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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Quick Hit Theater Review: Molly Sweeney -- Long Wharf

 Jonathan Hogan, Simone Kirby and Ciarán O'Reilly. Photo T. Charles Erickson
Molly Sweeney
By Brian Friel
Directed by Charlotte Moore
The Irish Repertory Theatre Production
at Long Wharf Theatre

Summary:
Molly Sweeney (Simone Kirby) has been blind since she was a baby, but her husband, Frank (Ciaran O'Reilly), takes her on his latest cause du jour and convinces Mr. Rice (Jonathan Hogan) to consider her for surgery that could restore her sight. Molly, who is quite content living in the world seen through her other senses agrees to please Frank. Rice think he may have been handed an opportunity to redeem the career and reputation he lost when he suffered a breakdown. Each has a motive for the surgery, but is gaining sight really the best thing for Molly, now more than 40 years old?

Highlights:
Very good performances. Kirby makes her character's sightless world very vivid to us. O'Reilly infuses the more serious script with some humor and Hogan is a perfect foil. Particularly nice is James Morgan's set, split into three areas backdropped by windows where each of the characters stays, not really interacting with the others, as they tell their versions of the story.

Lowlights:
The soliloquies get a bit tedious.

Other information:
The production runs on Long Wharf's Stage II, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven,  through Oct. 16. For tickets: www.longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282.
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Lauren Yarger with playwright Alfred Uhry at the Mark Twain House. Photo: Jacques Lamarre)

My Bio

Lauren Yarger has written, directed and produced
numerous shows and special events for both secular and Christian audiences. She co-wrote a Christian musical version of “A Christmas Carol” which played to sold-out audiences of over 3,000 in Vermont and was awarded the 2000 Vermont
Bessie (theater and film awards) for “People’s Choice for Theatre.”

Yarger trained for three years in the Broadway
League’s Producer Development Program, completed the Commercial Theater Institute's Producing Three-Day Training and produced a one-woman musical about Mary Magdalene that toured nationally and closed with an off-Broadway
run.

She was a Fellow at the National Critics Institute at the O'Neill
Theater Center in Waterford, CT. She writes reviews of Broadway and off-Broadway theater (the only ones you can find in the US with an added Christian perspective) at http://reflectionsinthelight.blogspot.com/. She
is editor of The Connecticut Arts Connection (http://ctarts.blogspot.com), CT Press Club's award winner of first place for web editing and second place in feature writing for the web in 2012.

She is a contributing editor for BroadwayWorld.com and is a theater reviewer for the Manchester Journal-Inquirer. She previously served as Connecticut theater editor
for CurtainUp.com and as Connecticut and New York reviewer for American Theater Web. Yarger is a book reviewer for Publishers Weekly and freelances for other sites. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

She is a freelance writer and playwright and member of The Drama Desk, The Outer Critics Circle, The American Theater Critics Association and The League of Professional Theatre Women. She served as a judge for the SDX Awards presented
by the Society of Professional Journalists. She also is a member of the Connecticut Critics Circle (awards committee).

A former newspaper editor and graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, Yarger also worked in arts management for the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts,
the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and served for nine years as the Executive Director of Masterwork Productions, Inc. She lives with her husband in West Granby, CT. They have two adult children.

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