Joe Adcock – ShowBizRadio

GALA Hispanic Theatre The Young Lady From Tacna

Joe Adcock — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 03:30:46 +0000

La señorita de Tacna (The Young Lady From Tacna)
GALA Hispanic Theatre: (Info) (Web)
GALA Theatre-Tivoli, Washington DC
Through March 9th
2:00 with intermission
$20-$42
Reviewed February 7th, 2014

La señorita de Tacna is about a playwright struggling to write a play. Neither the play nor the playwright is notably successful.

In contrast, Mario Vargas Llosa, the author of La señorita de Tacna, is hugely successful. He has written a couple dozen spectacular novels, many of them international best sellers. He won the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature. In 2011, the Spanish government actually invested him with nobility, naming him El Marqués de Vargas Llosa I.

As a playwright, Vargas Llosa is a dabbler. Of his nine dramatic works, La señorita is the best known.

What makes the play interesting is its examination of a writer’s creative process. The protagonist, Belisario, sits off on the left side of the stage. He taps at a typewriter. Exasperated, he yanks out page after page, balls them up and throws them away. He explains that his characters are unruly. They head off unbidden on dramatic detours. He himself is an unruly character. He is supposedly trying to write something about fragments of memory from his childhood, embellishing known facts and filling in gaps with improvised fictions.

He berates himself for getting off track. He wants something romantic, a love story. He comes up with a disjointed unhappy family tale. Sexual hysteria and intimations of incest, sadism and masochism compete with bickering about money. A pervading irritant is the erratic title character.

The current GALA Hispanic Theatre production of La señorita gives the play an appropriately vague and tentative look. Director José Carrasquillo and his designers create a nowhere-in-particular look. Setting (Giorgos Tsappas), costumes (Ivania Stack), sound (Brendan Vierra) and lighting (Cory Ryan Frank) hint at times and places ranging from late 19th Century small towns to mid 20th Century cities. Tacna is a small town on the Chile/Peru border. Belisario and his distressed typing are located in Lima.

Carrasquillo’s eight actors struggle along in ways that recall Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author. Carlos Castillo plays Vargas Llosa’s exasperated playwright. Luz Nicolás is the “Señorita,” switching back and forth between innocent ingenue and bitter old woman. Also bouncing around back and forth in place and time are Andrea Aranguren as both a femme fatale and a long-suffering mother, Victor Maldonado as a dashing Chilean officer, Marian Licha as a fading grande dame, Hugo Medrano as a fading patriarch and Tim Pabon and Oscar Ceville, sometimes as eager youths and sometimes as exemplars of disillusioned middle-age.

Along the way, Vargas Llosa tosses in red herrings: did a black man with a white mask really sneak into a high society ball? Did the Señorita really dance with him only to discover, with unspeakable horror, that he was black? Did outraged gentlemen really beat the intruder with walking sticks? Was the señorita — a proud Peruvian — really engaged to be married to the dashing Chilean invader? Was the marriage aborted at the last minute when the bride-to-be discovered that the groom-to-be was lustful? Was he was having an affair with an equally lustful married woman? Did grandpa really have an affair with an Indian woman? Oh, the horror! Was she, like the intruding black man, severely beaten? What’s with all the sex-and-violence-and-racism mishmash?

As the story proceeds, it’s as if we were reading a bewildering and barely legible draft, full of cross outs and erasures and rewrites.

Yet, in his novels, Vargas Llosa is the master of lucid storytelling. On historical matters, his research is phenomenal. “The War at the End of the World”, his epic about a 19th Century apocalyptic religious movement in Brazil, is an exquisite mosaic of fact and fiction, as is “The Feast of the Goat,” his retelling of the rise and fall of the 20th Century Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Over and over again, Vargas Llosa has proven to be a virtuoso of relevance and plausibility when it comes to imaginative writing.

When he wants to, Vargas Llosa adheres scrupulously to the literary imperative of fostering a willing suspension of disbelief. In La señorita de Tacna, he seems to be engaging in a willful cultivation of disbelief.

Photo Gallery

Carlos Castillo (Belisario) and Luz Nicolas (Mamae)

Victor Maldonado (Joaquin) and Luz Nicolas (Mamae)

Photos by Lonnie Tague

Cast

Mamae: Luz Nicolas
Belisario: Carlos Castillo
Amelia/Carlota: Andrea Aranguren
Joaquin: Victor Maldonado
Abuela Carmen: Marian Licha
Abuela Pedro: Hugo Medrano
Agustin: Tim Pabon
Cesar: Oscar Ceville

Production Staff

Producing Artistic Director: Hugo Medrano
Associate Producing Director: Abel Lopez
Director: Jose Carrasquillo
Scenic Design: Giorgos Tsappas
Lighting Design: Cory Ryan Frank
Costume Design: Ivania Stack
Sound Design: Brendon Vierra
Properties Design: Marie Schneggenburger
Stage Manager: Cecilia Cackley
Technical Director: Andres Luque
Production Manager: Anna E. Bate
Producer: Abel Lopez
House Managers: David Kriesberg, Alida Yath
Costume Design Assistants: Chelsey Schuller, Robert Croghan
Wardrobe/Backstage Manager: Jenny Cisneros
Assistant Technical Director: Linda Di Bernardo
Master Electrician: Aaron Haag
Electricians: Alison Burris, Christian Campbell, Chris Elwell, Joshua Midgett, Gabriel Rodriguez, John Rubin, Eliza Walker
Master Carpenter: Ryan Lanham
Carpenters: Christian Campbell, Steven Romero, Christian Sanchez
Scenic Charge: Marisa “Za” Johns
Scenic Painters: Ashley Bailey, Danielle DeFrancesco, Matt Reckeweg
Fight Choreographer: Mona Lisa Arias
Light Board Operator: Cecilia Cackley
Sound Board Operator: Artemis Lopez
Surtitles Programmer: Laura Smith
Surtitles operator: Esther Gentile, Laura Smith
Photographer: Lonnie Tague
Graphic Design: Watermark Design
Playbill: Christopher Shell

Disclaimer: GALA Hispanic Theatre provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Vienna Theatre Company This

Joe Adcock — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 02:54:35 +0000

This by Melissa James Gibson
Vienna Theatre Company: (Info) (Web)
Vienna Community Center, Vienna, VA
Through February 9th
2:00 with intermission
$13
Reviewed January 25th, 2013

First a little quiz: 1. Are you between the ages of 32 and 40 (or do you remember sharply, even fondly, being between 32 and 40)? 2. Do you feel frustrated, futile, restless, listless, passionless, indecisive, helpless and snarky? 3. Do you try to deal with unhappiness by tossing off snappy zingers?

These questions probe what used to be called “midlife crisis.” In the present context, they describe a dark comedy called This, which is currently on stage at the Vienna Theatre Company.

If you answered “yes” to at least two out of three of the foregoing questions, you might well respond positively to This. In a sketchy way, the play explores familiar issues that particularly affect a certain middle class demographic. These issues range from deep to deeply shallow.

The characters are not what you’d call attractive. The VTC cast members themselves don’t seem to like them. At times, even in an intimate tête-à-tête, the performers don’t look at one another as they utter supposedly passionate disclosures. Director Tom Flatt’s actors do, however, try to indicate telling characteristics while keeping their distance from the embarrassing specimens that they are portraying.

This Playwright Melissa James Gibson is a Vancouver native who now lives in New York. She writes mostly for TV. Indeed her This characters are sturdy perennials familiar to watchers of soaps and reality series. Some of the humor is quaintly lame. Alcoholism, for example, is a source of mirth.

The protagonists — Jane, Tom, Marrell and Alan — met at a college 10 or 15 years before the This events transpire. Their thrashings are observed by a French physician, Jean-Pierre, who works for Doctors Without Borders.

