In Rapid Lemon’s Variations on
Myth, director T. P. Huth takes advantage of the emotional ride a series of
ten-minute plays can create if presented in an order that allows them to
strengthen one another. It is too often that a series of smaller plays is
presented as hors d’oeuvres, being consumed individually without thought to if
the first appetizes the audience for the second, whereas this collection of ten-minute
plays formed a cohesive experience.
Artistic Synergy of Baltimore (ASoB) presents a splendid rendition of Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare’s most well-known classic comedies. Most are probably familiar with the material already through literature class, seeing it performed elsewhere, or from the various movie versions (most notably the 1993 version directed by Kenneth Branagh), but for those who are not familiar, it can be summed up briefly as two love stories intertwining with misdirection,
What if it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year? You’ve got friends who will be there for you! Right? What of those friends are just meddlesome, busybody, buttinski folk who can’t leave well enough alone and have to knit-pick at your problems to make them feel better about their own? In the east coast premiere of Reginald Rose’s Dear Friends, that recipe for disaster is exactly what’s brewing up in the Lambert’s Living Room.
Madhouse doesn’t begin to describe the utter shenanigans happening in William Gillette’s New England mansion on Christmas Eve. Scandal! Mystery! Murder! For god’s sake, there are actors present! What else could be expected from Ken Ludwig’s bitingly humorous and boisterously bloody play The Game’s Afoot? Directed by Fuzz Roark, this scintillating madcap comedy with just a dandy drop of blood for the murder mystery enthusiast in us all is the perfect way to ring in the holiday season.