April Matthis

The Dinosaurs

The Dinosaurs

Jacob Perkins’s The Dinosaurs is a meditation on sobriety and female friendship. It unfolds within a women’s and trans-inclusive alcohol-recovery group dubbed the Saturday Survivors, a nod to the day of the week they meet over coffee, scones, and doughnuts in a bland, white, windowless community room with folding chairs (scenic design by dots). Under Les Waters’s direction, the 70-minute play, which features a remarkable ensemble of actors, slides from a naturalistic mode into an experimental one, as time and identity are upended. The experiment, however, proves frustratingly vague rather than provocative.

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The Apiary

The Apiary

A dystopian story about environmental catastrophe and death is not necessarily where one would expect to find humor, but Kate Douglas achieves a darkly comic triumph with her new play, The Apiary. The production at Second Stage Theater fires on all cylinders, including Kate Whoriskey’s superb direction and the uniformly stellar cast, who navigate the play’s mixture of absurdity and sincerity with precise and convincing performances.

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Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf

Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf

Elevator Repair Service (ERS), the adventurous downtown troupe known for theatrical adaptations of iconic modernist works, is parodying Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams in a new play by Kate Scelsa that has the cleverest title in town—Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf. The production is directed at breakneck speed by the company’s founder, John Collins. It features visuals by Louisa Thompson (scenery), Amanda Villalobos (properties), and Kaye Voyce (costumes) that give the proceedings the kitsch-cluttered aesthetic that’s an ERS signature. 

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