Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2006 I have to say that I was disappointed to learn last month that I would not be seeing A New Brain, the show long-advertised for this slot in the Ghent season. Alas, auditions didn’t turn up enough people to produce the show properly, a…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, January 2006 “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” – Sir James M. Barrie It is this adventure, or at least the very beginnings of it, that Sutton Vane (1888-1963) explores in his 1923 play Outward Bound. That his vision is dated and very, very…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, November 2005 The Emperor’s New Clothes is the sixth annual British-American Panto presented as a Thanksgiving treat for Columbia County and the surrounding region by Judy Staber and her stalwart Pantoloons, and this year they have a real, albeit small, theatre in which to perform. Having…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October 2005 The Smell of the Kill by Michele Lowe is a weird, funny, disturbing little play of which I am inordinately fond. It is also a tricky one to write about since it is so short and since surprise is a key element in an…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2005 I have always enjoyed the fact that we use the archaic “wright” when referring to someone one crafts plays. Once you have written a play it is not just something that you wrote, it is something that you wrought. I find five definitions…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, April 2005 I was so excited to see Pal Joey on the Ghent Playhouse schedule this season. This 1940 Rodgers and Hart classic is seldom produced – everyone sings the songs but no one stages the show. I have seen bits of the 1952 film version starring…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, January 2005 “That’s what it’s all about. Doors and sardines. Getting on — getting off. Getting the sardines on — getting the sardines off. That’s farce. That’s the theater. That’s life.” – Michael Frayn, Noises Off That pretty much sums it up. There is a whole…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, November 2004 I hate to say this, but don’t go and see this production of Proof at the Ghent Playhouse. David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize winning play is a suspenseful drama broaching questions of genius and madness. No one involved with this production shows the slightest sign of…
