Given Dickens’ penny-a-word driven verbosity and his fondness for resolving every plot point with a flurry of coincidences, adapter McEleney seems undecided: is this history play a tragedy or a farce?
Trinity Repertory Company
Theater Review: August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” — The Culture We Build
The message of August Wilson’s final play: the future rests not on the number of Whole Foods we build but on the culture we value.
Theater Preview: “Buddy” Cianci’s Ghost Returns to Haunt Providence
We are definitely feeling a sense of Buddy haunting us, to be sure. I mean, this theater is the place he visited. He attended many, if not most, of the shows here.
Theater Review: “Fuente Ovejuna” — An Underwhelming Revival
Lope de Vega’s classic story of how the powerless stood up to authority — and won –deserves better treatment than clumsy caricature.
Theater Review: “Faithful Cheaters” — Delightfully Frenzied Farce
This thoroughly cockamamy world offers the kind of guilty pleasure that you hope never ends.
Theater Review: “A Lie of the Mind” – Trinity Rep’s Excellent 50th Anniversary Gift
Critic Eric Bentley valued the theater of audacity above all, and that is just what is on glorious display in Trinity Rep’s marvelously nervy A Lie of the Mind.
Theater Review: Chekhov Lite — “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike”
Chekhov’s jokes are the inevitable by-products of his characters confronting life’s absurdities; Christopher Durang is content to wring laughs out of wacky situations and cartoon caricatures.
Theater Review: Of Race and Real Estate — Clybourne Park
Given his full-throttle depiction of the myopia of middle class mores, Bruce Norris is more in the flamboyant satiric line of Sinclair Lewis, who also trained his sharp ear and eye on the Midwest, the American heartland, jabbing away at American delusions of community, status, and self-satisfaction.
Coming Attactions in Theater: October 2011
It is encouraging that the list of recommendations for October isn’t filled with musicals. Are straight plays back? I wouldn’t count on it in this economic climate. So let’s bask in the chance to hear words without music.
Coming Attractions in Theater: September 2011
Every September proffers an explosion of productions; as usual, my eclectic picks, driven by my prejudice for the new. There are few world premieres among the openers this season, aside from the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival’s “Once in a Lifetime” and Arts Emerson’s presentation of The Foundry Theatre’s “How Much is Enough.”