Results tagged “crossingthebridge”

"Inadvertently topical" is perhaps the best way to describe The Year of Magical Thinking, at Intiman Theatre through Sept. 20 (tix $40-$55). Joan Didion's own adaptation of her award-winning 2005 memoir of the same title, the one-woman show follows Didion's struggles with grief following the death of her novelist husband John Gregory Dunne in 2003, which coincided with the beginning of the long, catastrophic series of illnesses that eventually claimed her daughter's life the next year. But playing against the backdrop of the ongoing national debate over health care reform, during the show we kept coming back to the--again no doubt inadvertent--lie that is the throughline of the play, and one of the first things Judith Roberts, the marvelous actress who plays Didion, says at the opening: "This will happen to you."

     

This last weekend at Theatre off Jackson, the Missoula Oblongata, out of Baltimore, got us revved up for what's looking to be a killer week of experimental theatre and performance. And yes, yes...we can see the eyes of readers rolling already. More performance art! Well, here's the trick--if there's one thing we took away from Missoula Oblongata's The 50 Greatest Ladies and Gentlemen, it's that, quite the opposite of what you might expect, the off-the-wall stuff is (often) more approachable than the mainstream stuff you'd get at the Rep or Intiman or the like.