Tag: Cloverdale Playhouse
Pinocchio at the Playhouse
Last night I attended opening night at Cloverdale Playhouse’s The True Adventures of Pinocchio. I went expecting to see a staged version of the legendary animated Disney film. What I found was much more akin to a Grimm’s fairy tale, complete with lying and cheating and killing and stealing. Not exactly what one would expect […]
Private Lives
Private Lives, the last play of the Cloverdale Playhouse’s 2018 season, is a fascinating experiment. The play suggests a hypothesis about what might happen if you were trapped an audience in a room with four loathsome screaming monsters for two hours. The four monsters are all themselves trapped in webs of relationships with one another, […]
It’s Not All Brioche and Brandy
“I’ll go and see anything so long as it amuses me or moves me. If it doesn’t do either I want to go home.” – Noël Coward I am not a fan of reality TV. I know that may put me in the minority of television viewers as there are literally hundreds of shows dominating the small […]
There’s No ‘I’ in “Theater”
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller Director Alexander Zeldin once said: “Theatre is always about together, whether it’s the audience and the performer or the group of people that are making the work or the wider community that the work is connected to in some way.” As […]
Empiricism? Is That All You’ve Got?
Tonight we saw the very best production we’ve ever seen at the Cloverdale Playhouse. That’s saying something since we have pretty much been reviewing plays there ever since 2011, when then-Artistic Director Greg Thornton quoted Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead in the epigraph to a Midtown Montgomery Living blog post about picking plays during that […]
“We Could Play at Questions!”
“It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall, it’s a painting, and if you can walk around it, it’s a sculpture.” -Tom Stoppard Heads or tails? Left or right? Yes or no? “To be or not to be?” In life we are faced with endless questions, choices we must […]
“Decide Not to Surrender. That is Strength.”
“There are four things in life that will change you: love, music, art, and loss. The first three will keep you wild and full of passion. May you allow the last to make you brave.” -Erin Van Vuren Friends, this has been a rough month. Sure, it has been a bit more humid and hot […]
Go Beyond Your Form
“Decisions are made by those who show up. Don’t ever forget that you’re a citizen of this world.” -from “The West Wing” by Aaron Sorkin As I have said time and time again, theater is a team sport, and especially community theater. Every part of the machine has to work together to bring a play […]
The Hobbit
The stories we hear or read in childhood tend to stay with us for the rest of our lives. They infect our dreams while coloring our expectations for all future narratives. Some of this is because we are so impressionable at a young age. Some of it is because childrens’ stories tend to boil ideas […]
“You Are Not the Hobbit that You Were”
“The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien I have long been a lover […]
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