Norwegian mediators Mona Juul (Erica Sullivan) and Terje Rød-Larsen (Mark Anderson Phillips) communicating with Israel and the PLO. Photo by Kevin Berne.
With “messy” and “extremely entertaining” diplomacy that amounts to a “gripping” “master class in the procedural thriller” in the hands of Marin Theatre Company Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis, who took the reins of the West Coast premiere of J.T. Rogers’ Tony-award winning 2016 play Oslo. Those accolades came from reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Main Independent Journal, and those and others have led MTC to extend the production through October 28.
The play stars Mark Anderson Phillips as “amusingly brash, egotistical and charismatic sociologist Terje Rød-Larsen and Erica Sullivan as “cooly composed” diplomat Mona Juul, who are able to get the “separate parties beginning to talk about talking and provide a safe and remote space to simply get people in a room together to try to find common ground,” writes the Chronicle‘s Lily Janiak.
The Marin IJ‘s Sam Hurwitt, meanwhile, calls the MTC production a “smartly constructed and thoroughly engaging piece that gives a real sense both of the sweep of history and the small, personal moments that somehow kick it into motion.”
Janiak also highlights that “the excellent cast of 14 is made up of a whole lot of men in suits, and Rogers seems to make an effort to give women a presence in the play with limited success. Mill Valley’s Marcia Pizzo deftly plays an array of women from a dubious colleague of Terje’s to an officious Swedish hostess, but the closest any of them come to playing a real role in the story is the kindly housekeeper whose waffles everybody rhapsodizes about.”
The 411: The Marin Theatre Company‘s production of J.T. Rogers’ Tony-award winning 2016 play Oslo has been extended through October 28. MORE INFO & TIX.