We received a wonderful little capsule review from Johanna Adams at BlindSquirrel Bloggings, which you can read here. Oh what the hell, I’ll quote it as well:
Babylon Babylon. This is perhaps the best concept for a theater piece I have seen since attending a storefront production of Mary Zimmerman’s Arabian Nights 13 years ago in Chicago. Author/director/performer Jeff Lewonczyk gets high points for scope of vision and audacity with this. The action follows a group of townswomen in Babylon who prostitute themselves at the temple of Ishtar on the eve of Babylon’s fall to the Persian army. The tone is largely comic, although some serious and mythic notes creep into the script. The costumes and set have a delightful thrift-store pagentry to them and the 30+ member cast is gorgeously committed and adorably enthusiastic about their roles. It runs a bit long (2 hours 15 minutes with no intermission on the night I went), and there is some uneveness in the script– but there is a lot to enjoy about this quirky and unlikely assemblage. I loved Hope Cartelli as the priestess to Ishtar, Mike Criscuolo as a hapless prince of Babylon, Iracel Rivero as a simple country girl, Robin Reed’s rich snotty lady, Melina Gac-Artigas as a serene and reluctant virgin and Kamran Khan as both a beggar and a rich slaver. Amantha May’s choreography was also stand-out and bewitching (I went to college with her, many, many years ago).
Let it be trumpeted from the rooftops that since last Friday we have officially dipped beneath the two-hour mark! Truly we are gods.
Meanwhile, Matt Freeman has also given us another shout-out, which is much appreciated. I have yet to see his now-playing new play When Is a Clock, but if it’s anywhere near the standard of his previous works it’s not to be missed.
