Thursday, August 2, 2007

links for 2007-08-02

• Who's Counting: One night in St. Louis theater
  Dennis Brown looks, curtain up to curtain call, at nine shows on one night in the St. Louis theatre world.
  (tags: theatre stlouis)

Friday, July 13, 2007

An American Daughter

Tonight I saw The Orange Girls' production of Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter; it was the last of a Wasserstein memorial trifecta in St. Louis this season, beginning with New Jewish Theatre's The Sisters Rosensweig and our The Heidi Chronicles.

These three plays, taken together, can be seen as something of a trilogy. Written over a decade, they're probably Wasserstein's most well-known works. For my money, An American Daughter is the weakest of the three; it was written last and feels a lot like a rehash of the themes, characters and political locales of the preceding two. The story concerns the nomination of a driven, privileged, family-oriented woman to be United States Surgeon General and the media-manufactured scandal that imperils her confirmation. The central question here, as in Heidi and Rosensweig: "Is it possible—or even desirable—for a woman to 'have it all'?"

There are some very good performances in this production, notably Jeff Wright as the conservative gay go-getter, Morrow; Monica Parks as accomplished and conflicted best friend Judith; and the wonderful Mary Schnitzler as the woman at the eye of the storm, Lyssa Dent Hughes. Scott DeBroux's set packs a lot of living room into the COCA black box, and Brian Beracha's sound design along with Daniel Lanier's lights complement it nicely.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Clearing the Cache: May 13, 2007

• Lackadaisy
  Cats in early 20th century St. Louis, a (gorgeous) web comic.
  (tags: webcomic stlouis)

Thursday, March 1, 2007

links for 2007-03-01

• the show with zefrank: ray
  Ze meets Ray, right in my own backyard. Amazing.
  (tags: zefrank stlouis)
• Don't you?
  Well, don't you?
  (tags: beaarthur)
• iPhone Matters
  A weblog for everything iPhone/
  (tags: macintosh apple iphone)