Daniel Pearce

Hamlet (Free Shakespeare in the Park)

June 30, 2023

For this year’s Free Shakespeare in the Park, director Kenny Leon has set his modern dress "Hamlet" in what looks like the same Georgia estate as his acclaimed 2019 production of "Much Ado About Nothing." However, Beowulf Boritt’s set this time around looks as though the Georgia suburban mansion has been destroyed by a hurricane with the main house off its foundation and the main room missing three of its walls. The set also features two American flags, a partly buried “Stacey Abrams 2020” poster (used in the "Much Ado") and a jeep nosed into a huge puddle with an Elsinore license plate. While the production is chock full of ideas (too many of them), it creates the new problem that Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" doesn’t make much sense set in America. After all, when is the last time we had a king and queen? Obviously, the parallel is that something is rotten in America but where is this Never Neverland? [more]

Hindsight

September 28, 2021

The pop music classics of the 1980’s intermixed with audio clips of President Ronald Reagan telling jokes is an apt pre-show soundtrack to playwright Alix Sobler’s "Hindsight." With Stoppardian flair, Ms. Sobler manages to make an exploration of the 1987 elimination of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine into a cleverly informative non-linear 90-minute entertainment. [more]

Timon of Athens (Theatre for a New Audience)

January 23, 2020

On paper the concept should not work: scenes and characters have been cut, a Shakespeare sonnet has been added set to music, as well as a Greek song, and four characters originally written for men are played by women. Nevertheless, the streamlining of this modern dress production in the edition prepared by Emily Burns and Godwin makes this tragedy very accessible and eliminating subplots makes the play quite linear. The addition of women gives the play an almost contemporary feeling. The scenic and costume design by Soutra Gilmour for the first half of the play is simply dazzling, while the second half has its own visual display. [more]

Mother of the Maid

November 1, 2018

Jane Anderson’s "Mother of the Maid" would probably not be very compelling without Glenn Close’s Isabelle Arc as the play itself is following the dots in filling in the little that is known with mostly common historic and unsurprising details. (One exception is after Isabelle has seen the unicorn tapestries at the palace, she naively asks if there were any of the animals to be seen.) However, with Close who gives a constrained and moving performance the play becomes something else: a persuasive portrait of a mother and wife who has an awakening to the ways of the world based on what happens to her daughter. [more]

Ring Twice for Miranda

February 19, 2017

Although "Ring Twice" is filled to the brim with socio-political symbolism, it’s not likely that the author was trying for any direct reference to the current maddening political scene since gestation periods for plays are notoriously long. Clearly this play was written well before the 2016 election, so any vague commentary appears to be inadvertent. This is not to say that the metaphors and symbols Hruska uses aren’t intriguing in their own way. [more]

Hamlet (Mobile Unit 2016)

September 24, 2016

The single disadvantage of director Patricia McGregor’s approach is that in cutting so much text, the events of the play seem to occur one on top of each other, making the play a bit melodramatic, and a good deal of character development is sacrificed by the way. However, with dangerous-looking fight direction by Lisa Kopitsky and intriguing movement by Paloma McGregor, this is a "Hamlet" that lives up to its mission to be accessible and entertaining to all, those who know the play well and those seeing it for the first time. [more]