Word: playing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plays were produced in combination presumably because both are "short" works about the life of college students over the course of their senior years. Each play is in fact short, in that neither merits its own intermission; however, including the break between the plays, the production is four hours long. During the last stretch between ten and eleven there is definitely a sense of restlessness throughout the theatre, which unfortunately has as much to do with the production of Moonchildren as the inevitable urge to move...
...they all have conflicting ideas about the changing times in which they live and about the adults that they are becoming. Their afternoons are full of tea and brandy, while their evenings are full of more risqu behavior: applying to law school or sneaking out to have sex. The play is a comedy, and by focusing on its comic aspects, director Dorothy Fortenberry '02 successfully avoids the preachy and whiny mess that the material could easily become. Wasserstein's message is that a woman must choose between being feminine and having a career and that either way she will regret...
...Rita, during a late night chat predicts that by the time all of her friends are thirty, each of them will be "incredible" and "pretty fucking amazing." By the end of the play that prediction has not come to fruition, and it is implied that their situation is not going to be much better when the women are forty. The travails of these young women trying to carve a place in society for all future women are difficult, and sometimes a bit depressing, but they are still a pleasure to watch...
...same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Moonchildren. Set during the '66-'67 school year, the play revolves around the lives of seven college hippies--five men and two women--living communally in an apartment in New York. The issue of the day is the Vietnam War, and the men are terrified of being drafted after they graduate. That is to say, one of them mentions that inclination once near the beginning of the play. Weller's idea of developing this theme consist of having his protagonist Bob (Jay Chaffin '01) summoned for a medical exam, act like he is dead...
...undeveloped material they were given. Unfortunately, they seemed to exacerbate the situation. Joe Nuccio '01 as Mike yells and jumps around so much that even potentially funny speeches become annoying. His chauvinist roommate Dick (Josh Glassman '02), who is written as suddenly developing feelings near the end of the play, comes across as static as Mike is irritatng. In general, Glassman seems to have a poor grasp of his character. Dick seems more like a modern Middlebury student wearing tie-die over his J. Crew than the hippie he was written as. The women--Ruth (Shapiro) and Cathy (Shani...