Back to the Future with TeCo Productions

Take a short trip back to the future. The 8^th Annual All Star Playwright Festival and Annual New Play Competition sponsored by TeCo Theatrical Productions at the Bishop Arts Theater Center in Oak Cliff launched seven new one-acts this past weekend, penned by promising playwrights from across the metroplex.

2010 Playwrights

This year’s competition displays an 80’s theme, so all productions take the audience back to aspects of a recent cultural milieu that offers perspective and commentary on our world today, some with humor, others with poignant insight. They provide an entertaining, thought-provoking evening or afternoon’s jaunt back to that “kinder and gentler” future.

How does the competition work? More than twenty playwrights submitted short one-act plays in response to a general call for entries. A reading team of writers, theatre professionals and educators rated and scored all of them as to quality of writing and stage-worthiness. I was one of this year’s readers. The top seven scorers then advanced to the Playwriting Festival. At each performance, audience members vote for their favorite production. After the final performance February 21, the votes get tallied and the winning playwright wins $1000 in cash and airline tickets to the destination of his/her choice. A fine reward for all the hard work.

This year the playwrights include: a former stand-up comic and award-winning script writer; the founder of The Playwrights Forum; the artistic director and co-founder of a a well-established non-profit theatre company; an award-winning author, poet and performance artist; a Dallas-based renaissance performance artist with his own entertainment company; a graphic designer and film-maker; and a well-respected regional set designer and co-founder of a successful for profit theatre company. All bring a wealth of experience and a range of artistic focus to the performance pieces.

What gets reinforced in the festival viewing is how a script can be only as good as it is interpreted and performed, no matter how well written. In several cases, more polished scripts got saddled with less than stellar performances and unimaginative direction. Phillip Morales’ Back in the Day: Or How to Transcend the Mix-Tape and Carol M. Rice’s Waltzing Matilda’s, both interesting scripts at first reading, ended up a bit flat in production. Several other plays’ scripts, not quite as well crafted as literary works, sprang to life due to their tight, energized direction and spot on acting performances. Love, Snakes and Thriller by Rodman Goode and The Cosby’s: The Lost Episode by Buster Spiller both surprised and delighted me on stage when they had not impressed me particularly on the written page.

The strongest production was Rodney Dobbs’ Date Three, Date Four: ’83-’84. Powerful at first reading, this play presented the most consistent plot structure and fully developed characters, which changed in interesting ways from Scene 1 to Scene 2 as their relationship evolved. The play posits a clear snapshot of the era, in vivid direct contrast to a similar scenario today. It centers on a realistic setting of a dating couple with certain behavior expectations and mores reflective of the era. In Scene 1, Randy, played with natural ease and macho arrogance by Marty Moreno, discusses his “screw and scram” philosophy and how he doesn’t view this date as a likely conquest. Cavalier to the max, Randy boxes everyone into a disposable category. It’s hard not to cringe when he tosses off the thought that he doesn’t use condoms as there’s not much out there to catch from unprotected sex a shot won’t fix. Shannon Rasmussen, as Dana, plays her romantic co-dependence to the hilt with believable neediness in Scene 1. In Scene 2, they enact a similar meeting a year later. Dana has wised up and Randy is no longer “in charge” of his sex-life. This time, Dana, as realistic sex kitten with devil horns and tail, presents him with a condom en route to the bedroom. Suddenly her character expands to include the looming specter of AIDS in her alluring devil suit, an unexpected, effective combination of the realistic and metaphorical.

Very funny characterizations and efficient, fast-paced, believable blocking in Buster Spiller’s self-directed The Cosby’s: The Lost Episode elicit the most audience response of the evening. JuNene K. as Clair Huxtable is the hilarious stand-out of the entire performance with her multi-layered repeated delivery of the line, “Mama gonna tear that ass up.” Who knew that line could be so funny, said so many ways? Spiller’s solid cast includes Aron Watson, J.R.Bradford and Sequoia Houston.

The seven plays presented are, in program order:

84 by Jonathan Norton

Waltzing Matilda’s by Carol M. Rice

The Cosby’s : The Lost Episode by Buster Spiller

Date Three, Date Four: 83’-84’ by Rodney Dobbs

Love, Snakes and Thriller by Rodman Goode

To the Max by Camika Spencer

Back in the Day: Or How to Transcend the Mix-Tape by Phillip Morales

The 8^th Annual All Star Playwright Festival and Annual New Play Competition runs through February 21 at the Bishop Arts Theater Center, 215 South Tyler St. in Oak Cliff.

For tickets visit TeCo Theatrical Productions:

www.tecotheater.org 214-948-0716

It’s a Wondearrghful Pirate’s Life

A play for boys, and it’s not about sports? Imagine that!

Nationally recognized Dallas Children’s Theatre takes on a wide range of topics and challenges every year in its programming. Right now it’s running a swash-buckling, high energy, funny-bone tickling musical adaptation of Melinda Long’s best selling book How I Became A Pirate, in a southwestern premier engagement.

The Pirate Crew at DCT

It’s a winner with both boys and girls, if the delighted interaction I witnessed at intermission is any indication. “Aargh! Swab the decks, mate-y, or you’ll walk the plank!” reverberated from merrily vociferous preteen male voices as they waited for the second half of the show to begin. Their little sisters danced around them, enthusiastically engaged in “air swordplay.”

It could fire the imagination of many a young boy to stumble upon a hapless band of pirates mistakenly landing on a beach near his home, eager to adopt him into their tribe of misfits and to find a safe hideaway for their hoard of buried treasure. How I Became A Pirate was named winner of the Irma S. and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature, Book of the Year, in 2004, followed in 2007 by its World Premier Stage Production at the Emerald City Theater in Chicago (book and lyrics by Alyn Cardarelli and Music by Grammy award winner Steve Goers).

Young Jeremy Jacob, played with a sweet, energetic appeal by Dallas newcomer Scott Zenreich, discovers life on the “high seas” has great freedom. But it has its challenges, too. He has to learn how to “Talk Like A Pirate” to forget his good manners, avoid a menacingly grinning shark (huge cheers from the audience every time the creature poked its snout from the water) and survive a loud storm that tears up part of the pirate ship. He begins to miss his family at home and can’t fall asleep easily when he learns that “Pirates Never Tuck You In”. In the end, Jeremy makes a wise decision but helps out his newfound friends, as well. Mum’s the word—ye’ll have to go spy what ‘appens for yerself….

The cast included: Zenreich as hero Jeremy, with pirates Chad Patrick Smith, Karl Schaeffer and Alexandra Valle singing and sparring with equal zest. Paul Taylor imbued Captain Braid Beard with warm élan and stole the show as the pirate captain with a loving heart and a twinkle in his eye. He made a fine role model for lads of all ages.

A fantastic pirate ship set, pre and post storm, designed by Randel Wright, engulfed the entire DCT stage, the sort of ship a bevy of young boys would have a wild heyday exploring. The light and sound effects (Linda Blasé and Marco Salinas) made the storm wrecking the pirate ship snap and crackle with vitality and enough scary reality to find Jeremy’s second thoughts about becoming a pirate believable. Nancy Schaeffer directed and choreographed the show with musical direction by B. Wolf.

Shiver me timbers! Don’t miss this boat, with whatever youngsters age 4 and over you can tow along. How I Became A Pirate runs through February 21 at Dallas Children’s Theatre, 5938 Skillman St., at Dallas’ Rosewood Center for Family Arts.

Tickets: 214-740-0051 www.dct.org

YouTube video about building the pirate ship:

http://www.youtube.com/dallaschildrensthr#p/c/BC9405F4E7D6C39B/4/pJ1SaVOd2KY

About the book: http://www.melindalongbooks.com/pirate.html

PHOTO by Mark Oristano   Shown clockwise from highest point: Scott Zenreich (Jeremy Jacob), Chad Patrick Smith (Wheezing Stephen McGee), Lloyd Harvey (Jacque LaToe), Karl Schaeffer (Stubby Barbossa), Paul Taylor (Captain Braid Beard), Alexandra Valle (Millicent “Milt” Skeeter)

Revolution in drag: Taylor Mac

“The revolution will not be masculinized….”

Taylor Mac unleashes the beast within, or is it his best? You decide; I’m not going to tell you. In fact, I can’t tell you what he’s like, as he defies comparison. Pouting petulantly, glitter-encrusted eyes flashing, he stamps a dainty foot encased in faux- leopard skin platform heels and dares us to try.

Taylor Mac wants us to join him on an odyssey voyage deep inside, where he reveals heart and soul truth in the most intimate way possible. He hopes the participatory act will give audiences courage to embark on the voyage, themselves. After all, we’re bound tightly together in this life and culture, passengers linking arms on Spaceship Mother Earth, careening at warp-speed towards Armageddon. Or are we?

Yes, it’s a drag show. But it’s not your everyday, hothouse garden-variety man over-painted with savage defiance to vaguely resemble some deceased femme movie star or enshrined, glitzy celebrity. No impersonation about it. It’s far, far more subversive than that. And far more revelatory. It’s not amplified. There’s only one light on the solo performer inside his downstage bubble circle. It’s more of a shamanic ritual with coyote trickster in pastel fishnets and heels, grinning mysteriously, coquettishly, from under an array of feral wigs in acute disarray, from behind a Mardi Gras glitter face while accompanying himself in song on ukulele. Does he reveal an aboriginal tattoo face, a Greek Chorus mask, an earthy Commedia Arlecchino, or ferocious Noh Oni? Taylor Mac’s visage is chameleon in scope, presence and impact, not static. Occasionally he dons a mammoth “prosternida”, affectionately termed “boobies”, to complete the transformative effect and spike humor. Bring him your tulle, your Mylar, your silk shawls, your slinky teddies, your huddled masses, yearning for inner freedom…and he’ll light the pathway there.

Taylor Mac

Taylor Mac is a brilliant, unique playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, political activist and entertainer with a dedicated penchant to inspire and illuminate. He is the recipient of a Sundance Theater Lab Residency, a Rockefeller Map Grant, The Creative Capital Grant, The James Hammerstein Award for playwriting, The Edinburgh Festival’s Herald Angel Award, a Jeff Award nomination, two GLAAD Media Award Nominations, PS 122’s Ethyl Eichelberger award, a New York State Council of The Arts Grant, an Edward Albee Foundation Residency, The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant, and The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Voices Fellowship. His one man show The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, in performance at Dallas’ Undermain Theatre through Feb. 13, has toured to The Sydney Opera House, The San Francisco MOMA and Opera House, New York’s Public Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, The Spoleto Festival, The Bumbershoot Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, London’s Soho Theater, and literally hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, cabarets, gay sex clubs and festivals worldwide.  He invites you, dares you, encourages you, longs for you to join him in reflective play, where you’ll discover your shared humanity and change the world by leaving repressive conformity behind.

“The revolution will not be masculinized.

The revolution will not be masculinized.

We’ve nothing to fear but fear, itself.”

http://www.undermain.org/undermain-now-playing.htm

WRR describes Undermain Theatre as “both literally and figuratively Dallas leading underground theatre”. It’s located at 3200 Main St. in Deep Ellum. Tickets: 214-747-5515, www.undermain.org

Quotes from Taylor Mac’s opening night performance: 2/3/2010

Be(a)stly Genius at Undermain Theatre

Evolving into its twenty-sixth year of presenting leading edge, intelligent, entertaining theater for loyal Dallas audiences, Deep Ellum’s Undermain Theatre presents the internationally acclaimed performance artist/ playwright Taylor Mac in a two week run February 3 through 13 of his one man show, The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac.  The New Yorker describes Mac as “the talk of the town” for his unique multi-faceted performance pieces and plays.

Mercedes Lagunas illustration, The New Yorker

Lakewood resident and Undermain artistic director Katherine Owens learned of Mac’s intimate yet spectacle-filled performances while on a recent trip to New York and felt his artistry was a good match for Dallas theatre-goer tastes.

Using highbrow and lowbrow humor, song (with ukulele accompaniment), movement, fantasy costumes and make-up and sharp-edged geo-political monologue to create an impression of “structured chaos”, The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac deals with the problematic subject of conformity. Mac’s performance shows how recognizing and celebrating differences are key to accepting the commonality of human experiences.

Mac inhabits a “drag” persona to make his point clear. “I needed to expose my inner reality, what I found I was hiding from the world. “ He expands the definitions of “drag queen” or “gay political performer” far beyond conventional female impersonation stereotype. “My work is extremely personal as I believe the more personal risk I take the more the audience will relate and see their humanity reflected back at them.  So, through art, I try to be as masculine, feminine, ugly, beautiful, intelligent, base, chaotic, graceful, joyful, sorrowful, perfect and flawed as I am in real life.”

Taylor Mac is widely acclaimed as a playwright/performer phenomenon. He is the recipient of a Sundance Theater Lab Residency, a Rockefeller Map Grant, The Creative Capital Grant, The James Hammerstein Award for playwriting, The Edinburgh Festival’s Herald Angel Award, a Jeff Award nomination, two GLAAD Media Award Nominations, PS 122’s Ethyl Eichelberger award, a New York State Council of The Arts Grant, an Edward Albee Foundation Residency, The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant, and The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Voices Fellowship in playwriting.

