Summerworks – a bit of a round up, reviews to come

So far I’ve seen 4 shows at Summerworks.  I haven’t had time to write them up, but I thought I’d give you the one-paragraph version here, and then do the proper write-ups sometime when I have time to breath…

Rendez-vous with home – Good show, nice audience interaction/participation, cool to learn a bit about Haiti.  I was happy to have gone, I think it’s totally worth the hour of your time, and the $10 admission fee, but it didn’t blow me away, it hasn’t sat with me and made me think days after and things like that.

Dust  – Really bloody good.  I would even say excellent.  The actors were bang-on, the script was interesting, the directing was good.  This is definitely one to check out – with the caveat that it’s not an ‘easy’ play.  It’s great to watch, but sometimes it’s hard to hear the words and think about the content.  There are laughs, but this show isn’t a comedy.

Kid Cosmic – Weird but good.  It felt a little bit like it was trying to be the next Rocky Horror Show, but without the (really fun) “sexual perversion” bits.  It’s a musical about a sci-fi comic book hero, so you know it’s not conventional.  Both the leads have great voices, so it’s a pleasure to listen to, even if the content is a bit weird for a musical.

Flux – Another musical, only, more operatic this time.  I enjoyed it, it was good.  Not amazing, but good.  But, to be fair, I’m not a huge musical person, I enjoy them, but don’t fall all over myself for them.  The staging was a bit odd, players facing the audience the whole time, made feeling any emotion a bit difficult, made the piece a bit emotive, but that’s okay, it matched the style of music (Scottish themed opera music?)

 

The other shows I plan to see are:  Lauchie, Liza, and Rory, That Gay Guy, Doom: 2012 and, of course, the Pastor Phelps Project

If you’ve seen anything and would be interested in writing it up (as short as a paragraph, as long as 700 words) drop me an email at megan at mooneyontheatre dot com.  (Like my vain attempts at averting internet spam?).  I’d love to hear from different people and have their thoughts up here too.