Review: “The North Pool” at Dragon Productions Theatre Company

Even the most major playwright has her fair share of minor works, the ones that tend to go by the wayside after the author’s death. For every Long Day’s Journey Into Night there is a Desire Under the Elms; every Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has a Clothes for a Summer Hotel. Such is the case with Rajiv Joseph, the prolific and intelligent playwright whose Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2011, and whose The North Pool, an 85-minute two-character drama currently in production at Dragon Productions Theatre Company, carries with it the distinct note of being a footnote to larger works by the same author.

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Review: “Safe House” at Aurora Repertory Theatre

How often do people yell in real life? In the past six months, I can only think of about two conversations that have resulted in raised voices that I personally participated in. Keith Josef Adkins, however, would have you believe that the natural colloquy of human beings is loud and emotional. At least, that’s how he presents his characters in his 2014 slavery drama Safe House, a loud and exasperatingly overwrought melodrama that hides its interesting sociopolitical themes in a thick coating of syrupy sentiment.