre's producer (and Pond director) Dennis Hitchcock took the stage, and after making the traditional opening-night welcomes, warned that the show's first act alone ran nearly 80 minutes - a long haul, he explained, for elder audiences. Yet I'm thinking that Hitchcock's announcement was made less out of concern for the crowd's bladders than out of justifiable pride - a trek to the restroom would force people to miss parts of the show, and with the stunningly fine performance Michael Kennedy is giving here, who would want to miss even one?
In the second act of the magnificent musical parody Urinetown, the character of Bobby Strong - a novice revolutionary, and the show's ostensible leading man - sings "Run, Freedom, Run," a rousing call-to-arms to his fellow oppressed. The number, a sort of "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" from Guys & Dolls as seen through a Les Miserables filter, is one of those guaranteed show-stoppers designed to leave audiences cheering. At the Timber Lake Playhouse's Saturday-night performance of the show, however, this production number led to something even more thrilling.
A theatre company takes a risk when it changes key elements of Shakespeare, as Iowa City's Riverside Theatre has by switching the protagonist in its presentation of The Tempest from Prospero to Prospera. Turning this male character into a female brings an entirely new dynamic to the performance, yet even though this makes for a unique production, it distracts from the tone of Shakespeare's text.
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.
As the lights dimmed for the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of The Mousetrap - based on Agatha Christie's mystery novel - I already knew whodunnit. But don't be fooled into thinking that I possess superhuman powers of deduction or anything. I was in a high-school production of the play some 20 years ago. (Fine. Twenty-three years ago. Happy, Mom?)
The morning after attending the Timber Lake Playhouse's production of the romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, I drove to my local video store and rented the DVD of the beloved 1940 film, which I had never seen. I would love to report that Timber Lake's production put me in such a happy state that I was simply eager to re-live the stage experience. But unfortunately, the rental was more of a necessity than an indulgence; I had to see what about Philip Barry's play made the movie such a treasure, because its reputed charms, sadly, weren't at all apparent on the Mt. Carroll stage.
It's hot. It's muggy. Bugs are everywhere. And in Iowa City, that means it's time for Shakespeare.
This past weekend, it was rainy, gloomy, and downright cold for this time of year. Let's face it: The weather sucked.
When you visit the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, you know you won't get much in the way of spectacle - the intimate stage space is charming, but limited - so, instead, you look for inventiveness, especially when the production in question generally thrives on spectacle.
