Love’s Labors: Lost & Found

Verb: Literature in Performance
July 14, 2005; closes August 7, 2005

Mixed: Five short stories with nice moments, weak endings -- stuck between literature and limelight -- neither quite the intensity nor the delicacy to fully work the stage, though the genuine Ted Roisum and the amusing Michele Mariana did hold my interest whenever they appeared. Adam Saucy’s lighting balanced modesty, drama.

Earth Stories

VERB: Literature in Performance
Portland Arts & Lecture
July 29, 2004

Interesting improv-like exercise creating multiple stories based on single status structure among four people, tweaking specifics for oddly related, yet altered realities. But staging prone prose yields book-on-tape theatre with, "he said," beleaguered narrative tone interrupted only by puzzling stylized miming and tedious scene changes. For lits: amusing; thespians: frustrating.

Carver Country

VERB: Literature in Performance
Portland Arts & Lecture
July 8, 2004

Capable performances all around but call me a purist: Scripts are not books and books are not scripts. They are not interchangeable. Furthermore, a scene does not a story make, especially under less-than-inspired directing. This is another case where mechanics of storytelling ultimately get in the way of the message.