Marin Theatre Co. meditates on Ruhl's poignant Boy
The plays of Sarah Ruhl are mightily appealing in their intelligence, sensitivity, beauty and depth. From Dead Man's Cell Phone to Eurydice (now at Shotgun Players) to In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, Ruhl makes the ordinary extraordinary and gives poetic voice to thoughtful, troubled lives that have a great deal to offer.
Now making its West Coast debut at Marin Theatre Company, Ruhl's The Oldest Boy is in some ways very conventional.
Empty Nesters explores a grand marital canyon
A marriage heads over a cliff, literally, in Garret Jon Groenveld's The Empty Nesters, a co-production of PlayGround and Virago Theatre Company and part of PlayGround's 19th annual Festival of New Works.
Luckily, the cliff in question is on the western rim of the Grand Canyon, and there happens to be a popular tourist spot called Skywalk that allows visitors to make a u-shaped jaunt on a glass walkway, with the canyon floor more than 3,000 feet below them.
Short sweet frolic on the PlayGround
In the spirit of PlayGround's annual 10-minute play festival, I'm going to attempt to write a 10-minute review.
The time is 10:40am. Start the clock.
The joy of a short play festival is the utter diversity in style, tone and voice. You can have what amounts to a sketch comedy bumping up against muscular drama, an intriguing fragment or a surprising burst of poetry. All of that happens and more in Best of Playground 15: A Festival of New Writers & New Plays at the Thick House. The seven plays presented represent the cream of the PlayGround playwriting process, which runs from October through March. A pool of 36 writers is given a topic and then asked to write a 10-minute play on a chosen theme. The best of those plays are given staged readings, and then the best of that bunch makes it to this festival.
Of the seven shows now on display, I can tell you my three clear favorites.