Author: Tom Williams

Lucy fans will enjoy Sirena Irwin’s take on Lucy – red hair and all. She has Lucy’s comedic facial gestures and eye movements done; she even has Lucy’s terrible singing in tow.

The play starts out a comic parody that eventually turns into a serious cautionary tale about the corruption of accumulating excessive power. John Henry Roberts is effective, first as the pompous governor, than as the worn-out obsessive ruler. Joel Ewing is terrific as he moves back and forth from three distinct characters. Once he tones down his booming voice a bit, his performance becomes engrossing.

The plot is only hinted at but we never see the scheme unfold. Instead, we see Fran turn psychopath as she killed Joe on their wedding night. In act two, Fran tells Virginia about her killing her war injured sister. This play turns from a song-and-dance infused sexual ramp to gain allotment checks to a murdering psycho seems to come out of nowhere.

Generally, when I dislike a play, I don’t review another production but, since I’m a fan of Redtwist’s work, I thought that they’d make Purple Heart stage worthy. But since the play is so weird, nothing can save it. My problems come mainly from the script that finds all of the characters devoid of empathy and the situation is fueled by repetitive dialogue with an under rehearsed feel.

Trap Door Theatre, under the creative drive of artistic director Beata Pilch, has developed a smooth style especially when mounting Eastern European works. She directs a game cast of players who nicely,even humorously 65 minute work by Czech writer/politician Vaclav Havel. His 1975 absurdest work, The Unveiling and his 2010 play, Dozens of Cousins, are seamlessly performed.