Word: wellmans
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STEWART'S METICULOUS RESEARCH IS overwhelming, incontrovertible and utterly damning. President and Mrs. Clinton, far from being innocent bystanders during the decade of greed, were active and willing participants. CLIFTON WELLMAN Seabury, New York
...Wellman's "A Murder of Crows," we are presented with the Phillips clan--Southern, rural, brutal--at their nadir. Nella (Alexandra Marolachakis) is widowed after her husband dies in a freak accident; she and her children, Susannah and Andrew (Rebecca Wolfe and Dan Goor), are forced to move in with their seamy relatives, who spend most of their time either bickering or at the racetrack...
...were only this simple. Wellman's script is a minefield of abstractions, a barrage of heavy-handed symbolism and non-linear (dis) connections. And where else to witness this fragmented and worn schema of juxtapositions than a junkyard? The mire is realized in James Murdoch's artfully ramshackle set. Littered with couches, barrels, tires and a clothesline, the audience is strewn around the playing space, indistinguishable from the wreckage...
What fascinates here is not Wellman's imaginative yet forced theatrical parlour tricks, but rather the strong ensemble cast and the mesmerizing visual and emotional pitches achieved by their director, David Levine. When the play opens with Nella, we know we are already standing on unsure ground. In Marolachakis's hands, Nella's dialogue seems to come from a place both ancient and newborn. Her opening monologue in which she declares, "you always live downwind of something peculiar," feels just right...
...Wellman's punctuated symbolism may cause the play's action to trip and stumble, but this production never lets it fall. Exhilarating in its energy alone, "A Murder of Crows" rarely fails to captivate...