Review: A Challenging DOLL’S HOUSE at Everyman Theatre
Review: A Challenging DOLL’S HOUSE at Everyman Theatre With the current prominence of the Barbie movie, doll’s houses are much on the public mind. In the movie, the heroine’s maturity is partly expressed in her leaving her doll’s house and indeed the entire...
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s Pericles: Not a Serious Bone in its Body
by Jack L. B. Gohn Posted on BroadwayWorld.com Monday, July 5, 2021 I first attended an outdoor theatrical performance 64 years ago. Over the decades, there have been plenty more. Up until Saturday evening, I’d never once been rained out. Saturday, though, my...
A Frosty but Comic Take on LOVE AND INFORMATION at Fells Point Corner Theatre
Churchill’s take on love and on information seems a bit chilly. There may be a lot of both love and information out there, she appears to intimate, but it’s not usually of very good quality. Much of Churchill’s frostiness is, however, presented with a comic touch, emphasized by Dierdre McAllister’s direction, by the energetic and youthful ensemble, and by the audience, which seemed to be goading on the performers with constant and frequently loud laughter.
A Sure-Footed BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS at Vagabond Players
Neil Simon’s indecision about genre in Brighton Beach Memoirs was related to his problem being direct about his parents. A true account would necessarily have revealed their fighting, his father’s desertions and infidelities, and the eventual failure of their marriage, and could only have been presented as a tragedy or melodrama. A comedy (and Brighton Beach is formally a comedy) would need to present a sanitized version of what Simon remembered; it would satisfy his audience (which expected comedies) and his parents, but it would also come further from the flavor Simon wanted to present. What we get in consequence is a play in three somewhat inconsistent genres.
About Jack Gohn
I lived in London and Vienna before coming to the United States, and grew up mainly in Ann Arbor. I was writing plays and stories as early as grade school. My undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, where I first reviewed theater, for the college paper, were succeeded by graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University, where I earned a doctorate in English Literature.