![]() ![]() If you’ve had enough of the norm and are looking for a nice laugh, check out these silly street signs that dared to put spin on things. There’s just something awesome about finding humor where you least expect it, which is why we're giving you this collection of funny street signs from around the world. Lighting designer Kenneth Posner also rates praise for washing the color out of this environment without robbing the characters of theirs.Whether they're intentionally trying to be funny or not, spying a hilarious street sign or road marker out of the blue is always priceless. With its complex interweaving of the sounds of war, nature and classical music, this is one show in which the sound designer - John Gromada - more than earns his credit. The gifted Taylor, who plays Bach’s first Suite for Unaccompanied Cello with heart-melting authority, is the sole holdover from Chicago. ![]() It’s a solid presentation, well acted by the four key players, though LaPaglia is a revelation as the brawny, garrulous Angel and Stram is bone-chilling as the monk. The production is one big, grim, Charles Addams leer in the face of death. Robert Falls, who staged the premiere of this play last spring at his home roost, the Goodman Theater, goes for the farce but also isn’t afraid of the horrific. Jesus “must die for our art to go on,” the monk says coolly, and there’s no question that Tesich regards that “art” as cruelly complicitous in the end of humanity his play describes. The monk is a shocking creation: In a monologue that cunningly turns in on Tesich himself, the monk compares the Second Coming to being a playwright and thinking you’re doing all right until Shakespeare suddenly reappears on the scene. Arriving at the monastery where Jesus is being held and tortured, they are greeted by a monk (Henry Stram) who encourages them to dispatch the prisoner as quickly as possible. Having been captured, Angel and Al agree to assassinate Jesus ( Andy Taylor), who has returned to earth as a cellist. The second act begins with a visual joke and a hilarious “Who’s on First?”-like riff that leads to the play’s dazzling centerpiece. Wandering this rubble-strewn landscape like “Waiting for Godot’s” Vladimir and Estragon, Angel and Al strike up a similar master-servant relationship.Īngel is strictly Noo Yawk but he quickly becomes the ardent student, soaking up Al’s knowledge of art and music, ultimately identifying composers and artists with accuracy and concision. Like Shaw and Stoppard, Tesich can’t resist imparting his own intellect to all of his characters when it works, the device becomes part of their charm. In exchange for his liberation and an education in high culture, Angel agrees to pull the cart to freedom beyond the border. He’s approached by Al (Byron Jennings), who is pulling a cart filled with masterpieces pillaged from bombed-out museums. “Road” opens in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with the much-tattooed Angel (Anthony LaPaglia) standing atop a traffic barricade, head in noose, gag in mouth. Set in an unnamed “place of Civil War,” the play abounds in allusions to Beckett, Brecht and burlesque (though it also includes a shameless reference to the atrocities taking place today in Tesich’s homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina). With “Road,” Tesich goes for broke with a symbol-laden black satire that takes in high art, low comedy and the Second Coming of Christ. The cynicism embedded in Tesich’s plays is much easier to take in his allegorical works than in the ones that, like his last, “The Speed of Darkness,” attempt a realism that typically translates as bloated, melodramatic insincerity. ![]()
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