By Fredric Dannen Lola Smith, a revered figure in the San Miguel theater community, turned 93 on September 10. Just 10 days later, she opened in a one-act play, Waiting for the Telegram, by Alan Bennett, a monologue that ran for nearly three quarters of an hour. Lola played Violet, a wheelchair-bound woman in a [...]
By Marthe Fraser My Narrator is about that little voice inside your head, the one that tells you how to behave and what choices to make. It’s a one-act play written by Norm Foster, who is often referred to as “Canada’s Neil Simon.” Light, quick, and charming, this romantic comedy, with its rapid dialogue and [...]
By Phoebe Greyson John Brown’s Body, a one-act play about the controversial abolitionist John Brown, takes place in Brown’s prison cell in the predawn hours before his execution. William R. Slusser, the playwright and principal actor, describes the forces that gave rise to his portrayal of Brown: “When I was in the seventh grade, I [...]
By Fredric Dannen The playwright Neil Simon died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on August 26, and to my mind, the news coverage of his passing was not as ample as he deserved. Everyone knows that Simon was the master of the one-liner. In his musical They’re Playing Our Song, a character is on the phone [...]
By Kate Rowland The delightfully eloquent and wickedly witty 1916 short story “Xingu,” by Edith Wharton, will be presented in play form by Playreaders at St Paul’s Church on Cardo 6, at 7:30pm on Wednesday, October 3, and Thursday, October 4. This will be something totally new for San Miguel—a short story brought to life [...]
Por Lilia Trápaga El Grupo Teatral El Caldero presenta el espectáculo “No se Olvida”, auspiciado por la Biblioteca Pública, en el Teatro Santa Ana los días 4, 5 y 6 de octubre del 2018. No es posible entender al México actual sin tomar en cuenta el parteaguas que 1968 significó en términos de cambios sociales, [...]
By Phoebe Greyson Every American TV viewer who grew up watching public television can remember getting hooked on programs from the BBC—from serial dramas like The Forsyte Saga to comic fare like Fawlty Towers, and especially the treasures of Masterpiece Theatre, such as I, Claudius, Jeeves and Wooster, Prime Suspect, and the recent smash hit [...]
By Phoebe Greyson In the opening lines of playwright Alan Bennett’s Waiting for the Telegram, an elderly woman in a wheelchair leans forward conspiratorially. In a voice laced with excitement and with the particular crackling of the very old, she confides: I saw this feller’s what-do-you-call-it today. Except I’m not supposed to say “what [...]
By Y Wolf One might think that a one-man play about the life of Simon Wiesenthal—legendary Holocaust survivor turned hunter of Nazi war criminals—might be a real serious affair. However, according to Tom Dugan, writer of Wiesenthal, the show has many humorous moments mixed in with the serious ones. “Wiesenthal had a great sense of [...]
By Lee Harris San Miguel Playreaders will take you to other places this week with two short plays by renowned dramatists, including Ethan Coen’s Waiting and the play A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter. Ethan Coen is best known, along with his brother Joel, as part of the acclaimed filmmaking team the Coen Brothers. Recognized [...]
