Carroll University’s Summer Rep Series 2015 features a pair of productions set in New York. The series opens tonight with the opening of Jonathan Larson’s classic rock musical RENT. The pop musical from the last decade of last century is almost impossible to stage with the right mixture of aesthetics, but there’s almost always something appealing about any production.
That show is being staged this summer in rotating rep with John Patrick Shanley’s Women of Manhattan. The play debuted a little over a decade before RENT. One New York critic referred to it as, “90 minutes of cappuccino chatter.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Shanley had also written Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Savage In Limbo. He would go on to write the church-based drama Doubt. 90 minutes of idle chatter between wealthy, young women in a mid-’80s Manhattan from Shanley might be a lot of fun. The promo copy from Carroll compares it to Sex and the City. Make of that what you will...
Carroll University’s Summer Rep Series 2015 opens tonight, Jun. 18 with RENT. Women of Manhattan opens tomorrow. For more information, visit the Carroll Players online.
