nomadreader

The backstory: After taking a few years off, Mr. Nomadreader and I have resubscribed to season tickets for StageWest , a local "bold, cutting-edge, contemporary theater." This year I had the brilliant idea to read each of the plays before seeing them. The first play of the season was  Bad Jews .  I promptly got the play from the library, went on vacation for a week and a half, came home to remember our tickets were for the next day, and managed to pick it up to read only after seeing the play. The basics: Bad Jews  take place in a studio apartment in New York City after a funeral. Its four characters are brothers Liam and Jonah, their cousin Daphna, and Liam's girlfriend Melody. My thoughts: Over the years, I've realized I appreciate plays (and films and television shows) with a writer's dialogue. Meaning: I'm okay with art being more eloquent and faster paced than those people would actually speak in life. Bad Jews  has this dialogue throughout. At tim...

The backstory: Des Moines has an incredibly vibrant theater scene, and a large part of it is StageWest , who bills itself as "eclectic, urban theater on the edge." This summer, StageWest is putting on Neil LaBute's three beauty plays: The Shape of Things, Fat Pig, and Reasons to Be Pretty . The plays aren't a trilogy, and I like to think of them as a trio because they're unified in theme, but not in character or setting. I saw The Shape of Things in its first run in New York in 2001 (more on that one next week), so I was eager to see all three plays. StageWest is only the second place in the country to perform all three, which is pretty fantastic. The basics: Carly overhears her husband Kent and his friend Greg talking about a hot new woman they work with. When Greg mentions his girlfriend, Steph, is merely ordinary looking, Carly immediately calls Steph. The ultimate question: do our loved ones see us as we are or as our best selves? Is your partner ordin...