Posts Tagged ‘David Ellenstein’
Poor Man’s Espionage Rules in NCR’s Spry, Fun ‘Travels’
Henry was content to tend to his dahlias and otherwise fritter away his post-retirement — but his aunt Augusta had other plans, plans she’d unfurled all her life. North Coast Repertory’s very good ‘Travels with My Aunt’ charts their course to that effect.
Read MoreLanguage And Its Exuberances Pepper NCR’s Excellent ‘Illusion’
French baroque playwright Pierre Corneille’s ‘L’Illusion Comique’ was written in 1636 as a nod to theater’s intrinsic beauty. Tony Kushner’s eye and ear saw the inherent tribute to performance art — and North Coast Repertory Theatre’s ‘The Illusion’ has preserved it with an excellent entry.
Read MoreLanguage, Portraiture Don’t Always Match in NCR’s Decent ‘Hedda Gabler’
Amid her sham marriage and her obsession with what’s not hers, Hedda Gabler Tesman is an Everyman for the world’s pathologically unfulfilled. Henrik Ibsen’s iconic character gets an airing in North Coast Repertory Theatre’s ‘ Hedda Gabler’ — but a new translation seeks to redefine Hedda’s periphery rather than explore her depths.
Read MoreNo Good Deed Goes Unpunished in NCR’s Nice ‘Way Downriver’
The nobler the deed, the bigger the recrimination — at least it seems that way sometimes, and inmate Aikins would be the first to tell you. Even as he seeks to turn the corner, he’s the subject of an unhappy ending in North Coast Repertory Theatre’s very nice ‘Way Downriver; William Faulkner’s Old Man.’
Read MoreNCR’s ‘Chapter Two’: For Once, Neil Simon (Horrors!) Isn’t All That Bad
Neil Simon sucks, God bless him, except when he doesn’t. North Coast Repertory Theatre is mounting a very good ‘Chapter Two,’ Simon’s tribute to his second wife Marsha Mason and a nod to the pain of widowerhood — for once, this criminally overrated playwright is on to something.
Read MoreArguably, ‘Freud’s Last Session’ Is a Hit
Two of the 20th century’s greatest men of letters came from uniformly different backgrounds and have equally opposite beliefs about God’s existence. In North Coast Repertory Theatre’s ‘Freud’s Last Session,’ we get quite a nice look at the debate that would have followed if the two had ever met.
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