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Official Theater Reviews

This page is text heavy, it might actually be something you want to print out and read gradually. You will find official reviews for Billy's theater productions including A Dublin Carol, Flyovers, Night of the Iguana, Once in Doubt, American Buffalo, Big Time, Puntila and His Hired Man, Days and Nights Within and Belly of the Beast.

CRANSTONONLINE.COM - Trinity's 'Dublin Carol' sings bittersweet By DON FOWLER

Although there is a bit of redemption at the end, Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol is a million miles away from Trinity Rep's upstairs production of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The play takes place in Dublin on Christmas Eve, where undertaker John Plunkett faces another lonely holiday. His life has been taken over by alcohol, although he professes to have things under control at the present. McPherson paints a dark picture, leaving the door open for at least a little light to shine in, while presenting the life of a man that abandoned his wife and daughter and lived a lonely existence. By his own admission, he is "in a bad state." He is sorry for his past indiscretions but tries his best to avoid thinking about them. He blames many of the years on "a drunken blur." William Petersen, known for his work on the TV series "CSI," returns to the stage after a long hiatus (He has been on "CSI" for seven seasons.) to give a powerful performance as John. He is on stage during the entire hour and a quarter, one-act production, joined at times by consortium member Danny Medford as his helper at the funeral home and veteran actress Rachael Warren as his daughter, Mary. Medford and Warren do an outstanding job of supporting Petersen, who admitted after the press night performance that he was a bit nervous. (He didn't show it.) Joyce, who hardly ever watches TV, admitted to Petersen that she didn't know who he was but was so impressed with his performance that she is now planning on watching "CSI." "It's a little different," he told her. "I spend a lot of time looking at bugs." Hopefully, he'll spend more time on stage, where he obviously has a chance to show his talent. Dublin Carol , much like McPherson's The Weir, which was performed recently at Gamm, is pretty much a downer. While it centers around a man's submission to alcohol, there is much more to it. John is pretty much a coward in his own eyes and is living with some serious guilt, which he tries to not think about. When his daughter appears, urging him to go to the hospital to see his dying wife, and possibly even "do the funeral," John retreats inside himself. Filled with guilt and denial, he ponders over his willingness to honor his daughter's request. Not a lot happens outwardly in this play, but there sure is a lot going on in the mind and soul of John Plunkett. The show is virtually sold out through its Jan. 7 final performance. Surely, Petersen's appeal accounts for this, and that is fine. Director Amy Morton keeps the Irish brogues to a minimum and Petersen has perfect diction, so I didn't miss many words. I did find the author's constant use of the phrase "You know" and the famous "F" word a bit overdone, however. If you're lucky, you may be able to get a ticket cancellation, but we know of Trinity employees who couldn't get seats for their families. Try at 351-4242. Dublin Carol plays through Jan. 7. (Correction: I called Curt Columbus "Chris Columbus" in the A Christmas Carol review, an obvious Freudian slip. Wasn't it Chris who discovered America? I was probably thinking of the theatre's Project Discovery...or maybe the fact that the genial artistic director has discovered a new way to present the old play. Or maybe it's just old age.)

EASTSIDERI.COMAT THE THEATERS:'Dublin Carol' is a dark tale of redemption By William Oakes

There is not much light in late December; this holy time of the year arrives shrouded in darkness. In Conor McPherson's play, "A Dublin Carol," now playing at Trinity Rep, the hope of personal redemption shines faintly, like a dull, wet gleam on the pre-dawn pavement. But there are times, for those who live in the dark depths, when even a dull gleam may prove to be enough. No one yearns for redemption as much as the lonely and brokenhearted; no one tells their stories quite as well as the Irish. I'm certainly biased on that point but playwright McPherson knows well how to evoke the Celtic spirit of wry pathos, the gift of producing a knowing, melancholy smile even when times are bleakest. While the play may provoke thoughts as black as Guinness (a metaphor I've used before) at its core "A Dublin Carol" captures the true spirit of the season, being that redemption is possible and necessary, even when the hope of it is most faint. What is decidedly not faint-hearted is Trinity's exceptionally moving production of McPherson's play. Guest director Amy Morton kindles the characters needs and wants slowly but steadily until, at the end, the gloom of a dark Dublin night seems pervaded by a certain inner spark; the desire for the light, if not the light itself. She's well aided in this redemptive quest by the small ensemble on stage, most notably William Petersen in the role of John, an alcoholic undertaker. Mr. Peterson, best known as the star of the television series "CSI," is a marvel in the role. The actor is virtually unrecognizable from his television persona and his Irish brogue is impeccable. But what impresses most is that each morsel that comes from his lips seems to come from some fount of very hard-won wisdom and, though wily and even charming the marks made on him by his past are ever present on his features. The gnawing need for a drink is there too; you can see it in his eyes. What makes Petersen's performance as John all the more harrowing is the sheer endurance that he brings to the role, the very palpable sense he conveys of having been very desperate for a very long time "trying to find the dignity" in his life even as his half-cocked face registers barely remembering all the hurt that he's caused. What we watch is not so much a performance but a man haunted by his own presence— the awful weight of a life lived badly. Trinity Rep's ever-reliable Rachael Warren plays his daughter Mary with sharp eyes and flinty ease. Ms. Warren brings a brittle and wary edge to the role and what's left unsaid between father and daughter here, conveyed only by looks, speaks volumes. To borrow a phrase from the play, "the silence left in their wake is deafening." Legendary Trinity Rep set designer Eugene Lee has assembled a Dublin flat every bit as exact and detailed as the portrait we get of Dublin in James Joyce's novel "Ulysses." He even provides for some rain at the outset of the play which resolves into a pervading dewy gloom, one that hangs over John's head like the past he "can't face and can't escape." Playwright McPherson seems, as with his character John, to be a loquacious talker (another famous Irish trait) and much of "Dublin Carol" takes the form of stories John relates with the garrulous authority of the last man at the bar at closing time. The language here is fluid, melodious and, even as it dips deep into the well of despair, never at a loss for humor. McPherson's gift of gab rings true and is peppered with expressions I've heard my mom and grandfather use. It is that ring of truth that gives these stories their potency and poignancy; John's stories are the relics of his lost life. "A Dublin Carol" takes place on Christmas Eve and although the ghosts that visit him are entirely of his own devising, John will be offered one small chance for, if not redemption, then perhaps some measure of inner peace. Sometimes, in this cold and holy season, that is all one needs. All performances of "A Dublin Carol" are sold out.

New England Entertainment Digest : A Different Christmas Carol: Dublin Carol at Trinity Rep By Robin Chamberlain

PROVIDENCE, RI: "Dublin Carol" by celebrated Irish playwright Conor McPherson, is a new sort of Christmas Carol. But the demons that haunt this work's leading character are all in his own head and of his own making – alcoholism (would it be an Irish play without it?), family abandonment, failure to succeed. In McPherson's usual style, the dialogue runs summarily from pathos to humor and back again using earthy language and varied pacing, interspersed with poignant little Christmas moments. It leaves the audience to decide for themselves what the leading character will do at 5:00p.m. I'll say no more about it.

The entire work takes place on Christmas Eve day – a time for hope, introspection, and whiskey. The leading character, John Plunkett, an undertaker's assistant, has just returned from yet another funeral. His young, gangly and untried assistant, Mark, is the perfect foil for John's stories, advice, and for providing the audience with plot/background exposition. We learn how John got to be in his current position, the ruinous road that lead him there, and what he may have learned from his past experiences and mistakes- if anything. The final of the 3 not-so-wise characters, Mary (hmmm, Mary? a Christmas Eve visit?) provides the catalyst of the story. I will not reveal her relationship to John nor the reason for her visit; suffice it so say that her tidings are not glad nor her news of great joy.

The role of John Plunkett is played by William Petersen, currently of "CSI" television fame. He told me that it has been nine years since he has been able to perform on stage – but there were no cobwebs on his performance. Alternately quiet and introspective and loud and physical, Petersen played the role perfectly, never crossing the fine line that actors can sometimes cross when using an accent or playing a drunk (or both, in his case)- becoming a caricature. Petersen is also visually pleasing to watch. His body language, facial expression, posture, and use of "business" are almost entrancing, and he follows suit with the dialogue, delivering both the pathos and the humor effectively.