Directed by OBIE-Award-winner David Drake, The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac has taken Taylor Mac on tour to The Sydney Opera House, The San Francisco MOMA and Opera House, New York’s Public Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, The Spoleto Festival, The Bumbershoot Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, London’s Soho Theater, and literally hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, cabarets, and festivals worldwide. He’s now here in Dallas, performing at Undermain Theatre, about ten minutes from Lakewood. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to witness a celebrated American artistic genius on stage.

http://www.undermain.org/undermain-now-playing.htm

Radio station WRR (FM 101) describes Undermain Theatre as “both literally and figuratively Dallas leading underground theatre”. It’s located at 3200 Main St. in Deep Ellum. Tickets: 214-747-5515, www.undermain.org

The New Yorker illustration by Mercedes Lagunas, February 1, 2010 edition

A Sense of Samsara: Adaptations in Reflection

OMG, they’ve done it again. The Dallas Theater Center has just mounted another peppy world premiere musical full of attractive, dancing, singing, and casually attired youths under the guise of classical adaptation. This time it’s an even looser nod to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata than their last Fall’s production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s set in fictional Athens University, where the male basketball team members don’t care if they lose games, but their cheerleaders do. So, the girls refuse to “give it up” to the team until they agree to try to win, hence the name of the musical: Give It Up.

Give It Up: Liz Mikkel & the Cheerleaders

Unfortunately, Lysistrata is a powerful anti-war play. Led by one principled, strong woman, Lysistrata, the women of Athens refuse to sleep with their men until they end the Peloponnesian War. They don’t refuse to sleep with them unless they win the war.

It’s not a minor distinction.  It’s a bone of contention.

Wonder if I dislike adaptations? I admire them if they work well.  Sometimes they’re the best way to make a classical work acceptable to a tentative or non-adventuresome modern audience.  Alas, there’s not much classical theatre on mainstream television or in the movie houses today.  It’s province remains the stage, where adaptation can reconnect modern audiences to great works they will encounter nowhere else. Through January 30 UT Dallas professor Fred Curchack and his partner, California actress Laura Jorgensen, perform Milarepa, a delightful adaptation at the Bath House Cultural Center based on The Life of Milarepa and The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. The title character, played by Curchack, was an 11^th century Buddhist poet/saint, the most beloved figure in Tibetan history for attaining enlightenment in one lifetime. Sound pretty esoteric? The Curchack/ Jorgensen production features modern music (percussion, wind instrument and guitar), rap, humor, special lighting effects and interpretive movement. Their adaptation works well to honor the spirit and word of the original text while making it entertaining and accessible, grounded in current metaphor.

“Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is a comic account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for its exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society and for its use of both double entendre and explicit obscenities.” (Wikipedia)

Aubrey Beardsley Illustration for Lysistrata

Get the picture? It’s fine to bring in song and dance and a live band for DTC’s production of Give It Up. As a matter of fact, the choreography around the basketball court with actual hoops and basketballs cleverly worked into the routines steals the show (directed and choreographed by Dan Knechtges). The music, lyrics and orchestration (Lewis Flinn) offer nothing particularly memorable, while the singing is excellent, notably by Liz Mikel, Patti Murin and Curtis Holbrook.

Where I have a problem is with the book and its thematic intent.  It has virtually nothing to do with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in spite of Douglas Carter Beane’s excellent writing.  (His book for the Broadway musical Xanadu earned him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical and a Tony Award nomination as well.) About Give It Up, Beane says: “I want theatre goers to have a good time, and I want them to leave with something fresh. Give It Up poses the question, ‘If you take away sexual attraction from a relationship, would you really fall in love with that person? Who would you fall in love with?’ Ultimately, it’s about being who you truly are, learning to love who you truly are and not having to pretend to be something other than that.” Fine sentiments, worthy of writing into a show. But what do they have to do with the anti-war battle of the sexes theme of Lysistrata?  There is nothing approximating an Eros Motel in Lysistrata; the women in protest seize and lock themselves inside the Acropolis, guarding away the money the men would use to continue funding war. The sexual battle ensues once they blockade themselves in, with a warring, but comical, Chorus of Men and Chorus of Women. If one is going to call a play an adaptation of another work, shouldn’t it have distinct correlation to that work? Give It Up has so little to do with Lysistrata, they shouldn’t be mentioned together. It’s more of an adaptation of High School Musical.

Round and round and round it goes,

And where it stops, nobody knows.

We could speculate until tomorra,

But that won’t help us get out of …

Samsara….

Milarepa, on the other hand, manages to do just that. Not only does it provide charming entertainment and educational information, it offers enlightening sustenance for the heart, soul and mind. This play begins with a few moments of silent meditation, which allows audience members to center themselves, step away from the mind clutter of cell phones and daily life chaos, and focus quietly on the performance at hand. A bell dings.  Curchak and Jorgensen, seated stage right on stools with guitar, wind and percussion instruments close at hand, begin to tell the life story of Buddhist teacher, poet and saint Milarepa, (c. 1052—c. 1135 CE). They show the course of his path towards enlightenment through story, short scenes, song and interpretive dance. Curchak portrays Milarepa. Jorgensen, masterfully defining a wide range of personas through voice and movement with wit and clarity (and minimal costume change) plays seventeen different characters, ranging from the story’s narrator to Ferocious Deities, from Marpa, Milarepa’s severe teacher to a Concubine who sounds and saunters a lot like Mae West.

Wheel of Life

Curchack and Jorgensen draw their material from The Songs of Milarepa, canonical Buddhist texts that emphasize the temporary nature of the physical body and the need for non-attachment (No Mind) and from The Life of Milarepa, a romanticized account full of references to magic which lacks the devout non-attachment of the songs. Not written down by the saint, himself, or for many centuries, the songs and tales were dutifully recorded by adherents, contemporaries, successors, and within the oral tradition of the people. So although the subject matter may sound lofty and yawn inducing to an action-hungry public, the accessible way that Curchack and Jorgensen portray the life history using modern vernacular, jokes, stylized movement and irreverent song not only holds audience attention but charms and amuses while offering a clear glimpse into Tibetan Buddhist enlightenment process. There is substance in what these performers create and magical artistry in how they achieve it. It’s a valid adaptation that works on many levels and sparks the creative mind. When the play ends in darkness with Curchack as Milarepa standing at rest center stage, entirely wrapped in softly blinking Christmas lights indicating enlightenment, the audience exclaims with delight and tastes a hint of the reality of that delicate transformation. Much of the performance deals with the concept of samsara, loosely defined (thanks to wordIQ.com) as the continuous cycle of birth, life, death, full of suffering and illusory goals and values. To become liberated from this endless cycle of rebirth when Enlightenment is achieved is the focus of the dharmic religions.  The high point, and funniest part,  of the play’s performance is the Samsara Rap Curchack wrote describing the “six realms of illusion”.

Samsara

This is a song of Mila-rapper,

Who saw the world as one big crapper,

He ate the world without salt or pepper,

That Buddhist rapper, Milarepa.

Round and around on illusion’s wheel,

There are six realms that seem real,

But they’re just projections, your creation,

For self-protection, not liberation.

The name of the game: samsara, my friend,

And there’s no way to win a game with no end,

When you’re there, you’re nowhere, are ya,

Ready to play the game samsara?

First stop is the Realm called Hell,

Anger’s the state where demons all dwell,

In hell everything everyone does is wrong,

And you and them can’t get along,

You’re in a rage, you can’t act your age,

Cause on this stage, the whole world’s a cage,

Friends you enjoyed, you now avoid,

You’re annoyed, an android in a paranoid void,

Your mind is a demon of terror, horror,

In the hell realm of samsara.

Next is the realm of the Hungry Ghosts,

Who always crave the best and the most,

They’re miserly, covetous, stingy, greedy,

Always thirsty, hungry, so needy,

But they get no elation from accumulation,

No excitation from starvation,

No gratification from masturbation,

No consummation from imagination,

No ejaculation from copulation,

There’s no vacation from their frustration,

No liberation from desperation,

Their main sensation … deprivation.

Their belly’s too big, their mouth’s too small,

And they’re always dying to have it all,

But it’s never alright, it’s always almost,

Cause more is less for a hungry ghost.

In the Animal Realm they’re as ignorant,

As a slug, a chicken, a pig or an ant,

They’re serious, practical, not much fun,

And subtlety?  They ain’t got none,

They’re automatons, deaf, dumb, and blind,

With predictable ways and predictable minds,

If you break their routine, they’ll feel it’s a threat,

And they’ll bark and they’ll bite like a pet at the vet.

Woof.  Woof.  Woof.  Growl.

Their sense of humor is so moronic,

They don’t understand anything ironic,

They don’t get symbols, they don’t get signs,

Literal minds need everything defined,

Show ‘em something unknown, they’ll just disdain it,

And don’t tell ‘em a joke, you’ll have to explain it.

The Human Realm is full of practical fools,

Busy with research, developing tools,

To achieve success, gain position,

While they eye each other with suspicion,

They’re cunning, shifty, slippery too,

There’s nothing humans wouldn’t do,

To get their way, have their say,

Come what may, they’ll win the day,

They’ve got a passion for fashion, a passion for sex,

Passion for flashin’ credit cards and cashin’ checks,

But whatever… a human owns is,

Never enough to keep up with the Joneses.

They lust after love and they fall in and out,

Just to have something to talk about,

And they’ll talk, and talk, and talk till tomorra,

Just to kill time in samsara.

The Jealous Gods are ultra slick,

They make diplomacy their shtick,

Lemme give you a tip, don’t give ‘em lip,

Cause they’ll come back bad with one-upsmanship.

They play hardball in the big league,

And the name of the game they play: intrigue.

Intrigue’s their way to have a relation,

It’s their vocation to rule the nation.

And every relation’s about survival,

Plotting, scheming against a rival,

Their own shadow’s a threat that gets ‘em annoyed,

Ask Freud … paranoid.

And because they need to stand high above,

They can’t stand kindness, can’t stand love,

Can’t stand in another’s shoes,

All they understand is win or lose.

The God Realm is paradise,

Everything there … nice.

The gods feel really, truly free,

Cause they’ve got individuality,

The ego that they have created,

Has got them so intoxicated,

Their self-esteem knows no measure,

The name of the game of the gods: pleasure.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh … do it again.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh … do it again.

Now the highest realms where gods are born,

Are the four heavens beyond all form,

(one) Infinite space, (two) infinite thought,

(three) Nothingness, (four) neither thought nor naught.

But even this bliss must come to pass,

Cause formless gods can’t tell their head from their ass,

The joy they feel, they think it’s real,

But in their pride they don’t see the whole deal.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,

Hallelujah, Hallelu …

You see, the seeds of habitual thought lie deep,

Rooted in the mind, they sleep, then reaping,

What they sow, the gods’ hearts harden,

As nasty weeds overgrow their garden,

So they jump over the garden wall,

And with divine grace, they fall,

Down from heaven, sad to tell,

They find themselves right back in hell.

Round and round and round it goes,

And where it stops, nobody knows.

We could speculate until tomorra,

But that won’t help us get out of …

Samsara.

Namaste, y’all….

The Dallas Theater Center’s Give It Up runs through February 14, 2010 at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, AT & T Performing Arts Center.

For tickets: 214-880-0202 www.dallastheatercenter.org

Milarepa by Fred Curchak and Laura Jorgensen runs through January 30, 2010 at the Bath House Cultural Center www.bathhousecultural.com

For tickets call: 972-740-2769

“Samsara” by Fred Curchack

From Sexual Mythology part two: PURGATORY (1989) and MILAREPA (2009)

Inspired by:  The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, p. 662 – 668

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Introduction by Chogyam Trungpa

Jeff Grygny

PHOTOS:

Dallas Theater Center’s Give It Up with Liz Mikkel as Hetairai, and the Cheerleaders

An illustration for Lysistrata by Aubrey Beardsley

Milarepa’s program image: the Wheel of Life, depicting the Six Realms

Bloody, Jolly Good Fun: The 39 Steps

Dallas audiences, are you ready for some bloody, jolly good fun? The national tour of twice Tony and Drama Desk winner The Thirty Nine Steps, adapted from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film thriller, blesses the Dallas Summer Musicals‘ Majestic Theatre with a fast, furious performance you won’t want to miss. A loose adaptation of the Hitchcock classic, it’s been a runaway hit in London’s West End since the mid-1990’s and premiered on Broadway in 2008.  It combines a rollicking thriller-romance script with vaudeville style comedy routines and Monty Python-esque farce enhanced by an overlay of highly sophisticated mime-like precision movement. Two acts’ worth of hilarity, madcap vaudeville, exotic accents, old-fashioned presentational romance, thrills, chills, classic movie nods and feats of sheer acting magic conspire to amuse and charm both novice and seasoned theatre-goers. A winner with a tight, witty script, the key to this play’s bright success is the many-faceted skills of four dynamic, indefatigable stage talents who perform it.