Alan is your standard bibulous gay friend who makes droll, wry remarks. At one point he laments having “Hush Puppy guy” written all over him. Though a stereotype, Alan is the most intriguing of the five characters. He is a living facsimile of a fictional character created by Luis Borges in his story “Funes el memorioso.” Funes and Alan are incapable of forgetting anything. This curse is a blessing for a playwright who wants characters who misrepresent their past words to be confronted with an exact retelling of those words. Matthew Randall, in an off-hand, rueful way, actually seems to enjoy playing Alan.

Shannon Benton as Jane, Kevin Walker as Tom and Rikki Howie Lacewell as Marrell stew, and sometimes come to a boil. Jane, a widow and single mother, is a “standardized testing monitor,” a poet and a teacher. Tom is a wood craftsman. He is married to Marrell, a lounge singer. For these three, sex provides the usual complications. Allen McRae is the aloof Jean Pierre. As a dramatic device, he is what, in the plays of Molière, is called the “raisonneur.” He puts upsets into proportion and calls things by their right names. He pooh-poohs “dinky” middle class fitfulness, comparing it to the horrific suffering faced by Doctors Without Borders in the third world.

Jean-Pierre’s comments are terse. Not so the ruminations of the central quartet. They freely indulge in flaccid “I hate…, ” “You always…” and “You never…” statements. Jane, in particular, is prone to diatribes. Her subjects include death, commiseration and the appropriateness of gentiles using Yiddish words.

This premiered five years ago in New York (off Broadway) and since then it has been staged by various theaters — including, last year, the Round House in Bethesda, Maryland. Clearly the play does not have anything like universal appeal. But it can give a certain generational cohort the encouraging feeling that their preoccupations matter.

Gibson’s characters frequently say “I’m sorry.” Then they go on to say that they are sorry that they say “sorry.” But the word has an unfortunate aptness. These folks are, indeed, a sorry lot.

Photo Gallery

Matthew Randall as Allan and Shannon Benton as Jane

Shannon Benton as Jane; Rikki Howie Lacewell as Marrell; and Allen McRae as Jean-Pierre

Rikki Howie Lacewell as Marrell; Matthew Randall as Alan; Shannon Benton as Jane; Allen McRae as Jean-Pierre; and Kevin Walker as Tom

Photos by Jessica Sperlongano

Disclaimer: Vienna Theatre Company provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review. VTC also purchased advertising on the ShowBizRadio web site, which did not influence this review.

Arena Stage Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life

Joe Adcock — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:29:32 +0000

Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life
Arena Stage: (Info) (Web)
Arena Stage-Kreeger, Washington DC
Through December 29th
95 minutes, without intermission
$50-$99 (various discounts available)
Reviewed November 21st, 2013

Not only is Maurice Hines tappin’ thru life at the Arena Stage. He’s also talkin’ and singin’.

And he’s 69 years old — a svelte and supple senior with snake hips and even snake shoulders. He brings the theater to vibrant life with his sunburst smile, his ingratiating “let me entertain you” manner and his phenomenal energy.

Hines’ autobiographical revue is big on nostalgia. The talkin’ and singin’ and tappin’ hark back to the 1940s — when Hines’ parents met and married. A collage of 14 on-stage screens displays a changing array of heirloom photographs. They lead us through a life of discipline and triumph.

Toward the end of the 95-minute show, there’s a segue into the present and future. Hines brings on some local tap dance talent: the dazzling and innovative Manzani brothers, John (21) and Leo (18). And then along come two promising middle-schoolers, Max and Sam Heimowitz.

These two pairs of young brothers evoke a certain poignancy. Hines and his brother Gregory were a performing duo, starting when they were about the same age as Max and Sam. Gregory died 10 years ago of liver cancer. Many of the upstage photo projections feature Maurice and Gregory in snappy costumes. The affectionate tribute evokes both sorrow and celebration.

For comic effect, Hines displays alarm and dismay at a younger generation that masters tradition and but then goes on to new heights. But — naw — dismissive gestures aside, it is clear that Hines is glad to showcase evidence that his beloved art continues on in lively new directions.

Mostly, however, Hines’ beloved art consists in Vegas-style cabaret patter and vocal stylings. The repertoire is a collection of oldies, including “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Come Fly With Me” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.”

The music is immeasurably enhanced by the nine-member all-female Diva Jazz Orchestra. This brassy virtuoso ensemble is great. The leader is a drummer, Dr. Sherrie Maricle. Her solo riff as an astounding display of blurring sticks and flying hands. The show blasts off with a medley of big band standards. This exciting overture lets know that we’re in for a good time.

Hines’ cabaret patter is heavy on name-dropping. The names are accompanied by anecdotes or at least comments. The celebrity list includes — let’s see — Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, Tallulah Bankhead, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., . . . and more. Many more.

Sometimes the reminiscences amount to a dusty and faded scrapbook. At other times the memories are powerful. When the Hines brothers first played Las Vegas in 1955, the strip was the sort of “whites only” enterprise characteristic of latitudes far to the south. Off by itself was the Moulin Rouge hotel and casino, which pioneered integration.

Hines tells of an incident involving Bankhead (white) and Bailey (black). Bankhead insisted that Bailey join her in her Vegas hotel’s swimming pool. The white patrons got out of the pool. When Bailey climbed out of the water, the pool was drained. On the projection screens are photos of segregation relics: “Whites Only,” “Colored Waiting Room,” etc. etc.

“We’ve come a long way,” Hines marvels. “A black man in the white house and the Supreme Court overturns DOMA.” This latter new landmark queues an old song: “Get Me To the Church on Time.”

Even a downbeat moment triggers an upbeat song. Which probably explains how, after all these years, Maurice Hines’ goes on “Tappin’ Thru Life.”

Photo Gallery

Maurice Hines

Maurice Hines, with members of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra

Max Heimowitz, John Manzari, Maurice Hines, Leo Manzari and Sam Heimowitz, with members of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra

Maurice Hines

John and Leo Manzari

Maurice Hines

Photos by Teresa Wood

Cast

Performers: Maurice Hines, John Manzari, Leo Manzari, Max Heimowitz, Sam Heimowitz

The Diva Jazz Orchestra

Drummer: Dr. Sherrie Maricle
Acoustic Bass: Amy Shook
Piano: Janelle Gill
Trombone: Jennifer Krupa
Trumpet: Jami Dauber
Lead Trumpet: Liesl Whitaker
Lead Alto Saxophone: Sharel Cassity
Tenor Saxophone: Camille Thruman
Baritone Saxophone: Leigh Pilzer

For This Production

Director: Jeff Calhoun
Music Director: Dr. Sherrie Maricle
Set Designer: Tobin Ost
Lighting Designer: Michael Gilliam
Sound Designer: Carl Casella
Projection designer: Darrel Maloney
Assistant Director: Patti D’Beck
Assistant Choreographers: John and Leo Manzari
Stage Manager: Kurt Hall
Assistant Stage Manager: Marne Anderson
Script Development and Dramaturg: David Snider
Casting Director: Dan Pruksarnukul
Production Manager: Marissa Larose
Technical Director: Scott Schreck
Properties Director: Chuck Fox
Master Electrician: Christopher V. Lewton
Sound Director: Timothy M. Thompson
Costume Director: Joseph P. Salasovich
Costume Shop Manager/Designer: T. Tyler Stumpf
Show Carpenter: Sean Malarkey
Props: Justin Titley
Light Board Operator: Paul Villalovoz
Assistant to the Lighting Designer: Nicki Rosecrans
Spot Operators: Curtis Jones, Kelsey Swanson
Sound Engineer: Roc Lee
Associate Projection Designer/ Programmer: Paul Leiber
Wardrobe Supervisor: Alice Hawfield
Youth Company Supervisor: Chet H. Craft
Musician Contractor: Rita Eggert
Musical Orchestrations and Preparation: Leigh Pilzer
Overhire Stitcher: Natalie M. Kurczewski
Overhire Painter: Mimi Li
Overhire Carpenters: William Klemt, George Page, Dan Peterson, Cathryn Salisbury-Valerien

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Signature Theatre Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill

Joe Adcock — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:17:40 +0000

Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill by Paul Down Colaizzo
Signature Theatre: (Info) (Web)
Signature Theatre, Arlington, VA
Through December 8th
100 minutes with one intermission
$47-$89 (Plus Fees)
Reviewed October 26th, 2013

“You are only as sick as your secrets” – or so the saying goes. Applying that bit of ancient wisdom to the farce/drama now premiering at Signature Theatre, I would say that playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo’s characters are sick, sick, sick.

