"The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer" and "Finding the Sun"

Director Sam Hack stages two one-acts with beach settings in this production, but it’s not a stunt or a thrifty set solution. Here where the water meets the land, we experience two very different meditations on the transitional moments in life. Tennessee Williams’ “The Parade, or Approaching the End of A Summer,” stars Reynard Fox as Don, a Tennessee stand-in who petulantly and masochistically grinds his gears over his stalled career and an unobtainable dancer named Dick. He talks out his frustrations with Miriam (Amy Schwarz), a vivacious intellectual whose love for Don can’t will him into being a success, despite her importuning. It’s a personal story, a letter to Williams’ younger self, but Schwarz’s fire brightens it up considerably. More universal is Edward Albee’s “Finding The Sun,” in which a group of people ranging from youth to senior citizen, some of them related by birth and marriage, ponder the next step in life. Gleeful, sardonic, pessimistic, longing -- Albee finds a corner for everything, and Hack has put a cast in place to explore it all. Nathan Weissler’s sixteen-year old Fergus is a hyper-intelligent wiseacre, but Weissler plays it subtly and well. Rob Gold is grimly funny as Daniel, a homosexual who’s abandoned his love for a heterosexual sham-marriage. How is something so dreamlike in logic and structure so real and affecting? Good writing, good cast, great performances. Presented by Clayton Community Theatre at Washington University South Campus Theatre (6501 Clayton Road; 314-721-9228 or www.placeseveryone.org) through Sunday, April 5. Tickets are $12 to $15.
April 3-4, 8 p.m.; Sun., April 5, 2 p.m., 2009