Robert Barossi - Page 8

New play development is one of the most essential and necessary elements to a thriving theatrical world. Playwrights must keep writing plays and their plays must be given the time to grow, develop, change, morph and grow again. And theater companies must be able and willing to give those plays the opportunity to do so. They must provide the incubator, where the perfect creative environment can be created to foster, nurture and support the development of young and growing works of theatrical art. In Rhode Island, The Wilbury Group is one theater that is taking up that mantle, with its Emerging Artists and New Works Series. They are providing just want new works need, offering to shepherd them through the process, from readings to full-scale productions. One such production is their current show, the inaugural production of the New Works Series, It's a Spaceship Now, conceived, written and performed by Stuart Wilson.

Once upon a time, a director told a group of young students of the theater to, "keep it simple, stupid." I know it happened cause I was there. This idiea of simplicity is not new or confined to theatrical productions, of course. In many facets of our life, simplicity is the way to go. Sticking to theater, though, Counter-Productions Theatre Company's current production of Speed-The-Plow is another good example of why simple is better.

In most cases, when you have a pair or set of something, one is bound to be stronger or better than the other. They may claim to be, or try to be, but one is usually superior in some way. Alan Ayckborn's House & Garden is no different. In this theatrical pair, two plays designed to be performed simultaneously in adjoining theaters by the same cast, the clearly superior sibling is Garden, the second of the two to open at Trinity Repertory Company.

It's not every day hat playwright can come up with something completely unique or different. Everything has been done before, they say. If Alan Ayckbourn hasn't accomplished an entirely unique feat with his plays House & Garden, then he's at least done something pretty rare. You see, House & Garden are designed to be performed together, at the same time, by the same cast, in adjoining spaces. They involved the same characters, in one way or another, and deal with stories that intersect in numerous ways. The trick is to make each one of them a high-quality play that stands on it own. In that regard, House, the first one to open at Trinity Repertory Company, is not entirely successful.

Sometimes, all a writer/producer/director has to do is find one perfect combination of elements, that one elusive perfect formula, and it immediately takes off. More than that, it becomes a huge success, lasting for years and spawning a long line of sequels, spin-offs and imitators. Think the tv show Law & Order or the National Lampoon's series of movies. In the theatrical world, the equivalent musical might just be Nunsense. This hit musical comedy, with lyrics, book and music by Dan Goggin, has become the second longest running Off-Broadway show in history and has led to a number of sequels and spin-offs. In a nice bit of symmetry, Nunsense is now being presented at one of the area's most successful and longest-running venues, Theatre By the Sea.

For many, if not most, plays and musicals are an escape. It is a way for audience members to lose themselves in the dark of the theater and in the lives of the people on stage. Plays are, for them, just entertainment, a way to connect with other human beings and feel what they feel, laugh or cry along with them. Then go home and forget all about it. That is not the case with the plays of German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, whose play The Threepenny Opera is currently running at The Wilbury Theatre Group.

Among other things, playwright Tennessee Williams is known for plays which fit into the category of "southern gothic." His works are often set in the south and tell steamy, sordid tales of love, sex, power and death. One such play, The Rose Tattoo, is set in a small town on the gulf coast, where everybody knows everybody else's business and where secrets and passions run as deep as the humidity is high. Less often produced than Williams' other plays, Rose Tattoo is currently on the stage at 2nd Story Theatre in Warren.

Stories about mothers have been around for as long as...well...mothers. And with Mother's Day coming up this Sunday, it's hard not to reflect and think about our own mothers or the other mothers in our lives. Or to remember some of the stories and memories that the word 'mother' conjures up. With its production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Gamm Theatre offers up an undeniably darker and arguably quite disturbing tale of one mother and how she rules her house and her daughter.

