I distinctly remember, in 1998, watching a PBS documentary prior to the 52nd Tony Awards ceremony, one in which I was enraptured by a segment featuring a nominated play. Captivating me with its quick-paced, witty, and sharp-tongued dialogue, the play was author Yasmina Reza's Art, and the clip featured the original Broadway cast of Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina, making my desire to see it all the deeper. The show's premise, though, seemed almost stupid, involving the purchase of a white painting for $200,000. "How could anyone create a play around that concept," I thought, "and make it remotely interesting?"
With its whopping cast size and an equally daunting song list, Guys & Dolls doesn't seem like the best choice for a rookie director. But that didn't stop local actor Jason Platt from taking the helm of Quad City Music Guild's first summer offering, and making a darned good run of it. To be sure, the Thursday-night preview show either needed a few major cuts to shave off at least 20 minutes of the two-hours-and-50-minute (including intermission) run time, or a quicker musical pace set by music director Charles DCamp. However, the lead vocal performances were phenomenal, the female dance numbers were great fun to watch, and the set design and high-quality costumes effectively represented New York City, circa 1940.
Clocking in at just under 50 minutes at the opening matinée, the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's (under) 21 Youth Theatre's adaptation of Go, Dog. Go! is a great opportunity for preschool and early school-aged kids to experience their first local-theatre production. (In retrospect, I could've even taken my 20-month-old daughter, along with a Snack Trap and three refills of Cheerios.) The show features a series of simple vignettes plucked from the pages of P.D. Eastman's 1961 children's-book classic about the friendship between six adorable canines. And while the general lack of dialogue or a steady plotline may bore some adults, the rudimentary yet whimsical scenes and characters will likely appeal to the under-10 crowd.
Character confusion makes for an enjoyable, lighthearted comedy in Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's current summer offering, Funny Valentines. And though the opening-night performance had a slow and somewhat shaky start in terms of line deliveries, the actors quickly settled into their roles and let their characters' quirks shine through.
As a frequent theatre-goer, both professionally and preferentially, it's refreshing to see familiar material presented in a different way. Such is the case with the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's production of Rent. Director Patrick Stinson and his cast abandon most of the conventions of the Broadway production, creating their own interpretation and consequently instilling more fun into this musical story of Bohemian life in New York's Alphabet City.
It doesn't feature a question mark, but the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse's Whodunit... the Musical may still not have the right question in its title; after viewing Saturday's performance, I was instead asking myself, "What is it?" The show's book, for the most part, is a straightforward murder-mystery, the majority of its songs make for a bright and cheery musical, and the climax and dénouement are straight out of drawing-room farce. It's an identity crisis bigger than the mystery afoot in the show's plot.
The Prenzie Players' current production, Cyrano de Bergerac, is costumed in nothing but black and white. Yet that lack of visual variety counters the abundance of color in the performances of the cast, which add shades of nuance to what could be presented as cut-and-dried "good" and "bad" characters. The actors' portrayals make it possible for audiences to feel sorry for the villain, to fall for our hero's rival in love, and even, to some degree, to occasionally dislike the tale's namesake.
As 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.Subscribe & Listen to Reader Podcasts
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