What starts as a theatre audition quickly becomes something entirely different in the QC Theatre Workshop's second production, Private Eyes. And this change from what's real to what's ... well ... something else is something I don't want to fully describe, because such a shift happened several times - and at very unexpected moments - during Friday's performance, making the evening a bit of an intriguing thrill that repeatedly piqued my curiosity.
After seeing Friday's performance of Hank Williams: Lost Highway at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, I am reassessing my typical disdain for jukebox musicals, particularly those that are biographies of particular artists wrapped inside collections of their greatest hits. Playwrights Randal Myler and Mark Harelik, here, managed to create a work that - in addition to being cohesive and easy to follow - nicely weaves Williams' hits into the story and is incredibly interesting to boot. And thanks to a pleasingly lengthy, Hee-Haw-esque scene in the middle of the second act, Myler and Harelik also avoid the seemingly too-frequent theatrical trend of shows with second acts that are much too serious and downbeat.
I could've left Saturday's Playcrafters Barn Theatre production of Ghost of a Chance at intermission and been quite pleased with the evening's entertainment. Unfortunately, I exited after the night's second act frustrated almost to the point of anger - not at director Patti Flaherty or her cast, but at the show's playwrights Flip Kobler and Cindy Marcus.
I had high expectations for the District Theatre's musical version of A Christmas Carol, given my knowledge of Tristan Layne Tapscott's and Danny White's talents. But Tapscott's book and White's music and lyrics actually exceeded my expectations during Friday's world-premiere performance, as the two have conceived a musical that I can see being produced by theatres across the country without requiring workshops and major rewrites. While their piece could still use some minor refinement, their version of the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge is remarkable for Tapscott's handling of the narrative, and White's cleverly crafted lyrics and gorgeous instrumentation.
While the story would benefit from more attention to how and when plot points should unfold, and some of the dialogue would benefit from a greater awareness of how people actually speak, I quite liked the themes that author Melissa McBain explores in Altar Call.
The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse and director Kimberly Furness have done it again, crafting a family production that's charming and a whole lot of fun for both the kids and the adults in the audience. My partner's nine-year-old daughter Madison and I enjoyed Friday's performance of Freckleface Strawberry: The Musical immensely, even though neither of us is at all familiar with the children's-book character the show is based on.
The Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse opened its presentation of Miracle on 34th Street on Friday, and if you're familiar with the 1947 film classic this musical version is based on, you should know that Laila Haley, who portrays Susan Walker, isn't on a par with the movie's Natalie Wood. She's actually so much better than Wood that it's not even funny.
The last time I watched Nancy Teerlinck perform, earlier this year, she offered a moving portrayal of a matriarch making tough, emotional decisions in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Moving. Yet as much as I liked her in that role, I think she's even better when she's playing ... well, a bitch ... such as the one she portrays in Playcrafters' current offering, The Christmas Express. Teerlinck's Hilda, who runs the play's Holly Railway Station, is an acerbic, crotchety, sarcastic, bitchy delight, and I think I now love the performer, and want to see this side of her comicality a lot more often.
After 12 years in the television-news business, I spent my first Election Day in more than a decade not covering the elections, but rather seeing a play about a bid for the presidency and the decision of whether to use personal attacks on opponents. And while watching the District Theatre's The Best Man, directed by Bryan Tank, I wondered if the point being made in this political morality play - that the business of politics is on a downward moral spiral - is one that needs to be made. Don't we, as a nation, already know that dirty politics are wrong, and doesn't this make the message of playwright Gore Vidal's 1960 work dated? A day later, though, I read an article about personal attacks and dishonesty continuing to be a part of political campaigns because these tactics work, and so Vidal's play, for better or worse, appears relevant after all.
Three days after seeing A Nice Family Gathering at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, I was still trying to understand the inclusion of the word "nice" in playwright Phil Olson's title. This isn't a feel-good, fuzzy-holiday-feelings sort of Thanksgiving play that would render the title appropriate, if clichéd. Nor is it an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy that makes the use of the word ironic. (Nor, for the record, is it a play about a family with the last name Nice.) I'm guessing, however, that an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy was Olson's intent, given that the content of his play kind of approaches shocking, though barely.
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