Month: November 2024

The young Prince Hamlet has returned to Denmark, only to discover his father’s brother Claudius, following King Hamlet’s death, has married his mother and appropriated the throne. This marriage took place right away. The couple aren’t exactly sitting Shiva. Hamlet is devastated. A couple of sentries on the graveyard shift has seen apparitions of a ghost who resembles the deceased King. Hamlet accompanies them the next night, and sure enough, it’s his dad. He accuses Claudius of murdering him in his sleep, pouring a dose of poison in his ear. Father demands that Hamlet avenge him. As an act of cunning Hamlet devises to feign insanity, giving him the upper hand in confronting his uncle. As the play marches forward, though we begin to wonder if he’s still faking. If he’s unwittingly acting out the absurdity of existence.

The crux of Hamlet is profound despair. His father’s dead, his uncle and mother (for all practical purposes) are committing incest, not to mention assassination. This happens between the family, and gone unpunished. Nobody seems to have noticed. Or perhaps it’s apathy. Hamlet is utterly baffled and distraught. What kind of world, of cosmos do we inhabit

when man, with propensity for nobility and kindness, would seek out depravity? Hamlet discovers this dismal truth of life and humanity. How do we reconcile conscience, drowning in a fractured and pervasive rejection of grace. He’s not sure he can go on. Ironically, the methods of revenge often involve the amorality he denounces. He calls his Mother a whore. He leads Ophelia on, then does a 180, with no explanation. By play’s end, it’s a nihilistic mashup of the ridiculous and chaotic.

The Classics Theatre Project, in the fine tradition of shifting the milieu to contemporary times, is at once intriguing and strange. Unlike the earlier, elaborate setting for TCTP’s Oleanna, Hamlet is minimal, achieving the scene with say, chairs and props. The dialogue feels reasonably spontaneous; the emotion palpable. Facetiousness is woven throughout. The insufferable, didactic Polonious, the comedic banter of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, amusing.

The peripheral music carried a somber bathos that would drive you to drink. Hamlet, I’m sure, must be a nightmare to stage. The hopelessness, the wordplay, the nonsense, the cruelty. The love lost to rage, to desperation, to forfeited tenderness. Under Joey Folsom’s keen intuition and clarity of execution, TCPT’S Hamlet is an unforgettable, disconsolate experience.

The Classics Theatre Project presents: Hamlet, playing October 25th-November 23^rd, 2024. Stone Cottage Theater: 15650 Addison Road, Addison, Texas 75001. (214) 923-3619 theclassicstheatreproject.com

Frederick Manion has murdered Barney, owner of a cocktail bar. He found him and shot him dead. His wife, Laura, returned home, black and blue, clothes torn, and told her husband she’d been raped. Manion, a decorated soldier, turns himself in. Paul Biegler, a retired District Attorney, is enlisted to defend Manion, with the help of his buddy, (tipsy attorney) Parnell McCarthy. Biegler visits Manion in jail, a contentious defendant.

Anatomy of a Murder is a novel written by John D. Volker, adapted for the stage by playwright Elihu Winer. Volker was the actual lawyer who defended the case. Otto Preminger’s intense, sardonic film, preceded the play, starring Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, James Stewart, George C. Scott, and Eve Arden, et al. Curiously, the play eliminated certain elements, probably for practical reasons. Now nobody expects (except perhaps Disney) for a show to hop between incarnations identically. It’s not always easy to tell the difference between concoction and elimination. That being said, I was surprised that one particular detail, brought up in Winer’s drama, was not pursued.

It should come as no surprise that the defendant’s innocence or guilt is irrelevant, at least to his defense. Paul Biegler says as much. Your attorney is your advocate in an adversarial process, designed for your best interest. If the verdict’s unjust, the onus lies with the prosecutor. This structure respects the presumption of innocence. Some attorneys say outright: Don’t tell me if you did it, I don’t want to know.

Anatomy of a Murder is a strange mixture of the lurid and the true. It’s an Exotic Dancer dressed like a Prima Ballerina. Biegler is perceived as truthteller, though he’s willing as any other lawyer to use chicanery. The law provides some latitude, at the discretion of the judge. Biegler draws the line at prevarication. He won’t lie. Laura Manion is displayed as the victim, while the prosecution suggests she was looking for sex. Naturally the time that Anatomy of a Murder was written, the laws concerning these questions were not enlightened.

None of the characters are well off. Biegler himself is scraping by. Frederick and Laura share a mobile home. It’s implied that he can be brutal when they fight. Biegler and McCarty get useful gossip from their secretary. It should be added this defense team of three are virtually working pro bono. Very little here is spelled out, the truth being messy and all. But it’s the sly Volker who plays on ambiguity. He emphasizes the doubtful, without being obvious. He exploits our inclination to say: Well, it might be true. And the ending is positively subversive.

