Guy Ben-Aharon
In his satire “The Golden Dragon,” Roland Schimmelpfennig holds his funhouse mirror up to “theater-people”: be they artists, audience, teachers, or students.
“The Whore From Ohio” is a provocative reminder that the same creature that is born to eat, drink, copulate, rot, and die is also a creature that dreams, tells stories, contemplates its own existence, and attends the theater.
Refreshingly, playwright Marianna Salzmann manages to be political without being didactic. Her characters live (rather than preach) through history, grappling with the transition from totalitarianism to democracy.
Oh God meets all of Guy Ben-Aharon’s criteria for Israeli Stage.
Swiss Stage’s inaugural offering was Dog Paddle (Schwimmen wie Hunde), a domestic comedy based on existential themes, by the German-speaking playwright Reto Finger.
Dramatist Theresia Walser is careful to point out that these women did not merely benefit from the abuses of authoritarian power, but perpetrated many of them as well.
Anat Gov does a fine job on the meta-playwriting level. “Best Friends” is a genre piece that is also an affectionate commentary on the genre to which it belongs.
Director Guy Ben-Aharon is on a roll. Working through Israeli Stage and German Stage, he has brought together another smart, compelling foreign play (an American premiere) and a first-rate cast.
Playwright Gericke-Schönhagen, hoping to avoid the phenomenon of talking heads, deliberately placed emphasis on those letters between Voltaire and Frederick that dramatized personalities rather than ideas.
“The Boston theatre community can always profit from international influx. The German theatre scene in particular is quite innovative both in the plays being written and the productions that reach the stage.”
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