Gary Graves & Three Superb Actors Reimagine Renaissance Power by Mary Lou Herlihy Playwright and director Gary Graves brings us reimagined perspectives on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti. He transports us to the height of the Italian Renaissance where the world’s most celebrated artists become Niccolo Machiavelli’s pawns in the “Great Italian Paint-off”!…
Rajiv Joseph Reveals “What’s Wrong with America” by Mary Lou Herlihy Rajiv Joseph’s “King James,” a brilliantly crafted two-hander, continually reveals “What’s wrong with America.” You don’t have to love sports to love “King James.” But for basketball fans and LeBron James’ followers, the insider gossip and Cleveland Cavaliers’ traditions will delight and amuse….
I will never see Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House in quite the same light. The gorgeous setting with views of Mount Diablo will always bring a faint echo of “Shenandoah.” At the O’Neill Festival at Danville, his “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1931) presents the disturbed, vengeful Mannon family. In this late O’Neill play the family is consumed by vanity and destroyed by war, filling us with dread.
Inspired by Greek tragedies, O’Neill highlights the family’s post-Civil War revenge, as they pick at the fresh scars of War. O’Neill sprinkles a little Freud in the wound. The operatic results leave only the innocent Chorus of musical townsfolk unscathed.
The action unfolds as fathers and sons return from our Civil War to dangerous, conspiratorial homes. Like all wars, especially those that pit countrymen against each other, the Civil War left wives and husbands, sons and daughters dead, blasted, or unsteady. Love recoils under all that suffering.
Susan Sandler Invokes the Magic of a Jewish “Bubbie” by Mary Lou Herlihy “Crossing Delancey” squeezes every possible moment of surprise, humor, and tenderness from a story of an immigrant, doting Jewish grandmother and her unmarried modern granddaughter. Meddling matchmakers usher in love and change. Susan Sandler’s 80s era New York comedy makes the…