Bruce McKenzie

Racecar Racecar Racecar

December 14, 2024

Sarah Blush directs a cast of five in the story of a father and daughter on a road trip from New York City to a storage unit in California. It is a trip that is both se in the present and past, and it is filled with a flow of information that mixes reality with fantasy in a liminal space between sanity and insanity. This story operates from a different dimension the moment one walks into the performance space. The set is a large orange square, shag-carpeted pit with no clues as to the staging. The two principal characters making this trip by car never sit as if they are in a car but casually walk the raised outside edge of the box. It is an element of this stagecraft that adds beautifully to the edginess of the production. [more]

[Veil Widow Conspiracy]

June 21, 2019

The set designer (Yu-Hsuan Chen) and lighting designer (Reza Behjat) have obviously worked collaboratively to create some effective—and often beautiful—stage pictures. Loops of light are a striking visual leitmotif throughout the show. Costume designer Mariko Ohigashi was given a particularly challenging assignment: imagining garments for three distinctly different worlds. She has delivered the period costumes of the original story (with help from Makoto Osada), the T-shirts with production titles that are worn on the film set, and the simple windbreakers that appear in the futuristic scenes—and she’s done it all with both nuance and flair. [more]

STET

June 28, 2016

Rolling Stone magazine’s 2014 controversial article "A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA" about an alleged rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house seemingly has inspired the author of this play, Kim Davies. Ms. Davies has taken many of the facts of that story and woven them into this fictionalized narrative that falls short of being compelling. [more]

10 out of 12

July 8, 2015

While this is a fascinating idea, anyone who has worked in theater will tell you that Tech rehearsals are long and tedious with all the stopping and starting to get the lights, sound, set and costumes right as time is running out. Unfortunately, much of 10 out of 12 falls into this category. At two hours and 40 minutes, the play is a bit of an endurance test for the uninitiated. Although as the Tech rehearsal goes on we get to know the characters better, the play is revealing about only some of its characters. [more]