Tag Archives: 13

Link: a little theater, cradle to grave

By Bob Hicks

Luisa Sermol and Ted Schulz in "Boleros." Photo: Russell YoungI’ve posted Teen to twilight: a theater weekend for the ages at Oregon Arts Watch. It recounts my adventures at the theater over the weekend, when I caught the Jason Robert Brown teen musical 13 at Staged! Musical Theatre, the theater-games comedy Circle Mirror Transformation at Artists Rep, and Jose Rivera’s memory-play Boleros for the Disenchanted at Miracle Theatre.

Somehow, the matter of age kept popping up: eventually it’ll be the death of us. Sound cheerful? Surprisingly, it sort of was. An excerpt:

“13” may be a stock teen comedy, but it’s also very much about growing up: after all, a bar mitzvah marks a boy’s passage into manhood. Jose Rivera’s “Boleros for the Disenchanted,” at Miracle Theatre, picks up chronologically a little after “13″ ends and breaks the age barriers right down the spine. It hurtles its characters directly into the romance and perils of youth and then pushes them on to the regrets and consolations of old age, leaving all of the muddled middle areas implied. The kid in “13” might think his life’s over. For old Flora and Eusebio in “Boleros,” it almost is.

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Luisa Sermol and Ted Schulz in “Boleros.” Photo: Russell Young