Okay folks, it’s Halloween weekend so go see something spooky. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde may be a wee bit precious, but it’s laden with suspense and solid acting. And but for a few odds & ends it looks fantastic.
If you prefer tales of the undead the New Moon Theatre Company opens Look Away: A Civil War Zombie Tragedy tonight. Or if you just want something creepy, kookie, and altogether ookie you might want to check out Gorey Stories, a somewhat troubled musical based on the stories and illustrations of Edward Gorey.
Theatergoers looking for something a bit more substantial may want to wander on down to the Hattiloo theater to take in a performance of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.
Colored Girls—a poem in 20 parts performed by seven nameless black women dressed in every color of the visible spectrum—is one of those plays I always expect to have aged badly. For having been created in 1975, at the apogee of women’s liberation and “black is beautiful”— Ntozake Shange’s stories of trial, triumph, and tribulation is always disconcertingly up to date.
Personally, I’ve always thought the characters’ ultimate flight into religion was something a cop out for an author who needed to tidy up her more interesting ambiguities but on most occasions even that can’t dull the edge of this groundbreaking piece of non-linear dramatic literature.
Also opening at Playhouse on the Square this Halloween weekend,: The Toymaker’s Apprentice. Yes, a Christmas show. And that’s all I have to say about that.
