REVIEWS...

The Quality of Light

"Quality of Light" concerns bereaved divorcée Claire (the affecting D.J. Harner) and raffish Jack (Patrick Rafferty, a find), 10 years her junior, who meet at a hotel overlooking the Cote d'Azur.  The scenario echoes Rumer Godden, David Lean, Tennessee Williams and "Enchanted April," yet by framing his narrative with similes of fine art, Hirsch avoids genre clichés and maintains intrigue.  The accomplished script draws beautiful work from director Jo Black-Jacob, who keeps bright and dark in balance, aided by some adept designers.   …Los Angeles Times

 

Richard Martin Hirsch's exquisitely written play was the winner of last year's Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival. As such, this intimate portrait of two badly wounded people is receiving a much deserved world premiere under the insightful direction of Jo Black-Jacob. A brilliant tapestry of life interwoven with art, Hirsch's drama is set in the hills above Côte d'Azur, where the light has attracted artists for centuries.   

…Backstage West

 

Snappily directed by Jo Black-Jacob, Hirsch’s play is witty and refreshingly literate.  

…LA Weekly

 

Hirsch maintains a remarkable balance between his spellbinding story, the compelling artist’s viewpoint, and the inherent humor which resides in the meeting of two people whose desires are not quite in sync.

…Long Beach Signal Tribune

 

 

Noir Light

 

A silly romp; an all-female cast send-up of detective stories that blazes by so fast that the bad jokes are quickly replaced with good ones.  This tale...has laughs galore, and Hirsch knows how to construct goofy narration for Jackie Maruschak as Tuesday Monday.

...Backstage West

Atonement

PICK  GO  Ably directed by Howard Teichman, Richard Martin Hirsch’s absorbing drama explores the tangled psyche of a middle-aged Jewish writer at a personal and epistemological crossroads. Michael Oberlander delivers an intensely fervid performance as Elijah Stone (nee Steinberg, a significant detail), an award-winning author and satirist who sabotages his marriage to his beautiful gentile, journalist wife, Laurel (Imelda Corcoran), by straying into the arms of a younger Jewish housefrau, Shaina (Meredith Bishop). While the triangle serves as a framework for the drama, the play (which shifts from past to present) goes well beyond portraying the liaison to delve into matters of faith, ethnic identity and what an artist sometimes thinks he needs to do to feed creative inspiration.

...L A Weekly 

"An intellectual effusion"..."effulgent"..."Hirsch's first-act plot twist works neatly."

When a writer writes about a writer, the going can get a bit tricky. No matter how far removed the writer character is from the writer, the proceedings can seem depressingly self-referential.

It's not that Richard Martin Hirsch's new play, "Atonement," now at Theatre 40, doesn't cast a wider net. Certainly, National Book Award-winning author Elijah Stone (Michael Oberlander) has other major issues to cope with other than his obsessive preoccupation with his career. There's his troubled marriage to Laurel (Imelda Corcoran) and his all-consuming affair with Shaina (Meredith Bishop). Then there's that mysterious older woman, Faye (Susan Morgenstern), who engages Elijah in philosophical discussions of an uncomfortably challenging ilk. Chiefly, there's Elijah's complete rejection of his Jewish heritage, a knee-jerk contempt for all things spiritual that will take an unexpected toll.

The action takes place in Elijah's mind and flashes back over the course of 12 years. The piece is extremely talky, sometimes mesmerizingly so, a rich intellectual effusion that addresses far-flung issues of sin and faith and loss and salvation. 

 ...Los Angeles Times
 
Fast Light and Brilliant
 

EATFest: Spring 2008 (Series C)

 

Produced by Emerging Artists Theatre (www.eatheatre.org)

Roy Arias Theatre Center, 300 W. 43rd St. (5th floor)
Equity showcase (closed May 4, 2008)

Review by Byrne Harrison

 

The final evening of Emerging Artists' Spring EATFest features five very diverse short plays.  Without a doubt the strongest production of the evening, and along with Love, Me (Margaret) in Series B, one of the strongest two plays in the festival, is the touching and nontraditionally romantic Fast Light and Brilliant.  Set on a balcony outside a hotel where a conference is taking place, the play features Carrie Tillis as a woman just coming out of a divorce and Roberto Terrell Milner as the man she flirted with, then suddenly pulled away from.  Playwright Richard Martin Hirsch has written a charming play about things people want from relationships and the realities of what they get.  Deftly directed by Ian Streicher who allows the play to slowly unfold, it's the highlight of the evening and features marvelous acting by Tillis and Milner.

...Off-Off Broadway Reviews
 
 
 
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