Two plays discussed in this week's Theater Talk re-imagine two classics. "After Miss Julie" takes Swedish playwright August Strindberg's very dark "Miss Julie" and moves it to Britain in 1945 after a Labor Party Victory. In both plays Julie has a one night affair with a man from a lower class and ultimately sees suicide as the only way to move forward. That opened last night at the Irish Classical Theatre and runs through March 22.
In "White Boy Othello" Subversive Theatre's Kurt Schneidermann re-casts Othello, not as a Moor among Europeans, but as a white among blacks. This has been done at least once before (with Patrick Stewart in the lead role) but it is still explosive as white actor Jeffrey Coyle is playing the moor opposite an all-African American cast. It's at the Manny Freid Playhouse on Great Arrow Avenue through March 7th.
Closings this weekend include the romantic comedy "Beau Jest" (Jewish Repertory Theatre), "Spring Awakening" (Medaille College), and "Burying the Bones" (Paul Robeson Theatre at the African American Cultural Center).
And talk about "burying the lead" Theater Talk breaks the story that Anthony Chase will play the character Lady Bracknell in Buff State's upcoming "The Importance of Being Ernest." You can see that Oscar Wilde favorite this weekend (last performance is Sunday at 2) at the Grange Theatre in Hamburg.
