Past Reviews
We appreciate the
reviews of media critics, the good, the bad and the ugly.....here's what they
have said.....
Philadelphia Weekly ,Sept 4, 2002
The Zoo Story
There are few American plays as dense as Edward Albee's The Zoo Story.
For the Luna Theater Company's slow-starting but ultimately triumphant
production, director Neill Hartley chooses to emphasize the play's strong sense
of duality, and it's a decision that plays to his actor's strengths .
A permanent resident both in terms of the park bench he occupies every
Sunday and the familial home in which he complacently resides, Peter (Grant
Noble) is the isolated everyman, oblivious and innocent. Into his life barges
Jerry (Gregory Scott Campbell), a transient beast intent on delivering Peter
from his self-imposed stupor. With the bars erected by our socially and
economically stratified society now removed, the "animal" Jerry attempts to
communicate with the "vegetable" Peter.
It's a terrific struggle, but as one is violently aroused from his long
slumber and the other finally rests, we realize that their often-pathetic
discourse has not only been worthwhile, but essential.
----J. Cooper Robb
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City Paper Sept 12, 2002
The Zoo Story
by Edward Albee
There’s a certain sense of unreality necessary to put on this 1959 Edward
Albee play, what with all the awkward dialogue, tangential story-telling and the
unlikelihood that a conversation between the two men who meet in a New York City
park would have lasted more than a minute. Actors Grant Noble (Peter) and
Gregory Scott Campbell (Jerry) handle it expertly, conveying the absurd and the
everyday, sometimes in subtle interactions, sometimes in explosive outbursts.
Very entertaining. It’ll be interesting to see how the new Luna Theater Co.
tackles David Mamet’s Oleanna in January, taking on possibly the fakest dialogue
in popular modern theater.
—Patrick Rapa
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City Paper Aug 31, 2003
NO EXIT by Jean-Paul Sartre
You already know the punchline to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential masterpiece — Hell is other people — long
before they actually say the famous line. It’s in the program and it’s all over the script. Three people
(sharply played by Dana Rossi, Christine Mascitti and Scott L. Wolfson), damned by their own actions, are
forced to spend eternity in each others’ sniveling, talkative company. The design is appropriately simple
and sparse, leaving the actors to dominate your attention with their appropriately incessant and
melodramatic chatter. Not even the glowing red exit sign at the back of the stage (are there fire codes in
Hell?) can distract the audience from the grim business at hand.
—Patrick Rapa
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Philadelphia Weekly March 10, 2004
Beckett and Call
The Luna Theater Company's production of Waiting for Godot puts a
twist on the classic.
Because of the restrictions placed on Samuel Beckett's work by the
playwright's estate, there's usually little outward variation in the staging of
his plays. But as soon as you hear the incidental music begin to play in the
Luna Theater Company's production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, you
know you're in for something different. Emphasizing the play's vaudeville influences, the music adds to Godot's
strong sense of illusion while director Neill Hartley's bold staging accentuates
the play's theatricality. The tramps Didi (an excellent Scott L. Wolfson) and
Gogo (David Hutchman) are not just stuck in a purgatorial void--they're trapped
within the cyclical structure of the play. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, Wolfson's articulate Didi and
Hutchman's subdued Gogo perform for each other to quiet the almost deafening
silence. They invent games and scenarios that--though performed with great
dexterity--are ultimately insignificant. Like actors, their words and actions
are but a facsimile of life. Detached from society, they don't seem to exist
beyond the bareness of the stage. It's a frightening existence, and Didi and Gogo ramble on in a desperate
attempt to prove they exist. Into this emptiness come Pozzo (Jerome Puma) and
his slave Lucky (Gregory Scott Campbell). Pozzo is usually interpreted as an emissary of reality representing the
all-powerful materialist and the imprisoned intellectual, but Puma's shrewd
portrayal of Pozzo is less tyrannical than most. Often unsure, he seems to rely
on Lucky for more than just fetching his stool and carrying his bag. In one of theater's most difficult roles, Campbell is marvelous, bringing
clarity to Lucky's famously disjointed speech that in lesser hands often seems
little more than gibberish. Most admirable, though, is how Hartley manages to bring us into the unique
world of the play. With the music creating the appropriate atmosphere, the
actors engage the audience both physically and emotionally. Interacting with the
theatergoers and making use of direct addresses to the audience, Hartley makes
us feel as if we too are trapped in this void where "nothing happens, nobody
comes, nobody goes." With no story to speak of, Godot can sometimes seem pointless. But
instead of an empty, futile waiting, Hartley and his cast make us share the
tramps' optimism that Godot may indeed arrive. And like Didi and Gogo, we too
are willing to go on waiting, certain only that "in this immense confusion, one
thing alone is clear: We are waiting for Godot to come--or night to fall."
---- J. Cooper Robb
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City
Paper Sept 9, 2004
Legend of Sleepy
Hollow
adapted by Neill
Hartley
All that was missing from WST’s Studio 3 was a nice, roaring campfire. In his
one-man adaptation of Washington Irving’s colonial ghost story, Neill Hartley
astoundingly leapt from character to character — narrator, townsfolk, the bully
Brom Bones — without missing a beat. Sure, his nasal delivery of Ichabod Crane
grated like nails across the schoolmaster’s chalkboard, annoying in an attempt
to amuse. But as the performance moved on, the lights dimmed and the mood
slipped from lighthearted to chilling. Crane ultimately falls in his climactic
clash with the Headless Horseman, but Hartley the storyteller remains on top.
— John Vettese
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City Paper Sept 9, 2004
Death and the Maiden
by
Ariel Dorfman
Luna Theater’s full-length production of Ariel Dorfman’s play,
dealing with the psychological impact of torture committed during the Chilean
dictatorship of Pinochet, certainly earns its climactic finale — though (at two
hours) there’s a lot of talking to get through. Its verbal drama — especially
between Paulina (Christine Mascitti), once kidnapped by the regime, and the
doctor (Jerry Puma) she believes took part — hits the right notes, though some
of the characters’ reactions (shouting, hugging, shouting again in quick
succession) reflect South American temperaments and seem unnatural from chillier
North Americans. Still, a timely homily on the ways to truth and reconciliation.
