Tuesday, April 22, 2014

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey POTENT PRECIPITATION



If you haven’t been to a Hub Theatre performance, you have no excuse. They’re a savvy, new company whose every show, every performance is pay-what-you-can. They choose unusual scripts and play the heck out of them. Their current production of Richard Greenberg’s smart, brooding THREE DAYS OF RAIN (through April 19th) proves their mettle.

Director Daniel Bourque’s cast makes every piece of Greenberg’s puzzle stand out in relief, every clever quip land precisely where it should. Act I introduces us to the charming misfit son of a famous architect. He’s by his own admission “not a people person” and he tends to disappear when the going gets tough. John Geoffrion makes him just prickly enough for us to see how he might infuriate his sister or his best friend. Yet his “exquisite perversity” endears him to us wholeheartedly.

Act II is thirty-some years earlier, so the responsible sister of the first act (Mary Seeger Mason) now plays her unpredictable, high-strung mother. Tim Hoover, the siblings’ lifelong friend in Act I is now his own father in crisis. For an actor, THREE DAYS OF RAIN is a juicy opportunity to play two quite different, yet related roles. For an audience, it’s the chance to see how it’s done and I’m happy to say Hub Theatre does it elegantly.