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As the title of Catherine Trieschmann’s Crooked suggests, there’s nothing straightforward about being a teenage girl—especially when you’re navigating religion, sexuality, and mental health in the Bible Belt. What is straightforward, says Kerry Reid, is the precision with which director Sandy Shinner and her Rivendell Theatre Ensemble cast dissect the often terrifying world of female adolescence. Dark elements of the human psyche are also unpacked in Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie, staged by Focal Point Theatre Company. Our Justin Hayford was initially skeptical about the need for a rewrite of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, but by transplanting the psychosexual tragedy from 1874 Sweden to 1945 England, Marber actually amplifies the deadly stakes of the original while toning down its melodrama and misogyny.