I won’t reveal who’s got what syndrome in Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill. That would deflate Colaizzo’s extended parade of not very shocking or even surprising revelations. But setting aside the question of exactly who is into precisely what, we have … let’s see now … two sorts of eating disorder, sexual abuse, incest, sexual secrecy, urinary incontinence, infidelity, use of a legally controlled mood-changing substance and overuse of a legally sanctioned mood-changing substance — not to mention rampant neediness and frustration, obsessive compulsive disorder and willful destruction of everyday household items including (but not limited to) wallboard and breakfast cereal.

Colaizzo’s dramatic setup is sort of four characters in search of a TV sitcom. It has to be admitted that his writing is witty. It is nearly ready for prime time. His dialogue is packed with insult humor, put downs and snappy comebacks. There are even some refreshingly goofy tossed off remarks. One character, refuting an accusation of financial irresponsibility, alleges that he has “enough money to buy a thousand dogs.”

And there is some agile social satire. A character who is accused of being devoid of empathy retorts that she is “processing” and is “entitled” to her “own feelings.”

This woman’s younger son dismisses his mother’s self-improvement educational efforts as dabbling in a “Googleversity.”

Colaizzo’s characters are, as you may have guessed, cartoonish. There’s the fretful mom, the frustrated dad, the clumsy older son and the seething younger son.

Director Michael Kahn (best known as head of D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company) ekes out welcome hints of character development.

As mom, Christine Lahti evolves from intolerant and severely respectable to somewhat accepting of herself, her family and her neighbors. At the top of the show her vocabulary bristles with unexamined expectations based on “should” and “ought.” It’s as if her family members and her house were fashion accessories acquired to flatter her life ensemble. Eventually, mom’s devotion to appearances withers like the prominently displayed bouquet of flowers from her prize-winning garden.

Wayne Duvall, as dad, goes from the conscientious but emotionally frozen provider stereotype to the tentatively adventurous male menopause stereotype.

As the older son, Christopher McFarland tires of pathetic longing for approval and opts for the sort of self-fulfillment that used to be called “personal bliss.”

Anthony Bowden, as the younger son, starts with habitual petulance. If there’s strawberry ice cream he rages at people’s unfeeling disregard for his loathing of strawberry ice cream. Eventually he sets aside grievance collecting and experiences real grief and real affection.

Getting back to the theory that “you’re only as sick as your secrets,” one might conclude that Colaizzo’s family is all better by the end of Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill. It would seem that they no longer have any secrets. But I wouldn’t bet on their future as wholesome exemplars of mental health and hygiene.

And yet … and yet … I did laugh a lot as mom, dad, older brother and younger brother stumbled and bumbled from denial to cringing to surrender.

As for that clunky title, Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill — it refers to an affluent Atlanta suburb. Colaizzo, who is in his late 20s, actually grew up in an Atlanta suburb called The Falls of Autry Mill. Note the lack of an “e” in that Autry, which distinguishes the actual from the fictional. The real Falls of Autry Mill (judging from its web site) appears to be an array of McMansions selling for just under a million dollars. Several of them are, or have been, in foreclosure.

The setting for Colaizzo’s farcical drama has all the material fixings of the well-known American Dream and most of the defects that precipitate the well-known American Disillusionment. In its jocular way, Autrey Mill updates dour American themes explored by Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill.

Last year Signature Theatre premiered Collaizzo’s tightly focused drama Really Really, which dealt with the tribulations of privileged 20-somethings. It was well-received at Signature and, later, in New York. Really Really, like Autrey Mill, presented the good life as really really not so great.

Disclaimer: Signature Theatre provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Teatro de la Luna 16th International Festival of Hispanic Theater

Joe Adcock — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 10:00:13 +0000

XVI Festival Internacional de Teatro Hispano (16th annual Hispanic theater festival, with simultaneous English translations)
Teatro de la Luna: (Info) (Web)
Gunston Arts Center, Arlington, VA
Through November 24th
90 minutes (times vary)
Free to $35/Discounts for multi-show passes and for students and seniors
Reviewed October 19th, 2013

Though your immediate plans may not include a visit to Latin America, here’s a timely thought: you can get a right-here-and-now glimpse of our neighbors to the south by visiting the Teatro de la Luna’s annual Hispanic Theater Festival, now running at Gunston Theater Two in Arlington.

First stop on the tour, Quito, Ecuador, took place this past weekend. Two actresses from that city performed a droll dual portrait of a couple of elderly women – nursing home roommates – whose reminiscences, confusions and observations are buoyed by bawdy humor.

Miche is proud of her ever-changing list of illustrious ancestors. The catalogue sometimes extends back to Simón Bolivar and sometimes stretches even farther and includes Christopher Columbus.

Miche sniffs at Tomasa’s lowly pedigree: mother a woman of easy virtue and father unknown. “Unknown!” Tomasa snaps. “What do you mean unknown!? He was known all over the country, he fathered babies everywhere!’’

Despite her genteel pretensions, Miche struggles loudly (offstage) with chronic constipation. Much of playwright María Beatriz Vergara’s humor is shamelessly low farce. Visual pranks supply abundant laughs – Tomasa, for example, uses her four-footed cane as a lever to jack up Miche into a more or less vertical stance.

Intravenous feeding equipment is used to dispense a scary mix of beverages.

Death and the hereafter are frequent topics of speculation. (Spoiler alert, but hey, the show will have closed by the time you read this.) Miche and Tomasa’s wide-ranging speculations about death and such give way to first hand experience. The magic of disco offers a surprise that few could imagine.

With the help of goofy eyewear, lumpy padding, shapeless nightgowns and the sort of rubbery headgear used by beauticians for hair highlighting the two actresses – Juana Estrella and playwright Vergara – come across as hardcore geriatric cases.

Their 90-minute show is an extended (sometimes overextended) riff on the indignities of old age. Though Meche and Tomasa are strenuously undignified, they are also bizarrely hilarious.

The Hispanic theater festival continues through Nov. 24. Future attractions include:

Oct. 25-27, Gato por liebre (Putting on the Britches), from Columbia, about a woman who passes herself off as a man in order to get a better life.
Nov. 1-3, La Madre (The Mother), from Miami, a comedy about whether a transvestite can relate to his son in public.
Nov. 8-10, Al pie del Támesis (Down by the Thames), from the Dominican Republic, a drama about a couple entangled in a mix of fantasy and reality.
Nov. 15-17, Una taza de té para una mujer casada (A Cup of Tea for a Married Woman), from Puerto Rico, about a woman struggling to get along with unruly men.
Nov. 22-24 El país de las maravillas (Wonderland), from Uruguay, about a couple’s endless search for a better life.
Bilingual works for children will be performed on Oct. 26 (Yo la llamo Rusita Rojas — a variation on the Little Red Riding Hood theme — and on Nov. 2 and 9, Sanos y Contentos — a musical comedy plug for exercise and good nutrition.

Photo Gallery

Maria Beatriz Vergara, Juana Estrella

Photos by Zero No Zero Teatro

Disclaimer: Teatro de la Luna provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

American Century Theater Biography

Joe Adcock — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:10:48 +0000

Biography by S.N. Behrman
American Century Theater: (Info) (Web)
Gunston Arts Center, Arlington, VA
Through June 29th
2:40, with two intermissions
$35-$40/$32-$37 Seniors, students, Military
Reviewed June 8th, 2013

It’s not as if the 1932 comedy sensation Biography didn’t have some hot buttons just waiting to be pushed in 2014. You’ve got embezzlement, bribery, intimidation by threat of lawsuit, sexual hypocrisy, political chicanery and mental maladies ranging from narcissism and anal obsession to infatuation addiction and paranoid schizophrenia. The paranoid schizophrenic is perhaps the hottest button, he’s what could be called a “walking time bomb just waiting to go off.”

