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Man in the Ring

Anchored by old Emile, (fabulous work from Allen Gilmore) who is going into and out from past memories as he battles dementia. He sees his young self (the boxer-built Kamal Angelo Bolden) as he arrives in NYC from St. Thomas to reunite with his estranged mother Emelda (Jacqueline Williams). As Emile and Emelda look for work in NYC, Emile’s ability to make lady’s hats leads him to Howie (Thomas J. Cox), a small hat manufacturer. Once Howie sees how well built Emile is he gets him to become a boxer.

a play about the ways men and women relate

Press Release

Defending the Caveman

Chicago Critic

Arlington Heights, Ill., October 5, 2017 – Ben Tedder returns to Metropolis Performing Arts Centre with Broadway’s longest running solo

MUST SEE REVIEWS Theatre Reviews Tom Williams

The Tin Woman

Tom Williams

The Tin Woman is a work inspired by a true story, it’s a heartwarming comedy that is a smartly crafted blend of family drama, humor and hope. Joy (Erin Noel Grennan – the playwright’s sister) has had a heart transplant and during her recovery she is questioning her second chance in life. She is depressed because she can’t come to grips with why she was given another chance to live.

REVIEWS Theatre Reviews Tom Williams

Beyond Caring

Tom Williams

Beyond Caring is a naturalistic drama about the plight of temp cleaning crews working for low wages in horrible conditions without benefits in an American factory. Barely surviving and working extremely hard–we see the four mopping floors, scrubbing walls and cleaning manufacturing machines. They barely have proper cleaning equipment, no insurance and no health benefits. They work late night hours with short breaks. This is a gritty portrait of exploited workers.

MUST SEE REVIEWS Theatre Reviews

Blue Man Group

Tom Williams

Blue Man Group is for everyone: kids, couples, visiting in-laws, clients, fun people, boring people, people with taste, people without taste. It’s an immersive, multi-media, comedy-rock-dance-party-show spectacle for all! If you haven’t seen it, you should; if you haven’t seen it recently, bring the kids, the new girlfriend, the family you have nothing to talk about with; if you have seen it recently, you might just as well wait a couple years, it’ll be around.

REVIEWS Theatre Reviews

Death of a Salesman – 2017

Tom Williams

Death of a Salesman so permeates our American subconscious, it hardly needs any introduction. Willy Loman (Brain Parry) is a husk of a man who has staked his life of 30-plus years of traveling salesmanship in the fruitless soil of unrealistic hopes and impractical principles—the pedestrian virtues of being well-liked and wearing a charming smile—to which the world has responded with brutal indifference, literally bricking-out the sun from alighting on his small, urban domain.

REVIEWS Theatre Reviews Tom Williams

A Disappearing Number

Tom Williams

A Disappearing Number uses mathematics as a framing devise for storytelling. Told in a series of face-paced vignettes that move around in time and place, this love letter to numbers blends math mysticism with personal relationships as well as a story about two giants of math in the 20th century.

MUST SEE REVIEWS Tom Williams

Dutchman and TRANSit

Tom Williams

These two companion one-acts are riveting, explosive and truthful as simmering racial (and gender) rage explode today as it did in the 1960’s. Both works will upset and get audiences aware of the cancer of racism and gender hatred that eats away at our society. Dramatizing can be the first step toward a solution – hopefully. See these two powerful one-acts.

REVIEWS

Farewell My Friend: The Tragic Romance of Star-Crossed Lovers

Tom Williams

Even if the two stories never coalesce into a bigger idea, one would still expect that each story, solo ipso, would be moving. Yet here, too, the meaning never comes together in Farewell My Friend. The immersive aspects of being in close proximity to the actors and the continual, narrative disturbances of having to change rooms only to see part of the story ultimately work against the production. I found the acting to be overly emotive and childish, without any honest grounding in true feeling. And as for the latter, again, I found the room changes were too frequent and the story too fragmented to be engaging and establish emotional continuity — a problem I don’t see repeat viewings ameliorating as one would only encounter it again.

MUST SEE REVIEWS Theatre Reviews

David Carl’s Celebrity One-Man Hamlet

Tom Williams

Why do a show about a possibly brain-damaged actor interpreting every role in Hamlet with the aid of puppets, projections, facial spasms, and acronyms? The answer, “Busey” says, is to prove that he can. And for a hilarious seventy-five minutes, we can watch a slow-rolling disaster interlaced with occasional flashes of genius as Carl pars down Shakespeare’s longest play into a rapid-fire series of commentaries, deluded sidetracks, and high tragedy.

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