. It has been years since I was at the intimate e.t.c. second stage to see a sketch comedy show . I very much believe that the smaller stage renders the comedy with more power due to the proximity of the players to the audience. Looking right into the eyes of the troupe-and they looking right into the eyes of the audience produces a connection that enhances the comic dynamic.
Despite being a tad dated, Boeing Boeing is still a crowd pleaser comedic farce. When you enter Drury Lane Theatre’s space, you’ll see a 60’s style room adorned with eight doors 9set design by Sam Ball). That usually means a madcap door-slamming farce. With Marc Camoletti’s wildly funny farce, terrific performances fuel an honest rendition of the farce format.
Hence there is something admittedly compelling about the premise of Marks’s play. Awakening the next morning after an 18-hour home birth—attended by husband Peter (Gabriel Franken), mother Rina (Deborah Ann Smith) and her midwife Joan (Alexandra Main)—Mari shocks everyone when she declares that the baby in the cradle adjacent to the bed is not, in fact, her baby. Riveting enough, but why does Mari think that?
Buddy is a tribute to both Buddy’s unique talent and to the innovative and imaginative talent of this young guy from Texas. With a large assortment of terrific honest old-time rock music, Buddy is a nostalgic trip back for some and an intro to early rock for contemporary teens. A good time was had by all – this show is fun! Bring your dancing shoes.
This is s disturbing, yet enticing work filled with much subtext, ambitiously cynical take on life, love and self-worth.. In is also a scary story of self-destruction. I’ll say no more so at not to spoil the power of the conclusion. Richard Cotovsky is riveting as the failed writer while Rudy Galvan, in his finest role to date, is thoroughly calculating and intense.
Anyone considering a trip out to Oak Park Festival Theatre’s production of Amadeus— English playwright Peter Shaffer’s 1979 black comedy—should know that the grass in Austin Gardens is especially cool on one’s bare feet. And that the birds chirp away well into the early hours of the evening there. And that one should bring an umbrella in the event of inclement weather or bug spray in case of mosquito infestation (there were a few the night I went). But as for Amadeus itself, I’m afraid this production has about as much dramatic momentum as a temperate June breeze, lumbering along with lackluster production design and perfunctory characterizations.
Set in a Northside Chicago tavern, Black and Blue is the story of two brothers in a life-long argument over baseball. Jake (Anthony Tournis) is a diehard Cubs fan while his brother Tommy (Greg Caldwell) is a diehard White Sox fan. The play covers the ten years of Inter-league between the two Chicago baseball teams. The brothers bet which team (the Cubs or the White Sox) will more games against the other in a ten year period from 1997 thru 2007. This sports comedy is 90 minutes of screaming, shouting, and arguments between the two brothers and an assortment of bar patrons and the boy’s father.
The Pride reminds us that buried even within the essential question of civil liberties, there remains still more fundamental questions about how gay men connect to one another. Even as we here in the U.S. seem to teeter on unprecedented political victories for GLBT individuals, The Pride doesn’t let us forget that such hard won personal liberties mean nothing if used only as a pretext for further withdrawal and self-isolation.
The charming, witty script of I Love You, You’re Perfect Now Change remains as fresh and apt today as in1996! Only a few minimal tweaks update the original musical comedy — like using a cell phone instead of an answering machine. This deservedly is the longest running off-Broadway smash hit! (1996-2008 for over 5,000 performances.)
Without a doubt, Lifeline Theatre’s recent stage adaptation of French novelist Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers contains all the adrenaline-pumping athleticism and quick-turning escapades one may dutifully expect from this timeless adventure story.