BLIND AND SAVAGE

posted by James Reel

This is a great week for theater in Tucson. Besides a wonderful production of Love’s Labours Lost, which opened last night at the UA and which I’ll review next week, there are two other plays running right now that require your immediate attention:

Acting isn't just a matter of delivering lines; actors must also listen and react while others are speaking. Two terrific productions that opened last weekend give actors abundant opportunities to demonstrate the art of listening, for each play is essentially a sequence of monologues, often amusing, sometimes harrowing. Borderlands Theater is offering _Blind Date_, by the Argentine-born, Miami-based Mario Diament. The play is a series of, for the most part, chance encounters, many of them on a park bench presided over by a blind writer modeled on Jorge Luis Borges. … The characters in John Patrick Shanley's _Savage in Limbo_ feel caged, and they're desperate to get out but have no idea where to find the door, let alone the key to the lock. Live Theatre Workshop's late-night series is presenting Shanley's so-called "concert play"; there's no music in it, but it is a set of spoken solos and some ensemble numbers, all variations on a theme of dissatisfaction.

You’ll find the full review here, in the Tucson Weekly.