Tanya Parks Archives - TheaterScene.net

Tanya Parks

The Sea Lady

October 11, 2022

Neith Boyce’s "The Sea Lady," a Broadway-bound play in 1935, only now having its world premiere at Metropolitan Playhouse is an attempt at a Shavian play of ideas. Based on a 1901 novel by socialist H.G. Wells, this very Edwardian story resembles Shaw’s "Misalliance" but without the wit or the scope of ideas. Extremely tentative in how far it dares to go, "The Sea Lady" seems like a relic of an earlier age. It has charm but it lacks depth; its message may have been new in 1901 when the novel came out or 1935 when the play was finished, but today it seems extremely old hat. [more]

Thunder Rock

January 23, 2020

It is not difficult to see what attracted Metropolitan Playhouse to Ardrey’s drama: its message that one cannot shut one’s self off from the problems of the world as the America First movement wants to do is very timely once again as in the 1930’s, and the refugees who appear in the play’s second act and speak of their hopes and dreams in the new land are a stinging rebuke to those who would shut the golden doors to foreigners seeking asylum in the United States in our own time. [more]