"Buried under long passages of nonsense in 'The Stone Witch' is a moving tribute to confronting one's heroes...The problem is Bitterman's focus on mental illness. When depicting insanity onstage, anything can happen and frequently does—but the mere absence of reason is rarely interesting. Zuckerman coaxes honest reactions out of his performers, but watching Peter repeatedly struggle with Simon's hallucinations grows exhausting as they slog through the largely meaningless confusion."
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"A story of a promising young children's author who is sent to the woods to coax a new book out of his long-silent idol...Our veteran author lives in a world that straddles reality and fantasy...This binary world is both 'The Stone Witch's' greatest asset and its greatest obstacle. It heightens a relatively mundane story to a level of theatricality, but Bitterman and...Zuckerman, don't yet seem to know how to make these two realms theatrically communicate...Lauria's performance is the highlight."
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"Lauria, playing an artistic genius suffering an extended dry spell, spends the better part of ninety minutes bombastically strutting across the stage, grandly gesticulating, and unpredictably modulating his growling voice into sudden shouts of passion and rage that will surely remind many of the late, great Zero Mostel...While the play is well-performed and nicely produced, and the dialogue has its entertaining side, the evening is done in by the abundance of predictability."
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"'The Stone Witch' exists almost entirely as a vehicle for the actor playing Simon...If his state of mind isn't really believable, you can't say that Lauria doesn't put on a show. Rupak Ginn does as much as anyone could with Peter, one of the most thinly conceived roles I've seen in some time...A lot of 'The Stone Witch' looks like drama, but too much of it boils down to hollow speechmaking...As presented here, it is all very theatrical and very false."
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"The real pain will be suffering through 'The Stone Witch,' a remarkably unoriginal drama...The threadbare scenario that is patchily embroidered by Shem Bitterman, the playwright, involves the trope regarding an insufferable genius and the admirer who tries to rescue him from creative malaise...A tedious 90 minutes, the play is flat in dialogue and thin in its characterizations...A tiresome mingling of shallow writing and whimsical visuals."
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"The art of creation is a difficult one to portray on stage but playwright Shem Bitterman and cast have done a beautiful job of dramatizing the highs and lows of this well-worn theme. The additional theme of the mentor-pupil relationship is superbly depicted by Dan Lauria and Rupak Ginn. Carolyn McCormick brings a sense of both drollery and danger to her role as the high-powered agent who will stop at nothing to get what she wants…this is one of the few recent plays to be entirely satisfying."
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"Fascinating and beautifully rendered...An intriguing and thrilling ride...Adroitly, sensitively directed by Steve Zuckerman...The stone witch appears and haunts...The metaphor for what it represents evolves brilliantly throughout Bitterman’s play...Zuckerman’s acute direction propels Bitterman’s rich themes and questions about art. Brilliantly, the actors move the action with suspense and engagement...Every lustrous design aspect of 'The Stone Witch' makes the production soar."
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"An absolutely gorgeous production. Which may be better than the play. It’s not that the play is bad. It’s not, it’s charming. It’s just that the collaboration...is so stunning that the play didn’t quite deliver the promise of the visuals...The cast is first rate...Dan Lauria is masterful at taking the confusing character of Simon Grundberg as written, and turning him into a real live flesh-and-blood human being we care about and have sympathy for."
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