Betsy Rinaldi News

Comedic and thought-provoking are both accurate terms for Epic Theatre Company's Rhode Island premiere of Lauren Gunderson's 2018 play, THE REVOLUTIONISTS.

Epic Theatre Company is expanding once again as it premieres its brand new live talk show entitled The Drag.  For five nights, Epic Artistic Director Kevin Broccoli will sit down with actors, writers, directors, and other members of the artistic community to discuss world events, pop culture, theater, and everything else with an irreverent and engaging attitude.  The show will be live from Epic's home base at Theater 82 in Cranston, and will be streamed on their Facebook page.

For one weekend only, Epic Theatre Company will be presenting the Rhode Island Premiere of one of the wildest shows you'll ever encounter.

GRIZZLY MAMA, by George Brant, was written in 2011 at the beginning of the inevitable downswing of the stranglehold Sarah Palin seemed to have on media at the time, and though the program clearly states that any resemblance of the characters in GRIZZLY MAMA to real people is mere coincidence, that's obviously as tongue-in-cheek as the play itself is trying to be. Perhaps this was effective when it first premiered, but the passage of time has eroded the stings and barbs of this satire leaving is as more of a dark comedy without the comedy.  With the ludicrous coverage of the coming 2016 election in everyone's face, a play like this just doesn't have any teeth, and it comes off as almost too safe.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) opens the new year with the New England premiere of Grizzly Mama by award-winning playwright George Brant (Grounded, Gamm 2014). With biting humor and shocking twists, Brant's timely play explores political extremism from both sides of the aisle. Rachel Walshe (Marie Antoinette) directs Gamm Resident Actor Casey Seymour Kim as Deb Marshall, a newly feminist homemaker with a death wish for her neighbor, an ultra-conservative political candidate; with Amanda Ruggiero as Deb's apathetic teenager, Hannah, and Betsy Rinaldi as her adversary's celebrity daughter, Laurel.

David Rabe's Hurlyburly, currently presented by Epic Theatre Company at Theatre 82 in Cranston, explores some well-known territory. It's Los Angeles in the 1980s. We're in the apartment of a couple of wanna-be Hollywood players. Vulgar, crude, rough-around-the edges guys who are trying to make it big, or at least make it, in Hollywood. They don't seem to have much real ambition though, or much actual talent, intelligence or qualifications when it comes to achieving their dreams, such as they are. All they actually do is sit around all day and night, drinking, doing drugs and having sex. These are not the bright and shiny celebrity filmmakers of Hollywood. They are the underbelly of the city, and Rabe peels back the surface and exposes all of their nastiness, not to mention their loneliness, paranoia, insecurity, greed and misery.

The 2nd Story company very ably presents this character-driven, dialogue-heavy piece, and under the smart direction of Mark Peckham, 'Dancing at Lughnasa' unfolds plainly and naturally.

Writers spend their entire careers, perhaps their entire lives, trying to find the right words. The perfect words. Those which will elevate their writing from something ordinary and dull to a lofty place among the great works of literary art. Some concepts, though, can't be so easily put into words. Cannot be defined or explained in any way that truly does them justice. Loves is one of those things and the attempt to put it into words is at the center of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, currently running at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) will stage The Real Thing, British playwright Tom Stoppard's Tony-award-winning 'best play' about the nature and mystery of love. BroadwayWorld has a first look below.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) will stage The Real Thing, British playwright Tom Stoppard's Tony-award-winning 'best play' about the nature and mystery of love.

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) will stage The Real Thing, British playwright Tom Stoppard's Tony-award-winning 'best play' about the nature and mystery of love.