American Conservatory Theater — Reviews

With ACT’s new production of Edward Albee’s Seascape we have a fairly obscure work by a major playwright, despite the fact that it won the Pulitzer in 1974. The play’s mood is gentle and comic with few hints of the acid-in-the-face histrionics of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, and his late-career, screech-fest, The Goat. And so we should ask, or at least wonder, what’s in this for new Artistic Director Pam McKinnon in her first directorial outing for her first year on the job.

ReviewsJohn WilkinsFebruary 8, 2019Edward Albee, 'Seascape', Pam McKinnon, ACT, American Conservatory TheaterComment

ACT's 'Men On Boats' Is An Illusion Of True Engagement

Men in Boats is as an incredible failure of imagination. The actual story of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 trip down the Colorado River is stirring and complex, a moment in history worthy of investigation, critique, celebration, whatever your game. Yet you can’t get to any of that without a real vision or philosophy of history. And a real vision would never reduce these complex people to stick figure goofballs.

What we get from Men on Boats is an illusion of real engagement and experimentation. It’s selling radical critique, revisionist history, feminist ideals, and theatrical invention, but it’s all packaging without soul or sense or care, just idle gestures to make us feel that something has happened.

ReviewsJohn WilkinsNovember 9, 2018ACT, American Conservatory Theater, Jaclyn BackhausComment

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