Howard Miller takes a look at The Light and the Dark: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi at Primary Stages:
Playwright Kate Hamill is best known as an adaptor of classic novels like Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, asking us to reconsider them through a contemporary lens. Now, in a presentation by Primary Stages, she gives us the story of a real-life individual in The Light and the Dark: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi. Opening tonight at 59E59 Theaters, the production is handsome to look at in terms of its set, costume, and lighting design, but it is less successful as a dramatic work, a show-and-tell with too little show and way too much tell. |