Good news for those of you in the Pikes Peak region who missed the world premiere of Kill the Critic! in June. The play will get an encore production next weekend--Thursday, August 22 through Saturday, August 24--for four performances only. All performances will be at Black Box Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., Colorado Springs.
This production is directed by Nancy Holaday, as was the premiere, and features almost entirely the same cast. But if you did attend the premiere, there are some key differences that may make it worth seeing again.
For one thing, the venue fixes a lot of the issues we had at the Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts. It's air-conditioned. Trains don't roar past every 15 minutes. The back row is much closer to the stage. And it's a true black box theatre, making the entire stage visible.
This last one isn't always an important consideration, but it is for this play. In case you haven't figured it out yet, one of the characters is dead for most of the play, and when the stage is raised, as it was at Tri-Lakes, people sitting in the back of the house miss much of the all-important floor action (at one point, a cop inadvertantly uses the blanket-covered corpse as a footstool).
And there's one other thing about this production. The actor who plays the hapless kidnapper was unable to make the last two performances so Nancy cast a new actor in the part.
I liked the original lead. Although he struggled to learn his lines, and ended up ad libbing most of them, he delivered them with panache, giving the character a childike charm despite the self-centeredness that seems to define him.
Responses from the audience were more w. Half of the people I talked to thought he was a brilliant comedian, but others thought he was painfully hammy.
Early reports from rehearsal indicate that the new lead is much better, a natural comic who is also much more disciplined in his line readings.
For complete info on the production, visit www.blackboxdrama.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment