It’s fantastic what the Colony has done to stage "The World of Ray Bradbury" Review by Archie Rothman, Seen & Heard, The Valley Vantage, Sept. 14, 1995

We’ve become accustomed to what can be accomplished on stage in the way of special effects and spectacular illusions such as falling chandeliers and landing heliocopters. But how can a small waiver theatre company put on a production dramatizing the sci-fi fantasy world of author Ray Bradbury where the staging and effects are as important as the play adaptations.

Our honored Colony Studio Theatre has done it by brilliantly creating Bradbury’s imaginative fantasy world on their small 99-seat theatre stage. And if you want to introduce children to theatre this may be just the way.
Sure we don’t see a giant sea monster rise from the Atlantic in the first of the playlets "The Foghorn" but we sure imagine it as an old keeper (Art Kempf) on an isolated island of New England’s coast convincingly demonstrates to a visitor that he’s not bored with the ever-changing water because of the emergence of a long-lost dinosaur attracted to the foghorn wail.

Bradbury’s concern that future advances are also liabilities permeates the other plays. In The Veldt a suburban family enjoy the comforts of an electronic home until an atmosphere-and-place induced room becomes a real Africa, with ferocious animals entering their domain.

In To the Chicago Abyss, a city laid waste by an apocalypse has an old man (Beans Morocco) going against the law by reminding the surviving populace about the pleasures that used to be — candy, coffee, record discs and other common pleasures  — making them aware of what’s gone.

Some great state-of-the-art effects amazingly creates what transpires when five astronauts are blown out of their spaceship and float into space. Those familiar with Bradbury’s famous The Martian Chronicles will especially enjoy The Third Landing where astronauts find their present and departed friends and families living in a fondly remembered hometown only to discover the shocking truth. Praise to the cast and those who did the sets, projections, special effects, digital imaging, lights, etc.: Susan Gratch, Douglas Bashaw, Jamie McAllister, Gary Christensen, Chad Leeper, and others.
 

Copyright 1995 The Valley Vantage 
Reprinted with Permission
The World of Ray Bradbury at the Colony Theatre