To paraphrase an old saying, you can't swing a dead cat in a Rhode Island theater without hitting a graduate of either Rhode Island College or University of Rhode Island. But don't worry, that's a good thing. RIC and URI have been consistently producing highly talented young theater professionals for a number of years. Local theaters, both on stage and behind the scenes, are teeming with these talented, enthusiastic, capable artists. And while there are other schools in the area producing similar talent, it seems that RIC and URI appear most frequently in the playbills of local productions. In the case of Daydream Theatre Company's current show, Higher Methods, talented young actors from the aforementioned schools happen to be the highlight of the evening. Rather than a daydream, the play is more of a fever dream, bordering on a nightmare. It is the tale of a young actor who travels to Los Angeles, Hollywood specifically, to find his long lost sister. In his efforts to hunt her down, he traces her steps, trying to experience everything she did. Along the way, he becomes lost in a strange world where little makes sense and nothing is what it seems.

Modern-day questions of race are examined with unflinching honesty in David Mamet's play Race, now playing at Ocean State Theatre Company. Mamet, one of the most prolific writers working today, has written numerous plays, screenplays and television shows. He is known for, among other things, his fast-paced, rapid-fire dialogue and his talent for stripping away the layers of politeness and political correctness to get down to the dirty, brutal truth beneath the surface. Race doesn't just get under the skin of our society's racial issues, it gets into the very marrow of the bone.

Until recently, Wilbury Group was presenting their plays in an old warehouse space, which was both difficult to find and mostly uncomfortable for the audience. The cavernous space was too large, too hard to find and made it too difficult for audiences to enjoy exciting new theater. Now, the company has found new digs, on Broad Street, in the Southside Cultural Center. The space is far smaller, far more comfortable and much more intimate, allowing Wilbury to bring the audience up close and personal with exciting works of drama, from old to new, musical to straight play.

Writers spend their entire careers, perhaps their entire lives, trying to find the right words. The perfect words. Those which will elevate their writing from something ordinary and dull to a lofty place among the great works of literary art. Some concepts, though, can't be so easily put into words. Cannot be defined or explained in any way that truly does them justice. Loves is one of those things and the attempt to put it into words is at the center of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, currently running at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre.

Although we might like to believe that things are black or white, one or the other, they almost never are. There are many shades of gray and variations in between. And it can be a blurry distance between two extremes. A fine line between, for example, sane and insane. Who's to say what its crazy and what isn't? And who gets to decide what to do about people deemed to be at the wrong end of the spectrum? Few plays examine these issues with such depth, pathos and clarity as Dale Wasserman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, adapted from the novel by Ken Kesey. The play, originally performed in 1963, received Tony awards when it was revived in 2001. It also spawned a movie version in 1975, famously starring Jack Nicholson, which won multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

For five years, after Bill Hanney bought and reopened the historic barn theater in Matunuck, musicals at Theatre By the Sea were produced and staged by Ocean Sate Theatre Company, led by Producing Artistic Director Amiee Turner and Managing Director Joel Kipper. When the five years ended, Hanney did not renew their contract and Turner and Kipper had no choice but to take their ball and go home. That is, they took it to Warwick, Rhode Island, where they opened their own brand-spanking-new space, newly remolded and christened Ocean State Theatre Company. And the 'ball' they took with them was all of their considerable expertise, skill and knowledge regarding how to put on theater of the highest caliber.

The show must go on, or so the saying says. This weekend, with a major blizzard plowing through New England, that didn't always hold true. Case in point, Providence Performing Arts Center, which had to cancel two Saturday performances of the touring production of Green Day's rock musical American Idiot. Fortunately, both of the Sunday performances went on as scheduled. Even luckier for area audiences, another show has been added for Monday evening, so there's one more opportunity to check out this stunning and intense production.

You're sitting in a large, dimly lit, nearly empty room, upstairs in an old warehouse in a nondescript section of the city. In the middle of the room, there is what looks like a wrestling ring, surrounded by chairs eagerly waiting for an audience of spectators. Finally, the lights dim and in walks a masked man in wrestling trunks. Only, you aren't at a wrestling match. You're at the The Wilbury Group's production of Kristoffer Diaz's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.