By Carol Van Zoeren In the program’s Director’s Message, Brian Touchette states his objective is to immerse the audience in the world of the play. He begins even before the play starts by cleverly presenting the curtain speech as a letter from Nurse Ratched, welcoming the audience to participate in this “group therapy session” while...
By Mike Logothetis Somewhere at the confluence of Poe, Kafka and Tarantino lies Martin McDonagh’s spellbinding play,The Pillowman. While some would label this as black comedy, I believe it is more dramatic realism. The feelings I had when processing the Chapel Street Players production on my walk home from the theater dealt more with unhealthy...
By Guest Blogger, Kevin Regan Kevin Regan is the Director of Multimedia and a player with CSz Philadelphia as well as a sometime performer, producer and other “p-words” with Wilmington’s City Theater Company. You have a mere three chances to see Mr. Marmalade by Noah Haidle, at Chapel Street Players in Newark this weekend. That...
Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play, The Real Thing, is a beautifully constructed kaleidoscope which shows us how relationships ebb and flow and gives us the fly-on-the-wall view that would never be possible to have in real life. The play has so many British cultural references that the cast took the challenge and all mastered some very...
The Chapel Street Players’ (CSP) 49th FUNdraiser production is the horror-comedy midnight musical, The Rocky Horror Show. Richard O’Brien’s cult classic camp fest is about two conservative lovebirds (Brad Majors and Janet Weiss) who get entangled with a group of out-of-this-world freaks, led by the self-proclaimed sweet transvestite Dr. Frank N’ Furter. After leaving their...
Although Neil Simon wrote The Gingerbread Lady in 1970, many of its themes – dysfunctional relationships, co-dependency, alcoholism, unemployment, and the fear of growing older – will resonate with today’s audiences. All of these topics are fully explored during the dramedy now playing at Chapel Street Players. Evy, a once celebrated cabaret singer, returns to...
Beauty Queen of Leenane is a neat and tight play by Martin McDonaugh, a child of Irish parents born in London where his family had emigrated just as the families of his Leenane must do in the 1989 setting. The characters he presents are also quite finely drawn. Maureen, played with great energy by Kerry...
Feeling silly? In the mood to shed a layer of skin and let out your inner monster? Then Chapel Street Players’ production of House of Frankenstein by Martin Downing (directed by Scott F. Mason) would be your best bet for entertainment this weekend! Vampires, werewolves, and other freaks roam the stage of this whimsical play,...
Pulling off a Tennessee Williams play about southern social mores in the 1950s wasn’t easy in the 1950s, but doing it in 2011, on the 56th anniversary of the play’s first production, is quite a feat. Jamie Cunningham is most ambitious in trying to portray a culture not his own with its intricate balance of...
What incredible risks Anthony Bosco took for the new Chapel Street Players production of Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire! First of all, the cast were almost all new to CSP. Secondly, he was taking on a play which the playwright himself had just adapted for a movie with Nicole Kidman. And thirdly, he is the...
