Hendrickson sings, chants, speaks, shouts, struts, strokes us only to strike us. He examines every motive in momentary advance of extolling or condemning it. He is alternately charming and brutal. He manages to reel us in time after time only to cast us, with an overhand casting, back into the murky waters of truth. His performance really does define "tour-de-force" for the journey he pulls us through is one of force and fear and formulation. Hard as it is to use the word "brilliant" it is appropriate in this instance.
Hendrickson tells Homer’s story as if it were his own; as if he were witness to history,...with discovery, dramatic flair, hushed respect and understanding, tempered by wit, irony and an everyman’s directness and absence of guile or pretense.
Steve Hendrickson...can easily join the ranks of Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight, Jefferson Mays in I Am My Own Wife”, and Tovah Feldshuh in Golda, all actors who have raised the craft of solo performance to art.
Steve Hendrickson is a versalitle,, engaging Poet... easing from character to narrator to other character in flawless fashion...In a grand sense he represents the scope of major battle without losing sense of intimacy, especially as the play focuses away from the battlefield on those impacted on the periphery.
Steve Hendrickson includes bravura in his encompassing, riveting performance as The Poet.
An Iliad
adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare
directed by Sheila Siragusa
Best Actor 2013 - Berkshire Eagle
Steve Hendrickson's solo perofrmance as the Poet in "An Iliad" at Chester Theatre Company was a stunning tourde- force that spoke to the essence of theater as narrative storytelling.
Top 10 Productions - Berkshire Eagle
Who would have thought that one actor narrating Homer's powerful story could hold an audience in his thrall for two uninterrupted hours and create, in the process, such a riveting and compelling theatrical experience.
Photos © Rick Teller