Danny Mefford plays Mark, the young assistant. Tall, dark, and gangly, he could have absolutely been an Irish youth. His performance was well-wrought, his effortlessly awkward physical presence and one-word answers spoke volumes.

As Mary, Trinity staple Rachel Warren was also well-cast. Her comfort with and understanding of the role were apparent. She also was brilliant with the quicksilver changes in temperament and mood, handling the emotional transitions effortlessly.

Kudos to director Amy Morton for crafting a thoughtful, well-timed performance. She kept the accents tightly leashed and made sure that the moments that could have lapsed into the histrionic never did. She also made skillful use of the set, designed by Eugene Lee, which was artful, conveying the shabbiness and sadness of the character's lives. It provided endless movement and placement opportunities for the actors, and came complete with running water. Moodily lit by Deb Sullivan, you found new things to see on it throughout the evening.

Does John Plunkett learn his lesson? Does he make amends? Change his life? Unlike Dickens' holiday work, the answers to these questions are less discernable. See the production and decide for yourself. It's worth it.

THEATERMANIA Dublin Carol Reviewed By: Sandy McDonald

Blame it on the solstice with its maddeningly shortened days, but even among nonbelievers, Christmas-unto-New Year's tends to be a time of reckoning -- a season for settling scores, making amends, and, with any luck, starting fresh. At Providence's Trinity Rep, Scrooge isn't the only one coming up short due to a life ill spent. In Conor McPherson's 2000 play Dublin Carol old Ebenezer has company in one John Plunkett, an aging undertaker's assistant who's a dedicated if functional alcoholic. Played in a fine, blathery turn by television star William Petersen, John is not one of your bitter, belligerent, sloppy drunks. Barely impaired, articulate, friendly -- even downright chatty -- he's quite happy to play mentor to a young man (Danny Mefford) who's temporarily helping him out. John has all the answers. He's a font of putative wisdom, whether doling out advice on the ideal gift for a young lady (a jumper with "a nice pair of socks in the pocket as a surprise"), discoursing on the perils of "dangerous love" (the kind that entails interdependence), or mapping out the day-to-day stages of prolonged inebriation (a virtual advent calendar of torments). He knows why he drinks. He knows why he couldn't hack heading a family and felt compelled to abandon his, decades ago. (In this arena, McPherson's low-key, seemingly offhand script is packed with insight.) What John doesn't know is any other way to live. Then a stand-offish young woman (Rachael Warren) arrives, offering a challenge and a choice. McPherson spends a good 10 minutes of this 80-minute play dodging around her identity, so it wouldn't do to reveal her link to this garrulous loner -- and it almost doesn't matter, because the outcome is intentionally left up in the air. Will John accede to her demands and do the right thing? Or is it much too late for futile gestures? In a sense, you're left to supply your own ending. John has already established the fact that, having sensed imminent failure, he'll run to embrace it. And his profession has taught him that there's a certain dignity in bowing to the inevitable. While not a major, multifaceted work on a par with The Weir and other McPherson plays, this study of a squandered existence leaves an unsettling aftertaste. John's yearning to connect is palpable, as is his attendant fear. Petersen illumines all the facets of this conflicted soul, and he's solidly partnered by Mefford, who brings to bear his own subtle manifestation of drunkenness (he's merely a little slow, off-kilter) and manages to pack volumes into each noncommittal "hmm." As the would-be agent of change, Warren seems over-calculating in terms of her affect, and her Irish accent distractingly fades in and out. Still, it's the bond between two men straddling opposite thresholds of adulthood that carries the play, which is given an optimal production here; Amy Morton's direction is tight, and Eugene Lee's set is characteristically veristic. Mostly likely, audiences will be drawn to see the show by Petersen's fame, yet fittingly -- John fancies himself "perverse" -- it's the actor's non-showy grasp of this shadow-dwelling character that's apt to leave them enthralled.

THE PHOENIXA TOUCH OF HOPETRINITY REP'S MASTERFUL DUBLIN CAROL BY BILL RODRIGUEZ - DECEMBER 12, 2006

The stock stage Irish drunk is of limited entertainment value, a silver-tongued Boyo full of charming blarney that's quickly wearying. Fortunately, Conor McPherson knows that the real McCoy is a sadder lad, but not half so glib. So the playwright's challenge with Dublin Carol is to let life-size characters articulate the troubles and insights that Guinness-inflated Brendan Behan wannabes can't even dream of. Trinity Repertory Company's rendition (through January 7) is a moving experience precisely because it similarly plays down all that could be pumped up: the pathos, the colorful anecdotes, the folk wisdom. As was demonstrated in the haunting Gamm production of The Weir in 2002, McPherson's forte is to give voice to the ordinary people he grew up around. Listening to one of his characters is like eavesdropping in a pub, albeit on people who have brought along their own writers to trim and polish their on-the-money yet natural-sounding dialogue. One effective method of this playwright is to not overstay his welcome. Dublin Carol lasts less than 90 minutes and has only three characters, one of whom is in only one of the three scenes, which take place in the same room. The story revolves around John Plunkett (William Petersen), a man well over the hill and only minimally relieved at not being under it. Death is a daily reminder to him, since he works at a funeral home as one of those black-suited men who carry the casket to the hearse and grave. John is an alcoholic, but the difference between the drunk he is and the drunk he was is the difference between a chunk of memento shrapnel and a sucking chest wound. Throughout the day during which the play takes place, John polishes off a fifth of whiskey, with some help, but it's to maintain a buzz, to provide white noise to drown out all his guilty thoughts. He remains as clear-headed as his company, the first of whom is Mark, played with an interesting gradation of self-centered sympathy by Danny Mefford. The 20-year-old is also working as an usher, but only as a part-time job for a while. On the surface he seems content, with a love life and a future. But by the last scene, when he shambles in drunk after unsuccessfully and clumsily trying to break up with his girlfriend, we see that there's a potential maladaptive version of John within him always ready to break out. Without turning this into a sociology essay, McPherson sketches a miniature world of Irishmen who when distressed would rather clutch a bottle than a woman. In a similar commentary rather than coincidence, the three women we meet in this play, and a fourth described, are shown to be the most miserable when they're the most passive, in contrast to their hyperactive male counterparts. The third character we meet is Mary (Rachael Warren), the sullen adult daughter that John hasn't seen in 10 years. The occasion is the fact that his equally estranged wife is lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer, and would like to see him, this being Christmas Eve. Warren is a model of actorly restraint here. She skillfully negotiates this minefield of sentimental potential, which makes Mary's eventual reaching out all the more meaningful, as does her combining stifled fierceness with mystified love. Restraint is apparently the principal marching order given by director Amy Morton to Petersen, since he's understating on all cylinders like a revving GrandAm. (I especially liked his casually scratching a wrist to downplay one patch of emotionally fraught dialogue.) John's kindly boss, who saved him from the gutter, is also in the hospital, so the tear taps are installed and ready. Instead of such a resort, though, the play simply uses the situation to let John express his appreciation to the man. So by the time Mary comes around and he lists his crimes and insists that saying sorry is very much not enough, we wouldn't think of doubting his sincerity. I haven't watched TV's CSI, but the films To Live and Die in LA and Manhunter certainly show Petersen accomplishing what he does here: giving a character a double life, one of which is too deeply felt to baldly express. The unusually naturalistic set design — unusual because it's by Eugene Lee — is so thorough that it provides rain outside this funeral home office. Against this neat-as-a-pin and well lit gloom, these three characters, puppets to their painful tendencies, lurch and puzzle out why they do what they do. Gloriously and subtly, McPherson has John perform an incidental final action, alone on stage, that gives both himself and us cause to hope.

THE SUN CHRONICLEPetersen translates to stage in 'Dublin Carol' BY JAMES A. MEROLLA STAFF WRITER Sunday, December 17, 2006

Providence audiences discovered something delightful this week; that you don't need forensic evidence to discover that TV star William Petersen can actually act with the best of them.

And the former stage actor, well, he rediscovered himself. Petersen, who for several high wattage years has played Gil Grissom, the main star of the CBS mega-hit "C.S.I. - Crime Scene Investigation," is also a good friend of Trinity Repertory Company's artistic director Curt Columbus. Columbus asked Petersen to take a break from being the country's most famous lead murder case forensic scientist - a character with a limited personality range who somehow started a cottage industry - to tackle head on Conor McPherson's pitiable paean to an Irish alcoholic's mid-life crisis, "Dublin Carol."

