Review: Charlotte’s Feathers

A young man named Benjamin Strong has just lost everything after the death of his parents and girlfriend. After a failed suicide attempt, Benjamin wakes up to find an angelic version of his girlfriend, Charlotte, sitting by the edge of his bed. She tells him that he has seven days left to live – and that he has a very important decision to make: Die alone, or take all of humanity with him.

Review: Interview with the Sphinx

In this provocative and immensely irritating comic play, the Sphinx from ancient Greece is interviewed in modern times as though she were a celebrity pop star. The problem is she never answers any questions—never directly, anyway. Instead, she prefers just dishing the dirt on everybody.

On Homer: “I never was exactly sure which one Homer was. I’m positive he wasn’t the blind one, though; that was just a silly story they started telling a few centuries later.”

On Oedipus: “Eddie was terribly conceited, you know…of course he was smart and handsome and oh, just had a way of carrying himself that impressed everybody. In spite of his foot.”

Bit by bit, the interviewer learns that what happens in Greek legend didn’t happen exactly the way Sophocles described it. Fortunately, the Sphinx offers the interviewer another riddle; if only he could figure out what exactly it is!

This witty 67-minute audio play stars Jill Brumer as the Sphinx and Neal Gage as the interviewer. Part Tom Stoppard, part Monty Python, part Oscar Wilde, this play by Jack Matthews combines philosophical paradoxes with fast-paced verbal pyrotechnics. It offers the perfect antidote to people who remembered ancient literature as nothing but stuffy and melodramatic characters with hard-to-pronounce names.

About the Cast

Neal Gage is a Houston actor and teacher who has appeared in several features and comic sketch videos on Funny or Die. Jill Brumer has an MFA in Media and Performing Arts and teaches theater at Houston colleges. Jack Matthews (1925-2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, and former professor in Ohio.

The play was first published and performed in 1992; later, it was revised and expanded for the 2013 audio production.

Review: Unboxed: A Play

Greg Zipper is a paranormal vlogger whose livelihood relies on his online popularity. When a fight between him and his girlfriend goes viral for all the wrong reasons, Greg purchases a dark-web mystery box in hopes of restoring his audience’s faith in him and hitting one million subscribers.

But when Greg opens the box, he gets much more than he bargained for, including a Boxer who’s determined to stop him from taking his loved ones for granted. Now Greg must do all he can to stop the Boxer, or else he’ll lose his livelihood – along with the woman he loves.

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