Bill Ratner

Uncle Jermy's Smyle Hour

bill ratner · June 22, 2012 certified reviewer
Uncle Jermy (Jeremy Guskin) should be ashamed of himself making us cackle like that at all those crazy, un-PC, often hysterically funny, whacked-out comedy bits that he crammed into the blender that is his creator-head and served up for his late-night audience (which was plentiful and enviable in its size, proportions and volume on the laugh-meter.) From a funny rubber-legged Conor Lane as Mr. Birthday, to the drolly deadpan cleaning lady - Mala Madson, to the Nazified Paul Eiding, from a child ... full review

I Am Google (2012)

bill ratner · June 19, 2012 certified reviewer
If Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar, then Craig Shaynak is a wide bowl full of funny. For 45 minutes Shaynak struts, frets, sweats, and makes delicious fun of the naive, wrong-headed pomposity of today's super-cyber-brands that run our lives. He is Google in absurdist slo-mo, manically answering old-fashioned dial phones, rifling through trivia books, calling his barely-reliable pal Wikipedia on the sly - all in an attempt to process the billion searches that he processes every day, and all the wh... full review

Richard Parker

bill ratner · June 19, 2012 uncertified reviewer
Owen Thomas' play, RICHARD PARKER, is a subtle, absurdist delight, obsessed with coincidence, taking us on a rather spooky series of whirligigs weaving actual historical coincidence with the fiction of the play, like a rich theatrical magic trick. At base two very different characters are pitted against one another in an almost Beckett-like way, yet Thomas' language is at once more traditional and less minimal than Beckett, providing lingual and sonic ammunition for the two actors' rich Welsh voi... full review

bill ratner