Anatomy of a Murder, staged by Richardson Theatre Center, is distilled. Volker has 86’ed some peripheral subplots for the sake of clarity, though that might have gone to tone. The focus is the courtroom, which occupies most of the stage. Director Rachael Lindley handles this disturbing content with a savvy, careful touch. The impressive cast, is also equal to the task. Odd that such a harrowing story should feel so distant. It lurks in your brain until it seeps out later.

Richardson Theatre Centre presented Anatomy of a Murder. It played October 25th-November 10^th, 2024. 518 West Arapaho Road, Suite 113. Richardson, Texas 75080. 972-699-1130. richardsontheatrecenter.net

The story of Sweeney Todd began as a serial piece in 1846, titled: String of Pearls. It appeared in the notorious penny dreadfuls, cheap, grisly pulp fiction. There has been some debate as to whether Sweeney Todd is fiction, legend or nonfiction. This popular narrative has known numerous stage incarnations, throughout the years, the most recent being Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical in 1979, not to mention film, ballet and television. And of course, Pocket Sandwich’s spoof, by Joe Dickinson..

Depending on the version (and there are many) you experience, the story goes like this. Sweeney Todd has it in for a corrupt Judge, who sent him away to prison, kidnapped and raped his fiancee. He sets up his trade as a barber with mad skills and thus in demand. There he will polish off the judge. As he contemplates his revenge, he encounters Mrs. Lovett, whose meat pie business is foundering miserably. Together they cook up the idea to replace regular meat with the victims of his homicidal impulse. Ironically and apparently, the public prefers human flesh and Mrs. Lovett’s business goes through the roof. The other characters include Sweeney’s grown daughter, a persistent detective, his young friend during imprisonment, and Tobi, a sweet orphan they hire to help Mrs. Lovett.

This Dickensian yarn certainly has layers. When Sweeney’s plot to murder murder the Judge fails, he resolves to indiscriminately kill any hapless bloke whose ass hits his cunning barber chair. His more or less understandable desire to avenge his exploitation, morphs into something wicked and pathological. The subsequent success of the meat pies becomes a metaphor for society and cannibalism. [Consider The Threepenny Opera’s Cannon Song, or What Keeps Mankind Alive? ] Sweeney’s seachange slowly engulfs all of his friends and loved ones, who meet with cruel demise. Is degeneracy inevitable? Does culture breed an insatiable taste for mayhem and blood?

I gladly count myself among those much relieved to find The Pocket Sandwich Theatre’s move to Carrollton, has succeeded and actually increased seating. (I think.) Their notorious touch for irreverent satire still holds steady, and the ebullient merriment, the fizzy dizzy mockery of rational logic, holds everyone in stitches. It does your heart good to find your self in the throng

of raucous, bubbly cheer. Joe Dickinson’s spoof of Sweeney Todd is about as serious as your Aunt Mable, in her cotton nightgown, cold cream and curlers. It’s closing weekend, so don’t miss this yummy feast!

The Pocket Sandwich Theatre Presents: Sweeney Todd (the Fiend of Fleet Street) closing this weekend on November 16^th, 2024. 1104 Elm Street, Carrollton, TX. (214) 821-1860

• pocketsandwich.com

Imagine one character, a woman, has been savagely attacked, in front of her children. Imagine everything of human value has been torn away from her. As the play opens, it has been two years since she met with social workers. Two women (one experienced, the other a novice) are there to walk her through an unbelievably difficult, excruciating task. The survivor has nearly nothing to lose, her torture virtually without remedy. The other two women have discovered that their usual protocol has no practical use, in the midst of such catastrophe. The information we get is parsed out slowly, and when we discover why she is there, it’s stupefying.

Playwright Debbie Tucker Green has constructed an enigmatic, overwhelming test of humanity. Under the circumstances, choosing the unspoken is preferable to risking what will make matters worse. And nothing feels as interminable as silence. I should add here that Green lists the characters as: One, Two and Three. This leaves casting to the discretion of the director. It might be women. It might be men. It might be both. It also suggests that these three could be any of us. Number three is the afflicted, this much we know. She is furious. She ignores their insipid guardrails, livid with nothing to draw upon but deep, deep despair. We can’t imagine how these three will navigate this dilemma. When silence hangs like a verdict. When our utter inability to comfort chokes us. 

Shannon McGrann, M. Denise Lee, and Kristen Lazarchick, under the sharp eye of Director Sasha Maya Ada deliver authentic, difficult performances, struggling with this minefield. McGrann, Lee, and Lazarchick are dropped into a tiger pit, the tension they create tighter than a drum. Good actors never give by halves, and they take us with them on this life-changing ordeal. As we might expect, Second Thought Theatre never takes the easy path. We’re expected to be as brave as the actors. STT it seems, thrives on harrowing, rapacious drama and we should expect nothing less.

Second Thought Theatre presented hang from October 16th-November 3^rd, 2024. 3400 Blackburn St, Dallas, TX, United States, Texas. (214) 897-3091. info@secondthoughttheatre.com