It's nice to see openings settle-down for the coming weekend what with there being we'll over a dozen dhows opening at the end of September. As many of those 12 -14 shows continue their runs, only one more show opens this week. Originally, Seth Rudestsky's Big, Fat Broadway Show was scheduled to breeze through town this coming weekend, but that was pushed back to next April.
This leaves only one new show for this weekend, and it's one that I've been looking forward to all season thus far.
Chris Flieller directs Libby Amato and Mary C. McLellan in the US Premiere of John Goodrum's The Nightmare Room. Chris and Jane Flieller had an opportunity to talk with the playwright on a recent trip to England. Earlier on in the season, I was at In Tandem's Tenth Street Theatre to take in another show. Flieller was aglow talking about the culture of theatre in the UK. You kind of get that a lot with him . . . I love talking with him about upcoming productions because there's this deeply genuine intellectual enthusiasm for upcoming projects that he's able to draw-in to the conversation. It's like going to a movie theatre, seeing the previews and then kind of wishing that you were seeing THAT show instead of the featured presentation.
In any case, The Nightmare Room sounds interesting. Based on a very brief work by Arthur Conan Doyle, the play is an original piece playing on some of the themes from that story. One woman kidnaps another. They share a room with a vial of poison. Having finally settled-in to read the piece, I find that the story itself isn't much to speak of. It's brilliantly framed, but it's kind of a weak joke. There's a punchline. The thing is . . . it is precisely the sort of premise that works as well as it does by virtue of the drama that can be read into it. The original story was that of two men in a room with a vial of poison. A husband and the man who is his wife's lover plot to see who will end up with the woman in question. Goodrum flips the tale a bit. It's two women now. And in this case the women are played by two quite talented actresses. And it's that drama that a staged performance could really benefit from. Doyle's story fell entirely in a sort of O. Henry/BIll Gaines flip in the last 50 words or so, but a live dramatic thing with the right drama drawn out of two really decent actresses in an intimate space . . . THAT is going to be a lot more fun than what is probably one of Doyle's weaker pieces. Even if it shares the same kind of a weak ending, all the drama leading up to that should be a lot of fun.
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And just in case you might be interested in seeing what you might be in for, here's the promo video In Tandem developed for the show . . .
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In Tandem Theatre's production of The Nightmare Room runs October 5th through 21st. For ticket reservations, visit In Tandem Online of call 414-271-1371.