Ted Deasy, Claire Brownell as Richard and Pamela: photo by Craig Schwartz

Filling the stage with the presence, energy and substance of a large cast show, Claire Brownell, Ted Deasy, Eric Hissom and Scott Parkinson demonstrate as an ensemble and individually why live theatre can offer a unique memorable experience to savor long after the final curtain rings down. With only rudimentary set elements to define the stage reality, sometimes a bare window frame or an overstuffed chair, a toted on Victorian lamppost, a set of handcuffs, or a line of steamer trunks, these four actors create multiple characters and define settings so clearly, so fast you marvel how they can possibly remember what’s next. A complex feat, superbly mastered. What fun,  just watch ‘em fly!

Ben Brantley, The New York Times, “Absurdly enjoyable!  This gleefully theatrical riff on Hitchcock’s film is fast and frothy, performed by a cast of four that seems like a cast of thousands.  The actors themselves seem to be having a helluva good time.  As does the audience.”

I met with three of the performers after viewing the show. All shared personal challenges and rewards in being part of the tour. A graceful Montana-bred beauty with cascades of auburn ringlets, peaches and cream complexion and direct, warm gaze, Claire Brownell, the female lead, exudes the poised confidence of a talented youthful artist at ease with her considerable accomplishment.  Yet she’s respectful of the over-arching artistic worth of the work. Fresh from the Broadway production, she finds the touring experience illuminating. Even though she feels she knows her three totally different characters “in her bones”, she finds that each new town’s house makes the performance feel fresh. She’s amazed how willingly the audiences embrace the show’s unique concept and welcome the chance to laugh heartily. She tosses her curls, “We ALL need to laugh more!” Suddenly serious, she describes valuing The 39 Steps as a show that promotes ‘culture for the future’ as it is as easily understood and enjoyed by young children as by adults. Brownell creates her characters with distinctive style and conviction. Her first character, Annabella Schmidt, is a femme fatale, a Mata Hari sophisticate swathed in a svelte black dress replete with ominous black wig, spouting dialogue in heavily accented patois. Every syllable she speaks is clear and distinct, amazingly comprehensible to the audience. She delivers her lines with a Garbo-like deadpan sincerity that makes the male lead’s inability to understand her hilarious. “Zere were zeese men in ze seatre trang to zhoot me, ZHOOT me!” she laments to a befuddled Richard Hanny, the lead man played with patrician Jeeves-like diffidence by Ted Deasy. With the help of venerable dialect coach Stephen Gabis, her fantasy accent, with German, Russian, Italian, Slovakian and pure invention overtones, becomes one of the most memorable aspects of her character. Brownell finds the boudoir scene her second character, perky blonde Pamela, plays while handcuffed at the wrist to Richard, her favorite and most challenging. “Most of the show is stylized and presentational, very theatrical; suddenly we have this intimate, almost real moment where the audience gets to sympathize with the hint of a blossoming romance.” At the same time, maintaining the scene’s frenetic comic pace and tension (rolling on and off the bed and Richard’s lap, hurtling around the room) while avoiding injury from the handcuffs has proven a challenge. “It’s completely choreographed, but it still has to look fresh and alive; so there’s risk.” The scene comes off with spontaneous charm and perfectly controlled timing.

Erik Hissom and Scott Parkinson play the myriad of other characters in the show, a Greater Tuna-like fruit-basket turnover of personas, fleshed out with a high degree of conceptual, playful physicality. Man #1, Florida-based actor Erik Hissom, laments, “I’m too old to do all this!”, to which Chicago-bred Scott Parkinson (Man #2) shakes his head and scoffs, “No way, man.” Both actors, with extensive professional stage credentials, are particularly well versed in performing Shakespeare, which they feel helps to inform and support the complex interplay of their closely allied characterizations in The 39 Steps. Parkinson says he thought the play looked difficult at first viewing in New York; the original actor in his role in the Broadway cast (Arnie Burton) told him it was the “hardest thing I’ve ever performed.” Both gleefully admit they relish the nightly onslaught of tightrope paced ensemble work. “Toughest parts are the Mr. Memory scenes,” reflects Hissom;” it’s a vaudeville interlude, a play within the play, where we ask an imaginary audience to pose questions to Mr. Memory.” “And sometimes the live audience jumps in with questions, not supposed to happen…!” Parkinson rolls his eyes in feigned alarm.

Eleven months from now when their tour wraps up, all four actors will have a cart-full of unforgettable memories and a most distinguished achievement to add to their resumes. Come on out, Dallas, and give the sterling production of The 39 Steps your most enthusiastic welcome. Standing Ovation? It’s richly deserved.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is adapted by Patrick Barlow, directed by Maria Aitken and features sets and costumes by Peter McKintosh.  The production is based on an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon and on the book by John Buchan. It features lighting by Kevin Adams and sound by Mic Pool. The dialect coach was Stephen Gabis.  Toby Sedgwick created original movement with additional movement by Christopher Bayes.

Dallas Summer Musicals, presented by Comerica Bank, presents the comedy vaudeville through January 31 at The Majestic Theatre, 1925 Elm Street in Dallas.  Tickets, priced from $15-$71, are on sale now at The Box Office, 542 Preston Royal Shopping Center, or area Ticketmaster outlets including The Majestic Theatre Box Office.  Tickets are also available by calling 214-631-ARTS (2787) or online at www.ticketmaster.com.  For groups of 10 or more, call 214-426-GROUP

For more information, see www.39StepsOnBroadway.com.

Visit the Dallas Summer Musicals website at www.dallassummermusicals.org, or call (214) 421-5678.

Business of Funny: Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Why laughter, why on the 23^rd floor? Neil Simon’s comedy, Laughter on the 23^rd Floor, which opened on Broadway in 1993 starring Nathan Lane, is a love letter in play form about Simon’s days as a comedy writer on the 1950’s Your Show of Shows. Simon portrays himself as the youthful narrator Lucas Brickman, the “new guy on the team” and creates larger than life versions of key writers, most of whom went on to major show business careers: Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Woody Allen and Dave Caesar.

The "Gang" on the 23rd Floor

Got to be hard not to laugh when you think about the witty repartee that took place when this irascible, sharp-tongued group met daily to churn out comedy routines for Sid Caesar. Simon put his fictional writers on an imaginary 23^rd floor as actual script sessions took place on NBC’s eleventh and twelfth floors: 11 plus 12 equals 23.

Water Tower Theatre’s production of  Laughter on the 23^rd Floor presents a satisfying, if somber, fly-on-the-wall picture of what it might have been like to function daily amidst a swarm of oddball creatives writing like busy bees for the likes of Jackie Gleason/ Sid Caesar. Exciting times! McCarthy is grilling Commie witches from the arts community in Congress and network executives fret that Middle America won’t get the sophisticated jokes the “team” turns out like State Fair taffy. It drives the comedian they write for, Max Prince, to distraction, so much that he punches holes in his luxurious office suite walls.

Director Terry Martin’s cast is comprised of some of the ablest comic talent in the DFW region. Put Brian Hathaway, Regan Adair, Ted Wold and Ginger Goldman in a room together, and it has to get funny fast. Add a dose of ethnic leavening from John Daniel Psyk (as writer Val who can’t say f***k) and Erik Achilla as Irishman Brian, and the firecracker just aches for a match. In this case, Brian Gonzales as comedian Max and Brandy McClendon as secretary/ writer wannabe Helen set off hysterical explosions every time they make an entrance. And newcomer Daniel Frederick as Simon’s alter ego Lucas keeps the audience engaged with his aw shucks fresh Rob Petrie-like demeanor, a quiet hint of the next generation of writer closing in fast.

Director Martin emphasizes the serious undertones of the play: job security, censorship, network downsizing. This tamped down the excess of manic repartee and potential high jinks, which could result from seating Woody Allen at a table with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. I expected more rumble, but enjoyed the nostalgic respect for a bygone day expressed so clearly in Simon’s script.

Rodney Dobbs’ set, a stunning recreation of a 1950’s penthouse office, replete with boxy furnishings, green marble columns and an upstage picture window with projection of a 1950’s downtown New York vista, brings a down-to-earth reality to the scenes. It reminds the audience that after all, writing comedy is a business.

If you want a glimpse into a bygone era with a group of talented folks who take the business of laughter on any floor seriously, catch this Neil Simon gem at Water Tower before some network cancels it.

Runs through February 7 at the Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road in Addison, Texas. Performance times are Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 PM (February 6 only) and 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM. Tickets: 972.450.6232 or www.watertowertheatre.org

Your Show of Shows: http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Shows/5460

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Caesar

PHOTO: Erik Archilla (kneeling), Joh Pszyk, Daniel Fredrick (seated), Ted Wold, Brian Hathaway, Ginger Goldman & Regan Adair; Photo by Mark Oristano

The Hollow Play: August: Osage County

“Whatever was disappearing had already disappeared, and no one saw it go.

This country. This experiment. This hubris.

And no one saw it go.”

A hurricane force gale cycle of illusion, delusion and half-forgotten truth sweeps over the Westins of Oklahoma, a large dysfunctional family depicted in Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County. It envelops the audience and blows out the venue doors into the heavy night, permeating every nook and cranny of American cultural myth, where it dissipates unnoticed. All are too busy to pay attention; no one sees it go…. Once gone, a huge gaping hole opens up, a well of sorrow, in the hearts of every character in the play.

http://www.augustonbroadway.com/

From drunken, pill-popping Greatest Generation elders to agitated, delusional Baby Boomers, from a stimulant-stoked teen living vicariously through drugs, nicotine and electronics to an indigenous subsistence worker who sticks with a most unpleasant job because she “needs the work”, all play a vital part in August: Osage County’s epic tragi-comedy, a tightly wound depiction of modern life’s delusion and unraveling. This play won both Pulitzer and Tony awards in 2008, along with the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play, Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play.

I sometimes view plays several times before I write my review, a benefit of being an on-line review blogger. I saw August: Osage County twice. Would it be a “potboiler soap opera” as some critics have described it, featuring a host of mostly well-acted but unpleasant characters, punctuated occasionally with one-line zingers for comic relief, or would it be the new Great American Stage Epic, as other voices have pronounced it?  In the final analysis, I concluded I had observed a profoundly moving, evenly balanced production full of human pathos, drama and humor, worthy of honor.

I felt drawn in by the prologue. I grasped the booze-soaked reality of the long-suffering poet and family patriarch Beverly as he hired a local Indian girl to keep house for him and his pill-popping wife Violet. An embittered but dignified realist, one of the few in the script, Beverly minced no words with his new hire. He slurred resignedly, almost to himself, “My wife is cold-blooded and not just in the metaphorical sense.” Quoting T. S. Eliot in practiced, professorial, dulcet tones or cackling in self-deprecation, stage and television actor Jon DeVries created a memorable portrait of a man ready to set down life’s burdens on his own terms. His own terms. I carried the chilling image of this brief prologue scene with me throughout the three acts, which speaks very well for both playwright Letts and director Anna D. Shapiro, as well as for Mr. DeVries.

I appreciated the performances given by the distinguished ensemble. Jeff Still as eldest daughter Barbara’s soon to be divorced husband Bill portrayed a real human being with ease, simplicity and effective stage presence. No caricature, no stereotyped mugging, just a straying middle aged man, struggling to maintain decency and sanity in the midst of dysfunction. He made his character interesting and sympathetic (also played the role on Broadway). Accomplished stage and screen actor Laurance Lau created a fully developed, intriguing character in the show as Steve, the lecherous, smarmy fiancé of the family’s youngest daughter Karen. The play came alive with energy and focus every time he entered a scene. His betrayal and amorality reinforce the tragedy of self-delusion that characterizes his fiancée Karen (Amy Warren), as well all the women in the family.

And there it is. The women in this play and the actresses who play them drove the show to its heights and depths. “Dissipation is worse than cataclysm,” acknowledged one sister in a non-agitated, lucid moment.  Violet’s sister, three daughters, and the granddaughter all converged on the family home, with husbands and boyfriends in tow, to support her in her loss, grief and illness. Each one slammed hard into a brick wall of illusion and delusion and ultimately drifted away to the safety of each’s world,  leaving “cold-blooded” mother Violet to deal with the lonely reality alone. “Who is stronger? When there’s nothing left, I’ll still be here,” snarled Estelle Parsons as matriarch Violet near the play’s end. Elder daughter Barbara (played with steel-willed multi-dimensional sorrow and ferocity by Shannon Cochran in a fascinating yet exhausting portrayal) shrugged back as she began to fade out, “You’re right, mom, you’re the strong one.” She was most like her mother; she tried the hardest to combat the dysfunction. Her stoic exit slammed the door shut with grim finality.

Estelle Parsons at age 82 has the stage presence, commanding voice and energy of a much younger actress. The family “wet blanket”, uncontrollable pill-popper and in-your-face harbinger of unwelcome truths, she manipulated the family with dismissive ease, deals them savage emotional blows with her funny but cruel one-liners and reveals her own raw vulnerability with keenly distilled nuance.   Watching these two women interact as mother and daughter on stage, raging and aching, alienated yet bonded by habit and heredity, squeezing vitality from every wellspring of craft and art they possess, is at once excruciating and entrancing. Superior performances with intense familial resonance back up the two main antagonists:  Angelica Torn, Jean Fordham, Amy Warren and Libby George. (The  slightly off moment in both viewings of the play arose during the free-for-all physical confrontation scene in Act II, which lacked force and seemed slow and stage-y. Stage combat is hard to make believable, even by pros.)

