Bruce Randolph Nelson's portrayal of Monsieur Gallimard is authoritative: all the glibness of a would-be mandarin who cannot quite pull it off, a lyrical self-awareness that does not quite go far enough, and a touch of madness.
The play has aged well.
I do not read Marcantel as indicting religion as such; she shows us how much groundedness and understanding faith gives.
Welcome to Fear City, premiering at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, shambles along amiably, looking as if it has no more greater object than to be a loose black family dramedy set forty years ago.
If by betraying her principles Scholl could prolong her life, as opposed to adhering to her principles, dying, and having no impact at all, which choice should she make? And this is not just her existential question: It is her interrogator Grunwald's as well.
The virtue of Byhalia, Mississippi lies precisely in its modesty.
A two-fisted drama of ideas, The Niceties may well leave you devastated, and will certainly send you out talking.
The group portrait of the youngsters (The Woman's younger self, her partners in crime Zabby and Skinny Lynny, the callow young men who pursue them or whom they pursue, and The Woman's big sister, aka The Favorite) in all their confusion, pain, and, most important, their exuberance and their desire t
The Therapist, embodied by Paul Diem, launched into a spirited evocation of the art of theater, which morphed into a vision of all life as a work of art.
We get an early hint that this Henry has more bloodthirst and realpolitik about him than Shakespeare had in mind, when (without any sanction in the script) he shoves aside a squeamish executioner and personally participates in the execution of the three traitors suborned to murder him at Southampton
This version of Richard III has been stranded in a World War I setting where it does not fit very well, and gives us an exceedingly tight focus on Richard himself, to the exclusion of a plethora of characters and relationships.
Victimization and bad choices are then so intertwined that to speak of individual moral agency seems almost pointless.
Mamma Mia! is actually more of a revue than a story-driven show, despite sporting the accouterments of the latter.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as Christmas rolls around, A Christmas Carol appears in theaters.
All the elements you want to see - the narration by Jean Shepherd, the Major Award, the flagpole (pictured above), the slugfest with Scut Farkas, the dogs in the kitchen, the Chinese dinner, and every repetition of 'You'll shoot your eye out!' are there, none the worse for your expecting them.
With Les Liaisons Dangereuses, we have byzantine complexity and unreal psychology.
Set in a high school where certain girls, banded together as The Carpenters, are in an anorexia/bulimia competition, where the intermediate prize is to date the hunky The Brad and the longer-term prize is death by malnutrition, the show follows the battle between the utterly unscrupulous uber-bitch
We know from the fact that playwright and performer Valerie David is standing before us that the upshot will be triumphant, and we don't mind the predictability at all.
This is not a show about big issues; the pathos comes from the human condition, to the basic facts of which the play is usually true, even when operating as a well-tooled laughter-delivery-vehicle.