All these opportunities for dramatic energy are pretty much glossed over by director Steven Scott Mazzola’s current American Century Theater production of Biography. What could be a comedy drama rife with shocking revelations and fraught reactions comes across as a protracted exhibition of mildly interesting characters. The play’s author, S.N. Behrman (1893-1973) was not a shock therapist on a par with Henrik Ibsen. But, in its day, Biography was hugely popular because of Behrman’s particular knack for upsetting seemingly sedate situations.

Behrman specialized in what used to be called “drawing room comedies” — the forebears of TV sitcoms. People would gather in a parlor and say funny things. The 19th Century literary and theatrical phenomenon Oscar Wilde was the absolute master of the genre (consider, for example, the perfections of The Importance of Being Earnest.) Behrman is much more wordy and much less witty that Wilde. But he knew how to engineer the mechanics of the drawing room genre: shuffle and deal and then reshuffle and redeal the funny maid, the young man of questionable breeding, the fascinating female lead, assorted secondary protagonists and funny older persons.

American Century Theater’s mandate is to rediscover major plays of the 20th Century. Biography was certainly major in its day — despite its 1932 Broadway première, it made lots of money — a burgeoning depression not withstanding.

The ACT revival of Biography is certainly of interest in terms of theater history. And its theme of freedom of the press vs. political expediency is undeniably timely.

The story’s particulars have to ring familiar bells for contemporary audiences. Readers of “People” and “Us” and supermarket tabloids know all about celebrity and scandal and sad but showy attempts to overcome adversity. In Biography, an editor sees that he could make a lot of money by publishing the life story of Marion Froude, a well-known female portrait artist. She consorts with (and sleeps with) an international array of the rich and famous. She has done portraits of dukes, presidents and dictators. The editor eventually overcomes Froude’s unwillingness to become a tell-all author. Once she gets started, however, Froude enjoys detailing her memories.

The Froude character may have been patterned on Isadora Duncan, an early 20th Century American modern dance pioneer who had affairs with all sorts of foreign notables. Before mass women’s liberation, women in the arts were the main suppliers of successful exemplars of unfettered female self-realization and self-expression.

As a young woman in Tennessee, Marion had enjoyed a sexual/romantic relationship with a man she had grown up with. The man, Leander (AKA Bunny), went on to become a rich lawyer. Then he decided to become a US senator. Then he discovered that his ex-lover Marion was about to publish her memoirs. Leander tries to persuade Marion to abandon her literary project. Not only is his political future involved but also in peril is his imminent marriage to Slade Kennicott — daughter of the immensely rich and politically powerful Orrin Kennicott.

Complications multiply. The tangle is never sorted out neatly. But we are left with a detailed picture (or biography) of the free-loving and free-living Marion Froude.

In that role, Jennifer J. Hopkins is flighty and eccentric. She easily fits into the stereotype of the early 20th Century arty Bohemian woman. She flaps her hands a lot. She rarely pauses to acknowledge and exploit the dramatic incidents that mine her role. Her speedy, excited, breathy diction is sometimes unintelligible. When the moments are ripe for subtle bits of acting that would give emotional oomph to Marion’s supposedly deep love for both Leander and the ambitious editor, Hopkins portrayal is sketchy. Her character comes across as essentially superficial despite a few moments urgent sincerity. Grave threats and serious misfortunes hardly seem to faze her.

As the editor, Daniel Corey faces the show’s hardest acting chores. A 1930s audience would be familiar with a stereotypical leftist/anarchist/marxist true believer. Corey can’t fall back on that long gone popular conception. His ranting cantankerousness just seems… well… odd. He might give audiences an account of a full-blown and sensational paranoid schizophrenic, but that never happens. Playwright Behrman throws in a few unhappy details from the editor’s childhood to add a bit of depth to the character. But Corey’s brief memory monologue about murderous anti-union strife comes as a playwright’s slapdash effort to plug up a hole in his story’s plausibility.

The one performer who seems at home in his role, with no desperate grasping for effects, is Craig Miller as a Viennese musician — an old friend of Marion’s from her days of European adventuring. Miller’s account of an incident of embezzlement could use some vigorous grasping for effects, however — desperate or otherwise. Illegal misappropriation of an inheritance is not best served up as a bland comment.

Cam Magee as Marion’s maid, Jon Townson as Leander, Frank Britton as a Hollywood heart throb, Joe Cronin as the manipulative millionaire Orrin Kennicott and Caitlyn Conley as Kennicott’s sassy daughter all make do with punchy one-dimensional representations.

As entertainment, the ACT presentation of Biography is a little on the snoozy side.

I’ll admit however that I did get a few laughs from the show. Some of the lines are snappy, as when Marion asks Leander, “Do you want to be a senator or is it just that you can’t help yourself?” And Joe Cronin, as Orrin Kennicott, offers a droll satire of the 19th Century dietary fanatics Charles Post and Harvey Kellogg. Like that pair of Battle Creek health prophets, Kennicott preaches that the cure for licentiousness is “roughage” (fiber). For irony, Kennicott uses this precept as an element in a seduction strategy.

There’s a question that Biography raises but never answers straight out: Why is this play called Biography? It’s all about whether or not a woman will write her autobiography.

Eventually, as the hours slowly go by, we realize that playwright S.N. Behrman has written a biography of an allegedly fascinating woman who has had erotic affairs with all kinds of celebrities. The woman dithers over whether or not she will accept much-needed money to write her memoirs for publication. Whatever she decides — to write or not to write, that is the question — Behrman creates a detailed dramatic portrait. In other words, leave the autobiography or no autobiography to the ditsy and distraught protagonist. As for Behrman, he painstakingly proceeds with his fictional biography of the fictional Marion Froude.

Photo Gallery

Jon Townson as Leander Nolan, Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude

Cam Magee as Minnie, Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude

Frank Britton as Warwick Wilson, Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude, Cam Magee as Minnie

Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude, Caitlyn Conley as Slade Kinnicott, Joe Cronin as Orrin Kinnicott, Daniel Corey as Richard Kurt, Jon Townson as Leander Nolan

Joe Cronin as Orrin Kinnicott, Caitlyn Conley as Slade Kinnicott, Jon Townson as Leander Nolan

Craig Miller as Melchior Feydak, Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude

Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude, Joe Cronin as Orrin Kinnicott

Jennifer J. Hopkins as Marion Froude, Jon Townson as Leander Nolan

Photos by Johannes Markus

Cast

Richard Kurt: Daniel Corey
Minnie: Cam Magee
Melchoir Feydak: Craig Miller
Marion Froude: Jennifer J. Hopkins
Leander “Bunny” Nolan: Jon Towson
Warwick Wilson: Frank Britton
Orrin Kinnicott: Joe Cronin
Slade Kinnicott: Caitlyn Conley

Production Staff

Director: Steven Scott Mazzola
Scenic Design: Robert Gato Echanique
Costume Design: Alison Samantha Johnson
Lighting Design: Jason Aufdem-Brinke
Sound Design: Ed Moser
Properties Design: Lindsey E. Moore
Stage Manager: Tre Wheeler
Assistant Stage Manager: Charles Lasky
Master Carpenter: Jonathan Hudspeth
Scenic Artist: Annalisa Dias-Mandoly
Set Construction: Ashley Crouch, Thomas Linn, Colin Manning
Additional Scenic Painting: Ashley Crouch, Lindsey E. Moore, Colin Manning, Ed Moser
Dialect Coach: Karin Rosnizeck
Master Electrician: Jonathan Weinberg
Sound Board Operator: Ashley Crouch
Wardrobe Assistant: Ashley Crouch
Photography: Johannes Markus
Publicist: Emily Morrison

Disclaimer: American Century Theater provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

American Century Theater Voodoo Macbeth

Joe Adcock — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:50:27 +0000

Voodoo Macbeth adapted in 1936 by Orson Welles based on William Shakespeare’s 1605 tragedy
American Century Theater: (Info) (Web)
Gunston Theatre Two, Arlington, VA
Through April 13th
2:15 with intermission
$35-$40/$32-$47 Seniors, Students, Military
Reviewed March 23rd, 2013

Voodoo Macbeth was a unique American dramatic achievement. The production was the sensation of the 1936 New York theater season, devised and staged by the ever-sensational theatrical wunderkind Orson Welles. It had a cast of 104 actors — all African-American. It was set in early 19th Century Haiti. That country’s revolutionary caudillo Henri Christophe conflates with Macbeth, William Shakespeare’s 11th Century warrior baron who evolves from hero to tyrant.

