Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July, 2006 I saw a wonderful new play yesterday called Hamlet. That is how I felt, anyway. Eleanor Holdridge’s staging of Shakespeare’s masterpiece made me feel as if I was seeing the play for the first time. As if it were some new work built out…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July, 2006 I’ll eat my hat if Dan McCleary’s side-splitting production of Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters isn’t the best comedy of this summer season. It is funny and fresh, performed with vigor by a top-notch cast. And admission is free! How could it get…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2006 I am on record as disapproving of revuesicals. They are not really theatre and not really a concert. Generally, they drive me nuts. But this one I found genuinely enjoyable, largely because of the excellent material culled primarily from the collaboration of George…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2006 Ira Levin’s Deathtrap is the uber-murder mystery play. Not only do three out of the five characters end up dead by the final curtain, but two of them take turns murdering, or threatening to murder, each other over and over again. During its 1978-1982 run…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, July 2006 Just when you think of the Theater Barn as a nice safe little summer stock place they go and stage The Graduate. Pop Quiz: What is Mrs. Robinson’s first name?* It is uttered a few times in the first scene of this play, but…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2006 “The threads of misery and joyAre woven fine.Into a vast design,When tragedy gives way to comedy.Until you can’t discernThe line between them.”– William Dumaresq I cannot think of a show more wholesome and squeaky clean than The Human Comedy. When people speak about “American…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2006 The first thing this show needs is a new title. The Burnt Part Boys suggests a tragic tale of burn victims or innocent civilians wounded as “collateral damage” in some war. In fact this is a fairly gentle musical coming-of-age tale about two brothers, Jake…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June, 2006 I was once turned down for a desk job because I was “not ethnic enough.” Anyone with two brain cells can tell that that is a patently ridiculous statement. We are all “ethnic” and ethnicity is not something that can be quantified. In…
