Mar 25

‘Deported’ dreams fragrant hope

Bobbie Steinbach and Jeanine Kane, photo credit: Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Deported, A Dream Play by Joyce Van Dyke, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, 3/8/12-4/1/12, http://www.bu.edu/bpt/.

Reviewed by Becca Kidwell

(Boston, MA) An American rose does not smell as sweet as an Armenian rose; that’s what Joyce Van Dyke tells us.  The Armenian-American culture is extremely prevalent in the Metro Boston area, particularly in Watertown where the Armenian Library and Museum is located, and has been trying to get the world to recognize the genocide in Armenia from 1915, when there were several massacres.  “Armenian men were rounded up and killed.  Then the women and children were ‘deported’ on a death march through the desert,” Van Dyke writes in the program.  And as the hundredth anniversary approaches, the genocide is still denied by Turkey, but Van Dyke writes of the hope of recognition and reconciliation in the near future. Continue reading

Jan 26

‘A Number’ of Sons

Mark Cohen and Danny Bryck, Photo Credit by Whistler in the Dark

 

A Number by Caryl Churchill, Whistler in the DarkThe Factory Theatre, 1/20/12-2/4/12, (in repertory with Fen by Caryl Churchill),  http://www.whistlerinthedark.com/productions/wantedsomething.html.

Reviewed by Becca Kidwell

(Boston, MA) If you were/are a parent, what would you do if you had a chance to fix the mistakes you made raising your child?  As a child, what would you do if your parents told you that you were not their original child, but a new, improved version made to fix the mistakes they made with their first child?  Caryl Churchill’s play, A Number deals with a controversial matter:  cloning.  Since the Dolly the sheep was cloned in the late nineties, fear and wonder has surrounded the possibility of cloning a human being.  This play speculates on what might result from such a procedure and the repercussions of such a decision upon a father and his son. Continue reading