Word: quietness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Both the men and women in "Company" are ambivalent about love and commitment. Amy (Samara Levenstein, ideally cast) frets and over-analyzes her way to the altar to marry quiet, sensitive Paul (deftly played by Paul Siemens). On the other hand, Harry and Sarah (Doug Rand and Kate deLima) extol the virtues of life-long committment while barely disguising their hostility toward one another. DeLima perfectly captures her character's sexual frustration, which she vents in a hilarious scene about food-related auto-eroticism...
...authoritarian tone of Harvard courses: "Certain Harvard classes...present things as if they were the most important thing, and I would sort of go, oh well, that must be the most important, and whatever I had to say or think was not that important... It just made me get quiet, very quiet...
...second act, the action picks up. All the quiet tensions that had been unspoken begin to scream for attention. Secrets that August had been keeping about the mound and the next summer's dig are revealed much to the changrin of the rest of the characters. Chad learns about Jean's pregnancy, and subsequently drifts into insanity, screaming about how he and Cynthia have been sleeping together. The play concludes with Jean sobbing over Chad's murder of her husband and his own subsequent suicide. August is left sadly looking at his slides and the remnants of six shattered lives...
While the drama takes some time to get moving, the acting is moving. Rogers is not able to display the quiet vitality that the other characters had found within themselves. He tries and seems to think he is doing a good job, but August's character needed a faster pulse. Maples, on the other hand, over-played her childish enthusiasm and bubbliness, almost to the point of annoyance. Her acting simply did not fit in with that of the other characters...
...realized her potential without being melodramatic. Neither she nor Lewis had many spoken lines, but they never tried to overshadow their fellow cast members. They slipped into their roles with a familiarity and understanding that was not reached by anyone else in the cast. Truly, Lewis's quiet but sharp one-liners and Gotlieb's outspoken, often obnoxious punch-lines brought a great sense of relief to an otherwise melancholy show...