Many people have declared August: Osage County on a par with the works of Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. It certainly deals with major themes on a grand scale in an effective, entertaining manner. Yet it remains to be seen where this play and future Tracy Letts plays will fit into the canon of American dramatic literature. Letts, himself, seemed somewhat dazed by the scale of positive response to his play. Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones in a September 2009 LA Times article writes, ”On the day he heard about the Pulitzer, Letts described himself as “happy, sad.” “My dad,” he said, heavily, “was much more sure of this than me.”” (Letts’ late father, actor and professor Dennis Letts, performed as the play’s patriarch in the original Chicago premiere and continued with the role on Broadway until cancer sidelined him.) Will it be revered and performed frequently in five years, in ten? Although I agree that August: Osage County is a remarkable work, I’m not ready to set it respectfully on the bookshelf next to the works of Miller, O’Neill, Albee, and Shepard. Not yet.

The play ends, house darkened and empty, Violet sobbing in lonely despair, crouched on the lap of the Indian housekeeper Johna (DeLanna Studi). Johna strokes her hair and croons, chanting lines from T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, The Hollow Men.  The play curls full circle back to the prologue, when deceased patriarch Beverly quoted Eliot in drunken defiance and gave Johna the book of poems. Light fades to black….

“This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

August: Osage County, on national tour, runs through January 24, 2010, as part of the Lexus Broadway series at the AT& T Performing Arts Center in Dallas TX.

“The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot: http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

A well-written contrarian’s review:

http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-august-osage-county.html

Interview with playwright Tracy Letts in the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-tracy-letts6-2009sep06,0,1611019.story?page=1

National touring website:  http://www.augustonbroadway.com/

Audacity Theatre Lab: A Second Helping, Dish It Up

Gimme dat LUV! Dallas’ sweetest, funniest on stage romance springs back to life, this time at Teatro Dallas’ space off I-35. Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello, Human Female regales its audience with farce, drag performance, true love, weird science and a hilarious twisted plot as the trials and tribulations of 37 year old virgin Tamela (Arianna Movassagh) and her man of many parts (35 different humans), Blork, played by hyperkinetic, deadpan comic maniac Jeff Swearingen, unfold.

Hello, Human Female

If attending live theatre is like sitting down to a prix-fixed meal of the imagination, then Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female is gourmet grilled potluck, peppered plumb full enough of implausible characters and wacky situations to sate the humor-seeking palate. It’s like watching Joaquin Phoenix on David Letterman, except these folks mean to be funny and are aware they have an audience. Soap opera plot meets Lost in Space meets Young Frankenstein meets Lassie, Come Home and Wizard of Oz, Whew. In retrospect, the chaotic concatenation somehow channels Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its over-riding theme of amor omnia vincit (LUV conquers all). In this case, LUV certainly does. Clean your plate, honey bun, and go back for seconds.

The secret to this effervescent, no-holds-barred romp? Matt Lyle, the playwright, currently resides in Chicago, where he’s studying comedy writing at The Second City and screenwriting with Chicago Dramatists. Director of the play and artistic director of the company, Brad McEntire, mounted and produced over fifty plays here in Big D then toured successfully to New York and Austin Fringe Festivals, before sallying forth in 2006 on an artistic sojourn to Hong Kong and other exotic, inspirational locales. There’s a brazen confidence herein, born of endless dribbling of ink on paper and much time spent clamoring to earn and keep the attention of maddeningly fickle audiences. These boys got it down to a science from the heart.

On stage, in the kick-ass dual role of codependent overbearing Mother in jog-suited drag and equally overbearing, smarmy Mad Scientist in gaiters is Jeremy Whiteker, with as much meritorious experience in performing in quirky, absurdist one-act originals as he has in straight ahead musical comedy. S/he is a hoot and a holler, a medium rare sight to behold and savor. Becca Shivers endears herself like a locomotive in overdrive in the gender-bending role of pre-teen boy “Timmy”, returns in Act II as the Mad Scientist’s humanoid sweetheart, a real honey-bee of a waspish creation. The star-crossed lovers, Jeff Swearingen as hump-backed humanoid Blork and Arianna Movassagh as perpetual innocent virgin in search of true love or an unreasonable facsimile, play off each other effortlessly with a fine balance of physical humor, crisp verbal repartee and droll song. Their duet version of “Somewhere Out There” ought to be filmed and posted on YouTube. Worth a reprise at play’s end! Stirring in a classical whiff to the madcap hilarity, Audacity regular Tyson Rinehart plays Homeless Harry (shades of Everyman) and Timmy’s aw-shucks, loveable Gramps. He lends a sober grounding to the enterprise, in a bizarre but comforting way. The narrator, seated stage right, adds the spicing of dry humor and perspective. Alas, the actor was not listed in the program handout, so I can not credit him.

Audacity Theatre Lab’s remount of Hello Human Female runs through January 23 at the Teatro Dallas space, 1331 Record Crossing Rd. Dallas TX 75235.  It’s a challenge to find the space but well worth the effort. The show will keep you smiling for an hour or two after you drive away and chuckling for days.

Reservations and tickets: 469-236-2726 www.audacitytheatrelab.com 

Full Sail Ahead: Port Twilight extended through January

Sci-fi fantasy makes perfect viewing for chill winter nights. Undermain Theatre Company swept into November 2009 with the world premiere of Port Twilight, or A History of Science (A Chronicle of Folly, Wisdom and Madness). Thanks to wide critical acclaim and high audience demand, the company now extends the production through January 30. Penned by Len Jenkin, one of the nation’s most distinguished national playwrights, the show is directed by Lakewood resident and Undermain Theatre’s artistic director Katherine Owens. Owens met Jenkins while touring a production in New York more than a decade ago. In 2006, Undermain’s production of Jenkin’s Margo Veil: an entertainment, also directed by Owens, earned kudos from The Dallas Morning News as the number one pick of the seasons’ top ten productions. In 2009, The Dallas Morning News theatre critic Lawson Taitte hailed Port Twilight as his Number One Production of the year.

Jenkin’s credentials and awards are quite impressive: they include three Obie Awards for directing and playwriting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, a nomination for an Emmy Award, four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a PhD in literature from Columbia University. His stage plays have been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, Germany, France, Denmark, and Japan. Dallas audiences recognize the entertainment value and literary merit of his work.

A member of a group of New York based writers known as “The Language Playwrights” with pronounced language-based, lyrical focus, Jenkin feels right at home in Undermain’s unique, always magical performing space under Main St. in Deep Ellum, about seven minutes’ drive from Lakewood. Mel Gussow of the New York Times opines, “In his plays, Len Jenkin often takes us on dark midnight rides to mythic environments…he leads us through a stretch of the American landscape tantalizing our senses and creating a haunting world.” He could be describing the fantastical ambience of Undermain Theatre, as well.

In Port Twilight, the landscape plays a defining role. Owens brought in two leading Dallas scenic painters and designers, Linda Noland and Terry Hays, to create a layered landscape effect in the performance space, like public murals. The designers worked furiously for over a month, using the same techniques to create the murals that Michelangelo used in decorating the Sistine Chapel. At completion, over two hundred feet of painted muslin in bright color schemes energizes and encases the whole underground space, including wrapping around the numerous columns that define the performance area.

Owens says working with Jenkin on his plays is inspirational as well as good fun. Jenkin came down from New York (he teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts) in October 2009 to sit in on rehearsals. Both director and playwright felt the production was moving along so well, they decided to take time off and play one afternoon at the Texas State Fair. All Undermain designers involved with Port Twilight joined in on the outing. Owens laughs about the excursion: ”Four and a half hours later we got back to the rehearsal space. I was so exhausted keeping up with the merriment, I fell sound asleep for three hours in the theatre, with people working all around me.”

When Port Twilight opened last November, all that imaginative exploration, lyrical writing, hard work painting and good times playing came together. Like magic. And the marvel continues through January.

Alexandra Bonifield’s review of Port Twilight, or A History of Science:

http://sjamaanka.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/zen-ergy-shoots-the-moon-at-undermain-theatre/

Undermain Theatre’s production of Port Twilight, or A History of Science runs through January 30, 2010, at their Deep Ellum location in the basement of a six-story red brick building at 3200 Main Street, Dallas, TX between Hall St. and Exposition Ave.

Plenty of FREE, well lit, accessible, cordially attended parking.

For tickets, call (214) 747-5515 or go to www.undermain.org

One in 3: Reality that Chills

The subject: abortion. The play: multi-dimensional and respectful. One in 3. A challenge to undertake? You bet, given the red-hot emotional charge. Under the measured, focused direction of Raphael Parry, Project X Theatre offers a carefully orchestrated, thoughtful, clinically analytical perspective on an abortion clinic’s daily realities. It’s not sensationalized, judgmental or exploitative in the least; instead “One in 3″ provides insight into the emotional and rational issues women and their men are forced to deal with when choosing the terrifying option. Or not. Facing untenable dilemmas, asking tortured questions, coping with rage and sorrow, or with the baffling lack of it, the characters who spill forth reveal the complexity of the “abortion question.” See the play, then count off one in three women at your local supermarket. That’s a chilling reality.

www.onein3.org

Project X at the Green Zone. 214-421-2400 Run extended into February.

Nibroc Trilogy: Appeal of Love’s Eternal Glow

Searching for a unique, memorable way to celebrate St. Valentine’s with a sweetheart? Go see Echo Theatre’s current production of Arlene Hutton’s nostalgia romance, the award-winning The Nibroc Trilogy at the Bath House Cultural Center. Billed as “5 actors, 3 plays, one love story”, it’s a three-play cycle tracing the initial courting ritual and consequent married life of a charming, deeply in love, small-town Kentucky couple from the 1940’s into the post-war era. Purchase a Festival Pass to pick and choose three performance dates to attend, or take in all three plays in one day on one of the two “Nibroc Festival” dates, February 21 and 28.

The first part of the trilogy, Last Train to Nibroc, opened February 5 to an enthralled, near capacity crowd. Morgan Justiss and Ian Sinclair, as the couple May and Raleigh, trade gentle barbs and polite revelation with thorough sincerity and a natural conversational style. Well-matched and engaging, they imbue Hutton’s lyrical script with a veracity that is both a tribute to America’s “greatest generation” and very accessible to today’s audience. Co-directors Ellen Locy and Pam Myers-Morgan capitalized on both actors’ appealing looks, talents and delightful stage chemistry. In elegant balance, they create an aura of romantic intimacy while keeping the play fairly clipping along. The play’s three scenes are set upon a railroad car seat, a park bench and a porch swing. The focus stays on character interaction while clearly revealing time’s passage and setting change, a simple but effective design motif. Nibroc rocks. It soars. It beguiles. It buries sweet memories in a real gentleman’s proffered hankie and restores faith in the values of character and integrity, in the promise of true love.

The Nibroc Trilogy runs through February 28 and includes Last Train to Nibroc, See Rock City (opening Feb. 12) and Gulf View Drive (opening Feb. 19). Advanced reservations are strongly recommended.
Schedule: www.echotheatre.org
echoreservations@att.net, 214-904-0500

Morgan Justiss & Ian Sinclair as May & Raleigh

A Cuckoo That Changed Its Tune

“What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.” Ken Kesey

In 1959 a Stanford graduate student participated in a government sponsored experiential psychoactive drug study. After ingesting various hallucinogens, Ken Kesey filed his government report and wrote his celebrated novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. From the considerable income and attention generated by the book, Kesey toured the country in a 1939 International Harvester school bus painted with drug inspired day-glo and became a major catalyst for what became known as the Psychedelic Era, heralding the San Francisco hippie scene. The novel was a quintessential anti-establishment statement and was interpreted as a “compelling cautionary tale that viewed society as a cold, formidable negation of all that is free, lusty and nonconformist.”                            

www2.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/sixties/kesey.html

So how does a stage adaptation of this narrowly focused 1962 novel have relevance for today’s theatre audiences? It’s a stretch, even with adaptation penned by multiple Tony and Emmy award-winning author Dale Wasserman. Contemporary Theatre of Dallas’ production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest strives valiantly to put fresh bloom on this rainbow-hued vase of withered poppies and largely succeeds, thanks to a strong acting ensemble and the restrained guidance of regional leading director Marianne Galloway. Instead of focusing on the book’s counter-culture polemical duality, Galloway emphasizes the humanity in all the play’s characters, steering her actors clear of oversimplified stereotypes, for the most part.

Consider main character Nurse Ratched. The book portrays this woman supervising the inmates of a psychiatric hospital, the action’s setting, as the embodiment of everything evil in the dominant, repressive government-run culture. The classic 70’s movie with Jack Nicholson did the same; all cheered when the intentionally cruel, all-powerful Nurse Ratched got her comeuppance. In CTD’s production, Galloway has pointed actor Sue Loncar in a different direction. Sue’s Ratched maintains firm control but appears to operate from a belief in “best care” practice, with no trace of sadistic delight at the suffering she doles out. Nurse Ratched juggles supervising recalcitrant, irresponsible, under-qualified staff with caring for a wily collection of voluntarily committed, needy psych ward patients, getting little support from the on staff psychiatrist (played convincingly by Reg Platt), who aspires to become “one of the boys” on the ward. She’s the lone adult voice of sanity and order. Sue’s Nurse is quietly icy and focused, outcome-oriented. She clamps down hard on infractions brought on by the taunting, relentless clowning around of main male character, the grinning misfit McMurphy. To preserve order in the midst of chaos, to do her job, she has no choice.

