Acting Reviews
![]() MARIA MARTEN
Damon Bonetti was absolutely delightful, relishing the almost entirely comedic role of a doltish village bumpkin. It’s especially fun to see the exceptionally handsome Bonetti, a leading man type if ever there was one, have a chance to do something like this. (Bonetti and Hodge switch roles at different performances, and it would be interesting to see each of them do both.) |
![]() RIZZO
The play is adapted from Sal Paolantonio’s book “Rizzo: The Last Man in Big City America,” also a well-rounded work. Paolantonio, now an ESPN correspondent, was an Inquirer reporter who covered Rizzo and, in this telling, was never intimidated by him. He’s played in “Rizzo” as an unflappable journalist by a poker-faced and excellent Damon Bonetti. |
![]() AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Damon Bonetti portrays Phillip Lombard, a mysterious soldier who served in Africa; Bonetti creates an engaging character with a bit of bravado, his sarcastic remarks aide in lightening tense situations and he and Bedford have an amicable chemistry onstage that make these two characters standout. |
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![]() GLASS MENAGERIE
This production is far more measured than Williams' overwrought stage directions suggest. As Tom, both past and present, Bonetti finds just the right note (with the slightest hint of a Southern accent) of exasperation: He is torn between his love for his family and his sense of responsibility toward them, and his own frantic need to get out of the trap that is his life. |
![]() BASH
LaBute crafts his play to reveal the brutality lying in wait beneath the surface of everyday life. Nowhere is this more apparent than in “Iphigenia at Orem”: In an age of corporate downsizing, a mid-level manager (Damon Bonetti) sacrifices his own infant daughter to generate enough sympathy to keep his job. Here, Bonetti’s initial surface-level sympathy devolves into a vicious artifice; coloring his performance with subtle nervousness, he offers a glimpse of the hideousness that lies dormant in every human heart. |
![]() PERICLES
Damon Bonetti's Pericles sizzles - commanding when necessary, playful if it seems right, abject in his pain, always a mensch. Christie Parker is huggably tender as the woman he eventually marries, with the prodding parental oversight of her father. Bonetti and Parker, falling in love, create the sweetest scenes you'll see here this season. |
![]() ROMEO AND JULIET
As one of the world's most widely produced plays, Romeo and Juliet presents a challenge to any Artistic Director who wants to present a fresh, new staging. The PSF's production achieved this goal in Bonetti's towering performance as Mercutio, who fused mime, dance, facial expressions, gestures, fighting, and voice in an incredibly athletic yet very artistic way. |
![]() HATE MAIL
Real-life married couple Damon Bonetti (Preston) and Charlotte Northeast (Dahlia) work seamlessly with director David Stradley, bringing to life the cringe-worthy confusion, humor and frustration of early adulthood courtship. The actors roll with their characters' whims - from a cultish ashram in Montana to a vitamin-selling escapade in Miami - and grow their identities before our eyes. Even when the script gets outlandish, Bonetti and Northeast take it in stride, and bring us along with them for the joyride. |