In August 1987, before he left for college, Chris Champion and I decided we’d drive to Atlantic City and sleep under the boardwalk. We had no plan beyond that. It seemed like something 18 year-old best friends should do: odyssey, iconic quest, scatter oats and all that.
The atmosphere of waiting and illness is replaced by activity and health. The patients we cheer for are as sick as any I’ve seen, but they reclaim their health before our eyes.
“Sarah, how did rehearsal go today?” “Fine, except I had to comfort a crying squirrel.”
An invisible show happens behind and underneath what the audience sees. Curtains fly, lights go up and down, sets move, all because of stagehands and technicians. The stage manager coordinates their activity prior to and during the performance. It requires a cool head, a wide understanding of theater craft, and comprehensive knowledge of the production.
Barbara Pratt mesmerized a packed house last night with a tour de force performance of William Luce’s one-woman play The Belle of Amherst.
The Angel is refreshingly unromantic and avoids cliche…the words work better when considered as a twilight reverie, without insisting on coherence. Musically, it’s an easily overlooked gem.
I’ve watched the new trailers as they’ve been released, and my physiological reaction to John Williams’ music is probably similar to every other 40-something sometime geek’s: increased heart rate, loss of peripheral vision (starry eyes), flood of cerebral endorphins… I feel young again.
Louise Maske stretches to see the King pass during a parade, and her bloomers fall to her feet. Her husband Theo, a low-level government functionary, is appalled when he learns what happened (he thinks he’ll be fired), while Louise’s upstairs neighbor is thrilled for the excitement. Soon, men are vying to rent a room in the Maskes’ apartment.
I waited in vain over 500 minutes for a twist that might align the show with something beyond its paranoid, easy target fantasies… The show never questions whether the hackers might be wrong – the group is unambiguously set up as virtuous, despite the implication of their name, fsociety. They love society!
The student company worked extremely well together…they paid attention, which allowed them to pull off some good sound effects, and kept the production hurtling along – the pacing was superb.
mossislandsounds.com 