Tom Williams Yet there is much to enjoy, loads of funny bits and the engaging use of the space with full audience participation becomes endearing. I had to admire the skill, craftsmanship and energy of the cast. They work so hard to tell their stories and to entertain us that we both admire them and applaud their efforts.
Sweet Bird of Youth features Williams’ lyrical language and deep sense of internal pain that often become a part of his characters. Loss of beauty and feelings of unworthiness are themes Williams like to explore. He also most effectively uses direct address toward the audience to hammer home comments. The three hour, two intermission drama flows nicely into a breezy evening of theatre.
Equivocation is a dense, wordy work containing material about the complex relationship between art and politics; between the truth and lies. Are Shags (and us) ready to pay the price for telling the truth?
This quirky play is 85 minutes of weird dark comedy. Santee and his benevolent sidekick Beaujo (Rudy Galvan) have spent months hiding their abduction horse dreamer, Cody, whose amazing ability to dream the winners of horse race…
It is nice to see a play by an outstanding playwright that is seldom produced. Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife is a 1949 play and a 1955 film that was Odets’ attack on the shenanigans that pervaded Hollywood in the days of the studio produced films centered on contract players.
Good People is a funny, honest and vividly naturalistic slice-of-life comic drama that intelligently defines the nature of just what a ‘good person’ actually is. Smartly, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire presents the complex, contradictorily nature of human behavior that has the key characters struggling with the affects of all their life decisions.
Woody Sex is a fast-paced, richly sung and expertly played glimpse into the life of Woody Guthrie. For us who know about Woody and for those unfamiliar (shame on you) with Woody Guthrie, this show has new insights into his life. We learn that his mother was a singer who influenced Woody as an infant. We also learn the hard times his family suffered from mother’s pyromania. Woody started street singing in Oklahoma at age seven. His natural discontent led him to establish a wondering spirit in search of harmony. it was a lifelong pursuit.
Charlie’s description of how he would sink to the bottom of a swimming pool or lake waters slowly and sit on the bottom until his air ran out observing things above as they floated by was insightful. Nancy’s early dreams involved being a woman and doing all the ‘woman’ things. These early scenes had touches of satire, melancholy and light comedy.
But what makes this 42nd Street sizzle is the terrific performance by Nicole Miller, as the chorus girl, Peggy Sawyer, who, in her first show on Broadway, saves the the show by stepping in, at the last minute, to cover the star. Miller’s dancing is expert, her singing and acting is renders Sawyer as the true ingenue who becomes a star right before our eyes.
In the hands of a master storyteller like August Wilson, Jitney flows as high drama. Themes such as younger disrespecting older generations, the struggle of the working class to make a living, and changing social order and the uprooting of older neighborhoods are aptly dealt with in Jitney.