I’m pleased to say that “Encore, Encore” was reviewed by Rick Pender of the Cincinnati CityBeat. Mr. Pender is Managing Editor of The Sondheim Review and also past chairman of the America Theatre Critics Association. He wrote a very favorable review of the play and gave well-deserved accolades to some of the play’s cast.

You can read a full copy of the review here – but here are some highlights:

“I caught Crowley’s excellent tragicomedy Encore, Encore on Monday evening. Parker was a founding member and initially the only woman in New York City’s legendary Algonquin Round Table, a group of renowned columnists, playwrights and satirists in the 1920s. The play traces her meteoric writing career and her turbulent personal life. We see her become established as the sharp-tongued drama critic for Vanity Fair, and we witness the deterioration of her marriage.

NKU senior Victoria Hawley played the central role in a production directed by veteran guest director Ed Cohen. Crowley’s play, which uses Parker as its narrator as well as its central character, digs deep, providing a portrait of a vulnerable woman who lived her life in the spotlight and never found real happiness.
 
Hawley portrays her from her first confident days at Vanity Fair, through her friendships and relationships with New York’s literary elite. She was known as flippant and brittle, a source of quick-witted, often obscene remarks, and Hawley handles them well — while also conveying Parker’s frustration and vulnerability.

NKU junior Hunter Henrickson rises to the challenge of playing Parker’s husband Eddie. He went off to World War I in France almost immediately after their marriage, returning after two brutal years in the field nursing service, shell-shocked and seriously dependent. Her intervening success became a source of friction and embarrassment between them. Henrickson showed Eddie’s initial, inebriated charm and did a fine job of playing the broken man he became. The show’s other fine performance came from junior Connor Moulton as Parker’s brash writing friend Robert Benchley, a steady source of insouciant foolishness.”