Showing posts with label Cultural Capitol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Capitol. Show all posts
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Ajax in Iraq Review: Will Kenton, Cultural Capitol

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 1 comments

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Sol Crespo, Lori E Parquet, Chinaza Uche, Tiffany Clementi, Mike Mihm, Chudney Sykes)

Review #2 is out, and we're thrilled that Will Kenton from Cultural Capitol returned. You may want to reread his reviews of Jacob's House and Dog Act to gain a deeper appreciation for the wide frame he brings to his reviews. This latest is no exception, and I was particularly struck by this quote:
Aeschylus and Sophocles were gentlemen soldiers – both are reputed to have come from the Attic nobility where everyone knew everyone else and reputation was everything. McLaughlin, on the other hand, is writing about a modern army made up of mostly working class volunteers who fight and die for infinitely more abstract notions of patriotism and duty.
Happily, there are also some very positive thoughts about the production and Flux in general, so make sure you read the whole thing, then get your tickets here, and then leave your own thoughts on the play here. Read the full story

 

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Dog Act Review: Will Kenton, Cultural Capitol

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 0 comments

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Lori E. Parquet, Chris Wight)

Will Kenton's review is up at Cultural Capitol! As you may recall, I appreciated the wider angle he brought to his Jacob's House review, and he brings the same insights to the this review, perhaps best exemplified by this great quote:
The play is a riff on two genres: the futuristic dystopia and the Restoration comedy of manners, kind of like Aphra Behn’s The Rover crossed with Waiting for Godot. It is a fruitful crossbreed: both of the genres are deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche, and Ms. Adams deftly manipulates both the generic plot elements of the two forms and the verbal modulation between poetic and absurd.
That tension between the poetic and absurd has run through all of the reviews, with some reviewers feeling more connected to one aspect than the other. I'm happy this review sees them as both essential, and also love his take on Kelly's direction and Lori's performance.

Read the full story

 

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Jacob's House Review: Will Kenton, Cultural Capitol

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 0 comments

(Photo: Justin hoch @ jhoch.com. Pictured: Tiffany Clementi, Bianca LaVerne Jones, Kelli Dawn Holsopple)

Readers of this blog know I love juxtaposition, so you can imagine my excitement reading Will Kenton's review at Cultural Capitol, which sparks our Jacob's House not only against a similarly themed play; but a wider frame of culture and religion. In a fascinating turn, he uses the Walter Benjamin quote that inspired Jason Grote's This Storm Is What We Call Progress, the play that was our second Food:Soul.

While I can't speak to his take of Wide Eyed Productions' Noah's Arkansas, not having seen the play and liking through acquaintance their AD and playwright; I am very grateful for a review that holds passages like this:
Mr. Schulenburg accurately captures the ambiguity of Jacob’s achievement as the third and most important patriarch of Israel: he is both the founder and the original sinner, the parvenu and carpetbagger who gave rise to the twelve tribes; he is the kind of guy who cracks a whole lot of eggs to make his self-aggrandizing omelette.
I'm also happy he connected with the Laban scene and Bianca's great work in that difficult swath of text (nearly a play within the play, our Laban).

So, read the whole thing here, then get your tickets, and after you've seen the show, please share your thoughts here. Read the full story