Recent Reviews
Review: Uncle Vanya by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on January 15, 2018
UNCLE VANYA plays out in drinking, multidirectional lust, and Vanya’s unending suffering. Vanya, with his considerable but totally unacknowledged talents, is faithfully conveyed by Beau Paul .
Anton Chekhov’s great play Uncle Vanya has just opened at City Theatre on the east side. City has made a worthy production of it, without frills, updatings, or Russian accents. The production is a straight, dialogue-heavy play that emphasizes the hopes, fears, and joys of its characters. The four-act play dwells on Russian landed gentry and lower classes living on a family hereditary estate in agricultural southern Russia. As vast as the skies over the …
Review (#2 of 2): A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter, Playhouse San Antonio Cellar, December 29, 2017 - January 21, 2018
by Kurt Gardner
Published on January 06, 2018
Well-performed by a solid cast, A BRIGHT NEW BOISE in the Cellar Theatre at Playhouse San Antonio effectively blends comedy with darker themes.
** Note: contains spoilers ** Winner of the 2011 Obie Award for Playwriting, Samuel D. Hunter’s ironically-titled A Bright New Boise centers on the lives of a group of employees working dead-end jobs at a nondescript Idaho craft store. Well-performed by a solid cast, it effectively blends comedy with darker themes. The piece opens with Pauline (Meredith Bell Alvarez), the store’s foul-mouthed and volatile manager, interviewing new arrival Will (George Green) for a part-time cashier …
Review: A Bright New Boise by Playhouse San Antonio
by Michael Meigs
Published on January 04, 2018
George Green's finely tuned, deeply felt performance as the lonely, vulnerable Will demonstrates his concentration in a self-effacing portrayal of deep emotion. Those of us who knew the artistic director only from news reports and Playhouse communications can now feel that we've seen the man.
This is the break room at the Hobby Lobby in Boise, Idaho. Never mind that it doesn't exist -- there's a Hobby Lobby seven miles away in Meridian and another twenty miles away in Nampay -- but in A Bright New Boise you're not in Idaho at all. You're in the vast loneliness of America's small towns. Playwright Samuel D. Hunter uses the emptiness of franchised America as a metaphor for the connections that are …
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Review: A Charlie Brown Christmas by Magik Theatre
by Kurt Gardner
Published on December 26, 2017
Directed with flair by Magik Theatre artistic director Frances Limoncelli, this production is entertaining for nostalgia-seeking adults as well as their young children.
“Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest.” So proclaims Linus to the downtrodden title character in the opening scene of A Charlie Brown Christmas, produced by the Magik Theatre and playing at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. To have such well-known animated characters portrayed by actual human actors requires some cunning, and this delightful production manages to pull it off with a high degree of ingenuity. For example, to indicate …
Review: The King and I by touring company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on December 16, 2017
The stage is set, the fog rolls in, the lights fade up from murky to dim to sensual and then the music explodes, cinematic and powerful. The audience is whisked not only across the globe but deep into the past.
The stage is set, the fog rolls in, the lights fade up from murky to dim to sensual and then the music explodes. Music that can be best described as cinematic and powerful. The mood has been crystalized: it’s like a black and white film come to life. A lone ship crosses the sea, seemingly sneaking into the harbor like a cat owning a midnight alley. We can feel the passengers' tension almost as thick …
Review: Pocatello by Street Corner Arts
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 14, 2017
Carlo Lorenzo Garcia's performance as Eddie is nuanced and riveting, an ache of tightly controlled emotion. It belongs on any of the "best of" lists drawn up for 2017-2018.
From Street Corner Arts' publicity photos for Pocatello you might think that this was going to be a story of a big Italilan family dinner. Lots of discussion, acrimony, anger, maybe even flying plates -- a nightmare over turkey and dressing. A sort of modern-day Sopranos translated to the barren plains of Idaho. You'd be wrong. Way wrong. Samuel D. Hunter's work concerns not a single quarreling family but three. Yes, the stories overlap and …