On Stage
Thorsten appeared in many stage productions at the Hilberry Theatre, a unique graduate repertory theater in Detroit. Reviews of some of these producations are available here.
Above: As Eilert Loevborg in Hedda Gabler
Main Section
As Brick, with Tami Evans
Cat Purrs Along
The Detroit News
by Kenneth Jones, Published March 15, 1993
There's a remarkable amount of tenderness and vulnerability displayed in Robert Hazzard's staging of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Hilberry Theatre. Tennessee Williams' well-crafted '55 soap opera is largely about greed and lies, things most counterproductive to love, marriage and family harmony.
As Brick, with Tami Evans
Long before Dallas gave us Sue Ellen, and Dynasty gave us Alexis, Williams gave us Maggie (Tami Evans), who just wanted a piece of her father-in-law's estate. The only way to win it is to produce a grandchild with Brick (Thorsten Kaye), her alcoholic ex-athlete husband.
Evans, as "Maggie the Cat," doesn't play it like she's in heat - although Maggie admits she is. Because Evans doesn't prowl, isn't overaggressive and threatening, you suspect Maggie's love for Brick is quite real. There's a dignity to her demeanor that's a refreshing, legitimate approach.
As Brick, with Tami Evans
Big Daddy (Michael Ouimet) is troubled by Brick's dissipation, a decline that began with the death of Brick's ex-football teammate, Skipper.
As Brick, with Tami Evans
Unfairly, the prurient question of Brick's possible
homosexuality usually
overshadows the terrific second-act account of a brusque father
reaching
out to his wounded favorite son.
You sense Ouimet's rather sweet-faced Big Daddy would forgive Brick anything, and there's not much tension in that, but the father-son sequence is accurate in its intimacy (when Brick leans on Big Daddy, their unspoken connection is deeply moving).
Soapy perhaps by today's standards, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof remains a beguiling portrait of a dysfunctional family turning in on itself.