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Theater reviews
2 plays, 2 venues grab Miami Valley audiences
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
DAYTON — The boundary between authenticity and pretense runs through two contrasting community theater productions that opened last weekend.
It turns out that more than chance has brought two people together in the drama "Park Your Car at Harvard Yard" at the Dayton Theatre Guild. It gradually becomes apparent how different they are from the versions they've been projecting to each other, but the audience has to work a bit to draw the conclusions.
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Playwright Israel Horovitz provides hints and revelations about Jacob Brackish, a retired teacher with three degrees from Harvard, and housekeeper Kathleen Hogan, who blames circumstances beyond her control for her lack of achievement.
What was clearest Saturday night in a production directed by Sarah Gomes was how the material has inspired Richard Young and Debra Kent, who play the duo. They earned an ovation, which is never a given at the Guild.
There's no need to do much more than follow the toppling dominoes — one thing leads to another and another in "Noises Off" at the Dayton Playhouse. The audience gets to witness what's really going on backstage and how that painfully and comically invades the scripted version.
That doesn't mean it's easy to do. It only looked that way on Sunday as director Jennifer Shaw's well-chosen cast put on this show about things that go wrong. The classic farce by Michael Frayn ran practically like clockwork.
Units of a whole, the cast includes Megan Cooper, Philip Smyth, Leo Geiger, Shaw (as Belinda/Flavia), Nathan Hudson, Blair J. Butler, Ron Weber, Tim Allgood and Amy Beth Baker.
Both shows continue the next two weekends. Tickets are $15 for "Park Your Car" at the Theatre Guild, 2330 Salem Ave. Call (937) 278-5993. Seats for "Noises Off" are $16 at the Playhouse, 1301 E. Siebenthaler Ave. Call (937) 424-8477.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
