Photos and Reviews
"The What Exit? Theatre Company's latest offering, is some of the best theater to come down the pike in quite some time." - Essex Journal
"The What Exit? Theatre Company's latest offering, is some of the best theater to come down the pike in quite some time." - Essex Journal
Greater Tuna Review...
"They’re portraying plenty of 'good 'ol boys,' but both Jim Ligon and Michael Irvin Pollard emerge as great ol' boys in Greater Tuna.
When Ligon must play an overweight woman in a yellow polyester pants suit, he's utterly - and scarily - convincing. Later, when he portrays a much older and even heftier woman, Ligon shows how she must carefully plan her lifting herself off the ground to stand on a chair. It's a small moment, only a dozen or so seconds long, but it's easily one of the most hilarious ones in the show.
Ligon is extraordinary when portraying an evangelical character that uses every cliché in the Good Book (and plenty of others). Pollard excels as a sheriff whose mouth is never without that requisite toothpick. How wonderfully moody he is, too, as a rebellious teen who wouldn't be caught dead without his Dead Kennedys T-shirt."
- Peter Filichia for the Star Ledger
A Marriage On a Course For the Rocks...
A Marriage On a Course For the Rocks: "Four movie stars appeared last year in an HBO film version of ''Dinner With Friends,'' which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2000. That's as much buzz as a four-character play, modestly produced off-Broadway, can generate. But because the lights of Broadway did not shine on Donald Margulies's dissection of marriage and friendship, the play was not eligible for a Tony Award and the publicity that attends the theater's glamour sweepstakes. Now ''Dinner With Friends'' is out there on its own, facing the real test of survival: the measure of lasting value as dramatic literature, and as theater for people everywhere. Does Mr. Margulies's play speak to audiences who may not know of its honored past? It does, resoundingly, on the strength of a perceptive, many-layered production by the What Exit? Theater Company." - Alvin Klein, New York Times, Oct. 6, 2002
That old theatrical saw..
That old theatrical saw that goes, There are no small parts, only small actors? Not in Stones in His Pockets, the hit play now at the What Exit? Theater Company of Maplewood. In this accomplished production, Richard Furlong and Steven Cole Hughs prove that they are indeed big actors. In fact, they're the whole show, playing every person on the set. - Star Ledger
Breaking boundaries...
“Emily Zacharias smartly shows the cavalier snobbishness that New Yorkers can exhibit when they find themselves in the burbs. As she admits to her adversaries, with no apology whatsoever, ‘There's enough truth in what you say to make me want to change the subject.’
J.R. Robinson has a nice, little boy quality that helps this helpless husband. Bev Sheehan - the state's best at dispensing dry humor — has the right level of acid for a person who's skeptical of life.
Then there's Rick Delaney, who portrays Floyd, assistant theater professor at a local community college. Delaney amuses when he orates about the history of drama and comedy, and its love-hate relationship with the fourth wall. He's funnier still when Peggy is about to say something and he holds up a hand, declaring, ‘Half of acting is listening.’”
- Peter Filichia, Star-Ledger Staff
Served Up Beautifully...
"The What Exit? Theater Company of Maplewood, always the gourmet chef of comedy, has served up a delightful meal of a play in its current offering...
Directed by Bell Wesel, the British sex farce features a non-stop parade of subterfuge, confusion and mistaken identity, all delivered with aplomb by the members of the talented cast...
Wesel has directed this show with the speed of an express train, getting maximum mileage out of the script's many iconic devices. The pacing perfectly supports the material, allowing peaks and valleys for the audience to catch its breath as well as absorb information vital to setting up the next gag."
- Bill VanSant for the Star Ledger