The Night Season. An ensemble play I would describe as more about loneliness than love, The Night Season is an experiential success insofar as it offers the same disappointment of loneliness by not only conveying loneliness’s disappointment through its characters but also by leaving its audience disappointed at its end—all this despite its sentimental conclusion in which many characters actually find love.

Wikipedia would have us believe Things to Ruin is “A rock concert about young people hell bent on destruction and creation,” but it’s unlikely Wikipedia saw the production I did. For me, at its worst Things to Ruin is about a group of former high school theatre nerds (I use the term affectionately), now grown into struggling actors and wayward young adults, who hang around a bar exorcising the ghosts of their Emo years while bemoaning the failures of their present. At its best, the show sometimes manages to transcend the hallmark sound of musical theatre, relay a sentiment not entirely infantile, and actually land in genre (though typically it does not stray far from the roots of Rock). At its best, Things to Ruin is very good; at its worst, it’s mawkishly sentimental. The good news: it’s more often at its best.

The stand-out performances, I noted, were experienced Trap-Dôrsists Halie Ecker, Marzena Bukowska, and Kelsey Rhiann Shipley: their presence had that sine qua non quality—in their physical movements; the credulity in their eyes; and, most especially, the expressive skill of their voices that transcended the “poetry” of the poetry to communicate its meaning clearly (cf. a coherent Shakespearian actress).