THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM makes TOP 10 BEST SHOWS of 2008 in the Triangle Theatre Review and ANGELS IN AMERICA named TOP 10 BEST show in Triangle Theatre Review, The Independent Weekly and The News and Observer!
"ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART TWO: PERESTOIKA (Theatre in the Park, April 11-27 ) PART TWO is the stronger, more focused, more compelling chapter of prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s two-part “Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” In PERESTROIKA, many of the more thinly sketched dramatis personae of ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES evolve from mere caricatures to full-blooded characters. Consequently, PART TWO reaps the fruit of the dramatic seeds sewn in MILLENNIUM APPROACHES. Under the sure-handed direction of TIP development director Adam Twiss, Eric Carl and Mathew-Jason Willis strike sparks with their crackling characterizations of AIDS sufferer Prior Walter and his long-time partner Louis Ironson, who takes a powder when Prior’s emotional tide is at its lowest ebb. Willis, whose character was reduced to an all-too-familiar swish caricature in MILLENNIUM APPROACHES, really spreads his dramatic wings as he cruelly abandons the stricken Prior for the dishy, but still deeply closeted Republican lawyer and Mormon fundamentalist Joe Pitt (Jesse R. Gephart) -- and then Louis recoils with horror when he finds out that his new main squeeze is a protégée of the ultra-conservative Roy Cohn (Dr. Kenny C. Gannon). If properly harnessed, the dramatic pyrotechnics on view in the Ira David Wood III Pullen Park Theatre could go a long way toward solving the national energy crisis."
"THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM (Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy, June 18-29): Vivaciously staged by Hot Summer Nights director and choreographer Matthew-Jason Willis as his valedictory production before he returned to New York City, THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM got a big bounce from dynamic dance routines that incorporate elements of square dancing, Irish step dancing, and an eclectic selection of other steps. THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM starred dashing leading man Will Ray as the musical’s charismatic two-faced title character -- gallant gentleman Jamie Lockhart and his infamous alter ego, that notorious rapscallion, the Bandit of the Woods -- and consummate comedienne Andrea Schulz Twiss as the Bandit’s next victim, Rosamund Musgrove, the young romance-starved daughter of dim-witted but fabulously wealthy Mississippi planter Clement Musgrove (Don Bridge) and despised stepdaughter of his avaricious and amorous, but famously ugly second wife, Salome (Susan Durham-Lozaw). HSN veteran Matthew Addison transforms the part of Goat into a star turn; and TIP veterans David McNeil Henderson, Mike Raab, and Lindsay Leb are hilarious as the murderous Harp Gang — Little Harp, Big Harp, and The Raven — who are hell-bent on relieving Clement Musgrove of his fortune — and his life — before the Bandit of the Woods can beat them to the punch."
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