Rosa Gilmore

Entangled: 12 Scenes in a Circle K off the I-40 in New Mexico

March 20, 2026

In "Entangled:12 Scenes in a Circle K off the I-40 in New Mexico," the beguiling and philosophically mischievous collaboration between Mona Mansour and Emily Zemba, the American desert becomes less a landscape than a condition of thought—a place where the ordinary laws governing time, consequence, and human attachment appear to have loosened their grip. Set in the fluorescent limbo of a Circle K somewhere in the New Mexico expanse—30 miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, and perilously close to both an atomic testing site and a nuclear laboratory—the play hums with a low-grade metaphysical dread that it wears, with admirable restraint, as comedy. [more]

Summer Shorts 2016 – Series A

August 1, 2016

As might be expected LaBute’s new one act, "After the Wedding," contains a shocker. However, when it arrives in Maria Mileaf’s production, it is so matter-of-fact that it has little or no impact. Elizabeth Masucci and Frank Harts play a married couple of six years. Named simply “Him” and “Her,” they alternate telling (different) versions of their years together without interacting. However, both of them recall an event that occurred on their way to their honeymoon which should have been a game-changer. For these self-absorbed people millennials, it was simply another incident along the way. Sitting in chairs facing the audience, Masucci and Harts are rather charming as the amoral couple but the play seems like a scene from a longer play not yet written. [more]

The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare in the Park)

June 18, 2016

Aside from the obvious misogyny of Shakespeare’s comedy for modern audiences, there is the problem of the heroine’s unpalatable final speech in which she berates women for not being more subservient to their husbands. Lloyd’s solution is to frame the play as a country-western beauty pageant to choose “this year’s Miss Lombardy” whose emcee sounds an awful lot like presidential candidate Donald Trump. In fact, there is a good deal of satiric political talk with comedian Judy Gold as suitor Gremio doing an interpolated monologue complaining that the director is a woman and that “we’ve got a broad running for President.” [more]