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.

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.

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.

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).

Saw Red Herring Theater's production of "Grounded" last night.  

"Grounded" is a one-woman show touching on themes of family, career, and identity.  Looming over all of that is the question of whether our technology will serve us or if it will be the other way around.

​Carolyn Demanelis is mesmerizing in the role of the unnamed female fighter pilot first introduced to us speaking rapturously of flying her jet 'into the Blue.'  Her plane is a machine she loves passionately even as she bombs targets back into the desert sands.

Perhaps the safest way to review Red Herring's production of "Dirt," written by Creighton James and directed by Amanda Phillips, is to say that it's about two brothers intent on digging up the body of their dead father.  

​No, it's NOT an adaptation of a Stephen King story! 7 years ago,  brothers Rusty (Samuel Patridge) and Jimmy (Benjamin Turner) carried out a do-it-yourself euthanasia on their aged to-the-point-of-pain pater familias.  With a highway soon coming right through their former property, the boys would just as soon dispose of the bones themselves in order to avoid awkward questions.

Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens walking into a room in the Afterlife sounds like the start of a joke. And there are laughs aplenty in the play "Discord," which I saw last night at Red Herring Theater.

Yet in spite of "Discord's" premise, and its laughs, I can't exactly call it a comedy. In fact, I don't want to say much more, as the individual theater goer really should discover the play's combination of humor and poignancy for themselves.