The only DNA expected here is Doubling Nightly Audiences. Petersen's acting pedigree - gleaned from a decade in the theater before his jaunt to financial security on a hit TV show - is on full display: the lost character's Irish brogue (at least 90 percent of the time, given the 10,000 words he has to utter), the quirks, the slouched posture, the halting mannerisms, the self-indulgent pity, the self-effacing notoriety.

Petersen - who told various newspapers in several interviews he needed "to get back to stage work before he forgot how to do it" - needn't have fretted. In playwright McPherson's hard-hitting words, "It's like ridin' a (expletive) bicycle."

"Dublin Carol" is an 80-minute character study of several rudderless souls and how easy it is for a typical Irishman to become an alcoholic in a society whose small towns unofficially condone nightly stops from pub to pub to pub in order to be "one of the lads."

McPherson is a master of three-character, alcoholic plays: See "The Weir."

While the playwright's language/dialogue seems effortless, flowing, almost invented on the spot, cheery and bleak simultaneously, and occasionally spellbinding, there is no ground-breaking plot or writing here, nothing truly new or ("CSI" notwithstanding) solved.

Don't expect insights into your lives; rather only insights into what's left of John's, Petersen's troubled character.

John Plunkett, on the verge of being a homeless bum after abandoning his wife and two children and discovering the bottom of the bottle, is saved by a kind mortician and asked to undertake undertaking. We meet him mid-life in set designer Eugene Lee's scruffy, worn, hoary, world-weary office, a match to John's demeanor.

VARIETYDUBLIN CAROL - BY  FRANK RIZZO A Trinity Repertory Company presentation of a play in one act by Conor McPherson. Directed by Amy Morton.
 
Mark - Danny Mefford
John - William Petersen
Mary - Rachael Warren
 
Not all Irish drunks are charming rogues, loquacious storytellers or wise souls with a touch of the blarney. Some are just sad humans lost in a limbo of loneliness, fear and regret. Such is the main character in Conor McPherson's short three-hander, which brings "CSI" star William Petersen back to the stage after eight years in this confessional of a play. But neither Petersen, nor Steppenwolf helmer Amy Morton or the meandering script can shape this visit to an alcoholic's no-man's-land into a completely satisfying dramatic whole. It's more of a hazy meditation on a lost soul in a low-key production that seems long at 75 minutes. Story centers on John Plunkett (Petersen), who works for a kindly undertaker -- now hospitalized -- who has taken him under his wing and saved him from the drunken gutter. Grateful John is now a functioning alcoholic, grappling privately with his sad, shameful and cowardly past while still imbibing in measured but constant sips of whiskey to dull his pain and the memory of the pain he caused others -- just enough to get by and make it through one more day. He's surrounded by death while going through the motions of a modest livelihood. It's clear that John is ever so carefully, safely, living in his own waystation en route to his inevitable end. He is jarred by a Christmas Eve visit from his daughter, Mary (Rachael Warren), whom he hasn't seen in 10 years. She comes to inform him that the wife he abandoned decades before is dying of cancer and asks him to visit her mother before she dies. The encounter opens up a host of feelings from both characters of past failings, humiliations and heartbreak, shattering the delicate existence John has created. The third character in the three-scene work is 20-year-old Mark (Danny Mefford), who works part-time at the funeral home. He provides John with a chance to reveal his past history. When Mark returns drunk in play's final scene, it's clear he may be the ghost of Christmas Future -- coming dangerously close to mirroring John's fate, taking to the bottle when he can't cope with women or his own life. John counsels Mark to change as he deals with the choice he has to make as well. Irishman McPherson ("Shining City," "The Weir") knows from which he writes. The program notes refer to the writer's own less-than-glamorous descent into alcoholism. Clearly, the need for drink as depicted in this 2000 script is nothing less than pathetic. But while the dialogue has the authenticity of plain folks and the details of drink and drunks ring true, the play also has the numbness and banality of aimlessness. Perfs all avoid sentiment, staginess and star turns, but ultimately underplay to a fault. Warren's Mary is tightly measured, as if to keep all her conflicting emotions -- from fierce resentment to tender sympathy -- in check. The small details of Mefford's socially awkward Mark are fitting and his drunk scene shows restraint. Petersen's quiet depiction also opts for understatement, but without much tension or variety there's little to connect to the audience. The naturalistic minimalism of the production borders on the bland and robs the delicate piece of its potential power. The hint of redemption at the end gives the play a note of hope -- but one that fails to resonate as it should. Set, Eugene Lee; costumes, Ana Kuzmanic; lighting, Deb Sullivan; sound, Peter Sasha Hurowitz; production stage manager, Jennifer Grutza. Opened Dec. 7, 2006. Reviewed Dec. 13. Runs through Jan. 7. Running time: 1 HOUR, 15 MIN.

BROADWAY WORLDREVIEW : TRINITY REPS DUBLIN CAROL Tuesday December 12th 2006 - Randy Rice

When writer D. Salem Smith asked Amy Morton why she was drawn to Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol and why she wanted to direct it, her reply was "What interests me about it - this will probably say more about me than anything else but - I hate Christmas. This is a play that doesn't pretend to like Christmas even a little bit."

Dublin Carol, is about Christmas, in that, it takes place on the days before Christmas. Period. Almost.

The realism of Trinity's set; a worn office in a funeral home, sets the tone for the evening. The office set takes up nearly the entire stage of the Dowling theater. Everything is to scale. The furniture is sturdy. Mismatched, but sturdy. Beside an occasional overcoat and bottle of whiskey, every prop and piece of scenery that will be in the play is on the stage as the play opens. There a many props that are never used as props, just as scenery.

William Petersen plays John Plunkett, a barely functioning alcoholic. Plunkett is, unexpectedly, running a funeral home, where he has been an employee for at least a decade.

Members of the audience, who may primarily know Petersen from his role as Gil Grissom in CSI, will see none of the quiet, thoughtful, hero Grissom in this character. Without any ego, Petersen plays Plunkett as a red-faced, sweaty, alcoholic. A man who has been "beaten by life".

Petersen emotes the 'ache' of loneliness; the loneliness of someone who is alone because of his own actions, and is overeager to have human interaction. In the first scene, Petersen is joined, on stage, by Danny Mefford as Mark. If Plunkett didn't need someone to speak to and react to, the first scene could almost be done, completely, as a monologue. Plunkett extols his life view on his young visitor. It is the skewed view of a lonely, terrified, alcoholic. Mentoring, in the worst possible way.

In scene two, we meet Mary, a beautiful, if hardened, young women played by Rachel Warren. Mary, we learn, is the estranged daughter of Mr. Plunkett and has come to tell him that his wife is dying of neck cancer and would like to see him. Mary introduces the audience to the ideas of the characters of Helen, her mother and Paul, her brother. The characters of Helen and Paul are only referenced, not seen. Alluded to, but not heard from. But the play is as much about them as it is about the characters that are seen on stage. Ms. Warren plays the ever-present anger of the character, tempered by incredulity.

There are some funny moments, nervous laughter funny, mostly. The character of John Plunkett is monumental and multi-layered. The character requires that an actor move the character forward, beyond a stereotype of the "Irish Drunk". This production requires of the two actors that share the stage with William Petersen to be at the top of their game. Both of these tasks are performed by the adept cast.