It’s not the most interesting character I’ve seen Sue Loncar create, but it’s a consistent and believable portrayal. When she returns on stage after McMurphy cracks up and assaults her, her physical discomfort is obvious but her determination to “do her job well” reflects no savage revenge motive. It’s unexpected to consider Nurse Ratched a sympathetic character, but Sue Loncar’s depiction elicits at least empathy.

The shift in Ratched’s portrayal causes a titanic shift in McMurphy. Under Galloway’s direction, Mark Nutter presents him as a self-centered, one-dimensional anti-hero. He’s a “good ol’ boy” in a tight spot, trying to wrest power away from the lady in charge, “just cuz.” If he can scam some spare change off the gullible inmates through gambling in the process, so much the better. He’s also a baldly unrepentant statutory rapist, which distances him further from comic lead or “hero” status. Does he disrupt the lives of the inmates on the ward? Definitely, with dire results. Does his violent attack on Nurse Ratched seem justified? In no way. Does he deserve to have a lobotomy? Probably not. Does the audience sympathize with him? Not much. It’s hard to know if the shift is script or director driven, but it sure changes the show. In the book, his death at the end creates a sense of transcendent release. In this production, it’s a relief he’s gone. Intriguing to watch, I’m not entirely sure it works.

The balance of the cast is a tight ensemble featuring some of the most stage-worthy performers the Dallas region offers. Randy Pearlman as the inmates’ “spokesman” Dale creates a vivid picture of an intelligent man who has chosen to step away from “real world” challenges, curiously more fleshed out than McMurphy. Nye Cooper, Andrews Cope, Ryan Martin, Andrew Bourgeois and Bobby Selah provide a non-stop cacophany of bumbling comic relief and believable psychotic behavior as the gaggle of inmates, effectively defining a reality that has no basis in it, whatsoever. On the other hand, Jim Johnson’s Chief Bromden seems oddly detached from the rest of the production. As the play’s conscience, the agent of transcendence and the only character that “escapes” to the real world, he needs to clearly convey the play’s point, the author’s vision. In this production, he almost fades into the scenery he’s so oddly understated. Director’s decision, dropped line, opening night jitters or scripted that way? Hard to tell.

This isn’t an easy play to stage, given its dated message and apparent reworking of the novel’s core characterizations by the adapter. The full house on opening night seemed to sincerely appreciate the performance. When Ken Kesey died in 2001, his son read this statement at the memorial service: “If there is one thing he would want us to do it would be to carry on his life’s work. Namely to treat others with kindness and if anyone does you dirt forgive that person right away. This goes beyond the art, the writing, the performances, even the bus. Right down to the bone.” Remember that sentiment when you see this production.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Dale Wasserman, based on Ken Kesey’s novel, runs through March 1, 2009 at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, 5601 Sears St., Dallas, TX 75206 (one block west of lower Greenville, behind the former Arcadia Theatre). For tickets and directions: www.contemporarytheatreofdallas.com.

Non-profit Arts Stimulate National & Local Economies

Finally! A US president recognizes the positive impact of the arts on our nation’s economy. “Innovation” and “creativity” were welcome words in President Obama’s speech in Denver. Unfortunately, not everyone gets the picture, from elected officials to puzzled citizens. The $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts in Obama’s Stimulus Package is not “pork”, as some claim. In addition to improving quality of life and providing needed “stimulus” to creatively keep our world functional, thriving arts have a positive, measurable economic impact on communities.

America’s nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity yearly—$63.1 billion in spending by organizations, an additional $103.1 billion in event-related audience expenditure. This economic activity supports 5.7 million jobs and $29.6 billion in increased government revenue. Yearly. Between 2000 and 2005, event-related spending by arts audiences increased 28%— from $80.8 billion to $103.1 billion. Documented fact, it’s not chump change nor “pork”. Want to review the economic impact of event-related spending by arts audiences? Check out the Americans for the Arts’ Arts & Prosperity Calculator: www.americansforthearts.org.

When you attend an arts event, you’re ‘stimulating’ the economy and supporting local arts organizations and artists. Thank you, President Obama, for understanding.

Data sourced from 45 year old non-profit arts advocacy organization Americans for the Arts, from an independent study quantifying the impact of the non-profit arts industry on the US economy: www.AmericansForTheArts.org/EconomicImpact

Audacity Theatre Lab: Dishing It Up & Out

If attending live theatre is like sitting down to a prix-fixed meal of the imagination, then Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female is gourmet grilled potluck, peppered plumb full enough of implausible characters and wacky situations to sate the humor-seeking palate. It’s kind of like watching Joaquin Phoenix on David Letterman, except these folks mean to be funny and are aware of their audience. Soap opera plot meets Lost in Space meets Young Frankenstein meets Lassie, Come Home and Wizard of Oz, with homage to the faked orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally. Whew. In retrospect, the chaotic concatenation somehow channels Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its over-riding theme of amor omnia vincit (LUV conquers all). In this case, LUV certainly does. Clean your plate and go back for seconds.

The secret to the hyperkinetic, no-holds-barred romp? Matt Lyle, the playwright, currently resides in Chicago, where he’s studying comedy writing at The Second City and screenwriting with Chicago Dramatists. Director of the play and artistic director of the company, Brad McEntire, mounted and produced over fifty plays here in Big D then toured successfully to New York and Austin Fringe Festivals, before sallying forth in 2006 on an artistic sojourn to Hong Kong and other exotic, inspirational locales. There’s a brazen confidence herein, born of endless dribbling of ink on paper and much time spent clamoring to earn and keep the attention of maddeningly fickle audiences. These boys got it down to a science.

On stage, in the kick-ass dual role of codependent overbearing Mother in drag and equally overbearing, smarmy Mad Scientist in gaiters is Jeremy Whiteker, with as much meritorious experience in performing in quirky, absurdist one-act originals as he has in straight ahead musical comedy. S/he is a hoot and a holler, a medium rare sight to behold and savor. Becca Shivers steams into her debut with Audacity Theatre Lab like a locomotive in overdrive in the gender-bending role of pre-teen boy “Timmy”, returns in Act II as the Mad Scientist’s humanoid sweetheart, a real honey-bee of a waspish creation. The star-crossed lovers, Jeff Swearingen as hump-backed humanoid Blork and Arianna Movassagh as perpetual virgin in search of true love or unreasonable facsimile, play off each other effortlessly with a fine balance of physical humor, crisp verbal repartee and droll song. Their duet version of “Somewhere Out There” ought to be filmed and posted on YouTube. Worth a reprise at play’s end, wish it had happened. Stirring in a classical whiff of Ionesco, Beckett and Shakespeare to the madcap hilarity, venerable regional actor Scott Milligan plays Homeless Harry (shades of Everyman) and Timmy’s aw-shucks Gramps. He lends a sober grounding to the enterprise, in a bizarre but comforting way. Narrating the production and guiding the audience in docile compliance to its seats with dulcet-toned instruction of what to do in case of ‘inevitable fire” is professional voice over artist and ex-pat Brit Emily Gray. She adds a zesty dollop of whipped cream ephemera to the absurdist reality sur la table. Jolly bon appetit.

Audacity Theatre Lab’s Hello Human Female runs Wednesdays through Saturdays through March 7 at the Ochre House intimate space, 825 Exposition Avenue. Street parking is ample, close to the venue and well lit. House staff is super-friendly. Reservations and tickets: 469-236-2726 www.audacitytheatrelab.com

Orinoco Loco: Teatro Dallas Afloat

The Orinoco River, at 1330 miles, is one of the longest rivers in South America. Its drainage basin covers 340,000 square miles, three quarters in Venezuela, the rest in Columbia .  The Orinoco and its tributaries form the major transportation system for eastern and interior Venezuela and the llanos of Columbia. It offers very rough going with many obstacles and life-threatening hardships, both in the water and out. When nationally celebrated Mexican playwright and distinguished literature professor Emilio Carballido chose the Orinoco as the setting for his late 1970’s play of the same name, he must have been thinking of the lawlessness and exotic remoteness such a setting would present.

In Orinoco!, Carballido’s vividly detailed monologues, describing the reality of the river or an actor’s state of mind, infuse the play with a strangely feral beauty. His lyrical dialogue foreshadows knife-edged potential for death and destruction. Every spoken or sung metaphor, every action of its characters (two down and out burlesque dancers who find themselves abandoned and adrift on a blood-spattered boat floating down the river towards a grim future) portend of violence and savagery. All may not be as it seems, may be worse. Contrast may indicate deceptive surprises. Who is the never seen silent man lying injured in the drifting boat’s stateroom; does he truly exist? Or is he a fabricated “cover” for bizarre mass murder?

Teatro Dallas presents a tentative, safe production of this intriguing, nuanced play. At the play’s opening, we learn that during the night prior, the boat’s entire crew engaged in a drunken, vicious brawl, which escalated into an attempt to break into the showgirls’ room to gang rape them, and ended with all but one crew member savagely murdered and tossed overboard. The set – the ship’s deck – the scene of the brawl, should reflect the bloody, grisly mayhem that took place the night before. Instead, a scant smattering of cautious red paint splatters dot here and there with a few unbroken beer bottles placed unobtrusively at the edges of the playing space. The deck should be littered with a jumble of debris—torn clothing, discarded shoes, shards of bottles, hats, weapons, lots of blood…all of which would offer the two capable actors fertile ground to develop character through and lead the audience into the boat’s dark mysteries. The rest of the production continues on that safe path, taking few risks, pushing no boundaries, hinting at few hidden agendas, creating little conflict and tension. It’s a workmanlike but non- adventuresome realization of Carballido’s evocative work.

Phyllis Cicero and Marbella Barreto as dancers Mina and Fifi are well cast and play believably together. There are moments where each verges on transcending the staidness of the production; the scene passes, and the deeper range of artistic possibility fades away. The only time the sordid un-reality of their situation and lives comes across clearly is when they rehearse a bit of song and dance routine. They aren’t awful; they’re just grimly amateurish. Choreographer Mark-Brian Sonna (www.mbsproductions.net) directs the women to communicate an air of desperation and bone-tiredness, as they laugh and clown and gyrate together in a threadbare routine of unbalanced enticement, almost a squalid dance of death. Too bad it’s a short scene.

Caraballido’s play Orinoco! merits performance. Even with Teatro Dallas’ production’s shortcomings, it provides thought-provoking, spine-chilling theater. For more Dallas stage reviews, go to http://sjamaaka.wordpress.com or www.examiner.com.

All the World’s a Political Stage: TeCo Productions’ One-Act Competition

Political theatre. Didn’t we just barely survive a year and a half’s worth of non-stop lunacy at operatic pitch? For those who just can’t get enough political soul-bathing, hustle over to TeCo Theatrical Productions (www.tecotheater.org) at the Bishop Arts Theater Center to catch the 7th Annual New Play Competition: The Best of Political Theater. Artistic Director and energizing force at TeCo, Teresa Wash, put out the call last year for Dallas regional playwrights to submit their finest-honed political one-acts to compete in this festival: winner to be chosen, appropriately, by popular vote. From nineteen submissions, six were selected for performance in this year’s festival competition. Each offers thought-provoking, poignant and often humorous commentary on major issues that affect all on a scale from the intensely personal to grandly universal.

“If America can elect a black man, I can sleep with one” declares a white character in Richland College professor and founder of Blacken Blues Theater Willie Holmes’ opening one-act Change, dealing with inter-racial issues and tolerance. Holmes deftly mixes humor with serious exploration of a timely subject. Barbara Macchia received a Jerome Foundation Fellowship through The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, MN, and is a longtime member of the New York Dramatist Guild. The death penalty and a grisly birthday party in celebration of its enactment sober the audience resoundingly in her The Special Schedule. Oak Cliff homeboy, playwright and film and photographic artist Phillip Morales takes on the subject of illegal immigration through the voice and heart of a US citizen in The Son of A Immigrant, a man who brings his solo protest to the steps of Dallas City Hall. lynuslynell returns to the New Play Competition for the 5th time with the hyper-energized The Assassination of Nathaniel Gary Gamarcus Anderson, in which a revved up revival-style pastor admonishes the Rev.’s Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as if they sat among the house audience and rouses the dead. Novelist and accidental playwright Richard Carter brings us a whimsical “what if” play set in the Oval Office with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton faced with a most unusual request from a undeterred middle –aged constituent, in I Only Need a Few. Rounding out the evening of hot button entertainment is local author, teacher, performer and UT Arlington graduate Paula J. Sanders. In her play, The Valiant Never Taste of Death But Once, a smooth talking, well-dressed African American man personifies a deadly worldwide scourge with such terrifying immediacy it’s hard not to avert the eyes.

