Odyssey Theatre’s revival of Jean-Claude van Itallie’s ensemble play, The Serpent, brings back vivid memories of my college days in the Sixties, the decade when everything changed for the worst. The bright, shining hope that John Fitzgerald Kennedy gave this teenager was shattered with his assassination. I was in my high school drama class with … Continue reading “The Serpent” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Sam Shepard crowded into my fevered sleep in the dead of night. Just hours after seeing his two remarkable plays, The Unseen Hand and The Killer’s Head, at Odyssey Theatre, I started thinking about the shows in a half-conscious state and a memory struck me. It is the image of the actor/playwright striding away from … Continue reading “The Unseen Hand” and The Killer’s Head” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Odyssey Theatre Company and director Denise Blasor have assembled a superb cast of actors for their production of María Irene Fornés’ 1977 play, Fefu and Her Friends. Touted for its all female cast, it is hardly unique in that aspect. Clare Booth Luce had a hit with The Women in 1936 that featured a huge … Continue reading “Fefu and her Friends” At Odyssey Theatre
While researching for this article, I discovered that Joe Orton’s life is an emotional conundrum. How a talented working class boy achieves a modicum of theatrical success with a couple of well regarded plays ends up bludgeoned to death at the age of thirty-four by his long time lover and collaborator, Kenneth Halliwell, in their … Continue reading “Loot” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
The term “kitchen sink drama,” meaning the gritty, British, working class plays of the late 1950s and early 1960s, could easily be applied to Taylor Mac’s extraordinary black comedy free-for-all, Hir. The term hir “is a gender-neutral, third-person singular object pronoun that replaces the use of him or her,” which points to the gender-bending confusion … Continue reading “Hir” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Put aside all expectations of an Aristophanes comedy. Eduardo Machado’s new play, Lysistrata Unbound, is no light-hearted romp about a bunch of Athenian women who cut off all sexual contact with men in order to bring a halt to the endless Peloponnesian Wars. No, this show, under the inspired direction of John Farmanesh-Bocca (Tempest Redux, … Continue reading “Lysistrata Unbound” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Playwright Mark St. Germain’s extraordinary off-Broadway hit, Freud’s Last Session (suggested by the book The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.) puts the renowned psychoanalyst and confirmed atheist in head-to-head intellectual debate with C. S. Lewis (Martyn Stanbridge), a noted author, Oxford professor and mid-life, Christian convert. In a gripping eighty-minute performance, … Continue reading “Freud’s Last Session” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Conor McPherson’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is a bitter, superbly black comedy, which is said to have inspired such Twentieth Century playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and most notably, Edward Albee, whose now classic play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a direct descendent. Odyssey … Continue reading “The Dance of Death” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Without a doubt, Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace is a glistening jewel of Twentieth Century American Theatre. The giddy, dark comedy debuted on Broadway in January of 1941 as the world was becoming more and more mired in the horror of yet another world war. Written by Kesselring as a thriller, it was turned … Continue reading “Arsenic and Old Lace” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
It is beyond question that Jacques Brel was one of the greatest singer/song-writers of the Twentieth Century. Put him right next to Edith Piaf for passionate, dramatic performances in the French chanson tradition, with songs that echo in the mind and memory. He rose steadily from obscurity in the early 1950s to world-wide fame in … Continue reading “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” at Odyssey Theatre
Paul Myrvold's Theatre Notes 