“There is no play and you know it.” – Michael to Anna ‘Clever’ morphs to ‘profound’ as film noire narration counterpoints with spoken word and played scenes, in Michael Laurence’s “Hamlet in Bed” a play within a play within a play. Playwright Michael Laurence constructs a fascinating and engaging retelling of the “Queen’s closet scene” in “Hamlet” (Act III, Scene…
“Remember that feeling? Of endless energy?/Endless joy? Like when you’d have your/parents’ car late at night with your friends? All/the windows down? In the summer? Loud/music? Your hands on the wheel? Everything/felt so strong? So easy? So light?/Where is that?/Who feels that anymore?” – Mom to Smith Daniel Talbott has written one of the best surreal, kaleidoscopic fables about not…
“Time it was /And what a time it was, it was/A time of innocence/A time of confidences/Long ago it must be/I have a photograph/Preserve your memories/They’re all that’s left you.” “Bookends” by Simon & Garfunkel The insidious sounds of “right now” that threaten to relegate the present to the past creep eerily into Hank’s Bar in Chicago in 1992. Hank…
Everything you touch turns to gold. Everything you touch turns to dust. “Everything you touch surely dies.” (From the song “Let Her Go” by Passenger) “Everything You Touch” is a time warp and space warp marathon, pushing and pulling at the audience as it takes audience members on a roller-coaster ride through events in real time, through events in the…
‘You made me hate Syria! You made me hate my home!’ howls a wrathful Jameel. Haytham, a gentle, middle-aged man, sits bound and gagged in a claustrophobic apartment as Jameel inflicts atrocity after atrocity on his fragile body. It’s the grim ritual of history and violence now playing at Rattlestick Theatre. Playwright/Performer Laith Nakli spins a tale of suffering past…
Rural green forest swallows the set of “Pitbulls,” the most recent installment from veteran playwright Keith Josef Adkins. Though overwhelming at first glance, the lush stage proves a fitting frame for this gothic tale of love and violence. Mary, a modern-day witch survives in the forest by brewing wine with her son Dipper. When the mayor’s prize-fighting pitbull is killed,…
The purpose of Theater Mitu’s documentary mythology piece is clear and certainly commendable. Addressing how Juarez, Mexico could have become “The Murder Capital of the World” and to rediscover director Ruben Polendo’s hometown, the company members “began traveling to Ciudad Juarez/El Paso, meeting with anyone who would sit down and talk to [them] to create a piece with and about…
Playwright Robert Boswell has determined to tackle difficult themes in his new “The Long Shrift” currently running at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater: when a crime is committed, who is the innocent and who is the guilty? Does the justice system work? What are the long term effects on the accused and the victimized? At the age of eighteen, Richard (Scott…
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” (“Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.”) – Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy,” Canto III, line 9 of “The Inferno” One would think that with Dante Alighieri, Goethe, John Milton, Kurt Weill, T.S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner (among others) in the house, nothing but a good time would be…
“Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few.” – Winston Churchill “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…” – William Shakespeare, “Henry V” Long distance truckers are indeed a band of brothers and sisters whose escapades on America’s interstate highways place them among the few. And consumers in the…