Tagged: Bill Gale

When you enter Trinity Rep’s Dowling Theater these evenings you just can’t miss the mess. Designer Eugene Lee has outdone himself, creating a scene that looks like a teenager’s bedroom on a very bad day. The walls are covered with large carpets, all conflicting in tone and color. There’s a distinctly un-comfortable looking iron bed.  Lamps from all eras abound. A Danish modern table, a keyboard from when, the 1960s, maybe? And above all is a huge crucifix, on which the murdered Jesus is nailed.

With their very fine new performing space (excellent sight lines, comfortable seats, good facilities) it seems a shame that Ocean State has picked a weak-at-the-knees Neil Simon play to officially open Rhode Island’s newest theater.

Dark.

If you had just one word to describe the powerful, incisive version of “Amadeus” at 2nd Story that might be it. After all, even when you enter the performing space you notice the dim. A couple of lights, a candle or two, and that’s it. Watch your step, and maybe get out those reading glasses if you care to check the program.

Oh my goodness, folks, those wacky Brits are back. They arrived Monday night in a slippery snowstorm using as their invasion vehicle the much anticipated, and much hyped, “Anne Boleyn” by veteran troublemaking playwright Howard Brenton. You will remember his work if you caught the deliciously provocative play “Paul” which celebrated the life of St. Paul at the Gamm a while ago.