Ian W. Hill's KILL ME Review

Posted on here on his blog (http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/) earlier today...

Here's the full text:

First, I saw Stolen Chair Theatre Company's Kill Me Like You Mean It at The Red Room last night, and it was excellent. It's a combination of film noir and Ionesco-style absurdism done with incredible sensitivity to tone and rhythm.

I came for the noir - director Jon Stancato did an email interview with me on the company's blog as part of a series of interviews with people who've done noir on stage - but I was made rapt by the absurdism. Lovely script by Kiran Rikhye (created in collaboration with the company).

The company is altogether very good (must repeat: beautiful tone and rhythm), but Cameron J. Oro is a wonder as American Private Investigator Ben Farrell; pitch-perfect, doing immense amounts with an accurate-to-the-style deadpan.

It plays four more times, tonight and next weekend, and it's selling out. If you're interested, tickets are available through smarttix.com. Get em quick.

I met with Jon for coffee before the show and had a nice talk about noir for the stage, and the problems of people assuming parody where none was intended (and the discomfort of getting excellent reviews that entirely miss the point of the show), as well as stories about the grade school we turned out to share in common (where he teaches now). Any problems with the show? Sure, but nothing that probably matters to anyone other than another director (I'm hard, as I always say, on scene changes). Good show. Wish I'd seen Stolen Chair's earlier work, but I'll get to the rest from here on.