Greenhouse Theater Center
Chicago
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A Memory of Two Mondays “packs one heck of an emotional punch,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Another one of Arthur Miller’s “dramatic cries of anguish on behalf of the working stiff,” this lesser-known one-act takes place in a Brooklyn, N.Y., auto-parts warehouse. The playwright’s “authorial alter-ego,” Bert, takes a job there to make a few extra bucks before heading off to college, and ends up meeting an interesting array of characters. There’s “the middle-age guy who needs a raise and more responsibility; the fellows who drink too much; the sharp-eyed youngster watching his dreams of art and poetry slip away.” Not much happens to these world-weary fellows as they punch the clock, day in and day out, but director Steven Fedoruk’s well-wrought depiction of their everyday lives sharply captures Miller’s signature combination of “intimacy and truth.”
The 14-member ensemble brings tremendous vitality to an otherwise second-rate Miller play, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s a good bet that Miller thought he was showing compassion for these people, trapped in such marginal, dead-end existences.” Yet, as is often the case with the playwright, there’s also a “heavy whiff of condescension” here. Fortunately, Brandon Ruiter’s performance as Bert mutes Miller’s superciliousness, while strong supporting performances ensure that the other characters transcend stereotype. Vincent Lonergan plays the lifer of the shop, while J.P. Pierson stands out as Bert’s poetically inclined co-worker. Together, the three actors make this Memory memorable.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.