Local theaters fairly quiet except for special events
It wasn’t so long ago that local theater in December overdosed on productions of “A Christmas Carol.” Nothing wrong with Dickens’ holiday classic. But six or seven overly cute Tiny Tims in one month can be enough to make a critic seek out less hazardous work.
This year, holiday community theater shows have just about evaporated. Do people not want to go to the theater during the Christmas season? I can’t imagine. Sitting in a sold-out house last week for Rainbow Company’s “The Wizard of Oz,” I got the impression families were starved for good stage entertainment. Adults are likely to have some time off, and I would think families are looking for things to do. Yet, apart from a special event here and there, our local theaters are quiet.
Pre-holiday entertainments, though, have been not just plentiful but worthwhile. The Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts just closed a stunning dance drama — “The Red Chair” — that explored the isolation of youth in a world full of new inventions that seem designed to help us get closer. The 16 dancers — all members of a single Jeneane Gallo Huggins class — showed surprising confidence, and moved as if they were concerned only with communication, and not technique (even though the technique was very much in evidence). The forays into dialogue were intriguing, and often made complete by movement. John Morris’ simple set, Edmund Green’s lighting and Natalee Graham and Katherin Currie-Diamond’s sound quietly overwhelmed you. It was the most accessible, most affecting dance program the academy has achieved in a long while. …
The three-week Samuel Beckett Festival ended its run over the weekend with performances of Test Market’s “Ventriloquist Sex” — a play by Rick Mitchell about a dummy who takes over his master — and Found Door’s “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow” — John Patrick Shanley’s look at two artists who have more in common than they are eager to admit. Both scripts were interesting, but both productions, while full of skill, were sloppily done. Overall, though, the six plays presented were, as a singular event, a spectacular undertaking by Test Market’s Ernest Hemmings. And each time I attended, I was surprised to see a good number of people there. It makes no sense. How can it be that Vegas — a town known for turning its back on the arts — is willing and able to support a festival of obscure plays? Could there be change in the air?
Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.