Media Archive

Bedlam is deadly serious about performing quality theater, and equally serious about having fun at the same time. Those two qualities – and the talents of the cast, director Tucker and playwright Hamill – have breathed new theatrical life into classic pieces of literature, made them more accessible, and brought in new audiences to be delighted by them.

Although uproariously funny at times, the material is never played strictly for laughs, and the scenes where Elinor and Marianne have their hopes dashed are still painfully touching.

More than a gimmick, Bedlam’s free-wheeling production adds a joyous energy to Austen’s tale of love and marriage, while avoiding the fussy Masterpiece Theatre trappings that usually accompany Austen.

For those who have no prior history with either the Austen novel or a film version, Director Eric Tucker and Bedlam’s production is accessible to any and all, rolling out the story in their inimitable style.

Whereas a movie brings the camera closer to or further from the action, in this cast the action surges toward the viewer and then recedes. The result is restless and absorbing.

Marriage deals on wheels might be an apt description of Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility. The former, of course, come courtesy of Jane Austen, who famously wrote elsewhere: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The latter are appended by the New York-based theater troupe Bedlam, whose delightfully exuberant 2014 staging of Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility — in a frisky adaptation by Kate Hamill, skitters and spins about the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center playing space (through Jan. 14) like the pieces and parts of some love-racked pinball machine.

Jane Austen fans will likely adore Sense & Sensibility. It retains the heart and wit of the beloved novel. But traditionalists must keep an open mind. Yes, the show is a tribute to Austen’s analysis on proper conduct and the merits of good sense. But it also celebrates the elasticity of theater.

Arcade in her marvelous middle age is a lovely example to us all. Yes, you’ve got to tell all your truth to power, but you don’t have to stop dancing to do it.

Ms. Arcade, whose delivery suggests what might have happened if Phyllis Diller had fallen in with the Andy Warhol crowd (as indeed Ms. Arcade did), trains her stiletto wit on the gentrification of New York in this entertaining if rambling show. 

Tammy Faye Starlite discusses her embodiment of Nico, the arctic chanteuse of the Velvet Underground.

In her mesmerizing theatrical shows, Ms. Lang has won critical acclaim for stepping into the skins of complicated veteran rock divas, like Nico of the Velvet Underground and the British rocker turned art singer Marianne Faithfull. Her newest show brings back Tammy Faye Starlite, a fictional character that made her a downtown New York club star more than a decade ago.

In her raunchy new solo show ‘Pound,’ the solo performer takes on filmic stereotypes—and tries to one-up crude male comics.