Tony Adams is a Chicago based theatre artist, husband and father, and artistic director of Halcyon Theatre. He's been fortunate to make my way as an actor, designer, director and writer (in alphabetical order) He also staged managed twice. He is a horrible stage manager.

Reader Review of the Fest

Submitted by Tony on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 23:25

I've been remiss in not posting this review already. 

Highlights from the review are:

  • (Manual for a Desperate Crossing) " . . . To describe the difficult journey, Fornes transforms the everyday speech of the refugees into surprisingly poetic, incantatory choral passages. Marooned on a small platform in the center of a blank stage, the cast of seven in Coya Paz's staging present a moving picture of human dignity amid suffering.
  • The festival's highlight is What of the Night? (1989), a collection of four masterful one-acts that chart the coarsening effect of greed and dog-eat-dogism on an American family over several decades. Progressing from Depression-era poverty to postwar plenty to postapocalyptic economic collapse, Fornes uses increasingly grotesque and unreal scenes to show how constant scrapping, scrounging, and selling deform and dehumanize. By the end the characters are fighting over scraps of meat like animals. Margo Gray's grimy, savagely acted production is pitch-perfect and harrowing."

Check out the full review when you can. It's pretty incredible The Reader made it out for whole fest for the second year in a row. Even more so that Zac Thompson took in the entire Festival in one weekend. (Last year it was split up among three critics)

I think they're pretty accurate on how the opening week went. I think Letters has gelled a little more since opening, which is good. The first week was a bit rocky for that one.

I'd quibble about Gossensass being inert; but as I told Zac over on the twitter, coming the day after Sarita and the same day as What of the Night, I can totally see that. I think Gossensass is the one that our audiences will respond completely differently to than industry folks, it's definitely a different side of Fornes from what most folks know. (It's really really fun.)

I realized afterwards this makes nine shows Zac's reviewed of ours in the past calendar year, including both the successful and not as successful ones. Which is pretty damned neat, I think. As he said, he's probably seen more of our work than anyone outside the company.

What do y'all think?

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