Connelly Theatre Archives - TheaterScene.net

Connelly Theatre

Salesman 之死

October 22, 2023

Not only is Jeremy Tiang’s "Salesman 之死I" an important document of a classic American play, it is also an illustrative reminder of the cultural differences between China and the United States. Under the direction of Michael Leibenluft, the cast of six is always engaging and always convincing playing both men and women alternately. The design puts the audience directly into the rehearsal room from March to May 1983. The play also allows us to watch major American playwright Arthur Miller as he explores and rethinks a play he had written over three decades before. The fact that the Chinese actors eventually did so well with this typically American text demonstrates the universality of Miller’s greatest play. [more]

Bedlam’s Persuasion

September 29, 2021

Bedlam’s 2014 production of "Sense and Sensibility," adapted by Kate Hamil from the novel by Jane Austen, and directed by Eric Tucker, set the bar so high for cleverness, originality and wit that we have come to expect this level of expectation from all of their future offerings. Unfortunately, their stage version of Austen’s last novel "Persuasion," a tale of mature love and second chances by first time playwright Sarah Rose Kearns, does not work as well. Among the problems are so much doubling and tripling that it becomes difficult to keep the characters separate and a lack of humor and irony that was inherent in the original material. Tucker seems to have forgotten that this should be a comedy of manners. [more]

Tumacho

March 5, 2020

To review dramatist/lyricist/composer Ethan Lipton's "Tumacho" almost feels like missing the point of this endearingly oddball "play with songs," a comic pastiche of Western and horror tropes that is essentially the theatrical equivalent of an old Hollywood B-movie. Its major goal is to shamelessly please the audience, something it largely achieves through top-notch performances and an abiding strangeness, if not necessarily a consistent quality of jokes or characterizations or plotting. Obviously, all of the latter should matter, but the fact that it doesn't only attests to the show's bizarre charm. [more]