Charlie Hensley: Reviews

An unsurpassable production... Charlie Hensley, who created something of a sensation last year with his staging of She Also Dances... finds the right dramatic tempo for Kramer's play and builds the action from one shattering climax to another... To single out any actor is perhaps unfair to a cast characterized by its close ensemble interaction.

For the serious theatregoer, it represents that standard of excellence we hope to find in every production. For the more infrequent theatre-goer, The Normal Heart is that dramatic event that should not be missed…

Distinguished by imaginative staging and…
the finest ensemble of gifted actors on a Philadelphia stage this season. Charlie Hensley’s direction is both passionate and impeccable. You should see it twice. It’s really that good.

A searing production… Charlie Hensley deserves a lot of credit for tapping into the power in Heart… to produce a shattering theatrical experience… His staging is as fine as the New York production, and it’s even more emotionally involving.

The Walnut Street Theatre counts eight productions of Twelfth Night in less than 150 years. I wonder if any has caught so effectively, as this one does, the topsy-turvy world Shakespeare created.

Director Charlie Hensley unfurls this comic masterpiece like a flag in a stormy breeze. The actors don’t just impersonate their characters. They live them with vigor and intensity… Milton Duke’s set – a giant rope lattice set off by ornate columns and a sunburst backdrop – lets the director achieve breathless pacing.

Hensley, probably the most consistently creative, inventive and daring director working Philadelphia stages… has put together a top-notch production… His direction was both light and firm, a sign of a director who is supremely confident in his material and his cast… I can’t praise this production highly enough. It’s well-directed, beautifully designed, wonderfully acted and incredibly funny. Kudos and congratulations are in order to Charlie Hensley…

There is not a bad thing to be said about the play, its cast, the direction, the music or the set. All fit together to make for an evening of theatre [that] seems to fly by in an instant. Directed by Charlie Hensley, the performance held the audience spellbound.

Charlie Hensley has put this together with intelligence and affection.. Hensley’s style here is a cross between a lilt and a twinkle… The utter absence of declamation gives the production a delicious naturalness, and the players look happy as larks about it.

Pay no attention to the groundhogs! With the Virginia Stage Company’s exuberant and thoroughly elegant production of Twelfth Night, spring is officially here. Housed amid garden walks winding through greenery, this familiar Shakespearean comedy of drunken revelry and gender-bending romance is given a merry, and quite comfortable, outing… the cast seems to be comfortable enough with its art to romp.

And the emphasis is put exactly where it belongs – on the language… Leave Twelfth Night alone and let it breathe, and all the laughs are there. That, delightfully, is exactly what happens with this production.

Charlie Hensley’s direction has effectively tied together the many disparate facets of this production into a cajoling whole. The production moves sprightly, but is never rushed. The use of the language is crisp and clear. There is no reason that every line of this Twelfth Night cannot be easily digested.

…VSC scores a triumph here.

It is lively, pretty and sexy… director Charlie Hensley has successfully milked it for every bit of lascivious innuendo. Hensley, who chose a beautiful 18th century garden for his setting, cast the show perfectly… Shows like this one will make Shakespeare lovers of us all.

In a visceral grip of pity and terror, the Virginia Stage Company audience watched in stunned, unblinking silence as the kindly gentleman psychiatrist and his masochistic nurse lead Blanche DuBois away to the mental hospital at the end of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

Charlie Hensley lovingly directs this potent work…this production was stirring.

…The larger risk is to mount a great play that everyone knows and has an opinion about. With…this stellar version of A Streetcar Named Desire, the risk pays dividends in wrenching emotion.

Virginia Stage Company’s treatment of A Streetcar Named Desire, with Charlie Hensley making his debut at directing Tennessee Williams, proves to be no stranger. The approach is careful and reverential. A faithful recreation of this American masterpiece…

Like a good book on a chilly winter evening, Sea Marks warms the heart and carries its audience to a faraway place…

Under the guidance of… Charlie Hensley, the pace of the play moves slowly and beautifully. Like a wave approaching land, the relationship between the two characters starts slowly, gradually intensifies, then crashes on the shore.

This is by far the most sophisticated directorial effort yet from Charlie Hensley, who misses nary a nuance of chuckle or storm… a bang-up job for drama, romance, the sea, and poetry.

It is rare to see a commercial production of a play like Hosanna in New York. Happily, this production is not only rare, it’s well done.

The play is entertaining, perceptive and engrossing, and it builds to a touching resolution. Charlie Hensley has directed with a light but sure hand, keeping the positive underpinnings of the protagonists’ relationship not far beneath the surface during all but the most venomous exchanges, and not allowing the evening to degenerate into melodrama.

[The actors] listen. Under Charlie Hensley’s direction, they are not afraid to stop talking either, and they fill pauses with action and with thought, too. We believe them because their words have the weight of fully imagined experience behind them.

A first-rate production… In addition to the precision and subtlety of Tremblay’s script, much of the credit goes to Charlie Hensley for his sensitive direction and for eliciting a shrewd restraint from both actors.

