After thoroughly enjoying our opening of Sleeper last night, Arts writer Margaret Quamme applauded the show in writing. Here are some highlights.
Sleeper is a taut, emotionally demanding drama set in the years following 9/11. Available Light Theatre’s fluid, dynamic production of David Ian Lee’s play never lets its tension subside over the almost 2 1/2 hours of running time …
Lee has a gift for high-energy, jumpy, and often gleefully politically incorrect dialogue … At their most emotionally confused, the characters come across as intelligent, even if their brains aren’t getting them anywhere …
Director Matt Slaybaugh deftly locates the gap between the glib words and the less coherent feelings beneath them. Using a minimal but effective set, he keeps several scenes going simultaneously without losing the flow of any of them …
Eads and Weaver are particularly strong as the two lead women, finding depths and complexities in what could have been a simple dichotomy of liberal versus conservative …
Brant is quietly effective as a man increasingly in over his head. Welsh is touching both as Rachel’s husband and as Teri’s father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s …
Jordan Fehr is believably conflicted as a Muslim with ties to both London and his native Afghanistan …
The Available Light production grounds the more theatrical elements of the play in realistic character development, with the result that the smaller daily conflicts of the play come across as being as significant as the larger more world-shattering ones.
You can read her whole piece here.
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