The current American Century Theater production is billed as Voodoo Macbeth. In a strict sense, director Kathleen Akerley’s show is no such thing.

Most conspicuously, it has a cast of 13 — nearly all white guys. Yes, guys. The fascinating Lady Macbeth, played by a male actor, is renamed “Gruoch.” Perhaps as a result of some gene-damaging environmental pollution calamity (the year is 2033) gender, among other things, has gotten scrambled. Matt Dewberry, a stocky actor with a stubbly beard, belts out the famous lines “Unsex me here… Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall.” This Gruoch character later avers to the wavering Macbeth, “I have given suck, and know how tender it is to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed his brains out, had I sworn as you have done.”

(As you may remember, Macbeth, prompted by malicious witches and by his wife, decides — and then undecides — and then redecides — to kill the king of Scotland and usurp the throne. Havoc ensues.)

Instead of Medieval Scotland or Haiti 200 years ago, director Akerley opts for a 21st Century post apocalyptic dystopia. The witches are some sort of Druid special forces ninjas. They undermine a crumbling Christian military autocracy that combines decadent macho violence addiction with degenerate faux Christian magical thinking. Religious ceremonies combine Latin Mass chanting with a fondness for the gospel hymn “Amazing Grace.” Also, there’s a self-stabbing compulsion, with accompanying blood-letting, that would impress even pre-Columbian Mexican priests.

So… no… this is certainly not an authentic Voodoo Macbeth. It might more accurately be called a Mishmash Macbeth. The mix even includes vague intimations of zombie resurrection rituals that are a blurry reflection of the Haitian culture exploited by the Voodoo Macbeth of 77 years ago.

Which is not to say that Akerley’s production lacks theatrical oomph. Her well-rehearsed male ensemble surrenders enthusiastically to a mystique of violence and superstition. They whip up frenzies that might look familiar to pre-Christian Middle-European berserker warriors.

William Hayes as the ninja witch honcho is consistently sinister and menacing, with occasional crescendos of berserk fury. He and his minions eventually intoxicate Macbeth — played by Joseph Carlson — with their thrilling rage.

Carlson has a steady grip on his character, a paragon of nihilistic poetry fused with murderous and self-destructive violence. Sometimes in his shaping of Macbeth’s psychotic moodiness Carlson descends into a madman mumble, which is frustrating if you delight in every word of Macbeth’s amazing soliloquies — like the one that begins with “My life has fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf….” But at least Carlson never falls into the unmodulated rant that can sink inexperienced Shakespearean actors. Some of Akerley’s actors do indeed succumb to pull of unmodulated rant.

Creating an emblem of gory mayhem is Frank Britton, who plays Macbeth’s betrayed ally Banquo. Britton comes off as candid OK guy who morphs into a blood-smeared zombie bent on revenge. Britton is the most spectacular of “makeup/gore effects” artist Casey Kaleba. Kaleba is also in charge of the fight choreography that regularly punctuates the action. Conflict tools include guns, knives, swords and good old hand-to-hand combat.

Kathleen Akerley is an all-round theater person. In addition to directing, she designed costumes (combat fatigues mostly) and a minimalist setting (sparsely furnished open areas.) In her attempt to create a sense of irrational frenzy, Akerley often has her actors crouching and thrashing on the floor. Since her theater has no actual raised stage, only audience members in the front row have a clear view of these intense moments.

However, it is the pervasive sense of irrational frenzy that is the most impressive element of this Macbeth. The pathological fervor is in no way glamorized as it would be in typical action/adventure movies and TV shows. One needn’t imagine a bizarre dangerous-to-self-and-others 2033 cult of violence to see the pertinacity of Akerley’s show. Alas, the fanatical distortion of patriotism, religion, masculinity and guns is only too familiar to us right here and right now.

Director’s Notes

Dai. Uy.

That’s a Vietamese term for Captain. It’s also a term that American soldiers took to calling their own superiors during the Vietnam War, one of the many terms from the local language that migrated into the daily conversation of English speakers. And it’s the word that occurred to me when I was trying to solve the problem of why people who are not Scottish would call a man “the Thane.”

It’s a problem that, by all accounts, Orson Welles either didn’t solve or didn’t view as a problem. He famously moved the action of he play to Haiti but without changing the national references (there is short video evidence that he, at least on some lines, let the actors whiff on the geography: obviously that’s easier to do with “Hail King of Scotland” than “Stands Scotland where it did?”) He kept the Scottish titles. I grant, this is no longer isolated to Welles: By now everyone of Shakespeare’s plays has been forced into the sometimes-constraining clothing of a cultural-temporal conceit (Nazis! Pirates! Pirate Nazis from Space! Who happen to call each other “Thane!”) But my job with this project was to find a way to make Welles’ play “work”, the same way it’s my job to solve any other play I’m lucky enough to get hired to direct (and if you’re looking for a frame-by-frame re-creation of the Federal Theatre Project as the best and most humble way I might have achieved that: a. No and b. I point you to 1. his 104-person cast of largely untrained actors who represented a 2. subset of the population that far too many people considered to be less than fully human enacting 3. a form of magic meant to genuinely shock an audience inured to the sing-song impotence presumably much more menacing to King James than to Franklin Roosevelt and that would scare us now only if I actually put snakes on the stage.) And solving this text meant working with fairly aggressive text changes Welles made, while working to make the Welles/Shakespeare structure a sturdy one, navigable by actors who understand their right to demand coherent given circumstances and playable beat changes.

#1 is easy: Hire fewer of them. #2 is trickier: Many -isms plague us still, but I believed it was necessary to capture Welles’ choice by finding the group that is systematically viewed by having less than full humanity, whatever group dismissed before they even open their collective mouths: not a group that still has to defend itself against racists and sexists but the group that no one but it’s own members would defend. And I still believe that group to be Conservative Christians, famously called out for “clinging” to their guns and religion. Since it’s a play that starts and ends with war, I put my group in the American military, and #3 solves itself. A generation that decided to produce one, not two, but seven Saw movies obviously is working something out about self-mutilation, which dovetails neatly with flesh mortification rituals both of faith and military hardihood.

It remained only to integrate my army in Scotland. After all this explication, I won’t lay out the storyline I created for the actors about the collapsing European economies and the American response to both Russia’s opportunism and its energy independence: I leave you to have your own fun with it. It’s 2033 and we’ve been in Scotland since 2022. The Army is no longer in touch with home. They’ve had to make Scotland home, some uneasily, some wholeheartedly, some having even started families. They’re carrying on the war on both flanks. They’re bolstering up holes in their faith with indigenous spiritual practices. And instead of Dai Uy, they call their commander “King.”

