"As a memory play and extended monologue, “Portrait” draws more strength from ambience and character than active plot, but Richman’s nuanced performance gamely carries the show. Like a memory itself, “Portrait’s” story may blur, shift, and coalesce, but it is the piece’s emotional impact that resonates most clearly. While our search for meaning may yield no definitive answers, we need not know God’s mind to appreciate the mysteries and love that unite us."
- Emily Cordes, Theatre Critic and Author at The Theatre Times
Drama Editor JOHN SULLIVAN writes about A Helmet Is a Helmet Is a Helmet..This short play barrels through its paces like a tricked out Formula 1, twisting and turning through complex linguistic alleys and byways until it is hard to pin where we’ve been and how we arrived at the finish. Identity is a mutable phenomenon here: hence the joke encoded the title. The playwright deftly juggles the language, pace and shape-shifting characters with aplomb and ingenuity—no small accomplishment as the more or less anonymous human cast includes a female Don Quixote and her faithful steed, Rocinante. This piece calls to mind the diabolically funny work of David Ives, especially his collection of shorts, All in the Timing, which also incorporates and current personages like the Trotsky family, Phillip Glass etc. into a similar hyper-speed Gordian Knot of words, actions and amazement. (Spacing is playwright’s own.)
Five stars