Critics Rave
THEATER REVIEW(New York Times); This Time, a Not-So-Sweet Prince
The members of the Frog and Peach Theater Company have decided that ''Hamlet'' is pretty much a guy thing: a lethal game between a young man and his stepfather who are out to destroy each other and who end up obliterating their entire family, along with another hapless family that just happened to be around. Turning the play into a thriller of this kind requires very different pacing from the usual classical productions and a marked change in the personalities of some key characters. more...
Time Out Review, Hamlet
By William Shakespeare. Dir. Lynnea Benson. With Ted Zurkowski, Austin Pendleton and ensemble
cast. Theater at West Park Presbyterian Church. Hamlet is a hard play to pull off. The longest
and perhaps most familiar of Shakespeare's
tragedies, it has a convoluted story that
proves difficult to keep on track. more...
Austin Pendleton Stars as Claudius in OOB
Hamlet
Austin Pendleton, who starred on Broadway last season in the
revival of The Diary of Anne Frank , will play Claudius and the
Ghost in a new production of Hamlet by New York's Frog & Peach Theatre Company. more...
Frog & Peach Presents Much Ado, with Earle
Hyman
Much Ado About Nothing will be the latest presentation by New
York's Frog & Peach Theatre Company, which, for the last four
years, has presented free Shakespeare at the Upper West Side's
Theatre at the West Park Church. more...
Hamlet
Following up on their production of Shakespeare's King John last year, the Frog & Peach Theatre Co. boldly
presented Hamlet, directed by the company's producer, Lynnea Benson. This company is notable for providing free
theatre and is making a name for itself with its accessible, no-nonsense productions of the Bard of Avon. more...
Gore Hounds,
Struggling toward the dark
Gore Hounds follows a Pirandello outline out of the Grand Guignol: three slackers are heavily into cheap horror videos.
They do little beyond hanging around in a filthy basement with a TV, VCR, beer, and occasional drugs. (A visit from a
girlfriend is like a visit from an alien life form.) They play a snuff movie, in which a girl is supposedly murdered ``live''
and another girl escapes -- right out of the TV set. more...
For good measure,
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is one of the darker of Shakespeare's comedies, and while some of it is very funny, there's quite a bit
of nasty business going on. The Duke (Hal Smith-Reynolds) leaves town, putting Angelo (Jason Kuschner) in charge.
Angelo has a dark streak a mile wide, and a past just waiting to haunt him. He also considers himself to be an immovable
object, but he hasn't reckoned with Isabella (Maureen Hennigan), an irresistible force in her own right. And the Duke
hasn't really left, he hangs around in disguise to see what develops. But there are serious life issues raised here: fidelity,
honor, passion, authority, responsibility -- but they are leavened with a little vaudeville. more...
Richard III
Frog & Peach Theatre Company's Richard III hits the nail right on the head: this is as accessible and focused a production of Shakespeare's messy play as any I've ever seen. Director Lynnea Benson has cut the play masterfully, placing the emphasis squarely on Richard's delicious treachery. With the interval smartly placed right before Richard's crowning, the two parts of the play neatly correspond to his rise and then his fall. more...
Slay-ride,
Macbeth
Ambition and lust for power, assassination plots and reliance on the assertions of fortune-tellers, bloody feuds, rivalries,
and alliances-all current occurrences, and all covered by William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Frog & Peach Theatre
Company's production was a stark, simple version that got its juice from the vigorous performances of its cast, as played
out on a set with hard, metallic-looking wall surfaces done in a steely black and white. more...
Too good to be true,
As You Like It
One of the mysteries and glories of Shakespeare is that the whole is not only great but almost always greater than the sum
of its parts. No matter how tangled his plot or intricate his syntax, by the time he sums up at evening's end, his characters
have so touched the heart and their quirks and quandaries have so beguiled the time that actors and audience, basking as
one in the afterglow, can have no doubt that morning's at seven, God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world. At least
that's true in a good Shakespearean production-and the Frog & Peach's As You Like It was a good one indeed. more...
How do you see the character of Richard II?
Pendleton: Ask me how I don't see him... One thing I've learned over the years in playing so many Shakespearean roles -- three of them in two plays at Frog & Peach -- more...
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