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style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial"><FONT face=Georgia>con-con’s
‘Like I Say’ less than the sum of its peculiar parts</FONT></SPAN></B></P>
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face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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align=center><SPAN
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face=Georgia>Bob Abelman</FONT></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'></SPAN></P>
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align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
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face=Georgia>Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning
Journal</FONT></SPAN></I><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'></SPAN></P>
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align=center><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'><FONT
face=Georgia>Member, International Association of Theatre
Critics</FONT></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'></SPAN></P>
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face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia>Len Jenkin’s bizarre comedy “Like I Say” and its Ohio-premiere
production at convergence-continuum has so much going for it.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia>The playwright has long been a favorite on the off-off-Broadway
circuit and a master of the theatrical avant-garde. Much like Mark Twain, he
uses humor to explore the basic questions of human existence and, like Kurt
Vonnegut, this exploration often takes place in desolate locations to see how
humans fare under those peculiar conditions. </FONT></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Georgia><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-style: italic">“Like
I Say</SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: ">,”
first performed in 2003, takes place at the Hotel Splendide, a broken-down
seaside resort that is described by its handful of itinerant and non-paying
occupants as being on a “dark end of the street” at “the edge of the
world.”</SPAN></FONT></P>
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style="FONT-FAMILY: ; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: none; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat; BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: scroll; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0% 0%; COLOR: "><FONT
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
face=Georgia><FONT color=#2b2b2b>Much of the play is spent revealing the rather
mundane and fractured lives of the disenfranchised hotel manager Helena (Lauren
B. Smith), her stuttering, lovelorn handyman Little Junior (August Scapelli),
who has a crush on angst-filled guest Rose (Linda Sekanic), and an alcoholic
artist named Mr. Schwartzberg (Robert Hawkes) who is painting the hotel’s garden
walls with images of the dead dancing with the living, <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
color=#2b2b2b face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
face=Georgia><FONT color=#2b2b2b>But Jenkin tends to explore often disparate
layers of the human condition by having the world his characters inhabit morph
into both whimsical and grotesque variations that twist and turn inside out, or
which simply lapse into fantasy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
color=#2b2b2b face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
face=Georgia><FONT color=#2b2b2b>The storytelling potential of all this dark
whimsy and silliness is enormous and right in con-con’s wheelhouse, but this
production stumbles and never hits its stride.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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style='FONT-FAMILY: ; COLOR: ; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us'><FONT
color=#2b2b2b face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face=Georgia><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'>For
more of this review, go to </SPAN></I><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'><FONT
color=#0563c1>www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/</FONT></SPAN></I><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style='BORDER-TOP: windowtext 1pt; FONT-FAMILY: ; BORDER-RIGHT: windowtext 1pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1pt; COLOR: ; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-TOP: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: windowtext 1pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; mso-bidi-font-family: arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: en-us; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in'>.
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