— Juliet Fletcher
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City Paper October 27, 2005
Stage Turner (Turn of the Screw)
This is a knockout of a production showcasing
two tiptop actors, Lenny Haas and Kate Hurster, in a shrewd adaptation of
Henry James' classic story The Turn of the Screw. Jeffrey Hatcher (Compleat
Female Stage Beauty and Three Viewings) wrote this clever script,
genuinely dramatizing the famous tale of a governess who wigs out while
looking after two children at a 19th-century manor house. Is the story about
Victorian sexual repression and its terrible and weird consequences, or about
real ghosts? In most productions of this much-adapted, much-filmed work
somebody usually decides — show the ghosts (in which case she's not nuts and
we are) or don't (in which case she is and we're not). Luna's production,
directed by Gregory Scott Campbell, happily votes with James: all of the
above. Ambiguity isn't Henry James' middle name for nothing. The clever tone
here hovers between old-fashioned melodrama and a whiff of parody. Cue the
spooky music. There are at least six characters — and Haas
plays all but the governess. He introduces the scene as the narrator, then
becomes the seductive uncle who lives in London and hires the governess with
the proviso that she never bother him about the children. He also plays Miles,
the precocious and slightly creepy, slightly pitiable 10-year-old (his little
sister, Flora, cannot, or will not, speak, which is convenient for these
dramatic purposes). Haas also plays the old biddy of a housekeeper, as well as
providing a variety of sound effects: kingfisher, wind-ruffled pages of a
book, rain dripping, etc. He gives every character not only a different
accent, but a different voice pitch and a different posture. It is a virtuoso
performance, but no more so than Hurster's romantic, impassioned governess. On the little stage, there are only an
oriental carpet and a carved love seat. The lighting (designed by Joshua
Schulman) shifts from suggesting indoors to outdoors, daytime to nighttime,
and the costumes (designed by Barbara Campbell) are both elegant and oddly
all-purpose. The problem in any adaptation from page to
stage is what to do with all the literary stuff: the description of the scene,
the passage of time and the characters' thoughts — all of which imply point of
view (well, in a Jamesian world, what doesn't?). Hatcher builds all this in
quite handsomely, and the presence of the ghosts of the evil (or maybe just
sexual) Peter Quint and his lover, the former governess Miss Jessel, is
vividly but obscurely suggested. It's creepy enough to hold you for a
Halloween treat, and theatrical enough to impress you with how much can be
accomplished by talented people in 75 minutes.
---- Toby Zinman
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City Paper Feb
23, 2006
Burned Out
(Burn This)
Luna Theater Company producing
artistic director Gregory Scott Campbell writes that his small theater fills a
void "by producing known works that have been forgotten or ignored."
Sometimes, though, that's a play's appropriate fate. Consider Lanford Wilson's
Burn This. In Wilson's prolific career, commercial triumph exists
inversely with quality. For every superficial hit like Burn This or
Talley's Folly, he's penned a neglected gem like The Mound Builders
or Serenading Louie. Burn This offered the same indulgent,
unmoving tedium on Broadway nearly 20 years ago—despite John Malkovich and
Joan Allen's efforts—that Luna exposes through March 5. Lovely Aaryn
Kopp plays dancer Anna, whose gay roommate Robbie recently died. Other gay
roommate Larry (Eric Courtwright) flails and weeps, and rich boyfriend Burton
(Patrick Doran) commiserates. Then Robbie's brother Pale arrives—real name
Jimmy, but with a cool nickname from his favorite cognac—and Robbie is soon
forgotten because Pale, played by Chris Fluck, weeps and flails (but it's
rough, manly weeping and flailing), and suddenly Anna gets the hot sex she
needs to fuel her stalled choreography. The rest plays out like a very loud
episode of … something we wouldn't continue watching. Pale shows up on New
Year's Eve, Burton finds out they've rutted, Anna throws Burton out—because,
of course, what good girls really need is a bad guy who's a good fuck—but then
she tosses Pale too ("We're apples and oranges," she sobs), and her
choreography (which could be basket weaving or brain surgery, for all that
Anna is believably a dancer) suddenly improves. Therefore, Larry reasons, Anna
really loves Pale, so he contrives to reunite them. If I ruined the story for
you, thank me. Campbell's production is an exercise in pushing. Kopp's grief
for Robbie is one flat note of hysteria repeated endlessly, while Fluck plays
the anger-spewing Pale—including a parking rant that Philadelphians can really
relate to—like a sprinter in a marathon; after an initial burst, he's wheezing
to catch up. Courtwright is auditioning for the outrageous gay sidekick role
that Sean Hayes won long ago. Only Doran seems centered—but Wilson writes him
off, and out, suggesting only that rejection makes nice guys stronger. Luna
continues a tradition of eschewing production elements, with a set that's more
basement rec room than Manhattan loft, and perfunctory lighting and music
resulting in artless scene changes. Oh, If only someone had said "burn this"
to Lanford Wilson!
----Mark Cofta
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Philadelphia Theatre Review May
9,2006
Luna's Spell
(Agnes of God)
The Luna Theater Company, known for producing edgy contemporary
theatre, challenges our minds with questions of memory, mystery and motherhood
in John Pielmeier’s Agnes Of God, now running through May 28 at The
Walnut Street Theatre Studio Five. I overheard an audience member say something
about "needing a musical" after the show. I understand. The material is
extremely dark and thought provoking, though if you've seen Agnes Of God
before, you won't want to miss Luna's version.
Directed by the company’s founder Gregory Scott Campbell, the cast, consisting
of Agnes Bowers, Melissa Lynch and Christine Mascitti sparkle. Especially young
Melissa Lynch. Her ability to capture an audience in a moment is stunning. And
her range as an actor is as effortless as her singing voice. She can sing
probably because she doesn't consider herself "a singer". She's not self
centered about it, so it means she's never listening to herself when she sings.
She's sharing it in pure form, and using it as a means to express. It is
essential to her character, and adds to the play an extra element. Real music.
An honest musical. An actor sings when they feel compelled to express something
that cannot be expressed by words alone. Lynch does this magically.
Come and skate in some psychological spider webs. See what you see in the
unraveling of a psychological memory wheel. Go and see Agnes Of God.
Let something touch you, whether or not it's what you conventionally believe.
Sometimes watching other experiences help guide you to finding your own
inescapable answers.
