Review: A BLISTERING “BLACKBIRD,” WILL LEAVE YOU BREATHLESS at THE OFF-CENTRAL PLAYERS
by Drew Eberhard - Sep 6, 2024
In researching and marinating the events that played out in my head following the opening night performance of the Off-Central Player’s production of David Harrower’s Blackbird, I ran across this quote. The quote in which I will speak about is actually fitting to the play itself. I’m going to post it now as a way to reflect and then continue with my thoughts on the show itself.
The quote states,
“The best theater teaches again and again that before one can truly love another, one has to find justice and connection with oneself.”
Review: A Dazzling ROCKY HORROR SHOW Ushers in an Overwhelming Feeling of Love at Jobsite Theater
by Drew Eberhard - Jul 14, 2024
Something we knew we always wanted, but unexpected is how much we would need a show like this. Who’d of thought, Rocky Horror in July? If ever there was a truer testament to the old saying, “If you build it, they will come...,” then that would be none other than Jobsite and their production of Richard O’Brien’s titillating cult behemoth The Rocky Horror Show.
Review: THE SMUGGLER at Jobsite Theater
by Drew Eberhard - May 18, 2024
Many times, I look at the cultural landscape and all its vast plethora of fortune we have been given in the Tampa Bay area alone, and one things for certain, I will move mountains, stop at nothing to experience theatre that moves me and thrills me to the core. Taking me out of the present worldview, away from daily trials and tribulations and into the stories of many characters, or in this case, one singular character that will allow me to invest time in their plight.
Review: A Powerful Staging Of Jean-Paul Sartre's NO EXIT Takes Center Stage At The Off-Central Players
by Drew Eberhard - Nov 10, 2023
No Exit is an Existentialist French play from 1944 written by Jean-Paul Sartre. The play had its first performance at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier in May of the same year. Sartre’s inception of the play centered around this idea of the look and the ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness or “other person.” Conceptualizing and rationalizing the idea of how we perceive ourselves, versus the mirror image of how society or those in close proximity perceive us to be.
Review: David Mamet's REVENGE OF THE SPACE PANDAS OR BINKY RUDICH AND THE TWO SPEED CLOCK at Off-Central Players
by Drew Eberhard - May 15, 2023
Mamet’s full-length comedy penned to appeal to young audiences premiered in 1978 at the Town Hall Performing Arts Center in Flushing, Queens a borough of New York City.
The plot is messy, convoluted, and at some times almost mind-warping. The story follows the adventures of Binky Rudich, his friend Vivian Mooster and an almost human-like sheep Bob as they struggle to get the two-speed clock to work. Soon, Binky’s mother known as Mrs. Rudich calls for Binky to come down for lunch, Binky decides to hit the clock with a hammer one last time hoping to make it work. Suddenly the kids have blasted nearly 50 lightyears away from anything they’ve known to the planet of Crestview.
Review: Caryl Churchill's A NUMBER at Studio Grand Central
by Drew Eberhard - Nov 13, 2022
A Number written by British Playwright Caryl Churchill first premiered in September of 2002 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, England. The play starred Michael Gambon in the role of Salter, and Daniel Craig in the role of Bernard (Et al.). Under critical reception, Churchill’s play was lauded for its use of “significant intellectual depth while imploring an effective economy of style.” Told in a series of five vignettes, the story is set in the near future, where a relationship/conflict between father and sons comes to a head when conflict about the use of human cloning becomes the topic of conversation. The play expresses the deeply divided differences between nature vs. nurture, and the idea that “if we had a do-over, could we atone for our mistakes?”
In an article for the New York Times, Ben Brantley described Churchill’s work as, “stunning” and a “gripping dramatic consideration of what happens to autonomous identity in a world where people can be cloned.”