The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater

June 2009

Starring Brenda Withers, Jonathan Fielding, Lewis D. Wheeler, Amanda Collins, Dakota Shepard and Brendan Hughes

Photos

Reviews

"Eugene Ionesco's play… now at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater's original Harbor Stage, at first seems so familiar that you may find yourself wondering why you needed to see it again. But the freshness and insouciance of Brendan Hughes's production - along with the crisp, deeply funny performances he elicits from an excellent cast - soon come to make it feel irresistible, darkly hilarious, and strikingly new. This is not your grandfather's Bald Soprano.

"…what's nightmarish in life is hilarious onstage. The scene in which the four of them sit anxiously on opposite sofas, smiling blankly and starting to speak, then pausing, then casting "meaningful" glances at one another, is pure comic torture. It's the worst dinner party you've ever been to, magnified to the point of hysterical laughter.

"...But the genius moment of the production is one that it would be unfair to describe, because it comes as a quick, perfect surprise near the end. It’s like an encapsulation of the entire production in one brilliantly realized moment: clever, amusing, and then unexpectedly something more, a magician’s jerking of the tablecloth that rearranges all the elements of comedy into a chilling glimpse of the existential void.

"Just a glimpse, though. And then the silliness bubbles back up, and the balance is intact. We’re reminded, as in the jokes of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or the black humor of Pinter’s Birthday Party, what absurdism really is: a precarious, hilarious, heartbreaking unicycle ride along the edge of a cliff."

— Louise Kennedy for the Boston Globe (full review)

"Director Brendan Hughes has done it again. In his second season at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater’s Harbor Stage, Hughes has crafted a flawless production of the Absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco’s first play, The Bald Soprano. Visually stunning and masterfully acted, this show is truly great theater... Ionesco’s work is Absurdism for Absurdists, and it is stuffed with non-sequiturs, verbal nonsense, and distortions of time and space that would make Dali red with envy.

"The show is funny, strange, surreal and haunting. The cadence, rhythm and emotion of normal conversation are all there. If you were to fall asleep in another room, the murmuring chatter would have all the peaks and pauses, the crescendos and quiet moments of an average gathering. But a closer listen would reveal a fractured interaction in which the simplest expectations of language, setting and time are irrevocably twisted and torn apart.

"WHAT’s talented cast makes assimilation easy, and within an hour audience members are exchanging knowing looks at the faintest smirks onstage... Hughes pulls together a neat, tight production that is perfectly funny and strange. If a walk on the weird side is what you crave, WHAT’s got just what the doctor ordered."

— Bethany Gibbons for the Barnstable Patriot (full review)

"Just laugh and let go, and you will get a kick out of Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater's splendid production of this classic Theatre of the Absurd play, which Brendan Hughes vibrantly directs with pizazz and delightful innovative touches... Hughes directs a superb cast of actors who raise the ridiculous to Marx-Brothers-style comedy...

"Director Hughes takes on the role of the Fire Chief and you'll love his straight-faced rendering of a convoluted — and meaningless — story. These are superb performances, and director Hughes cleverly brings it all together in a sparkling "Bald Soprano," which truly sings."

— Debbie Forman for the Cape Cod Times (full review)

Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet

Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater

August 2008

Starring Bob Kropf, Jonathan Fielding, Stacy Fischer, Amanda Collins, Dakota Shepard and Brendan Hughes

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