In describing the tone of Dublin Carol, Trinity's Artistic Director, Curt Columbus compared it to a Samuel Beckett play, not unlike Waiting for Godot. In its gravity, and its characters inability to move, I agree: although I find Godot to be more hopeful, which is something. Dublin Carol is presented with no intermission, which intensifies the experience. Dublin Carol plays at Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater through January 7, 2007. The run of the play is, essentially, sold out. Single tickets for some performances may be available. Call Trinity Rep's Box Office for more information, 401-351-4242

THE PHOENIXREGRETS/ROCKETTES Dublin Carol; The Radio City Christmas Spectacular - By Carolyn Cray - December 12, 2006

Scrooge is inclined to blame a mean night before Christmas on a badly digested bit of beef or a blob of mustard. But there's no doubt it's the drink, not the food, that's stirring up the garrulous, self-loathing protagonist of Irish playwright Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol (at Trinity Repertory Company through January 7) on a bleak Christmas Eve when he makes a sort of confessional of the shabby undertaker's office where he works and lives. And the knowledge that McPherson was himself burning the bottle at both ends when he wrote it adds to the small, quietly harrowing, compassionate work an extra poignance. In its premiere, this 2000 play by the author of the Olivier Award–winning The Weir opened the newly renovated Royal Court Theatre in London. By 2001 the dramatist, then 29, had ruptured his pancreas as a result of chronic alcoholism. It's a wonder he didn't need an undertaker himself. But since giving up the great Irish conversation greaser, McPherson, already prolific in his 20s and his cups, has written several more well received works, including the Tony-nominated Shining City and The Seafarer (also set on Christmas Eve), which opened in London this fall. Playing McPherson's whiskey-soaked failed father figure of a mortician's assistant at Trinity Rep is a man you might expect to know his way around a dead body: William Petersen, star of the popular CBS drama C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, on which he plays forensic entomologist Gil Grissom. A Steppenwolf Theatre Company chum of new Trinity Rep artistic director Curt Columbus, the film and Broadway vet is making his first stage appearance since taking on the TV series six years ago. To judge from the evidence here, he has not lost his touch. Dublin Carol is not a flamboyant portrayal of a drunk in the manner of Synge or O'Casey or O'Neill. McPherson's John Plunkett is an ordinary man ricocheting between denial and despair, between excoriating himself for past sins and writing them off as irredeemable and therefore not worth apology. For a guy who must have spent much of his life blacked out, he appears to remember every agonizing or embarrassing detail but to lack the machinery to turn error into wisdom. And Petersen essays him with an airy if aching touch, revealing layer by layer the not unlikable man, with his mischievous wit and boozy gift of gab, and the self-described "messer" beside whom, in his embittered daughter's remembrance, even a drunken boyfriend who reminded her of defected dad was "a fucking amateur." Most of McPherson's plays are about the purgative power of storytelling; in this one, Plunkett, in two brief encounters with his employer's 20-year-old funeral-helper nephew and one with the daughter who comes to inform him his estranged wife is dying, tells the stories on himself, conjuring a history redolent of cowardice, loneliness, drunkenness, and betrayal, but also of marred intentions and deep regret. The lyrically written work does not so much bombard as quietly captivate — and stir a compassion that its central character, however flawed, is not without. If Dublin Carol lacks the originality of St. Nicholas , with its dissipated theater critic telling tales of vampires, or the accumulative power of The Weir, whose barroom ghost stories lead to an account of loss that changes the temperature in the play's rural tavern entirely, neither does it rely on the supernatural to catalyze its portrayal of vaguely possible redemption. The only spirit in this cameo gloss on Dickens is Jameson as Plunkett, pouring tea and shots amid his shabby holiday decorations, tries to get his nose around the stink of the past to let in a whiff of hope. At Trinity the production is directed by Steppenwolf's Amy Morton and designed by Tony-winning Trinity Rep institution Eugene Lee with a sharp eye toward detail, from the old-fashioned coffin sign on an exterior brick wall to the makeshift office's jumble of vertical and horizontal slats and mismatched chair and ottoman. Petersen's Plunkett, in his incorrectly buttoned cardigan, subtly shouldering the effects of drink, seems almost painfully at home in the little womb that his kindly if enabling employer allows him. Rachael Warren, though her accent feels harder than Petersen's natural lilt, brings a squint-eyed, nervous brittleness to daughter Mary, who's caught between wounded girl and resentful woman. And Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium student Danny Mefford imbues gangly young sounding board Mark with an apt mix of awkwardness, halfhearted respect, and desire to escape the guy on the next stool. If Dublin Carol is like a scalpel carving out its everyday sorrows, The Radio City Christmas Spectacular (at the Wang Theatre through December 31) is like a sledgehammer bludgeoning Boston with imported Christmas cheer, whether from venerable Radio City itself, the shopper-clogged streets of Manhattan, the North Pole, The Nutcracker, or Bethlehem. That the instrument operates with the precision of an expensive timepiece is due in part to the mechanical nature of the entire enterprise and in part to the presence of the skilled and spirited Rockettes, their synchronicity amazing, their kicks shoulder-high, and their smiles as frozen as the North Pole itself. In a Riverdance-like homage to "The Twelve Days of Christmas," the troupe of 18, introduced as "a whole line-up of Christmas stockings," appears legs first and then proceeds to dazzle in various tap-dance deployments indicative of the numbered days and suggestive of everything from French hens to drummers drumming. And in "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers," which has been on the Radio City roster since 1933, the stiff, uniformed dancer dolls, their helmets plumed and their joints seemingly fused, pull off some marvelous mechanical maneuvers, even forming a wheel. If you can get over the bummer of a toy cannon's being wheeled on to shoot the Rockettes, their slo-mo domino death effect is enough to delight Henry Kissinger. But Santa Claus is MC and guiding spirit of this pert, gaudy paean to gift construction, buying, giving, and receiving. A variety show without much variety, the extravaganza (which includes an annoying Mrs. Claus, Little People portraying elves, and a troupe of singer dancers, in addition to the Rockettes) fields one present-loving orgy after another, from Santa's emergence from behind a billowing gift-wrapped box to the Three Wise Men offering up booty to the Christ child as they drag their glittering Middle Eastern entourages up the aisles in a solemn, over-amplified production number more wooden than the soldiers. "And the adoration continues, spanning the centuries," intones a disembodied voice as Joseph and Mary run through choreographed gestures to a swell of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful." Then, in what seems an especial gaffe, the voice informs us of Jesus that "two thousand years have come and gone, and today He remains the central figure for much of the human race." Surely this will be news to the rather large part of the world that is not Christian. The Living Nativity has also been a Radio City tradition since 1933, and it's probably no more retro than the rest of the show, with its parade of two-dimensional backdrops featuring flashing lights, giant snow-frosted trees, and gaggles of glittering ornaments. Yes, I know the Christmas Spectacular, which has been exported since 1994, is a holiday cash machine; its inaugural Boston run, in 2004, broke box-office records, displaying its forced jollity and garish wares to 200,000 people. But isn't turning the Living Nativity into something out of Vegas offensive to believers and non-believers alike? The only remotely tasteful thing about the scene on opening night was the sheep (one of three, sharing the stage with the full company and two camels) that clearly wanted to be elsewhere and had to be held firmly in its place near the manger. As the animal itself might remark if asked for a critique, "Baa, humbug."

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL - Dublin Carol Speaks to the Human Spirit

While a transformed Mr. Scrooge is clicking his heels together in redemptive glee in Trinity Rep's upstairs theater, a darker, less hopeful tale is being woven a floor below, as alcoholic undertaker John Plunkett struggles with his own demons in Conor McPherson's tough but touching Dublin Carol.

If A Christmas Carol is for the child in us all, Dublin Carol is more for the hardened adult who is willing to settle for a glimmer of hope, not born-again miracles. In Dublin Carol, McPherson has exposed the pain and regret that often accompany the holidays. Don't expect children prancing around a tree, or turkey dinner at the Cratchits'.

No, this is a harsh look at a shattered family, and a father ravaged by drink, fear and loneliness. If this doesn't sound very rosy, that's because it isn't. But it is, nevertheless, a gem of a piece from one of the fine storytellers of the stage.

It's also something of a star turn for William Petersen, the actor who for the past seven seasons has played laid-back head investigator Gil Grissom on CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Petersen, who took a break from the series to come to Trinity, is a longtime pal of artistic director Curt Columbus, who obviously realized that bringing in a big name would pay dividends at the box office. The run is sold out, although a handful of tickets are turned back each day. People can call the box office at noon to check availability.

Petersen, who in a recent interview made much of the fact that he hasn't been on stage in eight years, looked right at home opening night, navigating a sizable role (he's on stage for the entire 75 minutes) with seamless aplomb. It's a terrific, well-shaded performance, a portrayal full of remorse, tinged with humor and the will to carry on.

It is Christmas Eve when we meet Plunkett in his shabby office in a Dublin funeral parlor. A few colored Christmas lights dot the wall and a tiny plastic tree sits on a table.

Plunkett, once a falling-down drunk, has been taken in and given a job by the funeral parlor's owner, who is now in the hospital. Plunkett still keeps a bottle handy, but at least manages to hold down a job and get through the day.

