Jonathan Tindle

The Possibilities & The After-Dinner Joke

July 25, 2018

If "The After-Dinner Joke"’s 66 scenes seem cinematic, that is due to the fact that it originally was a teleplay commissioned by BBC for the series "Plays for Today" examining public issues. Churchill chose to deal with the politics of charitable institutions. Selby, personal secretary to the sales manager, decides that she gets no fulfillment from her work and tells her boss Mr. Price that she is resigning to be a do-gooder. Price offers her a job at the same salary working as a campaign organizer raising funds in towns throughout Britain for one of the charities that he has founded. [more]

Arcadia

July 23, 2017

The joy of Stoppard’s writing comes to the fore as the second act characters debate what happened in the first act, too often getting it all wrong, misinterpreting the evidence or jumping to too many conclusions that aren’t justified. These actors are so enjoyable to watch that we can only sit back and enjoy their self-delusions. [more]

No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming

July 22, 2016

Director Richard Romagnoli who also staged the 2007 production and he has done an excellent job of visualizing the scope of the scenes. Action on the battlefield, political conflicts in Moscow and German atrocities in the Ukraine are all exciting. A life drawing class sequence at a Budapest art school is quite compelling. A longhaired female model makes sardonic observations from atop a ladder as the students in long white coats swirl around her. It recalls the stunning achievements of Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway in their art house films. [more]

Pentecost

July 28, 2014

Director Cheryl Faraone knows that to keep the ideas going it is vital to have her characters be seen as human as possible so that we are not confronted with stereotypes and agit-prop, so that we become invested, begin to put our own values on the line. I particularly liked Jonathan Tindle, Alex Draper, Nina Silver, Lawrence Nathanson and Matthew Ball. A unique, priceless artifact, a creation of the finest in the human psyche, precious to the world, versus a gypsy baby, a gypsy mother, a Bosnian, a Kurd, a Palestinian Kuwaiti, an Azeri, a Mozambican, an Afghan, a Ukrainian, a Russian, how can we decide? [more]