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<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>con-con’s ‘Fool For Love’
provides the drama but lacks the danger<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></B></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>Bob
Abelman<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>News-Herald, Morning Journal,
Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>Geauga Times
Courier<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>Member,
International Association of Theatre Critics <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal
align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>This review
will appear in the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">News-Herald</I> on
12/6/13<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
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align=center><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><FONT size=3>A few years ago, <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The New Yorker</I> magazine ran a feature
story on contemporary American playwright Sam Shepard.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Called “The Pathfinder,” it noted that
Shepard was “compelling to look at but hard to read.”
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><FONT size=3>So too are his plays.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><FONT size=3>“Fool For Love” – first
performed in 1983 and currently on stage at convergence-continuum in Tremont –
is a particularly compelling piece of slice-of-life storytelling.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It offers little more than a brief,
dramatic glimpse at the turbulence that exists between two broken, rudderless
people.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Violent and disturbing,
this play is both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>Set in a stark, cheap motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert in
southern California, the one-act, one-hour play tells the story of troubled
lovers Eddie and May. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Caught in a
vicious cycle of all-encompassing attraction and visceral repulsion, the two
yearn for each other with white hot passion that immediately burns itself out
upon contact.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They push each other
away while drawing each other near, and do so with equal
energy.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black"><FONT size=3>Both Eddie and May are
laconic and inarticulate, but the playwright’s gift is turning their struggles
to express their unbridled emotions into white trash poetry.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is particularly true as the tequila
takes effect and they get lost in the telling of how their first, ill-fated
meeting became this strange, dysfunctional dance that they do in each other’s
company. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>Listening to these stories from a distant rocking chair and interjecting
his color commentary on what transpired in the past is The Old Man.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>He is singularly responsible for making
Eddie and May the damaged people that they are today and continues to haunt
their troubled, tortured souls.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black">This is certainly an
intriguing play, but what occurs on con-con’s intimate </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">Liminis Theatre<SPAN
style="COLOR: black"> performance space is a rather timid production of it.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><FONT size=3>When not
throbbing with passion, Shepard’s words are mean to the point of menacing.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yet, under Amy Bistok Bunce’s direction,
not enough of either comes through amidst otherwise fine acting.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>Clint Elston has a strong physical presence as the cowboy Eddie, but
there is little in his manner or movement that reveals the depths of his ache
for May or the extent of his irresistibility, which draws her like a moth to a
flame.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Nor does he pose much of a
physical threat to Martin, played nicely by Stuart Hoffman, who shows up to take
May out on a date but is so terrified and intrigued by Eddie that he does not –
cannot – leave the room. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>Similarly, Rachel Lee Kolis as May is hesitant to go to the dark,
dangerous places referenced in her words and show off the qualities that make
her so irresistible to Eddie that he would travel 2000 miles to be with her
again.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In one scene, with Eddie
laying on top of May and May not seeming to mind, Kolis kept self-consciously
yanking down the rising hem of her skimpy red dress.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>May most assuredly would have let the
dress go adrift, perhaps encouraging it to do so, at least for a moment.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>All of this results in Eddie and May roaming the stage as if performing a
Sam Shepard play rather than being the dangerous people in one.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT
size=3>Robert Hawkes is a delight in all that he does as The Old Man, but he too
does not appear dangerous enough for this play.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A thick thug like Eddie would not do
what The Old Man says immediately when he says it if this dusty, old tumbleweed
of a man did not bear some barbs upon occasion.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black">Each player in “Fool For Love” has one
hour to communicate his or her character’s lifetime of pleasure/pain.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is best that the audience leaves the
theater smoldering rather than merely singed.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN><SPAN
style="BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><FONT size=3>“Fool For Love” runs through
</FONT><A name=_GoBack></A><FONT size=3>December 21 at convergence-continuum’s
The Liminis Theatre, 2438 Scranton Rd., in the historic Tremont
neighborhood.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Tickets, which range
from $10 to $15, can be purchased by calling 216-687-0074 or visiting </FONT><A
href=""><FONT color=#3b5998 size=3>www.convergence-continuum.org</FONT></A><FONT
size=3>.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></I></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>