Eugene Weekly

On the surface, Irish author Martin McDonagh’s plays are foul, transgressive affairs, full of piss and vinegar and erect middle fingers. In the tradition of his literary forbears Swift, Joyce and Beckett, McDonagh is a relentlessly physical writer given to depicting all manner of human grotesquery — violence, perversion, degradation, deformity and compulsive cussing of the worst kind. Continue reading →

Playwright David Ives (A Flea in Her Ear, Venus in Fur) calls his play The School for Lies a “translaptation” of French playwright Molière’s classic 1666 farce The Misanthrope. Lies is now playing at University Theatre under the direction of Tricia Rodley. Ives has maintained much of the source material’s language. The play is written in rhyming verse, and Ives adds well-timed modern zingers for comic effect.  Continue reading →

A delightfully satirical sendup, 2001’s Urinetown: The Musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, pokes fun at everyone, from poet Bertolt Brecht and Les Miz, to our legal system, politics and capitalism. Refreshingly irreverent, Urinetown is a musical’s musical, and it’s given the five-star treatment by the capable team at South Eugene High School (SEHS).  Continue reading →

[Editor’s note: EW originally printed this article with the wrong cast names. We are very sorry for the error. The names have been corrected. Please see our post addressing this mistake and debunking the rumor that we reprinted an old review here.] Continue reading →

What would you give up for a fabulous, famous life of brilliant academia? What would you sacrifice for the sacred, animal warmth of family? Pulitzer-nominated Rapture, Blister, Burn digs into these uncomfortable questions of feminism. Continue reading →

The guitar wails above the heart-deep drumbeat. Dirty hands clank against a chain-link cage and the old story rushes at us, hammering home the memory of ego and betrayal that killed a man preaching kindness. Continue reading →