-Kathleen Akerley, Director, Voodoo Macbeth

Photo Gallery

Will Hayes as Hecate, Theodore M. Snead as Duncan

Nick Hagy as Mondor, Keegan Cassady as Lennox

Keegan Cassady as Lennox, Joe Carlson as Macbeth, James Finley as Fleance

Matt Dewberry as Gruoch, Joe Carlson as Macbeth

Ryan Sellers as Malcolm, James Miller as Ross

Frank Britton as Banquo, James Finley as Fleance, Joe Carlson as Macbeth, Will Hayes as Hecate, Matt Dewberry as Gruoch

Joe Carlson as Macbeth

Will Hayes as Hecate, Joe Carlson as Macbeth

Photos by Johannes Markus

Cast

Banquo: Frank Britton
Macbeth: Joseph Carlson
Lennox: Keegan Cassady
Siward: Evan Crump
Grouch: Matt Dewberry
Porter: Cyle Durkee
Maduff: Christopher Dwyer
Fleance: James Finley
Mondor: Nick Hagy
Hecate: William Hayes
Ross: James Miller
Malcolm: Ryan Sellers
Duncan: Theodore M. Snead

Production Staff

Director: Kathleen Akerley
Assistant Directors: Tyler Herman and Annalisa Dias-Mandoly
Stage Manager: Lindsey E. Moore
Set and Costume Design: Kathleen Akerley
Lighting Design: Jason Aufdem-Brinke
Sound Design: Frank DiSalvo, Jr.
Assistant Set Designer: Dean Leong
Costumer: Laura Aspen
Grouch’s Ritual Cloak Design: Laura Aspen and Annalisa Dias-Mandoly
Technical Consultant: Michael P. deBlois
Master Carpenter: Nick Hagy
Assistant Manager: Mollie Welborn
Sound Board Operator: Jorge A. Silva
Fight Choreography, Makeup/Gore Effects: Case Kaleba
Wardrobe Assistant: Mollie Welborn
Publicist: Emily Morrison
Production Photography: Johannes Markus
Program Design: Michael Sherman

Disclaimer: American Century Theater provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Les Miserables at The National Theatre

Joe Adcock — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 04:33:25 +0000

Les Miserables
Touring Production
The National Theatre, Washington DC
Through December 30th
2:37 hours, one intermission
$109-$198 (plus fees)
Reviewed December 14th, 2012

One attraction of the stage musical Les Misérables is that it is so remote … and so immediate.

The action takes place far away and long ago: France, between 1815 and 1832. Yet the themes and issues are somehow so familiar: wealth and poverty, oppression and liberation, cynicism and idealism, despair and hope, over-privilege and under-privilege, political conflict and interpersonal love.

And then there’s that soaring, grand opera music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. In aria after aria, chorus after chorus, scene after scene the music starts off grim and grinding, builds and swells and then takes off into exultation or reflection, tragedy or romance.

The story encompasses the usual hazards of opera: questionable plausibility, melodramatic incidents and, of course, prolonged, heart-rending death scenes. For comic relief we have the shenanigans of not-necessarily-very-funny skanky clowns. The unsavory low-lifes, as we are reminded at the touring production currently playing at the National Theatre, can come across as grotesque.

Any production of Les Mis operates on the frontier between grandeur and grandiosity. Sometimes you get towering, compelling emotion. And sometimes you get bombastic, hollow pretense. I’ve seen Les Mis four times now — in New York, Seattle, Vancouver and, just recently, at the National. Until the D.C. experience, I’ve been lucky. The productions stayed on the safe side of the divide between feeling and expression. This latest venture, however, was disappointing. At the National, expression way exceeds feeling.

The result is coarse, hollow and strained. The loudness is too loud. The crescendos build too quickly. The acting, on the whole, is broad at best and, at worst, ludicrous.

However … the protagonist and the young lovers are excellent singers and not bad actors. To a lesser degree, the same can be said for two of the main figures in a large group of luckless women.

Peter Lockyer plays Jean Valjean the protagonist. Valjean’s heroism strains credibility — but that’s just the way things are in French romantic-era literature. Think Three Musketeers. Think The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Valjean, convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to keep his nephew alive, serves his sentence as a galley-slave. Eventually paroled, he runs amok. But he is redeemed by a saintly bishop. He then goes on to become a wealthy factory owner and mayor of a small city. The law catches up with him. His nemesis, the cruel inspector Javert, wants to send him back to prison. Valjean repeatedly evades Javert. He becomes the guardian of a very unfortunate young woman’s child. He is caught up in the violent June of 1832 Paris confrontation between true-believing sons of the Republic and rigid upholders of authoritarianism. After the slaughter he saves his foster-daughter’s wounded fiancé. When fiancé and foster-daughter are safely reunited, Valjean dies peacefully — escorted into the afterlife by a host of cast-members whose deaths were generally not at all peaceful.

In the early galley slave and renegade parolee scenes, Lockyer is strident and unnervingly bombastic, which does not bode well at all for the long evening ahead in his company. But he quickly tones down his acting and singing. He adds subtlety and nuance. Eventually he does some astoundingly quiet, meditative, sustained high-tenor-range virtuoso singing.

Devin Ilaw as Marius, the fiancé, and Lauren Wiley, as Cosette, the foster-daughter, both sing beautifully — and with outstandingly clear diction. Also commendable are Briana Carson-Goodman as a lovelorn dreamer and Genevieve Leclerc as Cosette’s much-abused mother.

Les Mis has an epic, all-over-the-place sprawl of incidents and settings. The smallish stage at National Theatre is not an ideal venue for the show. The action looks inappropriately cramped when two dozen performers are on stage, all vigorously singing and flailing about.

Giving the illusion of some depth and movement are cunningly shifting projections devised by Fifty-Nine Productions — especially effective in the famous escape-via-the-sewer-tunnels scene.

Les Mis has earned its place as a mega-hit musical: countless awards, record long-runs, productions in 42 countries and translations into 21 languages. And now comes the movie version with a cast that includes Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Sacha Baron Cohen. On pages 2 and 3 of the National Theatre Playbill is a color spread advertising ” ‘Les Misérables’ THE MUSICAL PHENOMENON in theaters Christmas Day.”

Photo Gallery

‘Lovely Ladies’

‘Fall of Rain’

‘The Barricade’

‘One Day More’

‘Stars’ peformed by Andrew Varela (Javert)

Briana Carlson-Goodman as Eponine

Peter Lockyer as Jean Valjean

‘Master of the House’

Photos by Deen van Meer

Cast

Jean Valjean: Peter Lockyer
Javert: Andrew Varela
Farmer: Lee Zarrett
Laborer: Jordan Nichols
Innkeepers’ Wife: Natalie Beck
Innkeeper: Joseph Spieldenner
The Bishop of Digne: James Zannelli
Constables: Ian Patrick Gibb, Alan Shaw
Factory Foreman: Richard Todd Adams
Fantine: Genevieve Leclerc
Factory Girl: Jessica Keenan Wynn
Old Woman: Beth Kirkpatrick
Wigmaker: Cornelia Luna
Bamatabois: Lee Zarrett
Fauchelevent: Eriv Van Tielen
Champmathieu: Nathaniel Hackmann
Little Cosette: Erin Cearlock, Abbey Rose Gould
Madame Thenardier: Shawna M. Hamic
Young Eponine: Erin Cearlock, Abbey Rose Gould
Thenardier: Timothy Gulan
Young Whore: Brittany Johnson
Crazy Whore: Siri Howard
Gavroche: Joshus Colley, Hayden Wall
Eponine: Briana Carson-Goodman
Cosette: Lauren Wiley
Thenardier’s Gang
- Montparnasse: Jordan Nichols
- Babet: James Zannelli
- Brujon: Nathaniel Hackmann
- Claquesous: Lee Zarrett
Students
- Enjolars: Jason Forbach
- Marius: Devin ilaw
- Combeferre: Eric Van Tielen
- Feuilly: Weston Wells Olson
- Courfeyrac: John Brink
- Joly: Alan Shaw
- Grantaire: Joseph Spieldenner
- Lesgles: Richard Todd Adams
- Jean Prouvaire: Ian Patrick Gibb
- Loud Hailer: Nathaniel Hackmann
- Major Domo: Joseph Spieldenner
Ensemble: Hannah Isabel Bautista, Natalie Beck, Erin Clemons, Lucia Gianetta, Siri Howard, Brittany Johnson, Beth Kirkpatrick, Cornelia Luna, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Richard Barth, Ben Gunderson, Jason Ostrowski, Rachel Rincione, Natalie Weiss
Dance & Fight Captain: Ben Gunderson
Assistant Fight Captain: Heather Chockley

