Theater

PRIVATE EYES
By Steven Dietz
Directed by Leah Lowe
Tansill Theater

Private Eyes depicts the tangled web of relationships that exist between a man, his wife, and her lover. As the passions, jealousies, and regrets that drive each of the people implicated in its central triangle build, their emotions snowball and obscure the boundaries between the real and the fantastic, the actual and the imagined. Subtitled, “A Comedy of Suspicion,” Private Eyes explores love’s complexities, its extremes, its fragility, and the fears it provokes with dark wit and deep sympathy.

Underpaid. Overstretched. A wily Italian servant gets lucky in this classis 18th-century commedia, given a new treatment by Lee Hall. It is a story about a man’s travels throughout Italy on roads toward self-discovery while intermittently being redirected by murder and love.

COMPANY is an ensemble show that revolves around a central character, Bobby, who is in his 30s and unmarried. Bobby interacts with four married couples and one about-to-be-married couple who would like to see their good friend tie the knot, and with three single girlfriends who would like to marry him. While exploring the nature of commitment and companionship in an often bracing and heart-rending way, COMPANY nevertheless plays mostly as a very witty, contemporary comedy - though a comedy with sting. Most of the songs have become classics of the musical-theater repertoire.

UNCLE VANYA
By Anton Chekhov
Translated by Brian Friel
Directed by Amy Meyer '07
Tansill Theater

Uncle Vanya , one of the major plays by Russian writer Anton Chekhov, is about people trying to find value in their work and purpose in their lives.   The modest lives of Vanya and his niece Sonya are disrupted when her father the Professor and his young second wife Elena come to stay at their rural home.   Daily routine is upturned, Sonya falls in love with a local doctor, Vanya lusts after Elena, and their lives begin to collapse.   Yet in the midst of rejection and self-doubt passion and conviction and longing remain.   In his translation, playwright Brian Friel recaptures Chekhov's deep understanding of the laughter that arises through tears, and the hope that survives despair.   As one critic writes, Friel makes "a century-old play" into "a contemporary plea for mercy and grace."