Penny Penniworth
Emerging Artists Theatre at TADA! Youth Theater
Reviewed by Robert Windeler
October 07, 2009
http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-off-broadway/penny-penniworth-1004020379.storyThe characters' names are more reminiscent of the Restoration comedies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan: Hapless Penniworth, Miss Havasnort, Rupert Stryfe, Malodorous Dump, Mr. Pinchnose, the solicitors Bunting, Bunting and Swag, et al. But the source material for the 70-minute send-up "Penny Penniworth" is largely mid-Victorian English lit, and the comedic result is priceless. Four actors of astonishing versatility create multiple cross-dressing characters in Chris Weikel's knowing and laugh-out-loud play, directed briskly (the only way to do it) by Mark Finley.
Charles Dickens inspires the bulk of the plot and the sentimentality to skewer, with an occasional assist from two of the three Brontë sisters and others. The House of Goody's on-the-nose 19th-century costumes, with their breakaway wraparounds for lightning-quick costume changes, keep the audience rooted in the supposed period while providing anachronistic commentary.