Understudies

For Jean Valjean: Richard Todd Adams, John Brink, Nathaniel Hackmann
for Javert: Richard Todd Adams, Joseph Spieldenner
for Cosette: Natalie Beck, Siri Howard
for Fantine: Cornelia Luna, Jessica Keenan Wynn
for Thenardier: James Zannelli, Lee Zarrett
for Madame Thenardier: Lucia Gianetta, Beth Kirkpatrick
for Eponine: Erin Clemons, Britanny Johnson
for Marius: Ian Patrick Gibb, Jordan nichols
for Enjolras: John Brink, Weston Wells Olson, Alan Shaw
for little Cosette/young Eponine: Hannah Isabel Bautista
for the Bishop of Digne: Joseph Spieldenner, Lee Zarrett
for the factory foreman: Jason Ostrowski, Joseph Spieldenner
for the Factory Girl: Lucia Gianetta, Rachel Rincione
for Bamatabois: Richard Barth, Joseph Spieldenner
for Grantaire: Ben Gunderson, Eric Van Tielen

The Orchestra

Music Director/Conductor: Lawrence Goldberg
Associate Conductor/Keyboards: Tom Whiddon
Concertmaster: Michelle Maruyama
Keyboards: Adm Laird
Percussion: Eric Borghi
Music Coordinator: Michael Keller
Local Musicians
- Flute/Picc: David Lonkevich
- Oboe/English Horn: David Garcia
- Clarinet, Bass, E flat, Recorder: Ed Walters
- French Horn: Mark Hughes
- French Horn: Rick Lee
- Trumpet: Chris Gekker
- Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tuba: Paul Scchultz
- Viola: Kyung Leblanc
- Cello: Suzzane Orban
- Acoustic Bass: Chris Chlumsky
- Keyboard II Sub: Alex Tang

Designers and Crew

Producer: Cameron Mackintosh
Lyricist: Herbert Kretzmer
Director: Laurence Connor
Director: James Powell
Scenic and Image Designer: Matt Kinley
Costume Designer: Andreane Neofitou
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Sound Designer: Mick Potter
Additional Costumes: Christine Rowland
Musical Staging: Michael Ashcroft
Musical Director/Conductor: Lawrence Goldberg
Original Orchestrations: David Caddick
Music Supervisor: John Cameron
New Orchestrations: Christopher Jahnke
Additional Orchestrations: Stephen Metcalfe
Additional Orchestrations: Stephen Brooker
Original French Text: Jean-Marc Natel
Additional Material: James Fenton
Associate Director: Anthony Lyn
UK Associate Director: Christopher Key
Casting: Tara Rubin Casting
Company Manager: Joel T. Herbst
Resident Director: Michael O’Donnell
Production Stage Manager: Trinity Wheeler
Stage Manager: Heather Chockley
Assistant Stage Manager: Mitchell B. Hodged
Executive Producer: Seth Wenig

Disclaimer: The National Theatre provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Arena Stage Pullman Porter Blues

Joe Adcock — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 21:43:36 +0000

Pullman Porter Blues by Cheryl L. West
Arena Stage
Kreeger Theatre, Washington DC
Through January 6th, 2013
2:30 with intermission
$64-$94; discounts for those 30 and under, groups, families, military, police and firefighters
Reviewed November 29th, 2012

First of all, there are some truly sensational performances on display here. Second of all, the play itself is a mishmash, a conglomeration of organs in search of an organism.

First things first: The cast of Pullman Porter Blues pulls off a dozen wonderful musical numbers. They sing, they dance, they radiate vitality whether the material is gospel (“This Train”), lyrical ballad (“Sweet Home Chicago”), up tempo novelty dance (“Hop Scop Blues”), poignant lament (“Trouble in Mind”) or screaming soul (“Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues”).

The play’s setting is the Panama Limited, a train traveling from Chicago to New Orleans. The year is 1938. Ten performers — an ensemble of a singer/dancer/musician/actors — belt out traditional tunes from way back when. E. Faye Butler plays Sister Juba, a blues diva. Butler’s got pipes. Her expressive capacities range from inward exploration to outward explosion. And, she favors us with stunning intervals of shaking and shimmying.

Cleavant Derricks, Warner Miller and Larry Marshall play, respectively, a father, a son and a grandfather. All three are exceptional showmen (indeed, Marshall is exceptionally exceptional). When the spotlights hit them during some of their song-and-dance numbers the three men are radiant previews of things to come from Motown. Even Richard Ziman, who plays a stock bad guy, has a touching solitary meditative moment as he sings “900 Miles.”

Poor Ziman — he bears a conspicuous burden of stereotype and caricature. He even stands out in a cast of characters composed mostly of stereotypes and caricatures. Ziman plays the white conductor of the Panama Limited. His role calls to mind the prototypical demon of America’s collective nightmare of racial horror: Simon Legree of the 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The book was, by the way, immediately turned into a stage melodrama and went on to become the most produced play, ever, in American stage history — a record that still stands.

As he interacts with the father/son/grandfather trio of Pullman porters, Ziman takes on most of the standard equipment allotted to your regulation melodrama villain: drunk, sexual predator, sadist, bully, petty, craven, whiner, bigoted and, worst of all, not at all a gentleman when it comes to paying a gambling debt.

Ooops. Sorry. Mentioning the reneged wager might be a spoiler. But playwright Cheryl L. West sets up her story, themes and characters in a way that, unless you are asleep, you see events coming along way before they occur. Anyway: the bet. This is the night of an epic heavyweight boxing championship fight. It’s Joe Louis (black) vs. James Braddock (white). The train staffers are listening to the blow-by-blow on a radio. When Louis wins, his feat is a great morale booster for the black porters (one of whom bet on Louis) and a real downer for the bigoted, vile conductor (who, of course, bet on Braddock). And so ….

Which brings us to the mishmash nature of Pullman Porter Blues. Playwright West has an interest in history. So we get a good deal of exposition about Pullman porters, who were the aristocrats of the black working class in the early 20th Century. We learn about one of the protagonist’s efforts as an organizer of what was to become America’s first black union, the Sleeping Car Porters of America. We also learn about the grandfather’s father, a slave laborer forced to lay the very tracks on which the Panama Limited runs. We also learn about the Chicago Defender newspaper’s role as a pioneering force in African American liberation and empowerment.

Mixed in with the history material is a rape theme involving both the queenly diva and a lowly white “box car floozy” who manages to stow away in the Pullman baggage car.

Mixed in with all that is a vague whiff of magic realism involving a mysterious intervention by the long dead slave great-grandfather.

Mixed in with that is a fraught love-gone-wrong story laden with reproach and remorse.

Mixed in with that is a psycho-social display lacerating and unproductive male behavior. Nothing new there. West goes over ground explored a couple of decades ago by the late August Wilson, whose Pittsburgh Cycle of plays thoroughly dramatized the subject of conflicted and conflictive black male roles as seen in each decade of the 20th Century.

And speaking of August Wilson, his play-with-music Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom featured a black blues diva of the 1920s. One can’t help comparing Ma Rainey with Pullman Porter. As for the music part, West’s play is the equal of, or better than, Wilson’s. But when it comes to fashioning unique characters, a lively story and themes that emerge in an unforced way as characters and story develop, well …. Suffice it to say that Wilson is way ahead of most playwrights when it comes to art and craftsmanship. Way, way ahead. Let it be noted, however, that West has a bright way with pithy wisecracks. Her raucous and uninhibited diva, Sister Juba, tells a man that he looks “as sharp as a mosquito’s peter.” And further, “that smile of yours could make a praying woman do wrong.”

Now here’s a concatenation coincidences: August Wilson lived in Seattle. His plays were written at his own slow, deliberate pace. When, by his reckoning, they were ready for the stage they received their premieres or early performances at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. Cheryl West lives in Seattle. Pullman Porter Blues was commissioned by the Seattle Rep to inaugurate its 50th season — which is did in October. Furthermore — when the Rep moved into its splendid new theater in 1983 it commissioned a play with music, “The Ballad of Soapy Smith” (nice tunes, shaky playcrafting).

