The Talls
Opening Night: August 1, 2011
Closing: August 27, 2011
Theater: McGinn
The Clarke family is dealing with some very tall problems. Just ask 17-year-old Isabelle Clarke. Negotiating Catholicism, politics and virginity in the 1970’s can make the tallest girl feel really small. A comic drama about coming of age when life’s lessons come in all sizes.
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August 16, 2011
“The Talls,” by Anna Kerrigan, is the rare play about an American family in reasonable working order. True, mother is a little remote, and preoccupied with her best-friendship with a Roman Catholic nun. Perhaps father is distracted from the kids’ big games by his forthcoming campaign for comptroller of the city of Oakland, Calif. Still, by the standards of American drama of the last half-century, the Clarke family is positively wholesome, almost ready for a prime-time sitcom of the 1960s.
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August 17, 2011
Coming-of-age plays, like the characters in Anna Kerrigan’s The Talls, now being presented by Second Stage Uptown at the McGinn Cazale Theatre, come in all shapes and sizes. In this case, despite Kerrigan’s intelligence, some sharply observed details and an obvious desire to explore complex issues, the 80-minute work, unevenly directed and cast by Carolyn Cantor, is a bit small for its subject matter and ends up seeming somewhat underwritten.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 15, 2011
There’s nothing particularly wrong with "The Talls," Anna Kerrigan’s slice-of-life, coming-of-age comedy-drama set in Oakland, Calif., in the summer of 1970. Kerrigan’s characters flirt with stereotype but have just enough specificity not to hook up with it; the playwright’s dramatization of family dynamics is acute; and her evocation of period is generally solid. But there’s nothing very distinctive about it either, with the 80-minute show playing like a lost episode of the 1970s TV drama "Family." There’s fine work from a talented cast of seven and simpatico direction by Carolyn Cantor, but upon leaving the theater I couldn’t shake the nagging thought "That’s it?"
READ THE REVIEWAugust 17, 2011
Some slices of life have more life than others. Take, for example, the climactic scene of Anna Kerrigan’s new play The Talls, which just opened at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre as part of the Second Stage Theatre Uptown series.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 15, 2011
The last weeks of summer are ticking away, we’re all bracing up to deal with 9/11 ten years later and, believe me, everybody has far better things to do than see “The Talls,” so let’s keep this review brief.
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