Tom Williams

Director John Mossman sure gets his game cast of five to exude every ounce of comedy from Jean Cocteau’s 1938 French farce, Les Parents Terribles. We meet the ultimate tangled and twisted dysfunctional family that finds the father, George (Frank Nall) a wacky inventor; his wife Yvonne (Kathy Scambiatterra) the hyper-excessive mother who clings to her son, Michael (Julian Hester) in a passionately unnatural way. But Michael is in love with Madeleine (Allie Long) who also has an affair going with George. Aunt Leo (Miranda Zola), who has been in love with George for decades, live in the household is the only one present with a sense of order.

Golden Boy, written in 1937 (later made into a film with William Holden), is Joe Bonaparte’s (Nate Santana) story. Set in Depression era New York, Joe, a talented violinist and son of an Italian American immigrant chooses to be a boxer in his relentless search for the American Dream. Filled with gritty underworld characters and real family members (and, of course, the local socialists), Odets has the knack for presenting exact models of 1930’s frustrated lower class.

After all these years – Chicago still packs a wallop. The slick, sassy, stylish and sophisticated Broadway musical that was remounted on 1996 from the original 1975 production (which ran for 936 performances. To date, Chicago’s 1996 production has played for more that 6, 800 performances on Broadway making it one of the longest runs in history. Audiences love this show and the opening night audience at the Bank of America Theatre gave it a rousing standing ovation – me included! It’s that good and it never gets stale.

Director Peter Marston Sullivan has created the proper passionate tone to highlight Peter Shaffer’s fictional account of Antonio Salieri’s relationship with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The result is Amadeus, a rivetingly emotional gem.

Anchored by the in depth and glib work of Steve O’ Connell as Antonio Saleri and Chris Ballou as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus brings us into the fascinating world of Mozart as he strives for fortune and fame in Vienna at the court of Hapsburg Austrian Emperor Joseph II (David Tibble) in the late 1780’s.