by Alec Harvey
The Birmingham News
July 19, 2008
“The God of Hell”
City Equity Theatre
Through July 27
951-3029
Review: four out of five stars
In its first three seasons, Birmingham’s City Equity Theatre has proven at least two things.
First, the troupe isn’t going to take the easy way out, opting for literate, challenging work rather than sure-fire box-office winners.
And second, they’re always going to do it with a high degree of quality.
Birmingham Weekly July 17, 2008
Cover Story
by Glenny Brock
City Equity Theatre takes the next step
In the oh-so-Oklahoma atmosphere that has comprised Birmingham’s theatre scene during so much of recent memory, a minor Sam Shepard play is a major event. But the playwright’s cultural standing isn’t really what makes the City Equity Theatre production of The God of Hell noteworthy so much as the radioactive politics that permeate the script.
The show, which opens Thursday, July 17, at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, is the second Shepard outing for the company this summer, a follow-up to last month’s True West. No doubt the company’s founding directors, Jonathan Fuller and Alan Gardner, were conscious of the powerful, one-two punch effect these back-to-back productions would have. True West was an admirable warm-up. The God of Hell, under the direction of Marlene Johnson, is a clear triumph.
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.
City Equity Theatre 