Word: dead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dead wrong...
...couple, James (Ron Schachter) and Eleanor (Kristen Gasser)--a painting preserver undergoing a mid-life crisis and a part-time music teacher approaching menopause. James and Eleanor's children have all left home, creating a void in the couple's life. Bored, James allows the former lover of his dead friend Albert, a chic young woman named Kate (Nan Dunham), to seduce him into his first-ever extra-marital liaison...
...play's other standout. She devotes herself fully to her role elucidating Eleanor's fragile inner workings, and the sheer force of her performance sets her apart from the other players. Gasser's performance as Eleanor and Kim Shaw's portrayal of Agnes, the former wife of the dead Albert, are also very good. But not even superhuman acting could save Nichols' gimmicky and cliched script...
...series of coups in an unnamed archduchy, in which increasingly more ruthless leaders usurp the throne. lonesco takes this all-to-obvious premise--e.g. that power corrupts--and revels in its inanity. While facing execution for leading an unsuccessful rebellion, Candor (Glen Whitney) declares that he is a historical dead-end, and that his "rebellion was necessary, if only to prove I'm a criminal." Much of the humor of the play arises from the hackneyed, emotionally-inappropriate intellectualizations in which the characters are endlessly engaged...
Eventually the speech of this renowned oracle, this spirit medium for dead plants, became just so much background noise--like the pounding of the surf, or the whine of a chainsaw. The only bits of excitement were the occasional long periods of silence, each one of which caused me to look up from my notes, half-expecting it to be followed by a dull thud and a cry for oxygen or a taxidermist...