The play, directed by Amy Morton from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, opens as Plunkett has just returned from a funeral with his young assistant Mark, nephew of the hospitalized funeral director. John breaks out a bottle and begins to fill in the details of his sordid past, when he was completely at the mercy of drink.

The scene then shifts, and Plunkett is confronted by his estranged grown daughter Mary, who has come to tell him that her mother, the wife Plunkett left years ago, is dying of cancer in a hospital. Plunkett should do the right thing, she says, and visit her before she dies.

He resists, but then has a rambling talk with Mary about happier times and how he always felt out of step with the world. He then agrees to meet her later, meet with his ex and perhaps set things right.

That exchange, with Rachael Warren as an intense, feisty Mary, is one of the few moments of real dialogue in this brief show, as Petersen and Warren do their appealing dance together. It's not a big part for her, but Warren shines.

Danny Mefford, a Brown/Trinity Consortium student, fills the subtle but challenging role of Mark, who must act as the sounding board for John. He's there to listen and do little else, and Mefford manages to make that seem quite natural.

Mark has his own story to tell, it is true. He returns in the third scene for the pay Plunkett owes him for the funeral, and tells of dumping his stewardess girlfriend. That's when Mefford shows some emotional range and is not just a foil.

All this takes place on a vintage Eugene Lee set, filled with clutter and rich in detail. Drizzle even soaks the alleyway during the opening moments of the play.

Dublin Carol may be something of a downer, but it has its tender moments and says more than a little about the human spirit.

Dublin Carol runs through Jan. 7 at Trinity Rep, 201 Washington St., Providence. Tickets, when available, range from $20 to $60. Call (401) 351-4242 or visit www.trinityrep.com

BOSTON GLOBE - A STAR, BUT NO SPIRIT

Petersen leads strong cast, but 'Dublin Carol' fails to come alive - By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | December 8, 2006PROVIDENCE -- Throughout the 90 minutes of "Dublin Carol," you never stop noticing that it is carefully written, meticulously designed, and skillfully acted. This is not a good thing.Conor McPherson has indeed written his study of an alcoholic undertaker's assistant with care; Amy Morton directs the handsomely grubby Trinity Repertory Company production with fine attention to detail; and the three actors, led by William Petersen of "CSI" fame, deliver their speeches with admirable expertise. But the play never comes alive.McPherson made his name as a darkly modern Irish storyteller with "St. Nicholas" and "The Weir," then built on it with "Shining City"; at his best, he can spin memorable tales of haunted men. But in "Dublin Carol" the storytelling founders because John Plunkett, the defeated little man at its center, is haunted by some very unoriginal ghosts.He drinks too much, you see. And it has cost him. He abandoned his wife and children; he never amounted to much at work; he's full of that particularly poisonous mix of self-loathing and self-pity that alcohol often catalyzes.Perhaps something new could be made of all this, but by the time John reveals his boyhood shame at hiding when his father beat his mother, we're too far down the path of therapeutic drama to find our way back. We've also spent far too much time in the company of a character whose monologues are less interesting than he imagines.That's part of the point, of course: that John cannot see how tiny and pathetic he is. The point never gets more complicated than that, though, so John's long-winded introspection becomes tedious and unlikely. The guy's still drinking; it's just not believable that he would face -- and describe -- his past in the detail that McPherson forces upon him.But of course facing his past is implied in both the title and the structure of "Dublin Carol," with its Christmas Eve visitations upon a woefully misguided man. And the ghost of Christmas past does indeed appear, in the form of Mary, a pinched-looking woman whose relationship to John the playwright teasingly withholds for too long.She's come to tell him that his estranged wife is dying, a revelation that provokes the script's most melodramatic outpourings. But Mary's been estranged from him, too, and the way she and John open up to each other in this scene simply doesn't ring true.John's interactions with Mark, the young nephew of the funeral parlor's ailing owner, also feel more like plot devices than real human connection. Mark is drifting a bit, and maybe he already drinks too much; OK, he could be headed down John's dreary path. But their two long scenes together have the painstakingly constructed air of an acting exercise, not the spontaneous pulse of real life.You can see why actors would be drawn to this play -- it's full of lyrical, writerly passages, with lots of highs and lows and opportunities for emotional shading. Petersen negotiates the turns like a pro, as does Rachael Warren as Mary (though her Irish accent seems to lilt less naturally than his). Danny Mefford makes the most of the underwritten Mark, and Trinity, as usual, provides beautifully appropriate costumes and set.For all that, though, "Dublin Carol" is missing some essential spark. It wants to be chilling, but it only left me cold.

FLYOVERS

Dan Zeff, writing for the Copley News Service gave it **** and wrote (in part),"Jeffrey Sweet writes wonderful plays in miniature. ... Flyovers is prime Sweet and it's receiving a superlative production at the Victory Gardens Theatre. ... The play runs 90 minutes without an intermission, enough time to run the emotional changes from nostalgia to seduction to tense verbal fencing to physical violence. ... The play eventually shows how decent, if flawed, people can be driven to immoral acts through grim necessity. ... The play also toys with the notion of celebrityhood and the idea that for the country's cultural brokers, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and New York City are the only places that matter. Every place in between is merely a 'flyover' between power centers on each coast. ... The play has plenty of laughs, but Ted's abrasive personality injects a sense of lurking danger during even the lightest moments. We know there is going to be an emotional explosion, and it does come, but from an unexpected swerve in the plot. ... Petersen is perfect as Ted -- angry, jealous, resentful, but a caring husband and father and a man who feels he has a just grievance against society. Marc Vann, as always, gives a quietly insightful performance, this time as the success story who returns to the scene of his teen-aged persecution for reasons he may not completely grasp. Amy Morton re-validates her standing as one of the area's most resourceful and convincing actresses. She plays Iris with a wonderful blend of articulate self-knowledge, resignation, and regret. Linda Reiter has only a short time to etch her portrait of the disturbed Lianne, but she delivers a flawless cameo of a woman on the brink of mental dysfunction. Dennis Zacek, an old hand with a Jeffrey Sweet script, orchestrates a beautifully modulated production."

REPTILIAN DRAMA `NIGHT OF THE IGUANA' TOPS SCALES

Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Mar 15, 1994; Richard Christiansen, Tribune Chief Critic. Goodman Theatre's triumphant production of "The Night of the Iguana" fully justifies director Robert Falls' conviction that this 1962 drama by Tennessee Williams is indeed a masterpiece. (And if it isn't, this production absolutely makes you believe that it is.)

Lasting 3 1/4 hours, and not a moment of that time frivolously spent, this "Iguana" is a beautifully modulated, exquisitely enacted presentation in which two marvelous actors give ringing voice to a torrent of Williams' most poetic and most compassionate dialogue.

Hannah Jelkes, the New England spinster traveling with her ancient grandfather, and Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon, a disgraced minister sunk to leading cheap bus tours in Mexico, are the play's two restless, lonely souls.

Coming together from their separate painful journeys at a seedy beach hotel run by a lusty widow who already has seen Shannon through one nervous breakdown, they meet at a point of desperation in both their lives and for one rare evening in their troubled existence share a brief time of communication and comfort and peace.

Much of the play, as the 1964 film version with Richard Burton reminded us, is invested with Williams' sharp, biting humor. Falls' staging, his first at Goodman in two years, gives full rein to that mocking and sometimes raucous joking, but he parcels it out very carefully, using it as a contrast to set up the quiet, intense segments that, in the play's remarkable third act, reach a glorious climax in a long, intense scene of understanding and communion, spoken almost in whispers, as Hannah and Shannon reach out toward each other.

In a drama filled with symbolic contrasts, Hannah and Shannon are the two great contrasting characters: he so filled with maddening anguish and lack of faith that he is violently shaking under the weight of his burden, and she so resolute in her own struggle to conquer the dark shadows of her life that she is an eerily calm and saintly presence.

Cherry Jones, as Hannah, and William Petersen, as Shannon, have been perfectly cast for their roles, and they use every bit of their unique personal auras and particular acting resources to the maximum here.

Jones, tall, patrician and speaking with a melodious Bryn Mawr strain, is the living embodiment of the "thin-standing-up-female Buddha," as Shannon calls her. Petersen, haggard, haunted and railing against the heavens in a Southern accent, flings himself into the tortures of Shannon with his inimitable fiery force and, startlingly, with an almost feminine delicacy too.

