Red Herring continues its mission of bringing less-performed (in Columbus) classics to our stages with a crackling, brutal production of David Harrower’s debut Knives in Hens, directed by Penny Napoli.

This tight, hundred-minute (no intermission) play centers on a rural village in a pre-industrial but post-printing press time. An unnamed young woman (Jordan Davis), married to the village plowman Pony William (Sean Taylor), finds herself drawn to the miller, Gilbert Horn (Scott Willis). 

Davis’ young woman’s innate curiosity and wit runs her up against a society (even in her own marital bed) that would rather she stay where she is. That lust for knowing – wanting to name everything and find its true definition, its true heart – draws up groundswells of strength but also destruction, a painful casting-off of heavy, dead skin. 

Saw "Knives in Hens" at Red Herring Theater, and found I had to grapple with it a bit.  It's a tough play for the Bachelor's Degree'd likes of me to simply sum up and review.

​Written by David Harrower, "Knives in Hens" takes place in a kind of Scottish never-never land.  We aren't given a date or time, but for the people in "the Village," subsistence farming and some bit the processing of the farming product is how people make their living.

​Red Herring Productions illuminates “Knives in Hens” with stabs of poetic power, but David Harrower’s brooding romantic triangle remains a dark drama indeed.

Penny Napoli’s taut direction propels the Ohio premiere of the 1995 play, which opened Friday at the Franklinton Playhouse, as a timeless journey of enlightenment that evokes biblical fable.
The Scottish playwright may be best known for “Blackbird,” another drama of sexual awakening, deception and revenge.

I have a tip for anyone wishing to attend Red Herring Theater's production of "Nighthawks," which I saw last night:  If you really want to feel like you're watching the Hopper painting come to life, sit in one of the seats that are to the left side of the auditorium.

This is, by my count, the second and a half-ish revival of "Nighthawks," which I saw at Red Herring years ago, and for which I attended a reading of in support of The Drama Foundry in 2011, if memory serves.  This Red Herring production may be the best yet; it's tight, funny, has excellent performances, and a truly spectacular set.

​An iconic painting and an equally classic film noir plot combine in to make the delightfully wry comedy “Nighthawks.”

In the latest production by Red Herring Theatre, local playwright Johnrick Hole brings Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks at the Diner” to life, casting the four figures in the painting as characters in a quirky murder mystery.

Hole’s trim, well-structured script, which clocks in at about 70 minutes without an intermission, begins with an off-stage death, that of Bennie the bookie, who is found a couple blocks away from the diner that serves as the single set, a purloined fork lodged in his eye.

Saw "Jack & Jill" at Red Herring Theater.  Produced with minimal staging and a certain amount of fourth wall-breaking monologs and costuming, the play traces a romantic relationship from start to end.

​Rick Clark is Jack, who so uncomfortably makes the first move on the cynical Jill (Michelle Weiser) who he finds in a library, that I thought this play might quickly become some prescient "Me, Too!" movement story.

​Relationships aren’t easy to sustain, often have ups and downs, and can go sideways, despite the best intentions.

“Jack and Jill” persuasively probes beyond the initial meet-cute and/or meet-awkward moments of most romantic comedies to explore what can happen in a courtship, marriage and years afterward.

The play "Waiting to be Invited," which I saw Saturday night at Red Herring Theater (produced with Past Productions), was written by S.M. Shephard-Massat, a Georgia playwright who won the 2001 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, given by the American Theatre Critics Association to honor an emerging playwright.

​Late 1960s Atlanta: Ms Odessa (Julie Whitney-Scott) Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi) and Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush) all work at a doll manufacturing company.  They board a bus driven by the avuncular Palmeroy Bateman (Harold Yarborough) that eventually picks up the rather confused Ms. Grayson (Josie Merkle).

Red Herring Productions teams with PAST Productions for a moving, righteous production of S. M. Shepard-Massat’s Waiting to be Invited, directed by Patricia Wallace-Winbush.

Waiting to Be Invited follows three friends and co-workers, Ms. Odessa (Julie Whitney-Scott), Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush), and Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi), in Atlanta in the early 60s, leaving work to take part in a lunch counter sit-in. Shepard-Massat’s play — among many other strengths — knows that most of life comprises the moments leading up to the moment everyone talks about.

​The hugely entertaining and quietly moving “Waiting to Be Invited,” a dramedy written by S.M. Shepard-Massat, is performed with relish as a collaboration between PAST Productions and Red Herring Productions.

Three black co-workers at a doll factory head out on a bus after work on a Friday afternoon shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Feisty Ms. Odessa (Julie Whitney Scott),timid Ms. Delores (Patricia Wallace-Winbush) and observant Ms. Louise (Demia Kandi) plan to meet self-righteous pastor’s wife Ms. Ruth (Cathy Bean) outside an Atlanta department store and then go in to make a stand by eating at the previously “whites only” dining room there.