Month: September 2013

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”

A Good Reed Review Review , , , , , , , , , , ,

MGL FamilyBy Ande Jacobson

As she was researching shows for this 13th season, the title Making God Laugh jumped out at Tabard’s executive director, Cathy Spielberger Cassetta. Intrigued, she started corresponding with the playwright, Sean Grennan. As she says in her program notes, she found “merit, wisdom, and folly in it” and decided to add this little yet-to-be-published gem as one of the “Twists” to the season. Grennan describes his play as a “dramedy that takes place in four scenes at a family home, each ten years apart.” First is a Thanksgiving dinner in 1980 and the play continues with one scene per decade until spring of 2010.  Grennan too has a program note and says “all playwrights have to write their Family play.” This is his, and Grennan’s characters are each familiar in some ways. The script is very funny, and he uses several pop-culture references both in musical quotes (e.g., “Jet Song” from West Side Story, “Everything’s Comin’ Up Roses” from Gypsy, Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”) along with some period-specific failures (e.g., AMC’s Pacer, Yugo, Enron) to help hammer home the points he’s making. Continue reading →

Magic from within

A Good Reed Review Review , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Everyone searches for meaning at some point in their lives. Some aspire to greatness, some aspire just to survive, and others are somewhere in between. Sunnyvale Community Players presents Pippin, the Roger O. Hirson and Stephen Schwartz musical that is very loosely based on the life story of Pippin the Hunchback, son of Charlemagne, as he searches for meaning in his life. The story is extremely disjoint. It has generous doses of farcical humor and cheap magic tricks (reminiscent of Godspell) mixed with threads of meaning if you look below the surface. Continue reading →

Exploring the varied results of the Reardons’ rearing

A Good Reed Review Review , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

miss-reardon-FBBy Ande Jacobson

Paul Zindel’s And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little isn’t your typical play although the plot is largely drawn from Zindel’s experience. He credits his early years with his eventually becoming a writer. He often retreated into his imagination to escape the drudgery of his family life after his father deserted them. He also had fortuitous timing as an undergraduate in taking a creative writing class taught by playwright Edward Albee who later became Zindel’s valued mentor and friend. Although Zindel majored in chemistry, spent some time in industry, and later taught high school chemistry, he indulged his love of writing in his spare time. After his death, his New York Times obituary reported, “…he never went to the theater, he said, until he was already a published playwright.” Continue reading →