Toward the end of the drive out to the New Theatre's new location inside the Roxy Performing Arts Center in a strip mall in West Kendall, we half expected to see cow pastures crop up on either side of the road. Dramatic? Yes. But hell, we're writers, and if there's anything we took away from the theatre's world premiere production of Twain and Shaw Do Lunch, a play based on the real-life meeting of two great literary artists, it's that writers are melodramatic, grandiose egotists. In other words, we can't help it.
theaters toward the back of the building. The seating is a bit more
plentiful than it was at the troupe's former home, and the stage larger.
It was soon occupied by a rotund gentleman -- our George Bernard Shaw,
played by Stephen Neal. Neal quickly paints Shaw as a jolly, clumsy,
seemingly helpless fellow with impeccably dorky enunciation and boyish
calf-hugging knickers. He's joined by his wife Charlotte, portrayed by
actress Pilar Uribe as a witty, competent matriarch who regards her
husband with a mixture of admiration and amusement that gets lighter on
admiration as the play goes on.
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