Thursday, February 1, 2007

This Week's Column

Jake's Women

There's a particular interest in a writer seeing a play about a writer who is too much the observer and not enough the participant in his own life, especially when one is among those reviewers who began as a participant in theatre -- as a playwright, actor, director and even a song composer, and whose role now is as journalist and judge.

Well, when you get a role, play it.

The column--a review of Jake's Women at the North Coast Rep-- continues here at the North Coast Journal. Sneak preview: I liked the performances and the production more than the play itself.

Other reviews of this show are Barry Blake's in the Times-Standard, and Wendy Butler's in the Eureka Reporter. Barry went past Jake as a writer to see a more universal message in his fantasizing, and as usual integrated his description of the story with choice evaluative comments--he especially complimented the costume design. I'm not sure he liked the play any better than I did, though. Wendy was even more bothered by the accent that I was--actually I thought Michael Thomas had arrived at a more stable New York accent by the second act; in the first act it was hard to tell whether he was supposed to be from Boston or Brooklyn. And it wasn't just him in the first act. I'm guessing they got it together in later shows.

No comments: