from the current "best of the year" issue of the Riverfront Times: Best Shakespeare Production
Why is Shakespeare still being performed with regularity? Because when it's presented as thoughtfully and passionately as Mustard Seed Theatre's production of Measure for Measure, it teaches you more about yourself than ten years of therapy (and there are more laughs, as well).
Director Deanna Jent and her abundantly gifted cast took the raw material of the play (What is justice? What is morality? Who is fit to determine either? Can mercy be taught?) and released each idea into the audience like birds on the wing.
Adrift on that lovely iambic pentameter, they flitted and swooped about, inviting us to examine them and apprehend the truth of them, even when that truth was at odds with what we would have ordinarily called truth. And then with as cunning a whistle as you can imagine, Jent summoned these ideas to alight on the stage again, wrapped in the guise of characters buffoonish and bold and crass and desperate and chastened. And then she released them all in a thunderclap of clarity that stilled questions of justice, morality and mercy, leaving only compassion to raise its voice in triumph.
*
KDHX Theatre Review - Welcome to the Moon and Other Plays - Spring '07 Production
Reviewed by Mark Bretz
Recently St. Louis audiences have had the opportunity to observe the development of contemporary playwright John Patrick Shanley from two viewpoints. Last week, Shanley's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama from 2004, Doubt, played on the expansive stage at The Fox.
Currently, Shanley's professional debut effort published in 1982, Welcome to the Moon and Other Plays, is being performed by Fontbonne University. You'd be hard-pressed to find much in common in these two works, other than the apparent knack of the playwright to establish situations which demand our respect or invite our curiosity.
Welcome to the Moon is really more a theatrical exercise than an actual play, as it consists of six brief one-act works that consume little more than an hour to execute. These amusing vignettes are set in myriad surroundings, from a saloon in the Old West to a Bronx bar to the barren apartment of a destitute poet.
Still, what is lacking in depth is replaced by the insouciance and infectious glee of the playwright, who revels in quirky little situations. In the handsome and engaging production directed with flair and finesse by Emily Immer, a sextet of delightful performers entertains the audience with a series of winning little portrayals.
Matt Belt, for example, is equally at home as a clueless poet or a loud-mouthed tavern owner. Christie Blewett has fun as a flirtatious young woman surprised by the affections of an unknown admirer, or as the "good girl" trying to break up a duel between two cowboys. Bess Moynihan shines as the "bad girl" of the West and as a bored and unrefined bartender in the Bronx.
Mike Vincent is appealing as a young man determined to reveal his love to a distant woman, while Natasha Toro sparkles in a bit about a determined young woman who befriends a lonely young man who reminds her of the Russian writer Dostoevsky. She scores again as a gum-popping babe who still holds the heart of a neurotic former high school classmate, played in fitfully eccentric style by Craig Hinders.
All of the players segue in and out of their small scenes while establishing the set for the next theatrical bon mot. They're mostly barefoot and dressed in shades of black and white, and give themselves whole-heartedly into the spirited choreography of Kate Marie Watkins. Vincent's set design uses the moon as both backdrop and underpinning in a Daliesque fashion, nicely lit by Dominque Gallo. Trisha Bakula provides the "greatest hits" sound design of the playwright's life that serves to remind us where we've been and who we are.
*
KDHX Review of King Lear Spring '06 semester production
Reviewed by Daniel Higgins
King Lear is always an ambitious and risky undertaking, even more so than most of Shakespeare's other plays. The fullest realization of this text requires several near-geniuses in the cast. Fontbonne University and director Deanna Jent are to be commended for taking on the challenge, and for the degree of success the current production does attain. It is regrettable, then, that the production as a whole is as noticeably uneven as it is.
Some elements of the production are outstanding: the set and costume designs, by Daniel Lanier and KDHX Performing Arts critic Teresa Doggett, respectively, evoke a bleak pagan Britain better than any I've seen before. The mood thus established enhances the rest of what's good in this production. We begin with excellent performances from KDHX Performing Arts critic Steve Callahan as Gloucester and local Equity actor Travis Estes as Edmund. To the extent that college theater should lend prestige to the school, the performances of Fontbonne graduates Rory Lipede as Cordelia, Julie Venegoni as Regan, and Jenn Bock as Kent serve admirably. Richard Lewis is adequate to the task of playing Lear, a role that routinely defeats actors (most who play the king are not adequate, or very close to adequate, to this supremely difficult role).
But the range of talent within this production is remarkably broad, and here is the cause of the unevenness. Dominique Gallo's performance as Edgar is nearly perfect in the scenes in which Edgar is posing as "Poor Tom," but in Edgar's other scenes it can only be called eccentric in the extreme. Some of the lesser roles are rendered seemingly carelessly and sometimes with an amateurish stiffness, which undermines some entire scenes. Although there are a number of individual scenes that work outstandingly well, the unevenness of the casting does ultimately compromise the power of the piece as a whole. This is not to say that this production compares particularly unfavorably to others I've seen. In fact, it's as good a stage production of King Lear as any I can recall.
By way of disclaimer, I will mention that the company includes some I would call friends or friendly acquaintances. Although I believe I've been impartial, I make mention of the fact in the interest of full disclosure.
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