Word: derrah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ghastly, emaciated, old man, their disembodied voices are piped in, as though from another world. The actors, after the manner of Oriental drama, seem like life-sized puppets, but with the intricate gestures and fluid grace of human voice and movement. The entire cast is superb, from Thomas Derrah at King Deramo to Lynn Chausow as Clarice with her Little-Bo-Peep voice and Christopher Moore as Leandro, who loves Clarice and makes every entrance head-over-heels...
...production often sorely lacking in energy, some members of the cast try valiantly to liven things up Thomas Derrah, who played a puckish Tom Sawyer in the A R T's recent production of Big River, shows his versatility in the role of Wheeler His pockets overflow with ballpoint pens, he wears trousers hiked up around his crotch, glasses and a bow tie, and he carries a golf club all of which makes him resemble an anxious pre med before an exam more than a movie producer In the second act, Derrah's creepy qualities intensity as he sprouts fangs...
...Teddy (Mark Driscoll) stands to inherit little but his mother's idiotic grin. His father never let him go even to the bathroom alone, but stood over him while he peed and demanded that he learn multiplication tables. Driscoll, who substituted for Thomas Derrah on opening night, spends most of the play gazing stupidly at his even stupider girlfriend Lorraine (Maggie Topkis): both play their roles with a frighteningly convincing ditziness. Topkins swills beers and chomps on gum picked off the floor as she sends out for pizza to swell her already-ample girth...
ONLY TWO actors seem confident enough in their roles to move unself-consciously. Thomas Derrah as Lucio, Claudio's friend, offers the only consistently sympathetic character. Lucio is the literal devil's advocate, the very personification of human frailty. Derrah makes Lucio every bit as enjoyable as he should be, without sacrificing believability. Richard Spore also does an extremely fine job as an absolute caricature, the simpleton constable Elbow...
...husband, and the nattering and bickering of her circle of gossips, she nevertheless tends to hold the center of attention. The flock of reprobates around her project a great many varieties of competent villainy, from the goodnatured profligacy of Stephen Rowe as Charles to the simpering idiocy of Thomas Derrah as Benjamin Backbite. The ART also has lived up to its Faculty duties by casting several undergraduates, including Maggie Topkis '83 as a maidservant and Nick Wyse '84 as one of Charles's circle of drinking companions. Judging from the results, the ART can only benefit from more such collaborations...