Give Gun-Toting Guy a Big Hand
Playhouse One-Nighter Previews Barn Choice
Squeezing dozens of upcoming shows into an 800-word preview of the theater season, like a Thanksgiving feast, provides lots of left-overs to munch here in the weekly Cold Cream.
For example, add this note to our recalling that last season’s Blue Barn offering of the Vibrator Play and this year’s stunning August: Osage County both grew out of staged readings in the Omaha Community Playhouse 21 & Over series. Come 7:30 p.m. Sept. 14, and you can see a free preview of a play scheduled by the Blue Barn.
Once again it’s Amy Lane directing for her 21 & Over creation. She’s got that wild and crazy Irish playwright, Martin McDonagh, with his A Behanding in Spokane.
Doug Blackburn plays the gun-toting Carmichael who has been searching for his missing left hand for years. Then two black market amateurs pop up with a hand to sell.
The dark and violent comedy also features Ablin Roblin, Raydell Cordell and Kaitlyn McClincy, who slips this one-night Monday stand between her weekend performances in Brigit St. Brigit’s Big Maggie. Her charisma in Six Lesbians Eating a Quiche quickly spotlighted her as a newcomer to watch.
If that Monday doesn’t work, the full treatment runs almost a month at the Barn starting in February. But you only have to wait until Oct. 22 for the next 21 & Over reading: A Bright New Boise by Sam Hunter. Here’s a teaser: “The Rapture may be coming to the employee break room at the Hobby Lobby.”
Speaking of left-overs, the summer almost slipped by without much said here about some of last season’s top performances. Maybe that’s because, after complaining in advance about some outstanding work that didn’t get nominated for the Theatre Arts Guild awards, I didn’t have many complaints about the eventual winners.
But I completely neglected the Playhouse in-house awards. Blame the fact that I didn’t get to see one of the Fonda-McGuire winners, Kim Jubenville, for her title character in Becky’s New Car. That was surely well-deserved given her fine work in many roles.
Dennis Collins earned the other top award as Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond, ranking him with Henry Fonda, Frank DeGeorge and Norm Filbert among my favorites in that role. FYI, an old Council Bluffs friend of Filbert, the former Sally Menz now Sally Sandoe, is now playing Pond's Kate Hepburn role in Longmont, Colorado.
Cold Cream looks at theater in the metro area. Email information to coldcream@thereader.com.
posted at 08:34 am
on Sunday, September 02nd, 2012
