SHIRLEY VALENTINE
at the Wellington Theater
This predictability is pretty much a natural consequence of the show’s format and ambitions. It’s a monologue, after all; and because it’s a monologue it can’t offer us much in the way of action. There’s very little to see here, beyond Shirley’s making dinner in scene one and taking swigs out of a bottle of mineral water in act two. The showing is incidental; the telling is all–and telling is all rhythm.
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Opaa.
Don’t expect hip-hop at the Blind Parrot production of Len Jenkin’s Dark Ride, either. Jenkin is way beyond anything as danceable as that. His script goes for a kind of atonal baroque sound instead: something like what you might expect to hear if you tore up an old-master score, shuffled the pieces, taped them back together, and played the result.