---- Shannon Runion
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Philadelphia Weekly May
17, 2006
Go Ask Agnes
Luna Theater Company concludes
its season with John Pielmeier's taut drama Agnes of God. The story
concerns the mysterious death of a newborn child in a convent, and the ensuing
criminal investigation's focus on the baby's mother-a young, almost childlike
nun named Agnes (Melissa Lynch). The entire drama takes place in the office of
Dr. Livingstone (Christine Mascitti), a psychiatrist appointed by the court to
determine Agnes' psychological condition. As Livingstone's examination of Agnes
drags on, the doctor's motives evolve from determining the nun's role in the
child's death to curing Agnes of the damage inflicted by her abusive mother. But
does Agnes need to be cured? In Mother Superior's eyes, Agnes has been blessed.
"She belongs to God," the Mother (Hazel Bowers) proclaims to Livingstone, who
replies, "And I mean to take her away from him." Ultimately the play becomes a
battle between Livingstone and the Mother Superior for the mind and soul of
Agnes. The key lies not in the murder of the child, but rather the identity of
the father, who may be corporeal or spiritual. In Pielmeier's battle between
logic and faith, it's apparent both Livingstone and Mother Superior are
searching for a miracle. The difference is that the doctor wants a phenomenon
she can explain. Director Gregory Campbell's production is swiftly paced with
loads of overlapping dialogue and emotional moments that border on hysterics.
Lynch is impressive in her professional debut, and Bowers is spectacular.
Unfortunately, Mascitti struggles, and her sub par performance mars this
otherwise notable production.
----J. Cooper Robb
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Courier-Post May 9, 2006
Top-Notch Acting keeps 'Agnes"
Afloat
The conflicts in "Agnes
of God" -- religion vs. science, faith vs. reason, head vs. heart -- are
timeless. But John Pielmeier's 1982 play, now onstage in a stark new production
by the Woodbury-based Luna Theater Company, has not aged well. The story of a
possibly insane young nun accused of killing her newborn daughter, "Agnes of
God" seems more contrived than it did two decades ago. Perhaps the ongoing
sexual abuse cover-up scandal has demythologized the Catholic Church or the seams
in the playwright's strenuously schematic work have begun not only to show, but
to give way.
Fortunately, the struggle at the heart of
"Agnes of God" retains its theatrical charge. The play's three female roles are
still rich. And Luna's production, briskly directed by Gregory Scott Campbell at
the Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, features two terrific performances. Agnes's
court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Livingstone (Christine Mascitti), is a lapsed
Catholic and the sister of a young woman who became a nun and died after her
appendicitis went untreated in a convent. It seems unlikely someone with this
much personal baggage would be assigned to such a sensational case, a narrative
improbability made more problematic by Mascitti's one-note performance. The
actress focuses almost exclusively on the character's rage; her tightly wound
Dr. Livingstone seems as much if not more in need of a psychiatrist than Agnes.
It's a choice that threatens to capsize the production. Happily, Luna's "Agnes
of God" doesn't sink. As the volatile Agnes, newcomer Melissa Lynch is a
haunting mix of sweetness and scariness, a victim turned victimizer who may or
may not be touched by divine madness. And as Mother Miriam Ruth, veteran
Philadelphia-area performer Hazel Bowers lets us get to know the human being
under the black habit, a human being who understands all too well the fragility
of faith.
----Kevin Riordan
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Philadelphia Inquirer May 9, 2006
Thoughtful 'Agnes of God'
undermined and unbalanced
The temptation (you should excuse the expression)
that Agnes of God provides at this moment in our culture is obvious: John
Pielmeier's well-known play is a debate between the wish to believe and the need
to explain, between faith and science, between religion and medicine. But Luna
Theater's production provides a cast so lopsided that only half the argument is
presented, and so the debate is short-circuited.
Agnes of God begins with a mystery in a
convent: Who killed the baby born to a novice nun? And less to the point but
more interesting, who fathered the baby? The mysteries will be only partly
solved, and the play's slick script poses and then evades the questions. We
wait, and discover the answers are less interesting than the questions. Agnes
(the radiant, sad-eyed Melissa Lynch) is all damaged innocence; she sings
angelically, she has experienced the stigmata, and she claims she woke up on
bloody sheets with no recollection of how the dead baby wound up in her trash
can. Her mother superior (Hazel Bowers' presence lends authority and real
gravitas to this production) tries to protect not only Agnes' innocence but also
her own capacity to believe in innocence and in miracles. The suspicion that
hovers over her is another of the play's mysteries. Bowers' delivery is
flawless, her hands eloquent. The court has appointed a psychiatrist, Dr.
Livingstone (Christine Mascitti), who turns out to have many issues herself: She
is "entranced" by Agnes in what seems a neurotic way, she holds a profound
grudge against the Roman Catholic Church for past ill deeds to a dead sister,
she nurses an obsessive hatred for her own mother, and she has an out-of-control
cigarette habit. It becomes apparent that she is far from an impartial
physician. It becomes further apparent that Mascitti is sadly miscast.
Frequently inaudible, far too young, and much too whiny for the role, with
nothing in her diction to suggest authority, or even higher education, Mascitti
is unable to hold up her end of the debate and renders it moot. Gregory Scott
Campbell's direction and set allow, oddly, for only one chair. Regardless of
what significance this may or may not have, the effect is that somebody is
always standing, and looking mighty uncomfortable. It is an awkward production,
calling frequent attention to its flaws.
----Toby Zinman
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City Paper May 11, 2006
Nun the Richer
(Agnes of God)
Luna
Theater Company concludes its fourth season with another small-cast revival,
John Pielmeier's Agnes of God. The 1982 drama (filmed in 1985 with
Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly), about a young nun's secret
pregnancy resulting in a dead baby found in a wastebasket, still feels
current today, what with the Catholic Church in the news for priests' sexual
crimes, The Da Vinci Code and the occasional infant-abandonment case.
Like Peter Shaffer's superior
drama Equus, Agnes of God introduces a self-searching therapist
playing psychological connect-the-dots to solve a gruesome crime. Is the
angelic, simple-minded yet somehow knowing young Agnes (see Killer Joe
for another take on this familiar character) a murderer? Is she innocent by
reason of insanity? Is someone—perhaps her Mother Superior—responsible? And
how did a reclusive nun get pregnant, anyway?