No shy performances in the acting ensemble; several appear throughout the evening. Keep watching JuNene K, Heather Pratt, Selma Pinkard, Akron Watson and Brandon Christle, as they glide effortlessly from one well-defined character to another. Aubrey Stephenson’s sonorous singing voice in Holmes’ Change sets the tone of the evening with its melodious soulfulness. We do indeed live in interesting times, as reflected by the depth and scope of these productions.

Who will win the competition’s $1000 and airline tickets? I cast my vote, and I’m not telling. I promise it wasn’t as easy a choice to make as last November’s presidential election. The one-act performances end this Saturday the 28th. Dallas’ Bishop Arts District is the place to go and TeCo Theatrical Production’s The Best of Political Theater is the scene to make. Time for real change….

Tickets: www.tecotheater.org 214-948-0716

Timely Excellence in TeCo Theater Production’s One Act Winners

And the winner is….

The results are in from the 7th Annual New Play Competition: The Best of Political Theater, sponsored by TeCo Theatrical Productions (www.tecotheater.org) at the Bishop Arts Theater Center in Oak Cliff. By popular acclaim, Paula J. Sanders, local author, teacher, performer and UT Arlington graduate won for her entry The Valiant Never Taste of Death But Once, in a tough field of six diverse, competitive one act plays. The play puts a chillingly human face on the killer disease cancer. “Winning came as a total shock,” says Ms. Sanders, a four time previous competitor. “The play is very personal. During 2008 I lost five wonderful people in my life all from very different circumstances. However, the most devastating was the illness of my best friend’s mother, to whom I dedicated the play. She fought a hard battle with cancer and lost it in the spring.” Ms. Sanders feels the strong performances of Brandon Christle and JuNene K. brought her one act vividly to life. “JuNene K. symbolized the strength that we have all seen in our loved ones whether they are fighting cancer, AIDS or drug addiction.” What does she plan to do with her winnings — cash and two roundtrip airplane tickets? She laughs, “More than likely it will involve a creative endeavor or maybe a trip to Disney World with my four year old son. I do plan to put the final touches on that romance novel that I am self publishing….” Stay tuned in for Sanders’ continued success.

There’s more winning news. Each year, the playwright who receives the most points from TeCo’s Reading Committee wins the Literary Prize Award. This year’s prize with a round-trip airfare ticket goes to award-winning playwright, Richland College professor and Blacken Blues Theater founder Willie Holmes. His one act Change is part of a full play comprised of three one acts called Love Changes. Fast-paced and sophisticated, funny yet thought provoking, Change explores the challenges faced by Americans dealing with racial bias and stereotypes in developing inter-racial romantic connections. Holmes says he is honored to be recognized a winner in a political play writing contest as his favorite playwrights are August Wilson and Arthur Miller. “They blend social commentary, thoughtful humor, and provocative story telling. I try to fulfill these goals with each play that I develop.” He may head to New York, the Caribbean Islands, or Bermuda with his winning ticket.

TeCo Theatrical Productions founder and artistic director Teresa Wash glows with pride as she talks about the diversity of this year’s event. “I was particularly excited to receive an entry about immigration issues from an artist right here in District 1 (Phillip Morales) where 90% of the residents are Latino. And Paula Sanders is only the second woman to win the New Play Competition in the history of the event – I believe in encouraging women writers, there are so few of us.” Having a strong artistic success in her sparkling new performance space mattered a great deal, too. “I really wanted to raise the bar on the quality of the performances. This year, we broke box office records with over 600 people in attendance. This community has embraced us in a way I never imagined.” Next year’s competition will build on the diverse, multicultural success of this year’s thanks to Wash’s dedication and artistic vision.

What’s next for TeCo Theatrical Productions? Opening April 16, the company presents August Wilson’s King Hedley II, a “haunting and challenging tragedy of Shakespearean proportion”. It will feature TeCo’s T-an-T (teenagers and theater) in the culminating project of a four month long apprenticeship program.

Paula Sanders

Expect a sell-out.

For more of Alexandra Bonifield’s reviews, check out http://sjamaanka.wordpress.com and keep clicking on www.examiner.com.

A Privilege to Pee in Richland College’s Urinetown

Urinetown. What a dreadful name for a musical – images of nasty hip waders. Richland College’s drama professor Wendy Welch planned to stage the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof this semester, but it wasn’t available. On a hunch she selected the post-apocalyptic “sur-reality” of Gotham-like sewers for a timely, hip, politically relevant show about sustainable challenges, tussling haves and have-nots and the importance of love and peace to human survival. Sound grim? A little shocking in spots, for sure, but Urinetown’s highly entertaining, thanks to Ms. Welch’s clever, crisp staging.

Dystopia reigns supreme due to overpopulation and resource depletion, with pointed reference to 19th century English political economist and demographer Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus. Greedy, evil banker (!)  Cladwell B. Cladwell, played with Snidely Whiplash panache by Drew Bramlett, represses the town’s Dickensian rabble by charging them exorbitant fees to use the public toilets, hoards cash (what, a banker?), browbeats politicians and sycophants and murders the occasional upstart. Cladwell’s young, innocent, radiantly lovely daughter falls in love (“But soft, what light…”) with a principled if grimy Jimmy Stewart sort of lad from the wrong side of the plumbing pipes. A curious array of animated, jadedly comic characters lend the production elemental whiffs of Cabaret, West Side Story, Les Miserables, Sweeny Todd, and a faint hint of Our Town, at different times throughout the two act enterprise. Presiding over all action and reminding the audience and cast, often,  “This IS a musical”, leers omniscient town cop/narrator, Officer Lockstock, who controls the ebb and flow of the plot and drives the show’s rapid-fire timing.

Lockstock’s portrayal is integral to the show’s success. Director Welch had the good fortune to cast one of the region’s finest song and dance men and comic actors—Shane Strawbridge—in this crucial role. Impeccable timing, rollicking entrances, commanding presence, a soaring, well-supported, in tune singing voice with excellent diction –Strawbridge is a joy to watch perform and must inspire the young cast members treading the boards with him with his infectious enthusiasm and focused energy. Clint Hill and Rachel Legaspi are well matched as the romantic duo, Bobby and Hope. In Act I opening night, Hill’s singing pitch strayed a bit; by Act II he seemed to have found his vocal stride. Legaspi has a rich, warm, expressive instrument that sounds mature for her years and promises a great future. She’s a true talent with eye-catching stage presence, singing or speaking. In the comic relief role of Little Sally, a contrast to Strawbridge’s Lockstock, Katherine Gentsch brings charm and spunk and physical versatility to her portrayal. As the villainess with a changeable heart of gold, Delynda Moravec embodies the most Dickensian character of all in hard-edged Penelope Pennywise and elicits whoops and guffaws from the attentive audience.

Urinetown won the 2002 Tony Award for original score and demands quite a bit from its lead actors and chorus. The show’s strongest moments occur when the entire ensemble of twenty is singing and dancing at full tilt up and down the multi-level expressionistic set. Nary a detectable bobble, nor hesitation in blocking, appeared to take place opening night in Richland College’s production. Vocal harmonies flowed with well-rehearsed professionalism.  Sometimes the live band, placed behind the staging area, overpowered the miked singers, a solvable issue.

Musical theatre a dying art form? No one in Richland College’s auditorium opening night would believe that. Urinetown is definitely NOT your granny’s musical, portrays issues and relationships through searing satire that could hurtle a rightwing xenophobe into an apoplectic snit of outrage. It gives the musical art form wide spectrum relevance for today’s youth, both on stage and as audience. For art to instruct and entertain with validity, it must present a viable world through accessible metaphor and language. Excellent choice of shows for our time, delightful, engaging production, Urinetown speaks about YOUR town and to the hearts of all.

Phot0 by Tasleem Khan: Clint Hill and Rachel Legaspi

Ego-Surfing Out of the Loop

Ever done a google search on yourself? It’s an unusual self-reflective experience, almost like watching oneself in a mirror. Many people check it out every so often, meet with no major surprises. But what if it went terribly wrong? What if you learned that someone from your past misappropriated your name to use as a pseudonym as a gay porn star? What if you agreed to meet someone with your name who pretended to want to write an article about you and found yourself drawn into a macabre ménage a trois involving manipulative sado-masochistic violence? There’s no escape here.

Successful Showtime, Fox and ABC TV screenwriter Jason Schafer wrote the stage thriller i google myself as a topical ‘what if’ that descends into nightmarish levels of garishly intertwined relationships between three men, all of whom share names and connect through the google search engine. Featured on opening night of WaterTower Theatre’s 8th Annual out of the loop fringe festival and playing to an enthusiastic near capacity crowd, the short thriller helps kick off the diverse, creative festival in high fashion.

Mixing computer screen film projection of e-mail chat with intensely realistic overt and personal physicality, director Bruce R. Coleman (resdent artist at Theatre Three) masterfully spins his three actors through Mamet-like macho-energized scenes, never losing sight of the characters’ and script’s symbolic contrast between the remote, yet invasive, google medium and their face to face presence. What is googling yourself? “It’s ego-surfing. A surf engine snapshot of how you fit into the world,” flatly declaims one man. Schafer identifies his characters as numbers One, Two, Three in the program, which re-affirms the play’s focus on the character’s names as unique catalyst for the twisted plot. Well-crafted with skillfully potent pauses, the play’s objectives and commentary about the nature of connection in an alienating culture resonate clearly with the rapt audience.

Performances support the tightly wound script. Kevin Moore as One occasionally overemphasizes his diction as though speaking un-miked from the depths of a proscenium stage but conveys unreasonable obsession with measured fluidity. His verbal over-emphasis reinforces the character’s intense need for acknowledgement. Chad Peterson as the gay porn star Two and Joel McDonald as Three, the man from Two’s past, interact with such easy familiarity and natural calm that when they explode into violence, or promise it, the audience never doubts its valid logic for a moment. It’s a great opener for an ambitious Fringe Fest. Make you think twice about googling yourself.

i google myself , presented by Uncommon Ground at WaterTower Theatre’s out of the loop fringe festival, continues March 8, 12, and

13 at the Studio Theatre. For complete schedule times and info, go to www.watertowertheatre.org/outoftheloop.asp

Dream of Godless Madness: KDT’s Psychos Never Dream

“I’m kinda like Ozzy Osbourne,” says award-winning novelist, poet and playwright Denis Johnson, who describes himself as a “criminal hedonist” turned “citizen of life.” “What I write about is really the dilemma of living in a fallen world, and asking: Why is it like this if there’s supposed to be a God?” Johnson is the Resident Playwright of Campo Santo, the theater company in residence at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco,  the oldest alternative non-profit art space in a town brimming over with alternative art spaces.

Johnson’s Coen Brothers-ambienced thriller Psychos Never Dream opened Friday March 6 in Kitchen Dog Theatre’s performance space at The MAC on McKinney Avenue, a co-presentation with Project X . Set in rural remote north Idaho, dreams, delusions, and their horrific consequences explode in inebriated Technicolor array, in Johnson’s “fallen world”. Water rights issues, ex-hippies gone to seed or insane, and lust — for sex, for gold, for revenge for perceived betrayal and ancient grudges, all jumble madly together against a stark wilderness background. The play’s lyrical verbal resonance elevates its lonely desperate cacophony to a poignant search for meaning and connection, unexpectedly through gruesome savagery. “Why is it like this if there’s supposed to be a God?” From this play’s perspective, maybe there isn’t one.

The play slams open on main character Critter (Raphael Parry) reveling in surreal horror, as he rants and mumbles, wild-eyed and unkempt, digging a grave in a neighbor’s yard for a cloth-wrapped body he dragged there, a relative he presumably just murdered. The neighbor, Floyd (Sean Hennigan) stumbles upon the grisly proceedings; the action launches with merciless cat-and-mouse vengeance, riveting audience members’ attention, hearts in throats. Critter’s insanity may be due to a mercury-poisoning incident years ago. Raphael Parry cackles, grimaces, sweats and strains with blood-spattered menace and relentless malice, while somehow still conveying a wistful idealism that took a demented detour while he meandered about in life’s wilderness. Critter’s actions are out of control, over the top, random, vulgar and violent, completely irrational. Parry never misses a text-based beat and informs the bizarre script with a credible vitality; a less experienced actor could chew up a lot of idiotic scenery with a misread of this role. Parry’s portrayal never takes license with the script or launches into self-indulgent posturing. In Critter’s solo scene at a pay phone, the audience feels the sad smallness, the vulnerable bewilderment of this strange, unbalanced man, ultimately the universality of his plight, through Parry’s carefully nuanced portrayal.

Floyd comes across initially as a complete contrast, a voice of reason. Hennigan has a commanding presence and deep, gravely voice; his Floyd is a steel-eyed, take-charge sort of redneck. Perhaps he can pull Critter and the mesmerized audience back, teetering as they are at the edge of the black abyss. Soon it becomes apparent that Floyd is just as far gone as Critter, but in a less naked, amoral, manipulative way. Parry’s histrionics and Hennigan’s cool, calm demeanor work effortlessly together in revealing the depth and breadth of insanity and unfettered, calculated desire, so eloquently explored as themes in this play. “Why is it like this if there’s supposed to be a God?”