Everyone else in the play, even the vital Cynthia Baker as the bawdy, bosomy widow with whom Shannon seeks refuge, serves as support for these two characters; but the support is superb and, again, it is perfectly cast. This applies as well to the four gross German tourists who wander in and out of the action (set in the autumn of 1940, a bleak and ominous time in World War II) as it does to Lawrence McCauley's poignant portrayal of Hannah's "97-year-young" grandfather, a great minor poet who gives the play its final, moving requiem.

Every detail of the production, from the use of incidental music by that most Christian composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, to the fierce thunderstorm whipped up for the end of the second act, has been impeccably selected and worked out.

Designer Loy Arcenas' scenery, a veranda set amid an abundant tropical forest, and James F. Ingalls' subtle lighting further add to the completely realized strength and beauty of this production.

This is a work of theater that honors Williams in a way we expect from an institution of Goodman's stature, with a full-out blaze of talent illuminating every aspect of the drama. 

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA - Reverend ShannonGoodman Theatre in Chicago and the Roundabout Theatre in New YorkILLNESS SIDELINES WILLIAM PETERSEN Chicago Tribune ; Chicago, Ill.; Apr 8, 1994; Richard Christiansen.

Swollen vocal cords and bronchitis have forced William Petersen out of his leading role for three sold-out performances in the closing week of "The Night of the Iguana" at Goodman Theatre.

Petersen missed Wednesday night's presentation of the three-hour Tennessee Williams drama and, on doctor's advice, he canceled his appearances for Thursday night and the upcoming Saturday matinee, with his understudy, L.D. Barrett, taking over for him. Petersen does hope to be on stage Friday and Saturday nights and for the final Sunday matinee.

Once in Doubt" handles risk-taking successfully

Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Ill.; Jun 29, 1992; Richard Christiansen, Chief critic.
Raymond J. Barry's "Once in Doubt" at the Remains Theatre puts its three actors way out on a limb, which it constantly threatens to saw off.

Eventually, the branch does snap, crashing play and players to a sudden end; but for the approximately 90 minutes (with intermission) that this surreal comedy does go on, the three Remains actors out there alone on that limb do some mighty wild and most impressive dancing.

The three actors in question are William Petersen, Amy Morton and Gerry Becker, all members of the Remains ensemble who grew up in Chicago theater and have since then, without ever abandoning their roots, branched out into enlarged careers of movie and television work.

The stage, however, is their native habitat, and with "Once in Doubt," directed with skill and gusto by the author, these mature artists have returned home, taking one acting risk after another in a play that requires them to carry on like demented children while at the same time seriously addressing the heavy issues of art and sex.

Barry's script, a barrage of conscious and unconscious thought that's spit out in rapid fire by the threesome, has a fiery, though sometimes fuzzy, impact; but its battering-ram dialogue doesn't stand a chance of being communicated without this production's zany, impassioned delivery.

The play's first half, set on a pure-white stage, is devoted to a ferocious-and hilarious-battle of the sexes between a self-absorbed, suicidal painter (Petersen) and his longtime love-hate companion (Morton).

Wanting desperately to create art out of his being, the artist literally gives his life's blood to his latest work, at the same time trying to deal with the crazy pressures of his feelings toward his lover.

In the second half, artist and lover are joined by a neighbor, Mr. Wagner (Becker), a prosaic civilian who gets caught in their cross-fire, becomes a part of their warfare, and becomes enraptured with the strange, mystifying, exciting process of making art-and having sex.

Petersen, in a role that stretches his acting range (not to mention his powers of enunciation), gives a bravura performance of screwball tragedy, becoming both ridiculous and heroic in his obsession with his art.

Morton, tall and svelte and working in high comic style, is glamorous and gawky, sexy and silly, infuriating and endearing, foul-mouthed and prim as the bizarre love of his life; and Becker, enthusiastically intruding himself into their high-energy attacks, is a superbly baffled and mundane partner in their combat zone.

If, in the end, "Once in Doubt" goes on a little too long before coming to its abrupt ending, it's hardly noticeable amid the thrilling roller-coaster ride that Barry and his three players provide.

Buffalo' revival roars along with operatic passion

Chicago Tribune ; Chicago, Ill.; Jan 22, 1991. Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor. Very early on in "American Buffalo," Donny, a man who prides himself on being wise in the ways of the world, tries to tell his dim young friend Bobby how life works:

" 'Cause there's business," Donny says, "and there's friendship."

"American Buffalo" is about the tragedy that befalls men when they let business mess up friendship, when they lay waste their lives by ignoring the deep bonds of loving one another in favor of chasing after the great god Mammon.

David Mamet doesn't put it nearly so grandly in his play. The three characters he places in a Chicago secondhand shop are from the junk pile of humanity-little men who are ignorant, foul-mouthed, comical in their shortcomings. Their laughable idea of striking it rich is to pull off the petty burglary of a coin collection that is housed just around the corner.

For Teach, the hopelessly failed wheeler-dealer who takes out the anger against his inadequacies in extravagant flights of rage, the collapse of the burglary scheme means the bitter end of his chance to make some kind of a score at last. He's left only with the knowledge that he is ridiculous.

The greater sorrow, however, belongs to Donny, the shop owner, who, in listening to Teach's schemes, has fatally denied his paternal obligations toward the helpless junkie kid Bobby, whom he treats as a surrogate son.

The innocent Bobby, ironically, is the only one of the three whose actions are motivated by love, and not greed, and, for his pains, he is kicked about by Teach and thrown aside by Donny.

In the revival of this modern American masterpiece that Remains Theatre has mounted under the direction of Mike Nussbaum, the tragedy of Donny, Bobby and Teach roars along with grand operatic passion.

Nussbaum, who portrayed Teach in the landmark 1975 Chicago production of "Buffalo," has gone far afield from that seminal show's spare, taut style. There's a ragged street musician providing mood music on his saxophone; and there's an elaborately realistic setting of the junk shop that stretches from one end of Remains' wide stage to the next.

Mamet's poetic heightening of the gutter language of these inarticulate men is still startling in the shock of its humor and the beauty of its rhythms, but the Pinteresque pauses of the dialogue have been all but abolished, the lines racing forward as Teach and Donny rail at each other in ever-increasing desperation.

Sometimes, as the volume goes up and the words speed along, the play shows signs of degenerating into a shouting match. The menace here is all too obvious; there's nothing insidious about it.

But when the great turning point of the play comes, when the burglary plotting ends in violence, Nussbaum's hyperactive staging comes into its own with an explosion of rage and frustration.

This is the moment in which William Petersen's high-speed portrayal of a frenzied Teach reaches its emotional peak, with a lifetime of disappointment erupting in a terrible burst of destruction and a pitiable wail of grief.

Teach has the flashiest speeches in Mamet's brilliant script, and Petersen goes at them full throttle-twitching nervously and hitching up his trousers with bravado as he spews out his nonsensical wise guy talk.

Donny is a more stolid, less volatile character who nonetheless must dominate the play; and in Larry Brandenburg's workmanlike portrayal, it is not until Donny turns on Teach in the final moments of the play that one gets to see the dignity and strength of the man.

Kevin Hurley, however, gives a consistently intelligent and deeply moving performance as the slight Bobby. The confusion that clouds his tight face as he tries to fathom what is going on around him is visible, and the shock and sorrow that he feels when he is betrayed by Donny is heartbreaking.

BIG TIME' IS A GLEAMING LITTLE GEM SHEDDING LIGHT ON 'ME' GENERATION

Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill. Nov 13, 1987; Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor. Paul, the leading character of "Big Time," belongs to the fast-track crowd of young banker-broker-trader-dealers who flourished in the United States in the 1980s.

Whizzing about the world, troubleshooting on international accounts of "serious money," flying home to relax with a beer and a quick snort of cocaine, he's the yuppie prince supreme, about as far removed from the earnest working-class heroes of Clifford Odets and Arthur Miller as one could imagine.

But though he's a major member of the gimme generation, Paul's also an innocent. He loves his work, he fights for his woman, he believes in his future, he's sold on success.

Then, on a trip to shore up a shaky financial situation in a Middle Eastern country, he has his faced rubbed in the global realities of America in the '80s. He's taken hostage, is frightened and humiliated by his captors, is at last released and comes home a shaken and desperate man.

