The big draw of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin, was undoubtedly Richard Thomas in the role of Atticus Finch. Thomas, famous as John-Boy in The Waltons, was certainly a big factor in my mother’s excitement to see the production—and considering that many of the …
Continue reading Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin—14 June 2023
Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less (IOGM from here on out) has to be an incredibly taxing play to perform, as each of the five actors plays a multitude of roles, each demanding its own character. The actor with the fewest number …
The Sock & Buskin Theatre Company’s production of Ken Ludwig’s comedy Moon Over Buffalo was an enjoyable performance marked by excellent comic timing. Under the direction of Stefanie Austin—a co-founder of Sock & Buskin—the full force of the farce came to the fore through Ludwig’s trademark wit and series of happy accidents. Moon Over Buffalo …
Continue reading Moon Over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig—29 Apr. 2023
Theater of War Productions is one of the most exciting companies in the performance of ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays because they tie each performance to a particular social issue and use the performances as a jumping off point for discussions of the issue. Their recent version of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis was performed …
As I said in my review of Moonchild, Matteo Esposito had contacted me about watching and reviewing his plays. A reading of Sorting It Out is available from the Online Play Reading Group at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8fEDk32mh4. Like Moonchild, Esposito’s Sorting It Out is a piece of disability theatre, but I think this play is more thematically …
Continue reading Sorting It Out, by Matteo Esposito—12 Apr. 2020
I watched the video of a reading of Matteo Esposito’s Moonchild (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FNkpDJ3ZV0) because Matteo had emailed me asking for a review of the play. Moonchild is a piece of disability theatre, focused specifically on the challenges faced by Harry, a boy with autism who wants to be a painter. The conflict facing Harry …
Sonnetfest ’21, directed by Kevin Wetmore, introduced Shakespeare’s sonnets as fourteen-line plays, and that promise was borne out. The performance consists of several sonnets read (not in numerical order) and acted out by Loyola Marymount University’s College of Communications and Fine Arts. I watched the final performance, which was streamed over YouTube-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsHyQUA0hK0 (this link …
Continue reading Sonnetfest ’21: 4th Annual Shakespeare on the Bluff Festival—23 July 2021
There are few subjects more fit for the stage than Oscar Wilde. He was a larger than life personality, who fundamentally changed the way many think about art, about society, and about sexuality. And of course he was best known in his lifetime as a playwright, so the stage is doubly appropriate. Moises Kaufman’s Gross …
Continue reading Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, by Moises Kaufman-2 May 2021
Theater of War’s Antigone in Ferguson adapts the Sophocles play in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and its specific history in Ferguson, MO following the murder of Michael Brown by police in 2014. Organized and run by members of the Ferguson community working with professional actors and singers from New York and …
Continue reading Antigone in Ferguson, by Theater of War Productions–9 Aug. 2020
Aeschylus’ The Persians is one of the oldest and most interesting plays in Western history, being unique among surviving ancient Athenian plays in being set entirely outside the Greek speaking world, and in unique among tragedies in being about current events rather than a mythological subject. The play premiered in 472 BCE, just eight years …
Phillip Zapkin 