Seattleplays.com review By Tom Scanlon					Vincent in Brixton ACT closes Oct. 2
				A much-older lover steered van Gogh away from religion and toward art? Well, O.K., maybe . . . Though the play itself is perhaps not entirely convincing, the cast certainly is. In this intellectual/artistic version of “The Graduate,” Anne Allgood is indeed all-good – almost shockingly good, actually, as an English widow teetering right on the edge of bleak, black emptiness. Shawn Telford’s young Vincent comes sweeping into her life, first as an eccentric lodger, soon after lodging himself deep in her soul. Telford is a comic dynamo, and in Act I director Kurt Beattie pushes this, playing Vincent’s quirky traits (as when he insists – practically screaming – how quiet he is) for laughs; while this is certainly entertaining, it doesn’t feel quite right, and perhaps revealing more of VvG’s dark side earlier would have been more artistically interesting than the excruciatingly naïve, goofy, lovestruck, fish-out-of-water (or, at least, Dutch-out-of-Holland).       Where in Act I Telford shows his gifts for deadpan, almost Kaufman-esque humor, in Act II he makes a stirring transformation, now just a few years later Vincent has devoted himself to religion and become a twisted Gospel quoter, dark but attempting to shine from within, a Dostoevsky character.      The widow, crumbling as she by her jilted lover, uses her last ounces of strength to tempt him away from God, toward Art. While there are shortcuts in the Nicholas Wright 2002 script that don’t fully explore this hypothesis, Allgood and Telford dazzle, in the moment.      Devlin Borra is quite good as a happy-go-lucky young man who gives up art to support a family, although the script downplays any dramatic tension between his Sam and Vincent, opting for a chummy, mostly humorous relationship. As Sam’s lover, the daughter of the widow, Emily Cedergreen somehow manages to be furious for the entire play without making it tiresome, finding various shades for her simmering emotions. Her kettle never boils over, just steams and threatens to blow – a deft touch.