Jacob’s House Review: Will Kenton, Cultural Capitol

(Photo: Justin hoch @ jhoch.com. Pictured: Tiffany Clementi, Bianca LaVerne Jones, Kelli Dawn Holsopple)

Readers of this blog know I love juxtaposition, so you can imagine my excitement reading Will Kenton’s review at Cultural Capitol, which sparks our Jacob’s House not only against a similarly themed play; but a wider frame of culture and religion. In a fascinating turn, he uses the Walter Benjamin quote that inspired Jason Grote’s This Storm Is What We Call Progress, the play that was our second Food:Soul.

While I can’t speak to his take of Wide Eyed Productions’ Noah’s Arkansas, not having seen the play and liking through acquaintance their AD and playwright; I am very grateful for a review that holds passages like this:

Mr. Schulenburg accurately captures the ambiguity of Jacob’s achievement as the third and most important patriarch of Israel: he is both the founder and the original sinner, the parvenu and carpetbagger who gave rise to the twelve tribes; he is the kind of guy who cracks a whole lot of eggs to make his self-aggrandizing omelette.

I’m also happy he connected with the Laban scene and Bianca’s great work in that difficult swath of text (nearly a play within the play, our Laban).

So, read the whole thing here, then get your tickets, and after you’ve seen the show, please share your thoughts here.