Body of Work

TOO MUCH TEXT HURTS ATKINSON'S HARD TIMES
(excerpt)
October 4, 1996, Nancy Melich, The Salt Lake Tribune

Hard Times for These Times is another of Atkinson's one-man-band productions that he writes, directs and stars in for his experimental Plan-B Theatre Company.

Atkinson attacks the arrogance of overblown productions by presenting theater that contains its own amount of self-absorption. But never mind.

Hard Times is Dickens' 19th-century attack on the utilitarian philosophies espoused by Jeremy Bentham, who believed that pleasure could be exactly measured. Atkinson uses Dickens to impart his own displeasure with the current state of commercial theater.

Atkinson, a charismatic performer with a natural ease onstage, is tireless in his roving interpretations of multiple Dickens personalities.