Christine Mascitti plays the
doctor, sharing her doubts, fears and biases with us (she's a lapsed Catholic,
her sister was a nun). She's written as an obsessive chain-smoker, but this,
like much from her, is only spoken, not lived: Her cigarette dangles and
fizzles out, as perfunctory and unconvincing as her confessions. Since the
doctor drives the story, this muted performance is hard to overcome—and Amy
Chmielewski's mismatched costume for her only further distracts.
Hazel Bowers, making a
welcome return to the stage, shines as the Mother Superior with more than a
few secrets. She charms and bullies the doctor delightfully, trying to protect
Melissa Lynch's lovely, fragile Agnes, who almost glows in her crisp white
habit. Agnes proves wise as well as naive, either not understanding or
artfully deflecting the doctor's probing. Perhaps she's just hiding the
sinful, shameful truth—but what's causing those wounds on her palms?
Gregory Scott Campbell's
production in the Walnut Street Theatre's Studio Five black box looks
elegantly simple, albeit puzzling: A bright red carpet defines the doctor's
office, overstating, along with Andrew Cowles' red-tinted lighting, the bloody
birth that's described in detail. Agnes of God has greater aspirations
that the production doesn't reveal: Lynch and Bowers make Agnes' plight
fascinating, but the play's real power isn't as a "whodunit" (even if one of
the suspects is The Almighty), but in the tortured doctor's unrealized dark
journey back into her past—into the suffocation of her faith, and its possible
reawakening.
----Mark Cofta
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Philadelphia Inquirer, July 21, 2006
Playwrights give short shrift to their own creations (Spark 10 Minute Play
Festival)
Ten more 10-minute plays
follow last week's batch. These range from the clever to the empty, from
professional to embarrassingly self-indulgent. What they all seem to have in
common is mockery: The playwrights seem to despise the characters they have
created. One play after another parades cruelty, nastiness and childish spite.
Another thing these plays have in common is dependence on technology: cell
phones, computers, BlackBerries - all suggest a world in which communication
is radically diminished by the very devices that are supposed to facilitate
it. Another thing they seem to have in common is despair: The world these 10
skits reveal is a stupid, grim, lonely place. And most of the time, we're
expected to find that funny.
The Box.
Flashpoint Theatre Company presents two guys talking randomly about nail
clippers, sex and television while facing a box wrapped in plain paper. There
is much shallow, cynical talk about its toxicity and about disposing of it.
"We'll be dead. They'll think of something."
Hagar
the Stranger Calls Home.
Theatre Ariel's playlet is about a woman - child of an Egyptian father and a
Jewish mother - who has just arrived in
Jerusalem. Mother and daughter, on
each side of the stage, create a visual metaphor of the need for
reconciliation, but the current calamity in the
Middle East provides some unearned relevance.
Twenty
Grand, a Table and Two Chairs.
Random Acts of Theater's skit shows us two tough guys counting money into
bundles; one of them calls Becky and makes a date for Saturday night at
Zeno's, but the other guy says several times that he "did her in Zeno's in the
men's room." This segues into a Hamlet knockoff, revealing nothing but
that the playwright knows the basic Shakespearean plot.
Whacking
Crazy Joey.
More gangsters, this time from the
Philadelphia
Dramatists
Center; dying Guido
recounts a mob murder of the "top wop" in a monologue that wants to be David
Rabe but sounds like faux Sopranos. Still, Mark Jacobsen's performance
is impressive.
Yes,
Mamet. Luna Theatre Company gives us still more tough
guys. This piece has two aspiring playwrights imitating David Mamet's style
without understanding it. Windy, tedious talk in a derivative play about being
a derivative playwright.
Click
Me.
In Philadelphia Theatre Workshop's play about text messaging and cyberdating,
everyone is defined by his or her category, such as "long-term commitment" or
"differently abled." Consistently good performances in a play that makes even
10 minutes seem too long.
Coffee
Break.
Represented Theatre Company portrays single life as a guy and a girl meet
outside a cafe. They are each so desperate to connect with somebody that they
seem to find the other's drivel interesting.
Super
Duper.
Vagabond Acting Troupe's amateurish show involves a large number of people
dressed in makeshift superhero costumes running around, or standing still in
the dark, or shining flashlights at one another and at the audience.
The
Price of Pleasure.
Green Light Productions decided to take The Devil Wears Prada literally
and stage a debate between a Devil (wearing something considerably less than
Prada) and a hypocritical God vying for the soul of a dead girl who seems
soulless.
Lines
Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, Part II, or How We Got
America's Most Wanted and
the
New York Post.
BCKSEET Productions ends the evening on a witty note. A pretentious Australian
family named Murdoch tries to get the three sons into Harrow and
Eton; the entrance exam requires reciting and
explicating Wordsworth's
famous
poem. Two sons pass the test; the third, Rupert (Claire Golden Drake, who is
especially good), gets the consolation prize: the newspaper empire.
----Toby Zinman
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Philadelphia Weekly, October 25, 2006
Fetal Attraction
Luna’s new
production is electrifyingly funny.
The Luna Theater Company
continues its remarkable climb from mediocrity to major player with its assured
production of Doug Wright’s wickedly entertaining collection of short plays
Unwrap Your Candy: An Evening of One-Act Plays.
The show opens with two
rows of chairs onstage, facing the audience. One by one they’re occupied by a
group of theatergoers. A self-possessed and unruly little community, they’re
soon embroiled in combat as one snores incessantly, another chats loudly on her
cell phone and a third—a diabetic deprived of her candy—breaks into a frenzied
fit of passion. It’s a rollicking start, but it’s not the last time Wright
explores audience behavior.
Later, between scenes, a flashlight shines on
the heads of various audience members while taped comments reveal the
theatergoers’ alleged thoughts. It’s a hilarious interlude which reflects the
play’s interest in the human psyche, a subject that’s explored in macabre
fashion in the production’s three longer playlets.
Performed by four actors perched behind music
stands, their faces garishly lit from beneath, the second of Candy’s
short plays is a chillingly comic tale about a child musical prodigy. The boy’s
working-class parents (winningly portrayed by Kirsten Quinn and Allen Radway)
are baffled when their “mini concert master” transforms a tennis racquet into a
violin and immediately displays a unique
prowess on the instrument. They ship the boy to a noted musical professor who
soon has the wunderkind performing for his colleagues. But when the child
strikes a sour note at a recital, he turns inward, locking himself in his room.
