The Arizona Reperatory
Theatre 2008-2009 Season


Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams

“Cat on a hot tin roof" is a play about the human experience in a society, which tries to dictate to people how they should live, and at a time where lack of human communication leads to the unavoidable loneliness of man."
http://bookreviews.nabou.com/reviews/catonahottinroof.html

"In Williams's tense family drama, where every relationship and bond is suspect, the underlying recognition that these people are trapped by their blood is vital."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/CatTinRoof.html

Love's Labour Lost
by William Shakespeare

"Love's Labour's Lost is about 1/3 Shakespeare, 1/3 song-and-dance, and 1/3 ribald slapstick."
http://www.reelviews.net/movies/l/loves_labours.html

"For this early Shakespearean romantic comedy, known more for its linguistic virtuosity than for its narrative strengths, the playing is the thing."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117930601.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Company
by George Furth and Steven Sondheim

"Originally a series of one-act plays about marriage, the musical adds a linking character, Robert, who is the only one without a spouse. In visiting each of a half dozen couples who are his friends, Robert seeks to learn "what do you get" from being married."
http://www.amazon.com/Company-Stephen-Sondheim/dp/1559361085

"To wed or not to wed, that is the question Bobby, a bachelor, confronts in "Company." As he turns 35, he weighs the pros and cons of wedded life while, in a series of flashbacks, he recalls his friends, five married couples, facing the for-better or for-worse of their marital relationships. On the eve of a surprise birthday party, Bobby wonders about "Being Alive" after making up the third in the company of his partner friends."
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081018/LIFE/810180314/-1/ENTERTAIN18

Medea
by Uripides

"Medea, made unforgettable by Euripides as the killer of her own children, has been one of the most popular figures from the world of Greek drama in the last twenty years."
http://www.classics.und.ac.za/reviews/0333all.htm

"What keeps us entranced through this eternally shocking drama is that Medea is part of our world; the passage of 2,400 years has done nothing to distance her from us."
http://www.amazon.com/Medea-Euripides/dp/1416592237

Leading Ladies
by Ken Ludwig

"Ludwig’s newest comedy is so funny, it will make sophisticated and reasonable men and women of the 21st century cackle till their faces hurt." The Houston Press
http://www.kenludwig.com/leading_ladies/leading_ladies.php

"An exceptional performance can transform unexceptional material into a winning show — rarely better illustrated than with R. Christofer Sands' scintillating turn in playwright Ken Ludwig's farce. Sands plays Leo, a desperate down-and-out Shakespearean actor who — along with his reluctant partner, Jack (Tim Coultas) — dons women's clothes in order to masquerade as the female beneficiaries of a dying heiress."
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-01-17/stage/web-hed-required/


Kansas City Repertory Theatre
2008-2009 season


Clay
by Matt Sax and Eric Rosen

"A hip-hop musical about a white boy from Westchester? It sounds like a punch line from “The Daily Show.” But “Clay,” a new solo show written and performed by Matt Sax, is for real, and it has already been warmly received at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in Chicago and Los Angeles."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/theater/reviews/16clay.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

"It would be easy to cast a cynical glance at Matt Sax's solo piece Clay, the debut production from LCT3, Lincoln Center Theatre's new initiative. After all, the show features hip-hop music and an affordable bottom line, both of which make it attractive to producers. But if something cynical is afoot, no one has told the utterly sincere Sax, who is giving the not entirely successful work everything he's got."
http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/reviews/10-2008/clay_15496.html

Radio Golf
by August Wilson

"Like all of Wilson's plays, Radio Golf, now at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, is thoughtful and colorful, full of gentle moments of humor. Far from ending with a big bang, Wilson leaves us with hope and a question about what it means to be black."
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/08/15/032140.php

"The blight will come through," a real estate developer reassures his nervous partner several times in August Wilson's "Radio Golf."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/12/DDVR13D5SM.DTL

The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams

"Hepburn plays Amanda Wakefield, a faded Southern belle now living in a small urban apartment, where she suffocates her two children--her restless son Tom (a very young Sam Waterston) and her painfully shy daughter Laura (Joanna Miles)--with her incessant mixture of insistent cheer and guilt."
http://www.amazon.com/Tennessee-Williams-Menagerie-Broadway-Theatre/dp/B00007L4MV

"His words are a very fantastical banquet. " Shakespeare's line from Much Ado About Nothing sums up the enduring appeal of Tennessee Williams 1944 The Glass Menagerie. The narrator and key player's opening monologue is a just a foretaste to a "fantastical banquet" of richly lyrical language."
http://www.curtainup.com/b-glassm.html

The Arabian Nights
by Mary Zimmerman

"This latest spouse, you'll recall, has Shahryar bewitched. Scheherazade spins her tales hoping to delay the inevitable, and in Zimmerman's telling -- similar in its fluid episodic structure and frisky-somber tone to her Broadway hit "Metamorphoses" -- the fables delight and instruct while steaming toward an unsettling finish."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502178.html

"Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nightsis an adaptation of the ancient tale of Scheherezade, who each night cleverly distracted her murdering husband with stories in order to live another night."
http://www.curtainup.com/arabiannights.html

The Borderland
by Jim Grimsley

"In "The Borderland," neighboring families representing two very different social classes are brought together during a storm."
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Mr-Universe/Jim-Grimsley/e/9781565122116

"The play follows the events of a night in which Eleanor Rollins (Sarah McCord) comes to the Hammonds' home during a thunderstorm after being beaten by her drunken husband, Jake (David Van Pelt), who soon follows her there. The ensuing confrontations illuminate not only the contrasts but the unsettling correspondences between the couples."
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?pagewanted=print&res=9F0DE4D81E3FF932A05753C1A962958260