15
Feb
2016
On a cold night indicative of February, weary of politicians and the weather, I escaped to Rock Island for the latest District Theatre offering Moon Over Buffalo. A Tony-nominated play that debuted on Broadway in 1995, author Ken Ludwig's farce is a comedy of silly, exaggerated humor, and probably not to every theatre-goer’s taste. But in my opinion, and judging by the belly laughs coming from Friday's opening-night audience, the humor as performed here clearly worked for a number of us.
Augustana College’s Getting Out, directed by Jeff Coussens, is the story of one woman’s difficulties in reconstructing her life after being released from prison, and author Marsha Norman’s 1978 play is a brilliant depiction of life's realities for a woman who has been caught in a cycle of violence, beginning with abuse as a child. Although she served her time in prison and has been released, she now has the real “getting out” to do – getting out of her own psychological hell.
While waiting for the Prenzie Players' Thursday-night dress rehearsal of the William Shakespeare comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost to begin, I realized it had been a long time since I had seen one of the Bard of Avon’s plays performed live. I pondered whether I would be able to follow the plot and comprehend the dialogue. I worried that the show might be too stuffy for my unrefined sense of theatre. “Holy crap, I'm supposed to write a review – what if I don’t get it?” Yet as the show began, the Prenzies put my neuroses to rest very quickly.
Let’s get this out of the way: In case you're attending to specifically hear “Music of the Night” or other well-known tunes, the current production of the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's Phantom is not Andrew Lloyd Webber's more famous version of the same story. Comparing Phantom to Webber's The Phantom of the Opera is like comparing a croissant to an éclair. Both are French, textured, and rich with flavor, but also two totally different experiences.
I won’t lie: I left the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s January 5 preview performance of Arsenic & Old Lace a little creeped out. This show could be titled The Original American Horror Story, although a version with a light seasoning of laughter, and director Donna Weeks did an especially nice job of casting the show's eccentric characters that brought us into its world of homicide and pleasantries.
I must confess: When I first saw the Jimmy Stewart film It's a Wonderful Life on TV in the early 1980s, I was not a fan. Was I, I wondered, the only person on the planet who thought the story overly sentimental and a bit of a melodramatic mess? As I was to learn, I was not, for when the film was first released in 1946, some considered it a disappointing addition to director Frank Capra's oeuvre. Although I have begrudgingly come to accept the movie on its own terms over the years, it was with a bit of trepidation that I went to see the November 12 preview of the musical production A Wonderful Life at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse. Would this, my first published review, be my "outing" as a Scrooge?
"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of a man can invent." This Sherlock Holmes quote is a perfect description for the mystery play at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre - at least in terms of the lives of those on-stage. Just when you think things cannot get any crazier and the coincidences cannot get more coincidental, Ken Ludwig's script shows you otherwise. The Game's Afoot is a comedy with a mix of nutty characters and a whodunit theme, and while it was clear that the cast was still getting comfortable with each other and the script during Thursday's dress rehearsal, there were improvements in energy and confidence by the second act.
