Articles tagged with: Steve Haggard
Role Playing: Mierka Girten, actor with MS, knows wound behind her character’s scars
Interview: In the most intimate and empathic way, Mierka Girten connects with Trinket Dugan, the character she plays with disarming honesty in Tennessee Williams’ “The Mutilated” at A Red Orchid Theatre. Actor and character share deep, physical, albeit invisible, wounds.The big difference is that while Trinket conceals her mastectomy – her mutilation — in sorrow and shame, Girten talks openly about the multiple sclerosis she has struggled with since her days as a drama student at DePaul University.
Role Playing: Steve Haggard, aiming at reality, strikes raw core of grieving gay man in ‘Martyr’
Interview: He’s buttoned up, reticent, visibly shielded against the world, the new guy who wanders into a gay bar in lower Manhattan. And Steve Haggard, who charges this muted character with an irresistible blend of charm and pathos in Grant James Varjas’ drama “Accidentally, Like a Martyr” at A Red Orchid Theatre, says the lost soul he plays seems so authentic because, in truth, he is.
‘Accidentally, Like a Martyr’ at A Red Orchid: Stranger walks into gay bar, and tragedy follows
Review: Many adjectives tumble to mind in my fingers-over-the-keyboard wait for one that might sum up Grant James Varjas’ play “Accidentally, Like a Martyr,” a sleeper of a smash at A Red Orchid Theater. The descriptive finalists: Brilliant, enthralling, magical, cool. ★★★★★
‘Lear’ at Chicago Shakespeare: A worthy king rules over concept that Frankly doesn’t sing
Review: Were it not for Larry Yando’s crushing turn in the title role, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s “King Lear” would amount to little more than an ill-advised concept played out by a cast that largely misses both the pulse and the pressure of Shakespeare’s language. Setting aside for the moment this production’s manifold curiosities, at its core reigns the regal figure of Yando, whose portrait of Lear – as imperious fool stripped to his humiliated soul – is an experience not to be missed. ★★★
‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ lights the open sky with crisp mirth at American Players
Review: Traditional criticism hasn’t been altogether kind to Shakespeare’s early comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which is often portrayed as a workshop effort that set the stage for the Bard’s later, more sophisticated riffs on the madness of love. But this summer’s sharply drawn, energetic and sly production at American Players Theatre makes a savvy, satisfying case for a comedy worth catching. ★★★★