He stays there playing the same tune repeatedly
for weeks on end. The story concludes on a frightening note, leaving us to
ponder our inclination for exploiting the talents of others in order to satiate
our own needs.
The next short play initially seems to be
little more than a conventional haunted-house tale. The story focuses on real
estate agent (a propitious Quinn) trying to sell a residence where a nominal
celebrity and her family were butchered by an unknown intruder. In this creepy
and tense tale (recalling the media circus surrounding OJ Simpson’s Brentwood
address) Wright reveals the public’s almost cannibalistic desire to feast on the
trials and tribulations of the rich and famous.
Wright ends his examination of our parasitic
tendencies with an installment focusing on a pregnant woman (the brilliant Jaidy
Schweers) who engages in increasingly bizarre conversations with her unborn
child (the equally outstanding Allen Radway). In what might be the single
funniest scene of the year, the expectant mother is treated to multiple orgasms
by the lascivious embryo, whom Radway portrays as a Marlboro-smoking, Jack
Daniels-swilling gigolo. This imaginative blend of horror and hilarity is the
perfect conclusion to a production that establishes Luna as one of Philly’s most
unpredictable and electrifying small companies.
---- J. Cooper Robb
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City Paper, October 26, 2006
Petit Four
As
much as I love one-act plays, I concede that a bill of them is a tricky
affair: Like hors d'oeuvres, they sometimes satisfy, but also may leave us
hungry.
Luna Theater's Unwrap Your Candy, an
80-minute "evening" by Doug Wright (Quills and I Am My Own Wife),
more resembles a bag of Halloween treats: Three of the four plays are nearly
the same flavor (ironic horror, reminiscent of The Twilight Zone), but
if that's what fills you up, it's entertaining.
Actually, the comedic curtain raiser, "Unwrap
Your Candy," almost qualifies as horror: Luna's ensemble plays an audience
indulging in all the deadly sins of theatergoing: pagers chirping, cell phones
ringing (and answered during the show — which I witnessed for real at another
theater this weekend!), a man nodding off and snoring, and, of course, the
dreaded candy wrapper crinkling. I only wish Wright served them their just
desserts, rather than showing them taking over the theater.
In "Lot 13: the Bone Violin," blue-collar
parents played by Kirsten Quinn and Allen Radway tell the story of their son,
a self-made violin prodigy, with Chris Fluck as his awestruck teacher and
Jaidy Schweers as a scientist studying whether talent is learned or innate.
Eerily lit by music stand lights, the son's story gradually builds to its
creepy finale.
"Wildwood Park" also builds slowly, and
though its secret is easily guessed, Quinn (brilliantly edgy, despite an
unfortunate blond wig) as a spooked real estate agent and Fluck as a
mysterious client navigate the suspense well, overcoming some distracting
blackouts.
"The Baby" combines chills and humor as
Schweers plays a crazed woman who hears her baby talking to her — from the
womb. Told to the audience similarly to "Lot 13," with Fluck as the hapless
husband and Quinn as a narrating lawyer, the tale unfolds skillfully. Radway
is hilarious as the cigarette-smoking, Jack-swigging fetus, speaking like a
jaded comedian from a microphone in this witty take on postpartum depression.
Director Gregory Scott Campbell covers scene
changes cleverly by wading into the audience with a flashlight: When he
spotlights individuals, we hear their outrageous inner thoughts. He crafts a
swift-moving evening of delightful morsels — not a full meal, perhaps, but
around Halloween, this candy assortment tastes just fine.
---- Mark Cofta
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Philadelphia Inquirer, October 23, 2006
One-act plays delight as a whole at Luna
One jelly bean is hardly enough, but scoop up a
handful, and you're in business. Like jelly beans, one-act plays are rarely
satisfying on their own, but a bunch - four, in this case - makes for an amusing
evening in the theater. Unwrap Your Candy: An Evening of One-Act Plays by
Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife and Quills) is Luna Theatre
Company's tricky treat, just in time for Halloween.
Take those jelly beans one at a time, and
you've got:
No. 1: "Unwrap Your Candy." You know
that annoying announcement at the start of every show, asking you to turn off
your cell phone or beeper, and ending with, and please unwrap your candy now?
That is this play's plot. The actors sit in chairs just like the ones we're
sitting in, reading the same programs we've been reading, dozing, irritating
each other. Especially good is Allen Radway as a surgeon, suddenly struck by the
nagging suspicion that he may indeed be paged because he may have just operated
on the wrong man.
No. 2: "Lot 13: The Bone Violin." This
creepy play is about a child violinist, a prodigy, who comes to a dreadful end.
The ghastly lighting is more distracting than atmospheric, and too many lines
are muffled.
No. 3: "Wildwood Park." A real estate
agent (Kirsten Quinn is especially good in this one) is showing a fabulously
expensive house to a man (Chris Fluck) who is, presumably, a prospective buyer.
We learn, little by little, that spectacular killings were committed in the
house, and you can see the payoff coming a mile away. This play is too long and
the blackouts between its scenes mislead the audience into thinking it's over.
No. 4: "The Baby." A pregnant woman
(Jaidy Schweers) wigs out when her unborn child starts to talk to her - first
with poetry, then horse-racing tips, and then things turn really nasty. Radway
performs the voice of the baby with delightful and disgusting obscenity.
Gregory Scott Campbell directs and provides
some entre-act entertainment - a mildly inventive distraction from the scene
changing. Add it up, and the sum of the evening's parts is more amusing and
interesting than any of these little plays taken separately.
---- Toby
Zinman
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Philadelphia Theatre Review November
6, 2006Luna's
Candy is Pleasantly Sweet
In four short years,
the Luna Theater Company has quickly gained a reputation in the Philadelphia
theater community for producing plays, both classic and contemporary, that
consistently involve, provoke, and enlighten audiences. Opening its fifth
season, this inventive company presents Doug Wright's Unwrap Your Candy:
An Evening Of One Act Plays. By turns, clever and probing,
playful and eerie, the four plays in Unwrap Your Candy explore the
contradictions of human nature through a series of thematic antimonies:
between the healthy and the unbalanced, the conscious and the unconscious, the
illusory and the real.
In the productions namesake opening piece, Unwrap Your Candy,
five self-absorbed theatergoers, tyrannized by the totems of modern society,
most notably, the cell phone, inhabit theater seats facing the audience in a
mirror image which, according to the author, reflects the very people (and
their eccentricities) who go to plays.
