In The Matchmaker, Nicola Lipman’s wig sets the tone for the evening. (Photo of Lipman and Ric Reid by David Cooper)
I went from thinking, “This is going to be a very long night,” to laughing uncontrollably. That is an excellent trajectory. [Read more…]
Guest review by David Johnston
Chris Lam and Tariq Leslie work hard but drop the ball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. (Photo by Zemekiss Photography)
It was a bad sign when, after sitting through A Prayer For Owen Meany‘s fourteen-hour runtime, my first reaction was “What was that thing about?” (The program says the runtime is 135 minutes, but just as knowing Owen Meany made protagonist John Wheelwright believe in God, watching Owen Meany made me no longer believe in clocks.) [Read more…]
Writer/performer Selina Thompson slams it in salt. (Photo by Dick Davenport)
At the beginning of her autobiographical solo show salt., Selina Thompson says, “I’m 28. I’m black. I’m a woman.” I’m 66, white, and a man and those realities will have a huge impact on how I interpret Thompson’s work.*
The realities of everyday racism still shock me, for instance. Near the top of salt., Thompson relates a story about her grandmother, who was told as a little girl—by her schoolteacher—that black people have darker skin because they are lazy and dirty in God’s eyes. Decades later, a little boy in a Bristol café points Thompson out as a nigger and, although she was born in Birmingham and lives in England, she still fields endless questions about where she is “really” from.
The concreteness of this material made it some of the most affecting in the script for me.
Then, in a way, Thompson sets out to experience where she is “really” from. The body of salt. is about a journey that she took in 2013: to explore the history of slavery and its impact on her life, she traveled by cargo ship from Belgium to Ghana, then on to Jamaica and back to the UK. [Read more…]
Dawn Jani Birley makes a compelling Horatio in Prince Hamlet. (Photo by Bronwen Sharp)
This Hamlet is like a priceless fabric with a lot of holes in it.
Director Ravi Jain has conceived and cast this production with refreshing inclusivity: the players are racially diverse, seven out of nine performers are women, there are multiple gender reversals in the casting, and the production is bilingual: Dawn Jani Birley, who is deaf, plays Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, and the story unfolds in both English and American Sign Language.
In many instances, the results are revelatory. Christine Horne’s Prince is the most original, the most mentally unstable, and by far the wittiest Hamlet I’ve seen. Jain and Horne establish the edge of craziness early: near the top of the show, when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost on the ramparts, Hamlet speaks the ghost’s lines, possessed by a kind of ecstasy. (I’m using male pronouns because the characters maintain their original gender identities.) [Read more…]
Less than halfway through this evening, I wrote in my notebook, “I don’t want to spend any more time with them.” Mostly, I was talking about the characters; there are strengths—as well as significant weaknesses—in the production.
In The Open House, which runs an unbroken 90 minutes, adult Son and Daughter have come home to celebrate Mother and Father’s wedding anniversary. The evening starts with an extended passage in which these four—and Uncle—abuse each other and ignore one another’s cries for help.
Having suffered strokes and heart attacks, Father uses a wheelchair—and he’s a flaming asshole. When Uncle makes a comment about the kids’ affection for pets, Father spits, “How many times do I have to ask you never to think about this family?” Father relentlessly insults and belittles Mother, making it clear that she is a third-choice wife who has become an idiotic inconvenience. And, when Son tries to open up to Father, Father says, “Work this into your sleep” and mimes shooting him. [Read more…]
I feel revived. So many things in the world these days are so depressing and alienating—the endless Trump news, for instance. Grounded, personal, and celebratory, Mrs. Krishnan’s Party is the perfect antidote for all of that. I don’t know when I’ve left the theatre feeling so refreshed and renewed. [Read more…]
Don’t make the same mistake I did and go toDakh Daughtersexpecting an evening of theatre; it’s a concert by a Ukrainian band.
There are theatrical elements to be sure. Dakh Daughters is an all-women ensemble and their costumes (designed by director Vlad Troitskyi) are a trip; the musicians start off wearing green smock dresses that make them look like factory workers, but they’re also wearing whiteface make-up and they have blood-red flowers in their hair. The combination is kind of Soviet-brutalism-meets-Frida-Kahlo. [Read more…]
Little Gabrielle Rose and big Gabrielle Rose. (Photo by Don Lee)
The Full Light of Day is obsessed with its surfaces and, as a result, many of them are well crafted. The performances in this production are first rate. And the script is a mess—especially in Act 1, which is 90 minutes long. By intermission, I had very little idea who the story was about, what it was about (other than the obvious), or why I should care. [Read more…]
