Photo: Andrew Alexander

GCTC is closing out their season with a terrific production of George F. Walker’s new play, “The Burden of Self Awareness.” This is the world premiere of what can be called both dark comedy and social satire. After a near-death experience, Michael decides to give his fortune away to the needy. His wife Judy, firmly ensconced in the 1%, her shrink Stan who’s in the throes of a breakdown, Lianne, a call girl with a history degree and Phil, a private eye/hit man all have different opinions on the matter. The play skewers the differences between the haves and have nots with biting humor.

This is a first-rate cast. Samantha Madely is very good as the lissome well-educated hooker Lianne, who’s looking for a new direction in life. As Phil, a former news anchor turned detective, John Koensgen dithers believably between his Born Again faith and becoming a hit man. As the wound tight as a violin string Judy, Sarah McVie obviously needs, as she insists, “a large buffer” between herself and the have nots. She’s also expert at shimmying out of her underpants without disarranging her dress.

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Reviewed by Jeniva Berger for her site www.scenechanges.com

You might call Beatrice & Virgil a play about a writer getting caught up in things beyond his understanding. At least Lindsay Cochrane’s adaptation of the central part of Yann Martel’s fourth book points in that direction. Not having read Martel’s novel, which apparently turned out to be a particular disappointment after the astounding literary and film success of The Life of Pi, I can understand the quandary that readers had. Part fantasy and part allegory with a realistic setting and a theme that isn’t pleasant, Ms. Cochrane apparently found something that was stage worthy in adapting his book. Her faith is admirable.
You can’t fault the director Sarah Garton Stanley who has given us a well paced production, nor the performers who make the story within a story close to heartbreaking. Damien Atkins is a crisp,  matter-of-fact  author named Henry who has suffered a dissapointing rejection from his publisher for his novel called The 20th Century Shirt (apparently mirroring Martel’s own dismay when his novel was rejected), begins the play at a lectern at a side of the stage, speaking to an audience about how he overcame his disillusion and turned instead to other interests like theatre and books. Well and good. But then, Henry tells us of a a strange note from another person named Henry, who would like his help about a play he is writing.

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Reviewed by Kat Fournier.

The story of Anne Frank, humanizing the Holocaust, is one of the greatest modern tragedies.

Director Tim Picotte has used the 1955 award-winning script by American writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett to present the dramatization of the young girl’s diary. Moving, yet funny, the play is, at its core, a work of naturalism. Minute, realistic detail is built into the setting, dialogue and character.

The script spans three years in Amsterdam, and opens with a scene three years after the Franks move into their hiding place, following the end of World War II and the evacuation of the concentration camps.

The set, designed by Annemarie Zeyl, is a worn annex of an office building in Amsterdam, now transformed into a small apartment for the Franks and Van Daans. The space comprises a raised “loft” upstage of a central living room, flanked by two closet-sized rooms. The rooms are separated by curtains only, so emphasizing the lack of privacy.

Picotte offers a straightforward interpretation of the script, faithful to the original staging. Unfortunately, the approach lacks the necessary subtlety, resulting in the loss of the richness embedded in the text. The characters, played without the requisite refinement, almost became caricatures.

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