THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606110134
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: Montague Gammon III
LENGTH: 106 lines
The ``Mars and Venus Monodrama Festival'' at Regent University showcased some promising student talents that merit continuing attention.
This was the second part of the new student-run Arts Celebration and Theatre Summer Series. This weekend, the Regent stage area will be converted into a Comedy Coffee House; during the rest of the summer, the theater series will include a dance concert, an art exhibit, a film festival, another coffee house and productions of full-length, one-act and 10-minute plays.
A dozen monologues made up ``Mars and Venus.'' There were plenty of amusing and affecting moments, through relatively few of the pieces were really about the ``Battle of the Sexes'' that the initial publicity promised.
Three performers stood out from a group of 10 talented students. One in particular displayed a rare combination of writing and acting ability.
Michelle Hoppe has distinguished herself in three other Regent productions and finished the first half of this show with a funny, intelligently approached rendition from Christopher Durang's ``Laughing Wild.'' Durang specializes in the creation of self-absorbed obsessives, and Hoppe sharply captured her character's earnest egocentricity.
After the intermission, Bruce Long delivered another monologue from the same Durang piece. Long seems particularly adept at the sort of intense exaggeration that lends itself well to Durang's writing, earning the biggest laughs of the show as the audience gradually realized how the man he played had come into conflict with Hoppe's character.
Long closed the show with an equally intense, sentimental rendition of Adam's epitaph for Eve from the Bock and Harnick show ``The Apple Tree.''
Long pulls out all the stops every time he steps on stage, and if his teary, emotionally charged style is not necessarily the only valid approach to this monologue, he certainly commanded the audience's attention.
Two pieces in the second half were written and performed by Chuck Goodin. One, ``My Father's Coffin,'' revealed in particular the young author's keen grasp of vernacular speech. The other, ``Santa Claus of War,'' was a compellingly told vignette of the citizen soldier's reaction to the realities of wartime.
While there is a world of difference between writing a monologue and creating a full-scale script with its complex interaction of various characters, Goodin's insight into personalities, his feel for the rhythm of language and the sense of structure evident in these two speeches all suggest that he will be a playwright of real worth.
That he performed his own work unaffectedly, with care for the subtleties of the acting rather than for the simply verbal content, speaks very well for his abilities on the stage.
``Mars and Venus'' was directed by Caroline Nichols. Nichols, or whoever supervised the compilation of the pieces, did a good job balancing the humor and pathos upon which most of these monologues depended.
With its first two productions, Regent's summer series has taken important first steps toward maturity as an ongoing part of Hampton Roads' cultural scene.
The ``Mars and Venus Monodrama Festival'' at Regent University showcased some promising student talents that merit continuing attention.
This was the second part of the new student-run Arts Celebration and Theatre Summer Series. This weekend, the Regent stage area will be converted into a Comedy Coffee House; during the rest of the summer, the theater series will include a dance concert, an art exhibit, a film festival, another coffee house and productions of full-length, one-act and 10-minute plays.
A dozen monologues made up ``Mars and Venus.'' There were plenty of amusing and affecting moments, through relatively few of the pieces were really about the ``Battle of the Sexes'' that the initial publicity promised.
Three performers stood out from a group of 10 talented students. One in particular displayed a rare combination of writing and acting ability.
Michelle Hoppe has distinguished herself in three other Regent productions and finished the first half of this show with a funny, intelligently approached rendition from Christopher Durang's ``Laughing Wild.'' Durang specializes in the creation of self-absorbed obsessives, and Hoppe sharply captured her character's earnest egocentricity.
After the intermission, Bruce Long delivered another monologue from the same Durang piece. Long seems particularly adept at the sort of intense exaggeration that lends itself well to Durang's writing, earning the biggest laughs of the show as the audience gradually realized how the man he played had come into conflict with Hoppe's character.
Long closed the show with an equally intense, sentimental rendition of Adam's epitaph for Eve from the Bock and Harnick show ``The Apple Tree.''
Long pulls out all the stops every time he steps on stage, and if his teary, emotionally charged style is not necessarily the only valid approach to this monologue, he certainly commanded the audience's attention.
Two pieces in the second half were written and performed by Chuck Goodin. One, ``My Father's Coffin,'' revealed in particular the young author's keen grasp of vernacular speech. The other, ``Santa Claus of War,'' was a compellingly told vignette of the citizen soldier's reaction to the realities of wartime.
While there is a world of difference between writing a monologue and creating a full-scale script with its complex interaction of various characters, Goodin's insight into personalities, his feel for the rhythm of language and the sense of structure evident in these two speeches all suggest that he will be a playwright of real worth.
That he performed his own work unaffectedly, with care for the subtleties of the acting rather than for the simply verbal content, speaks very well for his abilities on the stage.
``Mars and Venus'' was directed by Caroline Nichols. Nichols, or whoever supervised the compilation of the pieces, did a good job balancing the humor and pathos upon which most of these monologues depended.
With its first two productions, Regent's summer series has taken important first steps toward maturity as an ongoing part of Hampton Roads' cultural scene. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
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