All this takes place in 75 minutes in Keith Reddin's new play, in a series of lean, urgent scenes that has been superbly directed, designed and acted by the Remains Theatre Ensemble in the Goodman Theatre Studio.

Reddin, author of such political-social satires as "Rum and Coke" and "Highest Standard of Living," has not lost his bizarre sense of humor here. He has given Diane, Paul's sleek, soulless boss, a monologue on the grisly deaths of her many relatives (spun out with chilling nonchalance by Amy Morton) that's as dark and as funny as anything he has written.

But "Big Time" is a darker, deeper work than Reddin's earlier plays. Stripped to essentials, much like the bleak vision of David Mamet's "Edmond," it's a sad, savage look at a new lost generation of spoiled, self-centered Americans, sleek and corrupt in their enterprise, whose feelings of love and understanding have been starved out in their hunger for the sharp deal and the main chance.

"What would you die for?" Paul's political zealot captor asks of him, and Paul cannot answer.

This lost hope is achingly personified not only in Paul-played in brilliant detail with swagger and charm, and delicate poignancy, by William L. Petersen. It is also present in his career woman lover Fran (Martha Lavey Greene), maddened by her failing feminism, and in his photo journalist friend Peter (Steve Prutting), who views a picture of rotting corpses as an object to be artfully cropped.

The play and its performances (notably in Alan Novak's caricature of a toadying business functionary) sometimes are merely clever; the drama loses a little momentum during Paul's imprisonment; and as well as Petersen and Morton enact the play's final, bitterly ironic duet, I wish the action had ended with the scene that immediately preceded it, a monologue in the dark delivered with devastating loss and confusion by Petersen.

"Big Time," in short, may need more work, more filling out. But its literary and theatrical excellence, delineated with surgical precision by director Larry Sloan, should not be belittled. This is a small play of smashing impact, in a polished production of great power.

REMAINS GIVES BRECHT A JOLLY TWIST

Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Apr 21, 1986; Richard Christiansen, Entertainment editor. Remains Theater's new production of Bertolt Brecht's "Puntila and His Hired Man" is such an astounding explosion of theatrical vitality that it may seem niggardly to note (weakly, to be sure) that it is probably not quite what its author intended it to be.

In the gusto of its ensemble performance and in the rich imagination of its folk art design, this is a most ambitious, exhilarating evening of joyous Chicago theater; yet it is so happy, and so filled with expert vaudevillian energy that it loses some of the sharp social and political bite Brecht put into it.

Written in 1940, when Brecht was in exile in Finland, and created in collaboration with his then-landlady, Hella Wuolijoki, the play is an extravagant tale about Puntila, a rich landowner who is a fine human being when drunk, but a cruel tyrant when sober. Joined to him as a servant is his engaging chauffeur Matti, a vital rascal who almost marries Puntila's vain daughter but, having better sense, finally turns his back on decadent capitalism and heads back to the glorious way of the working man.

As written by Brecht and certainly as played with tidal waves of comic force by Denis Arndt, Puntila is by no means a stock bourgeois villain. But the sharp conflict between the hypocritical world he represents and the strong, beautiful world of the peasant-proletariat is not emphasized in this sunny version, and consequently Matti's decision to abandon his master seems more like a forced, quick way to end the play, rather than its inevitable conclusion.

That being noted, one can then quickly go on to enjoy the many pleasures of this big, uproarious evening.

In staging this sprawling epic theater folk tale, Larry Sloan, Remains' new artistic director, has done an amazing job of bringing together design and acting talents that power the production with unflagging invention.

"Puntila" is so rarely staged in this country that it would be impossible to determine the "correct" way to visualize it, but Rob Hamilton's scenery and costumes, a kind of Scandinavian funk, warm up and embrace the big barn of the Organic Theatre, where Remains is staging the show, with vibrant colors and a variety of textures.

The cast of 20 actors effectively uses most of the Remains ensemble and fills out the rest of the roles with Chicago actors and a welcome influx of players new to the stage here.

Primary among these is Arndt, a Seattle veteran making his Chicago debut, who, as the lusty Puntila, is the force that keeps the play jumping.

Spinning around him in varying degrees of camp, caricature and full- blooded sassiness are William L. Petersen, sly and virile as Matti; Amy Morton, outrageously comic as Puntila's spoiled daughter; Bruce Norris, wonderful as her milksop fiance; and Bonnie Koloc, delightfully earthy as the singer who sets the scenes with the aid of composer-performer Howard Levy's peppy score.

Everybody has a wonderful time, perhaps with a little too much jollity to suit Brecht, but wonderful, nonetheless.

Days and Nights Within

Chicago Tribune, Jan 31, 1986 Ellen McLaughlin's "Days and Nights Within," currently receiving its Chicago premiere engagement in a production by the Remains Theatre Ensemble at the Organic Theater, is the eeriest of love tales, one set within the claustrophobic confines of an espionage interrogation behind the Iron Curtain.

It's 1950, and Elsa Weber (Amy Morton), a young mother and now West German resident, returns to her East Berlin origins in search of a missing friend. She is at once arrested, and, like a lot of people in those dark early days of the Cold War, seemingly swallowed up forever. She spends the next two years--the span of the play--deprived of proper food, adequate heating, clothing and sometimes routine hygiene. Her only human contact is the daily, incessant rounds with her Interrogator (William L. Petersen), a man so pinstriped and bland that it is hard for her to consider him little more than a hapless fellow victim of the communist bureacracy.

In a dozen or so scenes, performed without intermission, Elsa gradually deteriorates, first losing hope, then self-esteem and finally almost all of her will. Through monologues and dream sequences, we're shown some of the strange psychological landscapes traversed by a caged animal, ranging from her desire to switch roles with her questioner as well as to waltz with him.

To McLaughlin's credit, she is trying to go beyond the built-in hooks of a conventional interrogation drama. There's very little information provided about Elsa's life or family and none at all about the interlocutor's. Once the matter of the early '50s and East Germany are introduced, they're dropped. This struggle probably could take place behind the walls of many a modern state police system.

Unfortunately, the very lack of references--both political and personal --robs the play of interest, suspense and finally purpose. After a while, it begins to resemble an ugly piece of titillating voyeurism. To say that societies ought not do such things seems as pointless as saying that they won't.

Nevertheless, the play can be a gripping vehicle for its players, and here the Remains troupe is well-prepared. Petersen, in his first stage role since starring in the movie, "To Live and Die in L.A.," plays superbly against type: businesslike, timid, vulnerable, in awe of someone smarter and probably better than he is. At times, he's like a frightened schoolboy about to make his first erotic advances: At one point, clearly in love with Elsa, he stands near her just after she passes out, holding his hand above her head briefly before turning away in terror. Sensational.

Even so, it is Morton's play. Her trembling voice and gaunt, hangdog features, combined with her instinct for ferocious indignation and inner fury, make her a perfect Elsa, weaving near the precipice of sanity and exquisitely unshakeable in her moral outrage. Even when she disintegrates into a childlike lunatic, she manages both feminity and an awesome dignity.

Dennis Zacek's direction is swift and crisp, making great use of Patrick Kerwin's stark platform set and the evocative beams from lighting designer Robert Shook, whose shafts turn into towering pyramids thanks to the cavernous heights of the Organic.

BELLY OF THE BEAST, 'COYOTE' ELECTRIFY D.C. Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Jun 17, 1985; Sid Smith, Entertainment writer Chicago theater, which has managed to wow the theatrical capitals of London and New York in recent years, can now add this country's political capital to the list.

To open engagements at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here, as Wisdom Bridge Theatre and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company did Friday and Saturday, respectively, is as close as you can get in America to a command performance. Not surprisingly, they showed themselves off splendidly.

Although curiosity was high about Steppenwolf's "Coyote Ugly," directed by John Malkovich, it was William L. Petersen's gut-wrenching portrayal of convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott in Wisdom Bridge's "In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison" that really blew them away.

"It's quite simply the most painful and moving theatrical experience you are likely to have all year," wrote Hap Erstein in the Washington Times

The openings attracted the attention of the national press as well. Jack Kroll, the veteran and well-respected cultural writer for Newsweek magazine, said Petersen's performance was masterful.

"I thought it was one of the most powerful productions out of an American regional theater that I've seen in a long time," Kroll said. "It's one of those rare pieces that add to your awareness of life in your culture and your society."

