Word: ward
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Ward's landlady, Dr. Willet (Kristen Johnson), opens the play, describing how she grew to know, love and lose Ward. Dr. Willet delivers her monologue perched n a loft and as she progresses, lights dawn on Ward in his bookish room. In another corner of the stage, a third figure becomes apparent. Bald and stocky, this figure (John Sharian) represents at various points a demon, Ward's grandfather, and a cyborg. He even barks to out of site vampires. The characters vie for attention in the small, steep theater which only seats 27 people...
...three characters share a preoccupation with light, electric and otherwise. Ward wields a gadget with blatant Freudian implications. It is a light bulb attached to a long rod and disk which he uses to inspect people and swings like an orchestra conductor. This rod is one of several futuristic props which look annoying awkward in the play's early 20th century setting. But the more Ward dangles and sways it, the more interesting it becomes. As the trail of the light bulb moves back and forth like a pendulum, it induces a trance which is bolstered by the constant whir...
...Willet totes a candle. When she burns pages from Ward's manuscripts she becomes engrossed with the flames and maniacally mutters the same phrase over and over. Meanwhile, in the corner of the stage, the demonic figure regularly opens a light-filled porthole, symbolizing an entry into another dimension. After a particularly long, scary moment of darkness filled with the strangled screams of Dr. Willet, this porthole is thrown open. The light is blinding against the darkness...
...characters acrobatics contribute to the oneiric atmosphere. When Ward sings a soulful "Lay Me Down" with his shirt off, he dangles form ropes exposing his taut, sinewy body. The scene is choreographed as gracefully as a ballet. Later in the play, he delivers a speech upside down, supported by his ankles, with his shirt falling on his face and exposing his chest. The dimples of his abdomen flex each time he speaks, rendering his stomach an amorphous face...
...emphasize his liminal state, Ward's grandfather harangues form atop ladder and then hops with the ladder across the stage. Later he descends a metal grid by sliding his body in between the bars with half his body outside of the grid, half in. He exists partially in reality and partially in another world. In addition to creating striking images, these tactics are intelligent displays of how a madman might view movement...