Next, in Lot 13: The Bone Violin,
a musical prodigy is manipulated and exploited by his ordinary parents, his
controlling violin teacher, and a ruthless geneticist, all blind to the
child's humanity, leading to a haunting finale, in which one of the characters
asks, "The violin is real. Did we imagine the child?"
The third work, the Hitchcockian-tinged Wildwood Park, focuses on a
weary real estate agent who shows a mysterious doctor a rambling mansion where
a series of bloody, well-publicized, unsolved murders took place. The real
estate agent, who by her own admission, "does not like being a sentinel" over
the gruesome house in this "private, discreet community," grows ever more
anxious in the presence of the prospective buyer who might have even more
sinister motives for seeking out the mansion.
The evening ends with Baby Talk, the
most resonant work in the collection. Funny, unsettling, and ultimately sad,
this play dramatizes a woman obsessed with becoming pregnant, and once she
does, develops a relationship with her unborn son like no other.
Adding to the playful spirit of Unwrap Your Candy is that
the same actors appear in all of the plays. In this regard, actors Chris
Fluck, Kirsten Quinn, Allen Radway, and Jaidy Schweers move seamlessly from
one character to another with skill, deftness, and conviction, for they need
only a different costume, or a wig, or simply a pair of glasses to create
their chameleon characterizations. The production itself attains the same
level of excellence.
Gregory Scott Campbell's direction is crisp and
intelligent, as he provides each segment with a select number of props, albeit
important, to stimulate the viewer's imagination. Cindy Orndorf's lighting and
Andrew Monheim's sound design add, whenever necessary, crucial atmospheric
touches, either of mischief, menace, or mourning.
----By Maurizio
Giammarco
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A
Simple Plan
Israel Horovitz's Lebensraum is
entertaining, provocative and still relevant.
by Mark Cofta
City Paper; February 6, 2007
Imagine that Germany's chancellor invites six million
Jews from anywhere in the world to enjoy "citizenship and full privileges" as
national atonement for the Holocaust. Don't worry about why they do this, given
that survivors have waited decades just to recover seized property. Just picture
how people would respond.
Prolific but under-appreciated American playwright
Israel Horovitz, stung by lingering anti-Semitism in modern Germany (where his
plays succeed, with Jewish references cut out), teases with the idealistic highs
and shocks with the all-too-likely lows of this scenario. His 1997 play
Lebensraum, revived by the Luna Theater Company, is entertaining,
provocative and still relevant.
Three black-clad actors play 43 roles and narrate
TV-news-style, giving Lebensraum a high-energy, comic tone and daring us
(a la Bertolt Brecht and Thornton Wilder) to feel for characters despite
constant reminders that this is theater. Director Gregory Scott Campbell honors
this without frills; his economical production could easily tour to schools,
community centers and other nontheater spaces, but seems haphazard and
unambitious in the Walnut's Studio 5.
First reactions to "Project Homecoming" are
violent: German academics savagely beat a dissenter who shouts "Heil Hitler!" (a
smashed tomato represents his head) and Holocaust survivors strangle a
supportive Israeli rabbi when he insists, "We must reclaim this place for Jews"
(his costume beard twisted like a rag). The parallel deaths, burlesque yet
brutal, seem hauntingly plausible.
Horovitz eventually focuses on individuals: a
Massachusetts family becomes the celebrated first arrivals (after a French gay
couple is whisked away from the world's cameras), but the flood of Jews causes
friction: "Where do we put them?" a protester demands. "How do they feed
themselves?" Teens — American boy, German girl — fall in love, Romeo and
Juliet-style, and their tragic fate inspires an important but familiar
refrain: "Never again."
Veteran actor Steve Hatzai and young performers
Robert DaPonte and Jodi Epstein energetically bring the play to life with
insightful, sincere performances.
Horovitz's pious ending inspires, but Max
Zylberstein's story feels closer to the play's boldness. The Buchenwald survivor
returns from Australia to become personal caretaker to the woman who gave him up
to the police. He long dreamed of killing her, but — more cruelly, more aptly —
returns each day to tell her everything he remembers. Lebensraum wants to
play peacemaker, but also shows that peace doesn't come easily.
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'Lebensraum' asks tough questions
By Toby Zinman
For The Inquirer; January 29,2007
Israel Horovitz's play Lebensraum, which
opened on Holocaust Remembrance Day, asks the difficult question: Can people
forgive but not forget?
The plot's premise is both provocative and
ludicrous. The chancellor of Germany invites six million Jews from anywhere in
the world to come to live in Germany as instant citizens. "Project Homecoming"
is designed to assuage 60 years of German guilt and shame, and the play
follows a variety of people who take up the offer.
The title, Lebensraum, means "living
space" in German, and that becomes the issue - will Jews ever have
lebensraum in the world? When 10 million Germans are unemployed, and
others are struggling, their resistance to these new celebrity Jews seems
inevitable; hard times are never good times for immigrants.
Three good actors play many roles with many
accents, simply adding a hat or a scarf to sketch in the next character. The
excellent Steve Hatzai carries the heftiest roles, from an American dock
worker who moves his family from Gloucester, Mass., to an old, displaced
concentration-camp survivor who moves from Australia to his childhood Berlin.
Jodi Epstein shifts from a fierce Israeli
military operative ("We are the new Jews") to the lovely, young Anna, daughter
of a German dock worker who, predictably, falls in love with Sam, played by
Robert DaPonte. When Sam's father takes Anna's father's job, resentment turns
to rage, letting us glimpse the complexity of both the practical problems and
the emotional turmoil.
Each actor narrates events and introduces the
many people representing many positions: neo-Nazis, opportunistic bosses,
shocked school children learning about the Holocaust for the first time, angry
husbands, helpless wives.
The play is more satisfying theatrically -
watching the actors' virtuosity - than it is politically, since the point of
Horovitz's play seems elusive. The production might have more punch if it were
more vaudevillian - faster and more energetic - rather than being so
respectful of its serious subject that it becomes lugubrious.
