16
Jul
2008
In the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's current production of Crimes of the Heart, Ashley Hoskins portrays Babe, the youngest and most eccentric of playwright Beth Henley's Magrath sisters, and the actress is like a nervous breakdown on legs.
This is meant as the highest of praise.
You know a comedy is in trouble when its most engaging scene features an elderly woman's description of her escape from a German concentration camp. You know a comedy is in serious trouble when it uses that description merely to goose its tinny excuse for a plot.
[Yes, we're aware that this is the second week in a row in which the movie-review headline is some sort of "Superman" pun. Considering how many superhero movies have already been released this summer, we're impressed that we've kept the tally to merely two.]
As the organization's annual Greek dramas always do, Genesius Guild's presentation of Electra begins with a processional. During this preamble, the cast members, accompanied by a majestic anthem, slowly make their way across the Lincoln Park stage, and those who'll be wearing the traditional headpieces of the period carry them at waist level, giving us an early peek at Ellen Dixon's costumes, Earl Strupp's masks, and, for the last time before the curtain call, the performers' faces. (Only the play's choral figures remain unmasked throughout the production.) It's a lovely touch, as reassuringly familiar as Genesius Guild's nightly T-shirt giveaway and the shrieking from the children playing on the neighboring swing sets.
No one in his or her right mind could possibly think that the Elvis Presley pastiche All Shook Up, the new presentation at the Timber Lake Playhouse, is a stronger piece of theatre than West Side Story or You Can't Take It with You, the first two presentations in the venue's 2008 season.
HANCOCK
The blues musicians of the Kinsey Report - composed of Kinsey brothers Donald on guitar, Kenneth on bass, and Ralph on percussion - haven't released a new CD since 1998's Smoke & Steel, and during a recent phone interview, Ralph states that "we don't tour as much as we want. One reason is because the venues aren't there anymore, and another reason is because we've been working on a new record for some time now, and we want to come out with something fresh."
WALL•E
