Evan Henerson - Page 6

Sixty minutes spent in the company of an individual this thirsty for a human connection can be a bit exhausting, but it's well worth the investment.

While there are laughs to be had, nostalgia to be indulged and charm aplenty in Christian Lebano’s production of YaGM Charlie Brown for the Sierra Madre Playhouse, there is also a certain quotient of angst that no bright costumes or cutesy set pieces can disguise.

'A lean an hungry look,' Julius Caesar’s oft-quoted descriptor for Cassius, is an apt metaphor for the season-opening production of JULIUS CAESAR at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and not always in a good way. The leanness box is dutifully checked, but director Ellen Geer’s production could certainly be hungrier and more thought out.

Judith Moreland’s cunning production for the Fountain Theatre sneaks up behind you, gooses, tickles, sings, brays and pretty much does everything but give everyone in the audience a wedgie.

Figuring out whodunit feels like a bonus of this diverting if light slice of drama rather than its primary aim.

As Denzel Washington, Kenny Leon and Co. usher in the umpteenth renaissance of Lorraine Hansberry's A RAISIN IN THE SUN, across the country, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is mounting a 50th anniversary revival of the only other work the Hansberry- who died at 34 - lived to see produced.

It may take a few minutes for a viewer to get his bearings within the world of WATER BY THE SPOONFUL. The canvas laid out by playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes stretches from Puerto Rico to San Diego, from Philadelphia to Japan. Characters go by their chatroom handles, and their relationships to each other - even among family members who meet face to face - are complicated and are not immediately made clear.

Feats of magic are at an end, resolutions have been made and Ferdinand and Miranda are bound for a world far braver and newer than what they've experienced on this magical island. That's when Jeffrey King, as Antonio, turns to face his brother Prospero whose Dukedom Antonio usurped lo those many years ago. Prospero has forgiven him, and what does Antonio do?

The throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-pray-for-laughs approach to low comedy is a staple of live theater, and certainly, of William Shakespeare's plays. None play would seem to invite a shtick-fest - beg for one even - than the hugely ridiculous THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, alas, Kent Gash's free-for-all staging of Errors exposes the play's lameness rather than celebrates its lunacy. For ninety non-breezy minutes, every actor on that stage is mugging (or frugging) his or her collective buns off. Some of the players are quite deft and, indeed, the production has its share of laughs. Too often, though, the jokes don't land, the pace slows and the endeavor is dead in the water.