Saturday, October 26, 2013

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey STIRRING UP TROUBLE



Happy Medium Theatre’s gruesome BREWED by Scott T. Barsotti (bubbling through Halloween plus 2 days more for good measure) is billed as “a play about gatherings, sacrifice and the dark art of obligation.” Six sisters who do not get along plan to bury the hatchet for one night to reconvene for a dramatic announcement. They’re a scrappy bunch, brawling at the drop of a homophone, squaring off like gladiators, so you know it won’t go well. As Daniel Day Lewis famously intoned, “There will be blood!”

Director Mikey DiLoreto’s cast chop, stir and purée each other like master chefs, with especially harrowing work from Kiki Samko as the psycho whisperer, the only one who can calm their tragically truncated sister (a wonderfully wild Lauren Foster), from Lindsay Eagle as the spectacularly egomaniacal NASCAR winner and from Elizabeth Battey as the wacky, intrepid interloper.

Here’s my dilemma. The sisters aren’t witches because they would be able to do and undo spells if they were. Ditto if they were supernatural. What are they then, wreaking havoc and violence at every turn? I have it! They must be men!