Beth Lake

Call Me Izzy

June 13, 2025

Portraying the eponymous Izzy--or Isabelle per the formal preference of a long-ago teacher--the charismatic Smart earns our rapt attention throughout the play, though she cannot begin to overcome a first-person narrative that doesn't know that person particularly well. Wax, with journalistic straightforwardness rather than dramatic breadth, essentially reduces Izzy to a collection of abject sorrows and artistic inclinations, much of which Izzy shares while on a lid-down toilet seat in a locked bathroom. A grim sanctuary, it's where Izzy reads and writes poetry nightly, accomplishing the latter with an eyebrow pencil and a roll of toilet paper as her husband, Ferd, menacingly slumbers nearby in the bedroom of their Louisiana mobile home. [more]

McNeal

October 15, 2024

As in Ayad Akhtar’s plays "Disgraced," "JUNK" and "The Who and the What," all of which have been produced by the Lincoln Center Theater, "McNeal" is always interesting, always arresting. Unfortunately, in McNeal each scene seems to bring up a new theme and never completely finishes with the previous one. The individual confrontations are fine, but they never coalesce into a unified whole other than to depict the messy life of a famous author which can’t be the author’s sole purpose. Is the message that Artificial Intelligence is dangerous or only in the hands of the wrong people? [more]

A Christmas Carol (Blessed Unrest)

December 26, 2016

Director and choreographer Jessica Burr has created a number of dazzling moments with her precise unison of expressive staging, movement and dance. With only a few vintage trunks and a door, all on wheels, Ms. Burr achieves many vivid stage pictures. Walking up a flight of imaginary stairs is a thrilling display of mime. Burr’s work with the ensemble, most of whom play several roles is excellent with their colorful characterizations as evidence. [more]

The Wolves

December 9, 2016

The audience sits on either side of the large runway stage that set designer Laura Jellinek has arrestingly fashioned into an indoor soccer field. It’s a green vista of Astro Turf that gives the sense “…that the field goes on forever,” writes playwright Sarah DeLappe in her stage directions. [more]

the dreamer examines his pillow

July 31, 2015

Like most of the other of the author’s works, the three characters here are very colorful individuals who histrionically clash with each other while verbosely explaining their feelings and motivations. As entertaining, funny, and thoughtful as these often quite lengthy exchanges are, they’re unable to compensate for a lack real action or suspense over the course of the three scenes lasting 90 minutes and becomes wearying. Though similar in structure and themes to many of his successful other works, the dreamer examines his pillow is not as satisfying. [more]

Strictly Dishonorable

August 4, 2014

Travis Chinick's costumes are period perfect for the tail end of the Jazz Age while Liz Scherrier's two sets suitably set the mood for both the main room of the speakeasy and the bachelor apartment above. Beth Lake's sound design includes snatches of tenor arias as well as pertinent outside noises. [more]