Cal Barnes

A fantastic second production from the Zenith Ensemble Theatre group and Actor/Director Aaron Lyons. Overall, the choice to not just produce, but to tackle Shel Silverstein's 'The Devil and Billy Markham' goes right along with Zenith's mission statement off the bat -- a dedication to raw, relentless truth telling, and to produce veraciously thought provoking theatre -- the epic poem is a beautiful and masterful piece of writing, and it's not soft on the story either, it's thought provoking, and d... full review

Great little show from the Theatre Unleashed team -- or should I say a series of sketches about 2 and a half minutes long each -- the good variety of comedy and drama pieces and constant shift kept my attention the whole time. Of course, this has its pros and cons, if you don't like a particular sketch take heart because it will be over in two minutes, if you do, it will also be over in two minutes, which for the ones I did like it left me wanting to see more of that particular story and characte... full review

A good, visceral, story by Noel Olken. I think it's tough in general to sink into one man shows, but Noel does a great job of really making his journey and environments tangible and engaging through good use of lighting, sound, props, action and staging. Condolences to Jeff Gardner's sound design, which was a major aspect to making this piece work so well. For the majority of the show, the audience acts as a friend sitting across a camp fire as Noel tells engaging stories that would be typica... full review

Chad does a great job of incorporating a wide array of elements and skills he has picked up in his life journey that make this piece a unique and engaging comedy-life lesson-drama, including rhythm, dance, time, space, stomp, theory, and personal experiences. He is a very talented performer, and has a real great ability to put people at ease very quickly, which must be an essential talent for the art of the one man. The honesty in the piece is an aspect that struck me as very enduring, and ins... full review

This play is lucid. It's tough to write a review on a piece that is so intrinsically well done, so I'll take a moment... I feel sometimes as a reviewer, critic, or friend, respectively, it's easy to try and focus on the aspects in which a play can improve, rather then on the work itself. Then, every once in a while, a piece will come along that is so visceral, so true to life, that it will leave us completely breathless, lost in another place, a younger time... this is one of those pieces. ... full review

Most of, if not all of the few problems I have with this piece lie almost solely with the writing. While the actual dialogue is good and well written for the most part, the majority of the story doesn't happen in the now, i.e. between the two characters (action, conflict)... but rather seems to string on in one monologue after the other, all the while not really connecting the two characters together. It's a structural thing. The script mulls through many interesting concepts and absurd scenarios... full review

This play is a hell of a thing... In this case, the subject matter alone is enough. It doesn't take much else to get most grown men squirming to their seats from the box office, but along with that comes it's own sets of dangers that often lays waste one mans shows. Disillusioned writing, over-dramatization, self indulgence... Ben exemplified none of these things. His calm and confident demeanor matched with a steady speech quickly set me at ease. Here was a man with capable hands... experienc... full review

Set on a chaotic, work-in-progress set somewhere, Amy Tofte's Flesh Eating Tiger is a borderline absurdist, play within a play, bad romance, that gives us clever glimpses into a world of problematic addictions and co-dependency. I felt the play started out on a slower note, performance and story wise. Trying to figure out the setting proved to be distracting, and absorbed most of my attention in the beginning. Once the play within the play idea was established, and the performances dropped in ... full review

Experimental as what all. The show is highly abstract/visceral with most of my time spent trying to figure out what was happening. Without a comprehensible language (gibberish), and an extremely subjective plot, I found it difficult to sink in and lose myself in the story. I'm sure the play is well executed if you know what your looking for i.e. akin to experimental theatre... in that case I'm sure it would be quite good, hence 'Not my Thing' is the more appropriate personal response than 'Didn't... full review