One of the best non-musical productions in Birmingham in a long, long time…a doozie, a rollicking roller-coaster of a look inside the lives of the Weston family…absolutely a show not to be missed…you just may never be able to see it done so well again. (5 out of 5 stars)
Read the rest of Alec Harvey’s review for the Birmingham News here on al.com!
Meryl, meet Sandra. And Julia, this is Carolyn.
Those are just two of the film/theater matchups as City Equity Theatre produces Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County just five months before the big-screen version of the taut family comedy-drama hits theaters.
Thanks to Alec Harvey for the fine Living Arts section cover story in today’s Birmingham News. More here on al.com.
Alec Harvey
Birmingham News Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Four out of five stars
From the moment brothers Austin and Lee meet in their mother’s kitchen in Sam Shepard’s “True West,” you know all is not right with this family dynamic.
Austin, an Ivy League grad who is house-sitting in the Hollywood hills while mom’s in Alaska, is putting the finishing touches on a script that he is this close to selling to a powerful agent. Ne’er-do-well Lee is a thief by trade, and he’s hoping to find some houses nearby to burglarize. There is, to say the least, some tension, and it only gets worse in City Equity Theatre’s solid production running through Sunday at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
ALEC HARVEY
Birmingham News staff writer
Brian Friel loves words.
The Irish playwright has used them to great effect in his Tony-winning “Dancing at Lughnasa,” his adaptation of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” and many other plays throughout his illustrious career.
His are rarely works of great action. More often, his characters tell us of momentous events rather than showing them to us.
Such is the case with “Faith Healer,” his 1979 work that has already seen a couple of acclaimed revivals on Broadway. It’s a series of four monologues, told from the perspectives of three people – itinerant faith healer Frank Hardy; his wife, Grace; and his agent and friend, Teddy – all of whom were involved in a horrible event one night in County Donegal in northwest Ireland.
It’s a tour de force for the actors involved, and City Equity Theatre’s production gives us three performers who are more than up for the task. Jonathan Fuller opens and closes the show as Frank Hardy, with Francie Gardner as Grace and Alan Litsey as Teddy, who provides some much-needed comic relief.
City Equity Theatre 