Like the heartwarming and heartbreaking script, everything about Charlie Hensley’s Alliance Theatre staging reaches out to grab or hug you. Even Robert Odorisio’s warm bilevel set of a late 1940’s Brooklyn house seems to surround you as it comes together in sections that roll downstage and rise from the orchestra pit. It invites us to become eavesdroppers in a circle of universal family… The acting and staging are superb.

Director Charlie Hensley has come home to the Alliance with a hit. His direction is evident in the smooth, flowing performance…filled with dramatic confrontations as well as humor…Putting the house together piece by piece filled the audience with wonder. (Broadway Bound)

…One gets the feeling of peering into the Jerome family’s home in Brighton Beach rather than being in an audience at a play… The family is splitting up and leaving just as you’re wishing they would stay so you could see more.

Director Charlie Hensley skillfully leads these fine singer-actors through the sparkling action of the piece with a delicate hand. Not a nuance is missed. He leaves time for a few tears, and there are many moments of emotional gravity. He also uses a jaunty, razzle-dazzle ‘em approach in the moments of joy and fun, and there are an abundance of these. It’s exactly as it should be…

See this show. Even if you hate, loathe and despise that evil Tinkie Winkie, I promise you will love, honor and adore Falsettos.

With a tenderhearted passion that most musicals wouldn’t dare try, it is surely one of the most intimate, timely and moving presentations at VSC.

Charlie Hensley has directed a fine ensemble cast in a manner that pleasingly avoids asking for either poignancy or humor -- but achieves both.

The show is wonderful. That’s all.

Director Charlie Hensley has given us a labor of love in this production, turning whatever fear of risk he must have felt at the outset into a delicately unfolding triumph of heart.

Helping Hensley in no small measure is a dream cast of New York singing actors who blend so well into Falsettoland that it’s hard to imagine they have offstage lives. Best of all, they compose a true ensemble, each one strong, no one overshadowing.

Virginia Stage Company has the biggest success of its current season on display… an unparalleled, mesmerizing love story of two extraordinary people.

Thanks to Charlie Hensley’s delicately orchestrated direction, the scenes of their lives open and close with fluid sensuality, like the petals of O’Keeffe’s famous flowers.

Well, I loved Alfred Stieglitz Loves O’Keeffe.

In Sly Fox, the Walnut Street Theatre Company has got hold of one of the great American inventions of the 20th century. It is a laughter machine, fiendishly clever in its construction, a black comedy with a devastatingly cynical view of human nature, a bedroom farce of brashly corny double meanings, a play that mocks death in its enjoyment of life’s dirty tricks.

The Walnut has brought its former associate director, Charlie Hensley, back to stage the comedy, and he has done so with infectious relish, moving a better-than-average cast through their exaggerated paces with an accurate feeling for the rhythm of this sort of theatrical caper.

Charlie Hensley directs this large cast dexterously… While keeping a multiplicity of gags in the air at all times, Hensley offers some inspired stage business, split-second ensemble timing, energetic physical comedy and a hells-a-poppin’ courtroom scene.

The debate at the curtain of the Virginia Stage Company’s My Children! My Africa! focuses chiefly on who did the most soul-frying job: director Charlie Hensley or one of the actors… It’s a powerful play powerfully done, the brightest feather in the VSC cap for quite a while.

Ballyhoo: noun – flamboyant, exaggerated or sensational event… This production meets all of the superlatives that Webster can provide, and then some.

Director Charlie Hensley marshals the fine talents of his actors to provide an evening of captivating theatre that seems much shorter than its 2½-hour length… filled with more laughter than somber reflection… This production is well cast and marvelously acted, with winners in each of the seven roles.

Under director Charlie Hensley, [the show] arrives in town with all interpretations clearly defined, all blocking well choreographed and all timings honed.

At the holidays, audiences crave shows that are filled with laughter. Better yet, the laughter should be framed in tears. Best of all, the laughter should wade through the tears and triumph over them. That’s why The Last Night of Ballyhoo now at Syracuse Stage will be an enormous hit with local audiences.

Director Charlie Hensley has wisely chosen to allow the poignant moments to shine through, rather than having his actors fall into the pit of playing this script too much for laughs. It is the right choice.

Sparked by a deftly arched performance from the superb Sara Croft as Boo, the cast seems spontaneous and comfortable…

The Last Night of Ballyhoo… is more than just entertainment – though it is a thoroughly engaging evening of theatre. It will undoubtedly prove to be one of the great crowd-pleasers of this company… It’s one of VSC’s more winsome evenings. See it, by all means.

She Also Dances is a… moving, poignant drama [that] receives an unsurpassable production from the Walnut. Director Charlie Hensley charts the emotional progress of Arnold’s drama with remarkable clarity.

…An arrestingly offbeat work that combines dance, music and dialogue in poetic conjunction [that] provides a whole range of dynamic possibilities which are explored with unfailing sensitivity.

…So charmingly conceived, directed and performed that it holds the eye and ear, its suspense deriving not so much from situational uncertainty as from ingenuity in presentation.
It develops with the surprise of a cocoon, unfolding in gymnastics, dance and music that add lyrical comments of their own to the dialogue.