The play’s third “crazy” is Red, the deranged wife of the murdered man in the grave in Scene 1. Kitchen Dog Theatre’s artistic co-director Tina Parker gives what has to be one of the gutsiest performances of her career, clad scantily in a filthy nightie, stringy hair falling over her face in squalid disarray. She’s every bit a nightmare match for the bad boys, Critter and Floyd. Squealing with fear or grunting with tawdry sexual pleasure, she’s porcine, sub-human, disgusting–and plays her victim role to the hilt. When all is said and done, she may be the mastermind behind all the mayhem that transpires during the course of Psychos Never Dream…. She speaks of vivid dreams, unlike Critter, who reflects, “Six hours a night I sleep in the depths of deepest blackness.” If she’s not “psycho” and out of control, what is she? Trying to make sense of all the Bosch-like pandemonium is the play’s fourth character, the town deputy Sarah, played with dry, realistic understatement by Lisa Lee Schmidt. She’s so real she comes across almost like faded wallpaper when contrasted to the other three characters. But she has her share of issues, too, as her solo monologue on the pay phone reveals. No one escapes the cruel confusions and disappointments of life in Dennis Johnson’s godless universe.

Psychos Never Dream’s director, David Kennedy, worked as the former Associate Artistic Director at Dallas Theater Center, where he directed a staged reading of the play a season ago. It would have been interesting to read his perspectives on the production and his part in its development process in the playbill. His clear understanding of the play’s deranged sensibility and deft skill in holding the playwright’s vision together within modulated chaos enables his actors to create unforgettable relationships. Kitchen Dog Theatre’s mission statement says the company chooses plays that invite audiences to be “provoked, challenged and amazed.” Complimented by a reverberating rock score as sound, sallow-hued, soul-draining lighting effects and a set that unfolds like a hot pillow house hide-a-bed, this production of Dennis Johnson’s Psychos Never Dream is resoundingly awesome in its ability to do all three.

NOTE: Foul language, nudity, sex scenes, graphic violence abound.

Psychos Never Dream runs through April 4, 2009 (Wednesdays through Sundays) at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) 3120 McKinney Ave., Dallas TX. Tickets: 214-953-1055 or www.kitchendogtheater.org

Quotes and bio info about Denis Johnson come from a February 2003 SF Weekly interview and a June 2002 Entertainment feature in New York Magazine

Red & Floyd (Tina Parker. Sean Hennigan) Matt Mrozek photo

Charmed Seat in the Afternoon Sun: One Thirty Productions

Larry Randolph, Gene Ray Price, Cliff Stephens

Some well-kept secrets need to take a front and center seat on a sunny bench…. For example, at The Bath House Cultural Center, One Thirty Production’s A Bench in the Sun fits that category. A charmingly wry piece of theatrical fluff, it makes for an appealing afternoon’s entertainment, starting at 1:30pm, Wednesdays through Saturdays. Dedicated to producing light, “old-fashioned” plays that tell a good story and are peopled with unforgettable characters with nary a hint of questionable language or situations, One Thirty Productions is the only matinee exclusive producing theatre company in the Dallas region. It’s filling a real need, given the growing size of the audiences in attendance.

This is no Johnny Come Lately community theatre production. A seasoned professional Equity cast of three under the guidance of Charles Ballinger, one of the Dallas area’s most versatile, experienced directors with national credentials from both coasts and many respectable artistic locales in between, create an effortlessly smooth divertissement. They really know what makes comedy work: how to elicit chuckles or a few tears at exactly the right moment, how far to push humor without belaboring a joke, when to pause effectively to allow a more serious thought’s effect to sink in. It’s a pleasure to watch true pros at work—they make it seem as effortless as play. Cliff Stephens and Larry Randolph (also company producer) portray a begrudgingly devoted couple of curmudgeonly geezers, Harold and Burt, who bore each other daily with routine banter while sharing a retirement community park bench. As different in personality and style as Oscar and Felix from Simon’s The Odd Couple, Randolph and Stevens create a perfectly infuriating relationship reality that feels like a well-worn groove of predictability. Witness Harold’s announcement of his secret of getting to sleep at night; “I count my dead friends.” Ah, such excitement. Enter a woman — a flirtatious, retired film star–and suddenly the two gentlemen find their dull lives turned upside down.  Gene Ray Price as svelte, stylish Adrienne exudes plucky enthusiasm and just enough mystery to set both men on a crash-course to fervently pursue sunset romance… with a wealth of humorous consequences.

The Bath House Cultural Center’s intimate theatre space is the ideal setting for One Thirty Productions’ character-driven plays. The simple set by Larry Randolph with sound by M. Graeme Bice and lights by Cory Leugemors work effectively to support the talented cast and sweet charm of Ron Clark’s play. In the mood for some classy, light live entertainment? A Bench in the Sun runs March 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28. 1:30 pm, on the dot. One Thirty Productions.

The Bath House Cultural Center is located at 521 E. Lawther Drive at the end of Northcliff Dr. off Buckner Blvd. on the east side of White Rock Lake.
214-670-8749 or on the web: www.bathhousecultural.com.

Globe-trotting Wager: Epic Fun with Rover Dramawerks

The folks at Rover Dramawerks

Original French edition book-cover

are gutsy, to say the least. First, in tight economic times they move their production to the Courtyard Theater in Plano, a medium sized proscenium theater, twice the size of their usual performance space nearby. Second, when they can’t get the rights to a tried and true stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1873 epic novel classic Around the World in 80 Days, they simply write their own…very gutsy. The tale concerns a wager between a club of crusty English gentlemen that one member, stuffier than most Phileas Fogg, can win if he manages to circumnavigate the globe in precisely eighty days. Lots of exotic locales, fabulously costumed natives, steam locomotives, eclectic rafts, ocean liners adrift in typhoons, elephants. Easy stuff to reproduce on stage, right?

Not to say that Rover Dramawerks is the first to attempt adaptation. They’re in good company. Orson Welles produced and starred in a totally forgettable stage version of the show with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. An episode of the classic CBS television series, Have Gun -Will Travel, entitled “Fogg Bound”, broadcast on December 3, 1960, had the series’ hero, Palladin (Richard Boone), escorting main character Phileas Fogg (Patric Knowles) through part of his journey. A 1989 three-part TV mini-series starred Pierce Brosnan as Fogg, Eric Idle as French servant Passepartout, and Peter Ustinov as the show’s villain Fix. The best-known movie version, released in 1956, starred David Niven and Cantinflas with a huge cast of movie celebrities. The movie earned five Oscars, out of eight nominations. It’s an appealing challenge many have taken on.

In RoverDramawerks case the gamble is something of a success. Feeling a bit more like Louis L’Amour in places than Jules Verne, the show manages to inform the ambience of a rambling, eccentric race against superior odds around the world in an era when speed and travel weren’t words uttered in the same breath. The company had a double stroke of luck in the casting of their protagonist Fogg and his nemesis Fix. Embodying the unflappable, always punctual Phileas Fogg, local graphic artist Gary Anderson brings a genteel command to the role and sustains his demeanor with Sean Connery-like aplomb. The rakish working stiff detective Fix dominates the action in every scene he appears. Portraying a lovably bumbling villain who finally sees the error of his ways, Mike Hathaway somehow locates interesting dimensions in a character that bounces erratically along between melodrama stereotype and slapstick pratfall. As in Three Stooges. For some odd reason, Hathaway also portrays a minor character at the gentleman’s club. This is a confusing choice as the audience wonders if as Fix he’s just donning a disguise, not appearing as a completely different (and inconsequential) character. He takes his final bow in the “other guise.” A mistake. The casting of other main character roles is not quite so fortunate. Coby Cathey as Fogg’s French servant Passepartout effectively hacks the French language to bits every time he opens his mouth. American actors don’t generally do accents well, certainly confirmed by Cathey’s withering delivery. “Mon Dieu” is not pronounced “Mon duh.” Fogg acquires a lady friend along his voyage, an Indian woman named Aouda, who accompanies him back to England and endures the rigors of the journey as involved as any man. A role with interesting possibility. In Rover’s production, Aouda is played by the attractive but inexplicably Caucasian Sasha Truman-McGonnell. She seems stiff and bored, like a well-to-do matron suffering through a routine obligatory carriage ride around the park. Even when Fix grabs her around the torso as they are nearly swept overboard during a storm on board a ship, she hardly reacts, out of character for a proper Victorian lady.

Lesser characters ranging from ship’s captains and train engineers to marauding redskins, newspaper hawkers, cavalry officers, court judges and circus performers are played by an ensemble of six game, enthusiastic individuals. Notable among them is Nancy Lamb who creates lively believable snapshots of both genders. Part of the real fun in this production is seeing who shows up next wearing some outlandish get–up and speaking a new lingo. “If I am not always what I ought to be, ” Verne once wrote, “my characters will be what I should like to be.” In the spunky variety portrayed by the lesser characters in Rover’s production, the core vision of Verne’s teeming humanity gets effectively enlivened. And that’s what an epic should do.

This reviewer hopes Rover Dramawerks will go back to their smaller performance space where the confinement inspires invention and the intimacy forces nuanced characterization. Around the World in 80 Days won’t win any major theatre awards, but it sure offers entertaining possibilities that beat staring at the TV screen any time. Runs through March 21. www.roverdramawerks.com 972.849.0358

Upstanding Start: Upstart Productions at the Green Zone

NEWS FLASH: Upstart Productions wins a 2009 Column Award in the Best Non-Equity Play Category for its inaugural production of Topdog/Underdog.

As if haunted by the spirit of Kurt Cobain, lead singer with the 80’s grunge icon band Nirvana, Kenneth Lonergan’s 1996 play This Is Our Youth examines the tortured states of semi-aware existence of three upper class twenty-something drifters set in a New York apartment in the Reagan 80’s. More aptly, the play focuses on their pretenses, vulnerabilities and aspirations with the exacting attention to detail of a forensic investigator analyzing a suicide’s corpse. It’s intense. The stage atmosphere crackles with pervasive chill. Project X welcomes newbie Upstart Productions in this co-production, which completed its run at The Green Zone on March 22.

Playwright Kenneth Lonergan is best known for his award-winning screenplays (You Can Count on Me – 2000, Gangs of New York – 2002). This Is Our Youth, his first play, demonstrates his early interest in creating intimate, character-driven dramas. Lonergan’s characters are consumed with jaded ennui, self-recrimination and puffed up bravado. The play fascinates its audience with fragile relationship structures and the raging, relentless flow of its vivid language and naturalistic style. You don’t root for any particular character, but you sure want to know what makes them all tick and where they’re going, if anywhere.

On stage Matthew M. Fowler as pretentious, smart-ass bully Dennis, Drew Wall as Warren–a slightly younger “male ingénue” awaiting salvation out of an unfocused drug-enhanced fog, and Barrett Nash as alluring, contentious, pseudo-sophisticate Jessica present a triumvirate of idiot ne’er-do-wells, desperately seek validation while devouring the consumerist distractions of the 80’s that prevent them from establishing any self-worth.

Snappy banter trips off the tongues and machismo oozes from the pores of both young men. Characters a contrast in style, presence and temperament, Fowler and Wall instinctively posture and dig at one another as though engaged in an imaginary fencing duel. Forget the foils; get out the rapiers. Layer upon layer of coke and hemp-induced dialogue leads each character to monologues of monolithic emotional proportion. Both actors unleash just enough “sturm” to make the playwright’s point without surging into melodrama. This fine balance reflects their individual skills as artistic craftsmen and the strength and understanding of their director Rene Moreno. He had to take them up to that teeter-y edge, allow them to lean out a ways, then reel them back in before they tumbled to manic destruction. Great fun to watch. A tightrope act.

In waltzes calculating Jessica, tossing her full head of cascading red curls with complacent knowledge of how a little revealed flesh and that gorgeous mop will affect both men. She feigns an innocence that could make her one of the nastiest onstage tease-pricks short of David Mamet. Barrett Nash rises to the challenge, as prickly as any porcupine in heels, eye-liner and lipstick could be. Ultimately she does sleep with Warren, possibly a required rite of passage for both. At least AIDS won’t involve them in the play’s sequel. Nash creates a believable spoiled girl child struggling towards womanhood, picking fights over every perceived insult and some just for fun, for power. Again, restraint lends to her success, thanks to strong direction by Moreno. It pays to know what you’re doing when you have talent this ready and willing.

If playwright Lonergan were firing up the metaphorical grill to barbecue for his drinkin’, partyin’ buddies from the 1980’s, he’d marinade the bloody meat in a liberal dose of angst-ridden narcissistic nihilism with a liberal salt shaker’s worth of misogyny. Master playwright David Mamet he is not, bludgeoning the audience with fine-tuned balance of savagery and cunning in imagery and character. Yet this initial stage endeavor shows the promise that filled his coffers with later film ventures. It also affords a young company like Upstart Theater nuanced fodder to sink their artistic teeth into, particularly under the wise guidance of a seasoned director like Rene Moreno. Look for more high caliber performance from these “upstarts.” Rate this dish? Medium rare to extremely well done.

