If you have expectations of Henrik Ibsen, Norway, and a five-act play, put that out of your minds. Over the decades, An Enemy of the People has been adapted in many ways, perhaps none as freely as Ellen Geer’s version, now running in repertory at Theatricum Botanicum. Set in South Fork, South Carolina in the … Continue reading “An Enemy of the People” at Theatricum Botanicum
George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a classic piece of Twentieth Century literature that is de rigueur in classrooms, is a biting satire of the politics of revolution. Taking the Russian Revolution as a model, Orwell shows how the idealism of original revolutionaries gets co-opted by the unsavory and the ambitious. In Theatricum Botanicum’s staging of Peter … Continue reading “Animal Farm” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum
It is seldom that a house announcement concerning cell phones, exits, photographs, and so on, is entertaining. In the case of Theatricum Botanicum’s radical reworking of Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, that chore becomes a delightful entré into the world of the play. Speaking in a lovely French accent, Lea Madda, dressed in the skimpiest 17th … Continue reading “The Imaginary Invalid” at Theatricum Botanicum
As a young actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I remember that sometimes there would be audience members sitting in the front row with a book in their laps following in the text as the play unfolded. Often there would be a flurry of fluttered pages as they tried to catch up where some lines … Continue reading “Romeo and Juliet” at Theatricum Botanicum
Paul Myrvold's Theatre Notes 