Word: derrah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...PERFORMANCES which partake of Serban's subcamp shenanigans generally work the best. Thomas Derrah's Wong, a cringing and bitter waterseller, is another doozy in this actor's slow rise to the top of the ART company. In the last few seasons he has threatened to supplant John Bottoms place as The Best Thing About the ART. Sandra Shipley brings back fond memories of the Anna Mae Wong School of Oriental Acting as the avaricious...
...something of an ambiguous mess. It is either a parody of Alfred Jarry, which is redundant, or a parody of Shakespeare, which Jarry did better. Jarry's Ubu Roi, a scatological lampoon of Macbeth, caused riots in 1893 Paris. At best, Durang's version, featuring a padded Thomas Derrah murdering every one in sight and a cannabalistic bouillabaise, can only imitate Jarry's effects; at worst it is only dull. But as Mrs. Sorken says, "If you don't like it, let your mind wander...
...play, DeLillo's first, begins serenely enough. In a semi-private hospital room, Budge (Jeremy Geidt) engages in oriental exercises while roommate Wyatt (Thomas Derrah) sits in bed, reading The National Enquirer...
...most riveting and outrageous, as he takes both of his characters, Grass in the first act and the nebbishy Freddy of Act Two, to the edge and beyond. Nevertheless, the play never loses balance because DeLillo has spread out hilarious lines quite evenly among his insane asylum inmates. Derrah and Geidt start off by creating an atmosphere of subdued surrealism that clues us in to the weirdness ahead. As a human television in Act Two, Derrah switches channels effortlessly. Sitting to the side, looking straight ahead, and wrapped in a straitjacket, he transfers his voice with manic precision from soap...
...action at hand. One of the benefits of having all one's characters lunatics is that virtually any parenthetical comment may be expanded into a foolishly profound discourse. Richard Grusin, playing a sleazy motel desk clerk, launches into an elegy on stains and their makers, while Thomas Derrah portrays a straightjacketed mental patient and Middle American T.V. set simultaneously with equal conviction and vigor...