Conclusion: there is something about a commission with a strict deadline that can work against skillful creation. In the case of Pullman Porter Blues, the play doesn’t conclude. It just stops abruptly, as if someone yelled “Time’s up, Cheryl.”

Photo Gallery

Larry Marshall as Monroe, Cleavant Derricks as Sylvester, and Warner Miller as Cephas

The cast

Cleavant Derricks as Sylvester and Larry Marshall as Monroe

Larry Marshall as Monroe, Cleavant Derricks as Sylvester and Warner Miller as Cephas

Emily Chisholm as Lutie

E. Faye Butler as Sister Juba, with Lamar Lofton as Shorty

Larry Marshall as Monroe

Photos by Chris Bennion

Disclaimer: Arena Stage provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.

Little Theatre of Alexandria Cantorial

Joe Adcock — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:31:41 +0000

Cantorial by Ira Levin
Little Theatre of Alexandria
Little Theatre of Alexandria
Through November 17th
90 minutes, with intermission
$17-$20
Reviewed November 4th, 2012

What’s the opposite of an “exorcism?” An “enorcism?” Whatever the term may be, it describes Cantorial, the last play written by Ira Levin (1929-2007).

Levin, for most of his professional life, was the go-to guy for scary fiction, plays and movie scripts: notably “Rosemary’s Baby,” Deathtrap and “The Stepford Wives.” Levin had truly mellowed by the time he got to Cantoral. The play has its spooky element. It’s a ghost story after all. But it is less a thriller than a fable — a magical story of spiritual possession that has a happy ending.

Warren and Lesley are a young live-together New York couple. They have good jobs, she in publishing, he in commodity futures trading. Their search for a place to live leads them to a decommissioned synagogue on the Lower East Side. The neighborhood changed from Jewish to Latino, the congregation dwindled and eventually disbanded.

Warren and Lesley buy the synagogue. No sooner have they moved into their exotic new home than they … discover that it is haunted!! Yes, a cantor (a liturgical singer) who had served the old congregation keeps right on singing — even though he died some 40 years ago. Obviously, Levin’s main concern here was not unflinching realism. But as the fable progresses, it makes up in charm what it lacks in plausibility.

Lesley, by the way, is Jewish and secular. Warren is a secular gentile.

Now here comes the enorcism — or whatever you want to call it. Warren, unwillingly at first but then enthusiastically, is possessed by the uneasy spirit of Isaac, the ghostly cantor.

Helpfully providing background information about the synagogue’s history is Morris, who owns a nearby delicatessen. At the urging of Isaac, and despite the outspoken misgivings of Lesley and Morris, Warren turns what was to have been a yuppie showplace worthy of a spread in “Architectural Digest” back into a modest synagogue. Isaac’s influence includes inspiration for restoration and remodeling. The cantor’s day job was carpentry and construction.

The current Little Theatre of Alexandria production of Cantorial is efficient as storytelling and poignant when Levin’s story morphs into a spiritual fable. C. Evens Kirk, who directs, makes the bizarre come across as matter-of-fact. Without much fuss, his set design accomplishes a tricky transformation: a modern yuppie lair becomes a late 19th Century sanctuary.

James Myers as Warren, Heather Benjamin as Lesley and Steve Rosenthal as Morris accomplish similarly unfussy transformations — the latter two change from nay sayers to yea sayers. Myers goes from casual materialism to enthusiastic mysticism.

Myers, who has a beautiful voice, brings off a charming final moment when this preppy WASP starts singing liturgical Hebrew. As his voice gains confidence and volume we realize that Isaac’s unsettled spirit has found a good home.

Director’s Notes

I was first introduced to the works of ira Levin in fourth grade through a cousin who loved horror novels. “Rosemary’s Baby” was a must read. You can only imagine the letter home to my parents from the school concerning my choice of reading. My mom’s response was “You mean he’s actually reading a book!”

Having directed area productions of Stephen King’s Misery, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I was excited at the prospect of adding a work by Ira Levin to my resume. And as I read Cantorial for the first time, I kept turning the page waiting for that moment like Rosemary walking down the long hallway to see her baby for the first time.

I don’t think I’m giving anything away by stating that the moment never came! From the mastermind behind “Rosemary’s Baby” (and its unfortunate sequel), “The Stepford Wives,” Deathtrap and “The Boys From Brazil” is this realistic story. Yes, a “ghost story,” but or because there’s a ghost in it. Instead of horror, suspense, or espionage, Levin has given us a personal journey…a story of an adopted boy searching for his missing link.

The world we live in is enchanted and mysterious. It is not a symbol or metaphor. However, we often make up symbols and metaphors to explain the unknown. In fiction it may be hard to believe in vampires and time travel, so it becomes a work of horror and science fiction. But what if they were real? Do you believe in angels and miracles? If so, do you actually see them, and are they a part of your everyday life? In magical realism writers write the ordinary as miraculous and the miraculous as ordinary. As Freud might have said, “Sometimes a ghost is just a ghost.” In short, there is no answer, you just believe.

I hope you enjoy this production of Cantorial as much as I have enjoyed working on it. Don’t be afraid to believe. You may just discover something new or missing in your own life.

Photo Gallery

Heather Benjamin (Lesley Rosen) and James Myers (Warren Ives)

James Myers (Warren Ives) and Heather Benjamin (Lesley Rosen)

James Myers (Warren Ives) and John Shackelford (Williams Ives)

James Myers (Warren Ives), Steve Rosenthal (Morris Lipkind) and Heather Benjamin (Lesley Rosen)

Steve Rosenthal (Morris Lipkind) and James Myers (Warren Ives)

Photos by Shane Canfield

Cast

Lesley Rosen: Heather Benjamin
Philip Quinn: John Franklin
Warren Ives: James Myers
Donna Quinn: Fe Vivas Patriciu
Morris Lipkind: Steve Rosenthal
William Ives: John Shakelford
Cantor: Rick Flint

The Crew

Producers: Jamie Blake, Eileen Doherty
Director: C. Evans Kirk
Stage Manager: Rebecca Patton
Assistant Stage Manager: Zell Murphy
Set Design: C. Evans Kirk
Lighting Design: Ken and Patti Crowley
Costume Design: Annie Vroom
Sound Design: Janice Rivera
Assisted by: David Correia, nna Hawkins, Jennifer Lyman, David Rampy, Alan Wray
Set Construction: Dan Remmers
Assisted by: David Toll, Tom McLaughlin, Eddy Roger Parker, Tjaarda P. Storm van Leeuwen
Set Painting: Leslie Reid
Assisted by: Bobbie Herbst, Kevin O’Dowd
Set Decoration: Donna Reynolds
Master Electrician: Mary Abahazy, Pam Leonowich
Assisted by: Pat Durako, Peter Halverson, Jim Hartz, Mike O’Connor, Doug Olmsted, Nancy Owens, Donna Reynolds, Sherry Singer, Adam Wallace
Property Design: Heather and Ben Norcross
Assisted by: Sarah Boyd, Rachel Brown-Glazner, Carter Diggs, Gayle Nichols-Grimes, Barbara Helsing, Margaret Snow
Wardrobe: Megan Murphy
Assisted by: Mary Beth Smith-Toomey
Hair and Makup Design: Brandy Morgan
Rigging: Russell Wyland
Special Effects: Brett Alexander
Photographer: Shane Canfield
Videographer: Jim Hartz
Audition Table: Maria Ciarrocchi
Assisted by: Mary Lou Bruno, Barbara Helsing, Margaret Snow
Double-Tech Dinner: Larry Grey
Assisted by: Ronald Carter, Isabel Zorro
Opening Night Party: Ronnie Hardcastle and Ben Robles
Assisted by: Erblin Nushi, Joseph Robles, Joseph Zachry

Disclaimer: Little Theatre of Alexandria provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this review.