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May 22, 2007
Phillyist Reviews... True West
by Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey
It's always nice when someone takes a play that
you really like and produces it well. That's what the Luna Theater Company
has done with their production of Sam Shepard's True West. They have
taken a great wo a grrk and, defying what is, unfortunately, sometimes the
status quo, uphold its integrity as not only a great piece of drama, but
alsoeat piece of writing. Shepard's characters speak like real people
speak and they act like real people act. This is sometimes problematic to
theatre people who want to keep drama in the realm of the unreal. It makes
us feel more comfortable with things if it doesn't feel like we're spying on
real life. And that's simply not what you get from Sam Shepard's work.
True West is, on a very basic level,
about two brothers who discover that they're far more like one another than
either admitted, or even realized, before. But it's more than that: it
confronts the audience with questions of nature versus nurture and admits
that we never truly are who we think we are. The two brothers, Austin and
Lee (played ably by Eric Courtwright and Chris Fluck, respectively) couldn't
be more different, until an encounter with film producer Saul (Steve Gleich)
sends both into a complete tailspin, but for very different reasons. While
Fluck's portrayal of drunkenness was a bit over-the-top in the first moments
of the show, he leveled out to something much more believable and realistic.
Where he and Courtwright especially shone, however, was in the play's second
act, where the brothers' roles are more or less reversed. (In the original
production of the play, actors Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly
actually alternated roles for each performance, really driving home the
eventual interchangeability of the two characters' personalities.)
The strength of this production really does lie
with Austin and Lee, though, as the two seldom leave the stage and their
dialogue makes up the vast majority of the script; the secondary characters
are just that: secondary. I would have preferred it if the
probably-homosexual behavior we see in Saul's character in his first few
moments onstage had remained consistent throughout the play, or had been
left out completely, rather than disappearing once he starts talking with
Lee about golf. And the brothers' mother (Susan Moses) was sometimes a bit
too ridiculous (to be fair, her lines are ridiculous, but the character is
better played straight), but entertaining nonetheless. Unfortunately for
both Moses and Gleich, it was impossible to outshine or upstage Courtwright
and Fluck. It makes the production just a little bit uneven, but that's the
nature of the script, more than anything else, and Luna's approach to the
play was solid and satisfying, to say the least.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing To Shout About
What drives the Luna Theater Company's revival of
True West? Just yelling, apparently.
by Mark Cofta
Published: May 16, 2007
"I always wondered what it would
feel like to be you," one brother says to the other. The dynamics of sibling
envy — as well as tattered illusions about Hollywood, the American West and
home — drive Sam Shepard's oft-produced True West.
What drives the Luna Theater Company's revival?
Just yelling, apparently.
Brothers Austin (Eric Court-wright) and Lee
(Chris Fluck) meet at their mother's home ("Faith, Hope, Love: What Families
Are Built On," a wall placard announces ironically), where screenwriter Austin
housesits while Mom (Susan Moses) vacations. Petty criminal Lee arrives
looking for opportunities to burgle the neighbors and "borrow" from his
brother. When slick producer Saul (Steve Gleich) prefers Lee's ridiculous
pitch for a modern western to Austin's period romance script, the brothers
viscerally trade places.
Director Gregory Scott Campbell's production
defines neither the brothers' juxtaposition nor their evolution. Fluck's
angry, lurching caveman could never charm Saul into a golf game, let alone a
movie deal, lacking the cunning bad-boy swagger that Austin is supposed to
envy. Courtwright's milquetoast Austin likewise advances little, merely
adopting Fluck's shouting as he abandons writing to steal the neighborhood's
toasters.
My throat ached in sympathy, but I felt little
else; yelling does not equal passion.
Gleich's Saul is distinguished by a brief moment
of erotic interest in the understandably uncomfortable Austin, while Moses'
talents are largely squandered in an effort to seem daffy as the boys'
befuddled mother.
Brandon Phillips' square, bland set is
compromised by an extra row of seats so close that all of the play's action on
the floor is unseen by most of the audience. Scene endings lack definition,
with Andrew Cowles' lights fading midaction, as if by accident, and The
Three's original country music is largely wasted — though the song that opens
Act II, "In the Shadow of My Mind," proves haunting.
True West premiered in 1980 and shows its
age: Hollywood cynicism has been done better ("It's not a film, it's a movie,"
Saul proclaims, "leave the films to the French"), and the world's finite
number of manual typewriters (bashed nightly by Lee with a golf club) will
someday run out. Revivals should be reserved for productions willing and able
to reveal Shepard's themes and characters with insight — not just volume.
True West, through May 27, Luna
Theater Company, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 851 Walnut St., 215-704-0033,
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Brothers' story needs some restraint
By Toby Zinman
For The Inquirer
It's the guy-est of things: Sam Shepard's terrific
play, True West, about two brothers, is irresistible to actors and
directors, although not, perhaps, to audiences anymore (does a season go by
without another production?). The latest company to succumb to its
temptations is Luna Theater.
Shepard's
violent comedy offers various male blandishments: drunk and disorderly
conduct, fraternal combat, bare chests, and, maybe best of all, it gives
stage people another chance to bash Hollywood.
Austin (Eric Courtwright) is a screenwriter,
hoping to finish his love-story script and convince producer Saul Krimmer
(Steve Gleich) to back it. Lee (Chris Fluck), his brother, is a
live-by-his-wits drifter, just back from three months in the Mojave Desert.
They are temporarily and uneasily sharing their mother's kitchen while she
(Susan Moses) is in Alaska.
Lee hustles Saul and before you know it Lee's
working on a cowboy screenplay about two men chasing each other across
"tornado country" - a script that metaphorically echoes the play we're
watching.
Austin's project has been dropped ("Nobody's
interested in love these days"). And we watch the siblings switch roles:
Austin gets drunk and goes out and steals a bunch of toasters; Lee beats the
typewriter to death with a golf club. Saul "thinks we're the same person."
And maybe they are, although there is little in this production to reinforce
that idea.
As Lee, Fluck (who seems to be trying to model
his career on John Malkovich's) starts his performance way too high and too
loud - there's no place to go but down, which works against the dynamic of
the drama. He seems too dangerous and crazy at the start - why would anyone
extend this yahoo any hospitality? And why does he talk in that fake cowboy
accent?
Courtwright's Austin gets interesting in Act
Two when he's drunk and desperate - although it would help if we saw more
before-and-after contrast. Gleich's portrayal of Saul Krimmer lacks both
big-money polish and smarminess; the suggestion that his interest in Austin
is sexual adds an intriguing dimension, although it is hard to imagine that
Lee would want to be "snapping towels at each other's privates" after a
morning golf game if that were the case. Susan Moses manages the play's
weirdest role with comical aplomb.
