Lindsay Fuori Archives - TheaterScene.net

Lindsay Fuori

20 Seconds: A Play with Music

September 26, 2023

Sweitzer inhabits over a dozen characters in this play entitled "20 Seconds: A Play with Music," albeit two of them are him when young and him telling us the story now…two people he knows intimately. He is never so broad as to suggest caricature. His female characters are vibrant and flesh-and-blood enough for you to suspend disbelief that you aren’t actually seeing his mom Kathy, and Erdean, and Ms. Ruth, the fleabag hotel manager, and Denise, the girl next door, and finally his creation, Vivian Delgrosso, a drag homage to the Italian women his mom’s age. He brings the same depth to his male characters, with the masterpiece being his sadistic, yet eventually repentant father Tom. [more]

What Else Is True?

August 21, 2023

Another problem with the play is that although the subject is “Improv” we never actually witness any, just theater games to prepare for group improvs. Games like Mind Meld, Mating Call, 99 Problems, Zip Zap Zop and the Pattern Game are practiced but as the rules are not made clear, many in the audience be confused by what is happening. Throughout the play we are told that Miles is the most brilliant of them all, based on his auditions and performances, but except for a brief moment in the next to last scene in which he performs two characters in an improv alone, we are never shown any evidence of this. [more]

Made by God

February 17, 2022

It's just that, as the fictional Eva supplants the non-fictional Ann onstage, the play reverses course and sacrifices its human scale back to the rhetorical, with pro-life Eva and pro-choice Michael's gentle discord eventually turning toward the upcoming 2018 Irish referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment. Actually, the far more spirited debate is being held in Eva's own head as her religious upbringing wrestles with a sense of culpability for a recent tragedy that has cast doubt on her previously rock-solid convictions. Unfortunately, the much too-on-the-nose parallels between Ann's fate and what is tormenting Eva's conscience amount to a bundle of contrivances that touch off a cascade of underwhelming revelations not nearly as thought-provoking as the play's beginning scenes involving Ann and Mikey. [more]