Word: matteau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...America, where the institution of having servants has never been as common as in France, the social criticism which drives the play has much less force. In the production that closed last weekend at the Adams Pool Theater, produced by Extension School drama students Les Welter and Barbara Matteau, the sisters' madness seemed disturbing, but the audience's immediate connection to it--the sense that this violence could exist inside one's own home, beneath the surface of bourgeois contentment--was lacking; people who have never had a servant can't really shudder when a maid cries...
...that what we see on stage is really what it feels like to be mad. From the beginning, Genet encloses us in the hermetic mental world shared by Solange (Lois Folstein) and Claire (Mary Rutkowski), the sisters who are employed in the house of an unnamed "Madame" (Barbara Matteau). The play opens with what seems to be a maid's insurrection against Madame, as Solange inexplicably drops her servile tone and begins to abuse her mistress. Their bizarre, frequently incomprehensible exchange, in which erotic and violent impulses are mingled, is broken off suddenly by the sound of an alarm clock...
...Friends." It's "Black Coffee," a new play written and directed by Barbara Matteau, playing this weekend at the Leverett Old Library...
...Black Coffee" aims to look realistically at relationships among people stalled at the lower rungs of the corporate ladder. In this vein, it usually succeeds. Matteau does not shove any moral platitudes into her characters' mouths, and she manages to make the main characters interesting in only ten short scenes...
...five of these Gen-Xers work at Bowl and Brass, a cheesy Crate & Barrell/Pier One hybrid. Using flashblacks and present-day scenes, Matteau tells a series of interlinking stories about the protagonist Jen, her slacker-poet boyfriend Joe, Joe's exgirlfriend (and Jen's ex-best friend) Joan, Jen's boss Jack, who nurses crushes on both her and Joan, and June, the dippy new shift supervisor...