Gregory Scott Campbell's direction needs to
demand more restraint of his actors, and the sound design needs some more
authentic-sounding crickets, by Jiminy.
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A weird, quirky breath of fresh air
By Toby Zinman
(Inquirer) Oct 22, 2007
A debt of gratitude is owed to Luna Theater
for introducing us to Laura Wade, a young British playwright who has been
scooping up prizes across the pond. This U.S. premiere of Breathing
Corpses is as intriguing and satisfying to puzzle out afterward as it
is to watch. (I actually worked it out with paper and pencil on the train
home.) The problem is how to write a review without giving it away.
Wade's is a weird and quirky sensibility -
morbid, and funny, and emotionally smart; the series of scenes introduces
us to seven characters, many of whom are going to wind up dead before the
80-minute show is over. The scenes are linked in surprising ways and out
of chronological order to produce a showcase of cause and effect, the
internal logic of external events.
"Oh, God. Not again," the hotel maid
murmurs as she - and we - discover that the black socks sticking out of
the blanket in the bed are not on sleeping feet. Unhappy Amy (Melissa
Lynch), stuck in a dreary job in a dreary hotel, longs for "someone to
talk to - who's not dead," and off we go. Charlie (Allen Radway) will be
that someone.
We will meet a married couple, Elaine
(Sally Mercer) and Jim (David Hutchman), who are also unhappy - more so
after Jim discovers, with the help of his employee Ray (Matt Dell'Olio) a
dead woman in a storage locker. And also unhappy, but noisier about it,
are Kate (Trice Baldwin) and Ben (Nathaniel Robertson), locked in a
violent relationship in which much of their anger revolves around a dog.
With some Freudian shenanigans, Wade
demonstrates that Thanatos (the death wish) and Eros (the life principle
expressed in sexuality) are linked, with dreadful results. And while we're
at it ("it" being the intellectual-sources game), Laura Wade explains in
the program notes that her title comes from Socrates: "When a man has lost
all happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse." But there's a
pun here - it's the smell of decomposing bodies that launches each of the
plot's events.
Under Gregory Scott Campbell's excellent
direction, this excellent cast moves briskly through the many scenes, and
finds the right chilling/arch/realistic style for the odd material.
Despite the excessive and creepy plot, the
dialogue is crafted - and delivered - with a genuine sense of intimacy and
eccentricity (although, as often happens in Studio 5, the voices are
frequently hard to hear); we feel this is how these people really would
talk to each other, and Breathing Corpses makes us feel how odd
people really are.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cadaver Palaver
- by J. Cooper Robb (Philadelphia Weekly) - Oct 24, 2007
Be sure to bring a friend to Luna Theater’s production of Laura Wade’s
Breathing Corpses. Not because Wade’s tense mystery is especially scary, but
because it’s that rare play that’s as much fun to discuss afterward as it is
to watch. A clever and complex jigsaw puzzle of a drama, the play revolves
around a trio of corpses: one discovered in a hotel room, another in a
storage unit and a third under a bush in a public park. Although the dead
bodies draw our attention, the focus is on the living characters, in
particular the discoverers of the bodies Jim (David Hutchman), Amy (Melissa
Lynch) and Kate (Trice Baldwin). Smartly constructed in the circle-back
style (as used in the film Memento), director Gregory Campbell’s understated
production builds the tension discreetly. Several performers struggle with
Wade’s richly nuanced characters, but Hutchman, Baldwin and especially Lynch
effectively portray individuals who find themselves strangely detached from
life. Angry, unhappy or uncertain, they’re like breathing corpses waiting for
their inevitable demise. A surprisingly original meditation on the cyclical
nature of life and the thin line between living and dying, Corpses is a smart,
edgy alternative to standard Halloween fare. And following on the heels of
Luna’s delightfully macabre 2006 Halloween show Unwrap Your Candy, Corpses marks
Luna as the place to go for ghoulish fun.
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Near Death Experiences
Luna Theater's American
premičre of London wunderkind Laura Wade's acclaimed Breathing Corpses unfolds
intriguingly.
-
by Mark Cofta (City Paper) -10/24/2007
Breathing Corpses begins in an ethereal, beige-draped hotel room to the
muted strains of Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopedies." Lonely maid Amy (Melissa
Lynch) mutters "not again" when she discovers a lifeless body in the bed.
Her horror dissipates quickly, however, because the apparent suicide is, at
least, "someone to talk to."
Luna Theater's American
premičre of London wunderkind Laura Wade's acclaimed drama unfolds
intriguingly, peeling back layers not only in Wade's subtle script, but in
John Hobbie's clever set, lit expressively by Andrew Cowles. After Lynch's
funny yet disturbing revelations (while talking to a corpse), Wade moves on
to other equally fascinating, richly drawn lives: Jim (David Hutchman) and
Elaine (Sally Mercer) share an empty nest at home, so she's inserting
herself into his storage business, taking young Ray (Matt Dell'Olio) under
her wing — but they're distracted by a peculiar smell from one of the units.
Shift to Ben (Nathaniel
Robertson) and Kate (Trice Baldwin), who fight viciously during a heat wave
about Ben's beloved dog — or is Kate's foul mood caused by finding a body in
the park?
Don't look for a clear
story in Breathing Corpses' 85 minutes; its connect-the-dots
structure emerges only after later reflection. Wade's script challenges and
delights by exploring our responses to death indirectly: Lives are
momentarily interrupted by grisly discoveries that merit only a brief
mention in the news ("I'm 'woman walking dog,'" Kate gushes to her mother,
reading from the morning paper), but haunt the discoverers long after. The
title refers to Sophocles' assertion that "when a man has lost all
happiness, he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse," and also alludes to
the smells that a body produces after death.
Director Gregory Scott
Campbell's production feels slow, but that's partly due to the play's lack
of narrative drive. Though a fight choreographer would help make the play's
occasional violence feel as real as the emotions provoking it, the actors
impressively develop the characters' inner workings, particularly Hutchman's
taciturn Jim, whose life is forever warped, and Lynch's delicate Amy, who
finally meets someone living to talk with in Allen Radway's creepy Charlie
when the play returns, with grisly irony, to where it began.
