Tom Woods
Special to The Citizen
Grade: B+
When you plunk down your $5 to see a Harlequin production at Cayuga Community College, you usually get a mixed bag of performance and plays. Some of the scripts will be hampered by less-than-experienced performances and some actors will struggle to make mediocre scripts interesting. It is the nature of the beast that a college cast working with unpublished scripts will sink as often as it swims.
Usually.
This is not the usual production. Director Robert Frame has a pair of playwrights whose work he is familiar with, a cast that includes some returning students and a group of very promising newcomers, and a terrific performance by a new student and veteran actor, James Cantu.
The plays, “Digital Love,” “Cells” and “Male Order” by Jack Gilhooley and “It Happened At King's Island” by Jay Huling, are uniformly inventive, literate and taut tales of a cautionary nature about the pursuit of love, or at least sex, in the 21st century.
Frame has done a fine job matching his actors to the plays. No one is over-matched, all are comfortable in their roles and with each other. Each actor has an opportunity to shine.
Tarin Bonvino, Kenny Baker and Brie O'Connell lead off the evening with solid work in “Digital Dating,” and Krista M. Haggett and Mike Davis do fine work in “Cells” with some nice support from Allyssa LaLonde and Alaric Robin.
The final pair of plays is the best, both in performance and quality of the scripts. Suzanne B. Smith and Sarah Driscoll subscribe to the last heterosexual dating service in San Francisco in “Male Order,” and Zac Darling turns in a stellar performance as their less-than-stellar date.
Cantu, a long time professional actor now taking classes at the college, is superb in the Huling play, turning in a solid, detailed performance. Esther Taylor-Weiss is wonderful as a pragmatic Ms. Fix-it, and Jacqueline Kocur turns in her best performance to date, a none-too-reliable fantasy girl.
There is some very good video and projection work by Mark Romig and Frame's lighting. Ginny Fennessy's scenic design and Robin Fragoman's sound are well conceived and well executed.
The plays are recommended for adult audiences
Grade: B+
When you plunk down your $5 to see a Harlequin production at Cayuga Community College, you usually get a mixed bag of performance and plays. Some of the scripts will be hampered by less-than-experienced performances and some actors will struggle to make mediocre scripts interesting. It is the nature of the beast that a college cast working with unpublished scripts will sink as often as it swims.
Usually.
This is not the usual production. Director Robert Frame has a pair of playwrights whose work he is familiar with, a cast that includes some returning students and a group of very promising newcomers, and a terrific performance by a new student and veteran actor, James Cantu.
The plays, “Digital Love,” “Cells” and “Male Order” by Jack Gilhooley and “It Happened At King's Island” by Jay Huling, are uniformly inventive, literate and taut tales of a cautionary nature about the pursuit of love, or at least sex, in the 21st century.
Frame has done a fine job matching his actors to the plays. No one is over-matched, all are comfortable in their roles and with each other. Each actor has an opportunity to shine.
Tarin Bonvino, Kenny Baker and Brie O'Connell lead off the evening with solid work in “Digital Dating,” and Krista M. Haggett and Mike Davis do fine work in “Cells” with some nice support from Allyssa LaLonde and Alaric Robin.
The final pair of plays is the best, both in performance and quality of the scripts. Suzanne B. Smith and Sarah Driscoll subscribe to the last heterosexual dating service in San Francisco in “Male Order,” and Zac Darling turns in a stellar performance as their less-than-stellar date.
Cantu, a long time professional actor now taking classes at the college, is superb in the Huling play, turning in a solid, detailed performance. Esther Taylor-Weiss is wonderful as a pragmatic Ms. Fix-it, and Jacqueline Kocur turns in her best performance to date, a none-too-reliable fantasy girl.
There is some very good video and projection work by Mark Romig and Frame's lighting. Ginny Fennessy's scenic design and Robin Fragoman's sound are well conceived and well executed.
The plays are recommended for adult audiences
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