It is no accident that Bella Baird, the central figure in Adam Rapp’s compelling, though arch, play The Sound Inside, is a professor of creative writing at Yale University. For Rapp, himself a former novelist, needed a character obsessed with literature, meticulous with words, someone whose self-conscious dialogue sounds carefully composed, as if written down before it is … [Read more...]
The Civil War, played for laughs: Boca Stage’s sharp, funny ‘Ben Butler’
Comedy depends on the element of surprise. And the most surprising thing about Ben Butler, Richard Strand’s Civil War tug-of-war over a runaway slave who seeks asylum at a Union army post, is that the dire situation is played for laughs. The play is full of verbal wit, delivered with verve by a capable four-member cast at Boca Stage, under the crafty direction of the … [Read more...]