Tagged: The Bard's Town

The Bard’s Town Theatre continues its season of notable newer work with Jonathan Marc Sherman’s 2007 “Things We Want,” a satisfying dark comedy about three emotionally-stunted adult brothers still living in their childhood home while attempting to figure out how to overcome their various fragilities before they kill themselves or each other. That sounds heavier than the play actually is—tonally, it’s a gallows humor-charged fight between the id and the super-ego with flashes of brilliance that resists taking its characters seriously enough to let them fall apart in any kind of realistic disintegration.

Neurotic writers manipulating their self-aware fictional characters isn’t a new device, but unlike similar stories, The Bard’s Town’s funny and engaging “Chasing Ophelia” isn’t concerned with picking the navel of the writer’s creative processes or artistic tensions. For a romantic comedy, this play’s concerns are remarkably, well, theological: is an unseen, omniscient being really in charge of us, and how do we deal with feeling abandoned by him?

In just two seasons, The Bard’s Town Theatre has assembled a strong ensemble of regular performers—so regular, in fact, that some have taken to working in the restaurant downstairs, so on any given opening night you might order your pre-show Much Ado About Empanadas from the same actor who will have you laughing  or crying on stage upstairs.

“By and large, our audience still comes into our theater without any preconceived notions, as in, they’re not sure what they’re getting,” says executive artistic director (and restaurant co-owner) Doug Schutte with a laugh. “I think that’s a good thing.”

Christmas stories take the larger Nativity narrative—the arrival of an ambassador of peace, goodwill and redemption—and put the metaphor to work on individual transformations, those personal moments when generosity of spirit triumphs over our meaner, selfish natures. The best results are both heartwarming and as unique as the transformed individuals themselves.