- RECKLESS at Rhodes
I exchanged some big openings this week for a chance to catch a couple of one-offs and re-evaluate an old favorite at an old haunt.
I first encountered Craig Lucas’ Reckless when I was a student at Rhodes and it was fun to visit with this darkly comic, distinctly American answer to Candide in the place where I discovered it. And Candide for that matter.
David Jilg’s gently surreal production effectively tells the story of Rachel a happy middle class wife and mother who goes on the run on Christmas Eve after her husband confesses he’s hired a hit man to kill her. Reckless was a belated Christmas treat that looked so good it was easy to get lost in the visuals and not notice that everything started at a fever pitch and stayed there. This is a show about a woman who can’t stop talking until, after enough horror, she finally does. The director almost has to be a conductor to pull it off. Still awfully glad I caught it before it went away. And sorry to have missed Hay Fever at the U of M, but Lucas’ work arrives less often and I just haven’t been in a Cowardy mood lately.
Church & State:
Java Cabana hosts a “new kind of political theater” that doesn’t seem all that new. Or theatrical.
