STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Seeing inside the “invisible World”

1/1/2014

0 Comments

 
​Enough already with The Crucible. Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem witch trials is as omnipresent in San Diego this fall as our sticky weather. It’s the backdrop for La Jolla Playhouse’s Kingdom City, in which a group of high school teenagers putting on the play begin to act out like Miller’s characters. Now it’s getting a sequel-of-sorts at Moxie Theatre, where two of The Crucible’s principal figures, Abigail and Mercy, are seen 10 years after the witch trials in Liz Duffy Adams’ A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World. But regardless of what you think about The Crucible, Moxie’s 10th-season-opening production, like Kingdom City, rises and falls on its own merits.
            A Discourse … is a period piece with director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg’s cast in circa-1700 costumes (nicely designed by Jennifer Brawn Gittings). The setting is a New England tavern run with full military vigor by Mercy Lewis (Wendy Waddell), who 10 years earlier had cried “Witch!”, thereby bringing about numerous executions. A surprise visitor to her door is fellow former “witch hunter” Abigail Williams (Jo Anne Glover), who has been off seeing the world and, more profoundly, seeing the tragic wrong in her and Mercy’s fatal indictments. Mercy doesn’t want to hear it. Nor does blowhard Reverend Peck (Nick Young), hick farmer Judah (Christopher Murphy) and tavern girl Rebekkah (Olivia Hicks), who embark upon a kangaroo court to convict Abigail as a witch herself. Into the fray comes an imposing stranger in black (Jorge Rodriguez), who all (perhaps even Abigail) believe is Satan himself.
            The impromptu trial is awkward and stagey, rescued by “Satan’s” pre-intermission pyrotechnics. In Act 2, when Abigail and the stranger are alone on the tavern roof, the play’s bombastic tenor abates and the revelations about worlds visible and invisible, and about what real atrocity the witch trials are covering for, become clear. Glover and Rodriguez unearth these discoveries thoughtfully and tenderly. The play as a whole, however, flirts with comedy and melodrama in equal measure before settling, so it seems, for pensive discourse. Its spirited cast aside, it could benefit from another draft.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page