Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: ABINGDON LENGTH: Medium
It is the first mystery produced at Barter since Richard Rose became Barter's artistic director in the fall of 1992.
It was produced at Barter the first time in 1943, and originally produced at New York's Empire Theatre, which has provided Barter with some of its furnishings. When the Empire was about to be demolished, Barter founder Robert Porterfield lined up a convoy of actors and theater workers to truck its interiors to Abingdon. Barter still uses its red and gold wall coverings, lighting fixtures and other artifacts.
"Priestly uses the image that telling the truth is like a car speeding around a corner at 60 miles an hour," Rose said. "Once that happens, there's no stopping it. You go places you don't want to go and cannot avoid the danger and destruction that lies on the side of the road."
In "Dangerous Corner," family members and friends who worked together in a publishing firm reveal facts about themselves and a man who apparently committed suicided a year earlier. It is set in an English country home in the 1940s, with three women and four men who think they know each other finding themselves shocked at what they learn about one another.
"On another level, the play is about group psychology," Rose said. "When families get together for a reunion, everyone fits into the group in a certain way. ... The jokester is always the jokester, the outcast is always the outcast, and so on."
But as the plot of "Dangerous Corner" unravels, he said, "they no longer fit together in the same way. Subsequently, they don't know how to relate to each other anymore. In this way, Priestly comments on the way people live, on human psychology, and he does so in the form of a mystery."
"Dangerous Corner" is performed at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8:30 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Reservations and further information are available by calling 1-800-368-3240.
by CNB