REVIEWS

Jackson Evans , as Princeton and Leah Morrow, as Kate Monster were among my favorites from a cast of accomplished troupe of talents that sang well, delivered laughs and won the hearts of the audience. Adam Fane, as the flaming queen Rob was a hoot!

This flawless production does everything right. From the opening scene that finds the nuns changing in Latin to Maria (Jenn Gambatese) soaring as she sings the title song on a set that screams Alps, we instantly become enchanted into the world of Salzburg, Austria in 1938.

Chronicling Charles Darwin’s discoveries was nicely and effectively presented due to Gmitter’s fluid writing upon Collette Pollard’s suggestive set. Director Jessica Thebus’ staging underscores the ambitious storytelling effectively. The combination of telling Charles’ amazing rise to fame as the most controversial writer of the 19th Century and his lifelong romance made for an engaging play.

Lay Me Down Softly is essentially a memory play centered around the patchwork family of Roadshow. The action and metaphors are sports references and the on-going boxing matches. We see how hope and dreams were stiffed as this group laments through melancholy their lost dreams. Each character depends on the Roadshow family for sustenance, companionship, and recognition.

In their year of one playwright – 2014 – Lynn Nottage, Eclipse Theatre Company, under the creative direction of Aaron Todd Douglas, have mounted a powerful and wonderfully performed version of Ruined, the finest play by the talented Lynn Nottage.

She dramatizing the atrocities committed against women in the long civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nottage puts her immense research and writing skills to work to create situations and characters aptly depicting the conflicts in East Africa from a women’s perspective.