Reviews
Reviews
WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW Maxine & Robert Seller Theatre/Jewish Repertory Theatre
One-performer shows can be among the great stage shows of theater, one performer on a stage trying to tell a story, funny, sad or just entertaining.
Feb 14, 2020, 17:03
Reviews
COOKIN' AT THE COOKERY Daemen College/MusicalFare Theatre
It’s one of those fact of work life, the idea that you will have to change jobs and careers perhaps several times to get by.
Alberta Hunter would understand that.
Feb 13, 2020, 12:37
Reviews
FACTORY FOR MURDERERS Alleyway Theatre
Some names in history stick out, people, places and events people recognize and think they know about.
Think Jack the Ripper, the sick killer who rampaged through the poverty-stricken East End of London in 1888.
Feb 7, 2020, 15:58
Reviews
MERCURY FUR Manny Fried Playhouse/Subversive Theatre
Philip Ridley’s “Mercury Fur” is an extremely graphic look at what some people will do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and what the very few can do to those people to feed their appetites.
Jan 29, 2020, 18:54
Reviews
THE ANTIPODES Road Less Traveled Productions/RLTP Theatre
Annie Baker’s “The Antipodes” is more of a series of audition monologues than a coherent play.
Jan 26, 2020, 23:49
Reviews
JUMP Paul Robeson Theatre/African American Cultural Center
Through February 9
JUMP Paul Robeson Theatre/African American Cultural Center
Charly Evon Simpson’s “Jump” is about that most awful of family tragedies, suicide.
The story of this family is shadowed by a giant bridge.
We don’t know where this city is and that doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that the bridge is a central element in a community, used often by people passing from one section of the city to another and, clearly, a place where some people in utter despair jump.
Even before we learn much about the family at the center of this play, we meet Hopkins (Marcus Thompson Jr.), who actually started climbing past the safety railing to jump and suddenly pulls back.
He just can’t do it and moves back up to stare at his city and ponder the present.
That’s where he meets the equally troubled Fay (Aqueira Oshun), another denizen of the bridge, who is clearly considering jumping.
She’s living in her own place, scrabbling to get along.
Fay is recovering from the cancer death of her mother and her estrangement from her father (Andy Finley) who has moved to his own place and is trying to move along from his wife’s death.
There’s also sister Judy (Dayane Araujo), also distant from the family but who seems to be doing far better than her younger sister.
Dad has decided it’s time to clean out the family home and sell it and the sisters are needed to decide what they want and help him pack up the rest for distribution somewhere.
For the sisters and for Dad, there are memories of the good days and the sisterly rivalries of a family and Mom running the house and also taking the kids up on the bridge walkway to look over the city, effectively using a wonderful set design and construction from Al Garrison and assistant Larry Garrison.
This isn’t some dream, like the stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town, describing the scenes in Grover’s Corners to the audience members.
Instead, it’s a fully realized bridge and bridge walkway, requiring less imagination from the audience.
On the bridge, Hopkins and Fay meet.
A lot of this is dramatic misdirection from the playwright, shifting viewpoints and locations.
It also builds a sense of dread since it becomes increasingly clear someone will jump and die.
The question is who is the suicide and the result is surprising.
“Jump” is a shift for the Robeson.
While this theater often deals with social and family problems in the Black community, I don’t remember any dealing with suicide and the audience was clearly a little tense as the story unfolded.
Who wants to admit someone in a family lost hope and killed himelf or herself?
If you look just at the statistics, a lot of Americans commit suicide by gun and many more use other methods, like jumping off a bridge.
It happens here, even with the awful attraction of Niagara Falls.
It happens and trying to understand the reasons are important because a family member might realize a relative or even a sibling is in that stage past despair and needs immediate help.
Director Paulette D. Harris keeps this relatively short show going quickly, with fast scene changes and a strong cast led by Oshun and Thompson.
For the audience, it’s a play which looks at an ordinary family hit by one tragedy and then by another and who, ever, wants to be there.
That’s true whether you are dealing is a legal family or an informal grouping.
Each needs to know what can happen if a member of that grouping despairs.
Prospective audience members need to understand there are lessons for all of us on the Robeson stage and see “Jump.”
A.W.
Jan 24, 2020, 17:22
Reviews
MAN AND SUPERMAN With Don Juan in Hell Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival
George Bernard Shaw loved words, small words, giant words, an endless flow of words, flowing like a great river to meet his goals of spreading a gospel of his values.
Oct 2, 2019, 10:44
Reviews
VICTORY Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre/Shaw Festival
“Victory”?
Over whom?
Sep 6, 2019, 15:34
Reviews
CYRANO DE BERGERAC Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival
The nose is back.
In innumerable scripts, adaptations and translations, the story of Cyrano de Bergerac remains fascinating to the theater audience.
Sep 6, 2019, 15:26
Reviews
THE GLASS MENAGERIE Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre/Shaw Festivaleatree
Aug 3, 2019, 21:33
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