(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 2/24.)

To watch “The Hallway Trilogy” by Adam Rapp is to enter an alternate universe. In this series of connected plays being performed in rotating repertory at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (or in all-day marathons on Sunday), a nondescript passageway in a Lower East Side tenement building becomes a carnival of the desperate, the grotesque, the outrageous. Mr. Rapp, a relentless provocateur whose numerous plays have paraded a feast of bad behavior before the city’s more adventurous — and strong-stomached — theatergoers, never ceases to extend himself in the presentation of the grisly extremes of human experience.

via theater.nytimes.com

(Chris Jones’s article appeared on Theater Loop,1/14.)

There is no more appealing Shakespearean heroine than Rosalind: a smart, down-to-earth and thoroughly generous gal who not only takes care of her best friend through turbulent political times without regard for her own ego, but through it all retains an infectious optimism about love.

And there is no better Rosalind than Kate Fry, an actress able to play the entire seven ages of women and men without any stretch of credulity, and who invariably encapsulates on stage those very same and very beguiling qualities.

Fry's exceedingly fine work in Gary Griffin's expansive and engrossing new production of “As You Like It” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater is what you might call an essential performance. Without it, it's hard to imagine this production working so well. But with Fry as its warm, crispy, intermittently insouciant and perpetually irony-free center, this tale of court, forest and romantic disguise proceeds with the kind of rich emotional core that this delicately toned bit of Shakespeare especially needs.

And it comes with a singular quest of the heart in which one becomes wholly invested.

via leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com

(Charles Spencer’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 2/23.)

In Danny Boyle’s eagerly awaited production of Frankenstein the show’s stars are alternating the roles of the scientist and the deformed Creature in Mary Shelley’s great gothic tale, first published in 1818.

On Tuesday we saw Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature, cobbled together from dead body parts and conjured into life by the power of science, with Benedict Cumberbatch as his appalled creator, Victor Frankenstein. Last night the roles were reversed.

For those who have tickets — and if you haven’t you will have to queue for day seats or attend a performance due to be screened live in cinemas on March 17 and 24 — I can report that both versions are well worth seeing. Miller, however, strikes me as the more disturbing and poignant monster, while Cumberbatch undoubtedly has the edge as the scientist who is ultimately revealed to lack the humanity of the unhappy creature he has created.

Either way, the show is a thrill — though the inevitable result of seeing it twice is that one does notice the occasional longueur, and the fact that Nick Dear’s sometimes plodding script doesn’t always live up to the brilliance of Boyle’s direction or the nervy intensity of the lead performances.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in the Village Voice, 2/23.)

Is Geoffrey Rush sane? Certainly, he has played any number of compos mentis characters, and nothing in his offstage, off-camera behavior hints at a deranged psyche. Yet in films such as Shine and Quills and in the recent Broadway run of Exit the King, he takes on crazed roles with such confidence and aplomb you have to doubt the balance of his mind.

via www.villagevoice.com