As for Lynn Siefert's "Coyote Ugly," Kroll said, "I liked it. You seldom see something that's truly crazy. And it was really funny, a piece of crazy Americana with its own nutty sweetness."

Kroll also said that Malkovich is a marvelous director and that Laurie Metcalf, who plays one of the wacky members of an incestuously wacky Southwestern family in the show, is one of the most wonderful actresses in America today. "The entire cast in this is sensational," he said.

The Times' Erstein echoed Chicago critics by lauding the performers and Malkovich's direction while finding weaknesses with the play. "One can see why Steppenwolf gets acclaim by watching this production," he said, "but one wishes they would select better plays to show off their talents."

(David Richards, drama critic for the Washington Post, preferred to withhold comment until his reviews run in Monday editions of his newspaper.)

The engagements were arranged by Peter Sellars, the wunderkind director of the American National Theater at the Kennedy, and funded by AT&T, which contributed $500,000 for the visit.

When AT&T offered to sponsor regional theater appearances at the Kennedy this summer, Sellars took the opportunity to showcase Chicago, which he presently regards as the scene of the most dynamic theater in the country.

"Belly" opened Friday in the 250-seat Free Theater and will play through June 29. (There is no admission charge for the theater.) "Coyote Ugly" bowed Saturday and plays through July 6 in the larger 450-seat Terrace Theater.

The festival continues later, when Steppenwolf sends a production of David Rabe's "Streamers" to the Free Theater July 24 through August 11 and Wisdom Bridge brings "Kabuki Medea," its Japanese-style adaptation of the Greek tragedy, to the Terrace Theater July 10 through Aug. 4.

Sellars, who hopes the Chicago festival will serve as a srpingboard for regular showings of regional theater at the Kennedy, was typically exuberant and unrestrained in his enthusiasm.

"When the folks with Steppenwolf and Wisdom Bridge first got out of college, they didn't say, 'Oh, dear, how will we get jobs?', " Sellars told a sizable gathering of theater company members, visiting Chicago supporters and AT&T officials at a lavish sit-down dinner in the Kennedy's Rooftop Terrace restaurant after the "Belly" opening.

"They struggled with little money for 10 years and built work that can now hold its own anywhere in the world," he continued. "What we saw tonight from Bill Petersen and his cast members and director Robert Falls was not just an overwhelmingly committed and courageous evening of theater . . . we also saw impeccable technique, sheer Laurence Olivier technique."

Falls was particularly pleased that Wisdom Bridge's Washington debut involved a play with such political overtones. "From the beginning, Peter and I agreed that the Kennedy Center should be in part a place for exchange and debate among people who can affect social change in this country," Falls said. "During previews, several senators saw the play and said they planned to spread the word. Hopefully, we'll be artistically presenting some of the problems of prison life to people who can do something about it."

The Wisdom Bridge crew, against objections raised by Kennedy Center operators, insisted that the bright orange, comfortable seats in the Free Theater be removed. In their place, the center installed backless wooden bleachers, which fit in with the jailhouse set and made the 90-minute program deliberately more uncomfortable to watch than usual.

Nevertheless, the packed audience applauded enthusiastically after Friday's performance, eliciting two curtain calls.

Saturday, "Coyote Ugly," with a new, more compact set created by Kevin Rigdon from his original, looked excellent in the spacious Terrace Theater. The crowd broke into applause several times during the performance and frequently howled at the onstage antics, whether it was Metcalf chewing on an actual raw fish head or Moira Harris dousing her bosom with water.

"Some people may like these plays and others may not," said Roger Stevens, chairman of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center. "But whatever the feeling, I think we've shaken you up." 

BELLY OF BEAST' RETURNS, ITS POWER UNDIMINISHED

Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Apr 15, 1985; Sid Smith, Entertainment writer; A revival of Wisdom Bridge Theatre's 1983 production of "In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison" is playing at the Ivanhoe Theatre for two weeks, before a tour that will include stops at drama festivals in Glasgow and London.

Once again, it stars William L. Petersen as Jack Henry Abbott, literary genius and killer. Once again, it is devastating theater. Every time this program is played and finished, to borrow from W.B. Yeats, a terrible beauty is born.

What has been said before must be repeated. Petersen's Jeff Award-winning portrayal is extraordinary, because he so completely becomes Abbott. The stutter, the sibilant Southern accent, the paranoid nervous gestures, the sad mispronunciations of a natural scholar who, imprisoned most of his life, learned words such as "macabre" and "delicatessen" only through reading.

Add to that Petersen's courageous catalogue of visceral theatrics. The way he bangs his head repeatedly and mercilessly into a metal cabinet when a prison guard coldly announces the death of Abbott's mother. Or the way Petersen drops his pants when re-creating a childhood beating and then curls up on the floor, a battered fetus. Or the way he rages at top volume against the injustices of prison life only to relive with muted wonder the moments spent carving out another man's insides.

But beyond the electrifying external technique is the indescribable way, from the very first moment when he storms onstage and fixes the audience with a defiant gaze, that Petersen demands his hearing. It seems to stem from everything from his sly, intermittent eye contact to his bone-chilling commitment to the role. In any event, no matter what intellectual distance or glib analytical trick you employ, it's hard to doubt that Abbott is there, and that we, the audience, are on trial.

To that purpose, Petersen gets great help from the text and the superb quality of the production. The script, restructured by director Robert Falls from an earlier adaptation of Abbott's writings by the Trinity Square Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., is a combination of Abbott's grim story and moments from his trial, one that smoothly hops through time and space with effortless efficiency.

Unabashedly didactic, the text nevertheless asks as many questions as it answers. Here was a great mind treated like an animal all his life and, in a flood of unwanted celebrityhood, released into a world in which he couldn't possibly function. The whole tragedy indicts our notions of rehabilitation and justice.

Theater is rarely this powerful, and perhaps that's OK. I don't think we could take this sort of thing very often.

BEAST MAKES ITS MARK ON LONDON

Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; May 24, 1985; Richard Christiansen, Entertainment Editor


The American Festival in Britain, a month-long mixed bag of theater, dance, music and the visual arts, reached one of its peaks Thursday night in a 135-seat theater far removed from the mainstream of London commercial theater.

The occasion was the opening of Wisdom Bridge Theatre of Chicago's production of "In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison" in the studio of the Lyric Hammersmith theater in west London.

William L. Petersen, whose powerful portrayal of convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott began sensationally in 1983 in Wisdom Bridge's home base at 1559 W. Howard St., had already scored a fresh success in Europe with "Beast" earlier this month at the Mayfest in Glasgow, Scotland; but Thursday night, his triumph in the small, stuffy Lyric studio was altogether extraordinary.

For Michael Billington, highly respected critic of The Guardian, Petersen's portrayal was "an amazingly uninhibited piece of acting, an incredibly powerful work that showed all sides of the man."

Billington called director Robert Falls' production "memorable theater, which lets the audience make its own moral judgment," and he termed the play "a really substantial event" in the American Festival's varied programming.

Irving Wartle, theater critic of The Times, wrote that the performance was "played at white heat and at point blank range," with Petersen's portrayal outstanding as "a revelation of human nature."

Sheridan Morley, critic for Punch and the International Herald Tribune, noted "the incredible animal intensity of Petersen's acting, an intensity we can't even approach in England."

These comments, typical of the critical reaction that has greeted the play here, are backed up by the strong audience response the production has received. The show did turn-away business in its two preview showings; and the opening night audience, which included most of the major London critics and several Chicago ones, greeted the performance with a storm of applause.

With that type of response, and with such impressive reviews, "Beast" is certain to sell out in the small studio for the rest of its run through June 1.

Already there is talk of bringing the production back to London for a month-long run opening July 4 in the Lyric Hammersmith's 537-seat mainstage auditorium. In addition, Falls and Jeffrey Ortmann, Wisdom Bridge's executive director, have received feelers from the Gate Theater in Dublin and the Edinburgh Festival to tour the show there, as well.

All that, however, will have to wait until "Beast" completes its previously scheduled dates on June 29 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. But the mere talk of these possible European engagements is proof of the impact Wisdom Bridge and its vigorous brand of muscular Chicago theater has had in this first European excursion.

The Chicago-ization of Great Britain has not stopped with "In the Belly of the Beast," either. At the Albany Empire Theater, another venue several miles distant from London's theatrical center, the Joel Hall Dancers are performing through the end of the week.