Reviews for City Theatre Company Performances
Review: The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on June 25, 2010
Austin Rausch, particularly, takes impressive risks in pushing Adam into inflated caricature in the first act and then bringing him back in the second to a sympathetic portrayal. Marco Bazan is always the steadier and the more restrained of the two.
Paul Rudnick's play is cleverer and better crafted than you might suspect, given all the no-neck scandal over his playful recasting of biblical stories in goofy, unabashedly gay terms. The company plays the first act hysterically over the top, with flamingly naughty versions of the creation story and of the tale of Moses and the pharaoh, and almost -- almost -- a lesbian immaculate conception. Adam and Eve become Adam and Steve, for example. …
Review: Agnes of God by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 04, 2010
Evil exists. Pielmeier's examination of it here is glancing and exculpatory, as is often the case in our secular society. Each of these women is a victim in some sense, and in Pielmeier's world without greater meaning there appears to be very little consolation for any of them.
Agnes of God is a dark piece, in a dark place in the soul and in the universe. The three gifted actresses in this cast are glittering points of an enigmatic constellation in that darkness. A crime has been committed in a convent. Jennifer Underwood, admant and authoritative as the mother superior, clashes with Dawn Erin's Dr. Livingston, the skeptical, chain-smoking psychiatrist appointed by the court. Laura Ray's performance as a stressed and confused …
Review: How The Other Half Loves by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on April 08, 2010
We get to watch the two dinner parties develop in the same space in alternate time-stop action. The result is a devilishly clever bit of plotting and some sparkling comedy.
Alan Ayckbourn applies a clever staging twist of time and space in the first act of this contemporary English comedy of manners, and it is a delight to watch the City players accomplish it. How The Other Half Loves, as the title implies, is a satire of class and sexual mores. I repeatedly mistyped that title in the ALT "images" feature for the production, because my fingers were finding their way back to How The …
Review: A Raisin in the Sun by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 11, 2010
McArthur Moore is an intense, physical actor -- not an athlete, but rather a sculptor of gesture, attention and presence. In this production he proves that his approach is as valid for drama as for comedy.
Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun was a triumph for its 29-year-old author in 1959, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best play. It opened career avenues in theatre and in the cinema for a cast that included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett, Jr. The play was a victory for African American arts, as well. Hansberry broke both the color barrier and the gender barrier in American theatre -- …
Review: Buried Child by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on February 09, 2010
Keylee Koop as the ingénue Shelley is the only healthy one here. This L.A. girly-girl does her best to deal with this world of relentless downers, but she, too, gets to a point when she’s goaded to the attack.
Tom Waits’ discordant, sardonic music is a perfect match for Sam Shepard’s Buried Child. The program gives no credit for sound design, but City Theatre's artistic director Andy Berkovsky tells me that director Caleb Straus made the choice. Like Tom Waits, Shepard brings us into a world of discord and grotesque despair. Shepard creates a distorted vision of the all American rural idyll. Think you’ve had a tough time visiting the prospective in-laws? Forget it. Shepard topped …
Review: Laughter on the 23rd Floor by The City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on December 13, 2009
It's a vigorous, entertaining, vulgar, unpredictable evening, one that will blow away any stereotype you may have of Simon as a warm and fuzzy middle-of-the-road comedy writer. This has the authenticity of experience, with all the jagged edges that implies.
There's no assembly more live-wire, unpredictable and funny than a room full of comedy writers. In Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon, director Andy Berkovsky and a wild, accomplished cast mint anew the eccentrics of the early days of television.Word has gotten around about this show, which opened in November, took a long weekend's break for Thanksgiving, and will now be on the boards until just before Christmas. I planned to slip in on a …