Farther than Closer: Enter Stage Left’s Launch

I want to support emergent theatre companies with their shiny, new endeavors. I look eagerly forward to attending fresh, energized productions. But when the fragile fledgling spreads its wings, flops from the nest and plummets downward, I‘m obliged to speak truth. Enter Stage Left has just birthed such a bird. Launching on Teatro Dallas’ elongated, narrow performance space with Patrick Marber’s 1997 multiple award–winning drama Closer, Enter Stage Left made an ambitious choice for an initial venture. Set in London with lots of Brit vernacular and reference, good decision the company did not attempt the corresponding accents. Unfortunately, the text gets muddied by Americanized delivery. That’s for starters.

This production disappoints. Sappy. Maudlin. Ponderous. Unfocused. Unconvincing. Points of concern: 1) pace –funereal; 2) tone – one tortured, lengthy “emo” moan, scene after choppy scene 3) direction – hard to detect: the production lacks tension, suspense, mystery, integration and follows no well-defined arc 4) acting – sigh. One solid, believable performance: Chad Cline as Larry, with fifteen years of professional acting experience in film, commercials and stage work. He develops a multi-faceted, living persona, reveals telling, contrasting glimpses into his character’s dark side and higher nature in a steady, naturalistic manner. He understands how to utilize silence, how to allow the space, the pause moments, to shape his conversation. It’s a solo gig. The other three performers, Samantha Chancellor, Chad Halbrook and Jessica Layman, well intentioned and earnest, exhibit a range of melodramatic shtick that includes eye rolling, shoulder twitching, sighing, grimacing, wailing and…well, the superficial. No clear motivations. Buckets of crocodile tears.

Consider the women’s costumes. They do nothing to enhance the two actresses’ physical attributes, as required by the play’s emphasis on “woman as sex object.” Samantha Chancellor, a young woman with a promising, attractive face and an interesting voice and delivery, plays a stripper. But her physical being doesn’t match any sort of sex kitten image. No cleavage in a stripper? A different bra needed…. And a baby doll nightie would far better help her fit the role’s demands in the men’s club scene, The play’s “other woman”, a photographer, (Jessica Layman) looks ill at ease in her poorly conceived and oddly fitting costumes. She deserves a total re-think and a re-do, from the lifeless flat hair style worn throughout to her awkward, tight cocktail dress to the out of character shoes her husband brings her as a gift. Aside from the costume challenges, once she puts down her first scene’s prop camera, her performance waffles in confusion for the play’s duration, as though the actress got little direction and has no clue how to move or think or feel like the character she portrays. What a peculiar realization of a potentially meaty role.

The background music scoring the production certainly reinforces the pervasive “emo” mood, which does not align well with the play’s hard-edged tone. On a positive note, the lighting is crisp and professional; screen projection of an early scene, an e-mail interchange of a faux sex fantasy between the two male characters, works excellently.

Here’s yet another play about despondent, spoiled, well heeled malcontents. They puff cigarette smoke in each other’s faces, spout the f and c words liberally, occasionally take a swipe at each other and obsess about sex and broken relationships, sobbing out their sullied dreams in oceans of self-pity. Enter Stage Left’s mission statement says the company “seeks to…explore current and timeless human issues.” Hope for more artistically satisfying results in the company’s future productions. Ouch. Patrick Marber’s Closer, directed by Jason Folks, runs through April 18 at Teatro Dallas, 1331 Record Crossing Rd. Dallas, TX 75235, an Enter Stage Left inaugural production.

Tickets on the web: www.EnterStageLeft.org

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

When  Lorraine Hansberry selected the line from Langston Hughes’ poem as the title of her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun she had no clue she had written one of the most important American plays of the 20th century. In fact, when the play previewed on Broadway to mixed reviews, she didn’t know if it would succeed at all, much less break so many barriers so completely.

It was the first play by an African American woman on Broadway, also first with an African-American director.  At age twenty-nine Hansberry became the youngest American playwright, the fifth woman and the only African American to date to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. In its authentic, realistic depiction of everyday life for an African-American family expressed with such superlative artistry, A Raisin in the Sun ended, definitively, the American stage’s neglect of the African American experience, its creativity and issues. In 1961, a film version, now considered classic, won a special award at the Cannes Film Festival and Hansberry’s screenplay received nomination for a Screen Writer’s Guild Award. A Raisin in the Sun has been translated on all continents into over thirty languages, and performed in numerous productions abroad. In the U.S., through stage, film, television and book publications, literally millions of people have had some acquaintance with the American Southside Chicago Younger family—their fears, challenges and…dreams-some deferred and some realized. Dreams are what it’s about.

On Friday March 27, African American Repertory Theater in Desoto opened a bold, lyrically energized production of A Raisin in the Sun, as fresh and relevant to today’s issues and concerns as it was in 1959. One of few Caucasians in the nearly sold out house, I sat with regional award-winning African-American playwright, director and producer Willie Holmes. With delight we observed the house fill up with an enthused, eager audience— toddlers and moms, pre-teens in small herds, entire families, pairs of young adults on dates, business people rushing straight from the office, retirement center residents, some people clearly well-to-do, others close to indigent. The hall throbbed with noisy anticipation. Holmes and I wondered if the play could still reach today’s audience and hold their attention. As the first scene unfolded, our fears were allayed. Hansberry’s play, William Earl Ray’s sharp, relevant direction and a truly outstanding ensemble cast featuring film and stage star Irma P. Hall had the full focus of the rowdy, diverse crowd. It’s a refreshing experience to be part of an audience that reacts honestly, spontaneously and vociferously to the twists and turns of plot, the successes and failures of family life as depicted by on stage actors. The laughter, the sighs, the groans, the hoots and shouts in on-going response were all visceral testament to the exquisite caliber of art emerging before us.

It’s a rare pleasure to watch an actor own a role. Many inhabit roles well, give unique interpretations and inspire heated discussion long after the final curtain. But to really OWN a role? That doesn’t happen very oft. An honor to watch it take place. I’ve seen Vince McGill give solid artistic performances before but none like this. As Raisin unfolds, we watch his character Walter emerge from a  numb sleepwalker state, through rage, sorrow,  desperation, bitter dejection and self-recrimination, to a sweet transcendent self-actualization. Effortless, naturally flowing, understated, this “raisin in the sun” does explode and finds inspired validation as he triumphs over mundane distractions to live his dream. McGill masters the role and carries the production.

There is no weak performance in the ensemble. From Regina Washington who portrays Walter’s ambitious younger sister, inhabiting her role kinesthetically from her toenails up, to Taylore Mahogany Scott as Walter’s long-suffering, no nonsense wife– the “backbone” of the household and on stage anchor to reality, to quietly expressive Joshua White as the Youngers’ pre-teen son, to Alonzo Waller as effervescent African Joseph Asagi who dreams of a re-energized African nation, the realities of African-American experience are deftly brought to life with vitality, truth and interest. Presiding over all with wisdom and love is Irma P. Hall as Lena, the matriarch of the family. She reminds everyone where they came from and what paths truly matter in life, as hard as choosing those paths can be. “A force of nature” as described by Quentin Tarantino, Ms. Hall brings a poignant depth to the production. Never a stereotypical tyrant but ever the play’s moral center, her character’s love and determination inspire her confused son Walter’s transformation with credible authority and wit. It’s a refined yet earthy portrayal, a joy to watch this revered professional so at ease in her craft.

Director William (Bill) Earl Ray liberates his cast to fully explore individual possibilities while weaving them into a cohesive whole. He may claim to be ‘cursed with perfectionism’, but it’s sure fun to watch the result when he works his considerable directorial wizardry on such a text with artists of this caliber.

Don’t miss it.  A Raisin in the Sun runs through April 12 at the Corner Theater, 211 E. Pleasant Run in Desoto. For tickets, call 972-572-0998 or go online: www.aareptheater.com

Poem “Harlem” (sometimes called “Dream Deferred”) from Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) by Langston Hughes American visionary poet, columnist, dramatist, essayist, lyricist, novelist, social activist, writer of African and Native American heritage (1902-1967)

Lorraine Hansberry American playwright 1930-1965

Dont u luv me?

Dont u luv me?

Lauren Rosen/ Montgomery Sutton

It’s a simple question, in text message format. Who would ever guess it reflects a growing problem among teen-agers, escalated by technology? Stalking. Obsession. Aggression. Manipulative possessiveness. Date violence. Rape. “I’d seen news stories and movies and books about dating violence, but I’d always been able to separate myself from it. Being in this show has made me realize that it is a real issue. It’s really happening and it’s a dangerous way to live.“ Lauren Rosen “I wish I’d been able to see something like this when I was in high school. Even when abuse doesn’t reach the violent heights of the play or Chris (Brown) and Rhianna, the “small” abuses — emotional and mental as well as physical — can seem normal when you don’t have the relationship experience to see them for what they are.” Montgomery Sutton.

Lauren and Montgomery currently portray lead characters in Dallas Children Theatre’s gripping world premiere teen theatre production – dont u luv me, by resident award-winning playwright Linda Daugherty, author of The Secret Life of Girls and EAT (It’s Not About Food), running through April 26 at the Rosewood Center Studio Theater, 5938 Skillman Rd. in Dallas, Texas. The play deals with the subject of date violence and its epidemic proportions in the US while encouraging young people to make choices that result in healthy relationships.

One in three teens report knowing a friend who has been a victim of peer violence.

Montgomery got his start in theater at age 3 on DCT’s stage and has recently returned to Dallas after earning his BA in theatre at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. Lauren is a dancer and actress studying for her BA at UNT. They portray two “average” teens that start a dating relationship, which goes terribly awry. The play offers a realistically portrayed, intriguing opportunity for families and teens to learn about the problem and recognize the warning signs. It contains professionally choreographed scenes of stage violence with highly charged emotional content. According to play director, Nancy Schaeffer, “We are not backing off from the issues of violence and sexuality. This is not like an “after school special”- because we want it to mirror real life. Both actors have the chops and skills to deliver the complexities of this relationship.” Study guides are available on the website and talk backs with medical and psychology professionals occur after the performances. It’s recommended for ages 13 and up.

Performances are scheduled for Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturdays at 1:30pm and Sundays at 1:30pm and 4:30 pm. Tickets: 214-740-0051, or on-line: www.dct.org

Rated by TIME Magazine as one of the top five theaters in the nation performing for youth, Dallas Children’s Theater is a professional theater serving more than 270,000 young people and their families through its eleven main stage productions, national touring company, and education and outreach programs.

When Love Really Hurts

Dont u luv me: DCT 2009

CJ is a dreamboat, the sort of high school senior many teen-aged girls would love to have for a boyfriend. Tall, handsome, great smile, expressive eyes with sexy, long lashes, charismatic and funny, a good athlete and student, excellent communicator—and most of all, totally devoted to his sophomore girlfriend Angela. A lucky girl, right? Forty percent of teen-aged girls report knowing someone their age that has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend. CJ is an obsessive abuser. He doesn’t know how to stop. Angela is terrified he’ll kill himself if she tries to break up with him, even though he hits her regularly and forces inappropriate sexual contact. It’s heartbreaking to watch and part of a growing epidemic of violence that knows no boundaries of race, class, educational background or gender orientation. Welcome to love that really hurts.

Rated by TIME Magazine as one of the top five theaters in the nation performing for youth, Dallas Children’s Theatre presents the world premiere of Dont u luv me, by its resident award-winning playwright Linda Daugherty, author of national touring shows The Secret Life of Girls and EAT (It’s Not About Food). Part of the company’s “Young Adult Relevant Drama” program, the play deals with the subject of date violence, how to recognize it and how to choose healthy relationships.

Cast in the pivotal roles of CJ and Angela are two dedicated professional Dallas area actors—Montgomery Sutton and Lauren Rosen. Montgomery got his start in theater at age 3 on DCT’s stage, graduated from St. Mark’s School and recently returned to Dallas after earning his BA in theatre at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. Lauren is a dancer and actress studying for her BA at UNT. They create a believable, fully realized relationship. Lauren’s Angela at first is sweet and innocent, open and trusting. As Montgomery’s CJ shifts from playfully affectionate to demanding and tyrannical, Angela loses her friends, distances herself from her family and school activities to please CJ, and her inner light dims. She finds herself in a lonely, terrifying place and clearly reflects the numbing horror she must feel. Lauren makes the audience live the nightmare Angela experiences. Montgomery pleased audiences and critics alike a season ago as Romeo in Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare Dallas. He brings the same intensity, nuance and physicality to his role as the conflicted, confused CJ. He does behave like a monster, but he also shows a vulnerability that makes his portrayal comprehensible. Director Nancy Schaeffer says, “Montgomery makes us care about CJ. We want the best for him too-but then we see the anger grow and take over his life and love.” There’s a fine line between creating too harsh extremes and sugarcoating a serious issue; director Schaeffer and her two leads confidently pull it off. From their initial cheery conversation when school starts to their escalating text messaging (shown projected on a screen upstage), CJ and Angela’s reality evolves naturally.

No holding back the stage violence in this play. Some families may hesitate to expose their teens to it, so up close and personal. Don’t be deterred. It’s well-rehearsed and choreographed precisely. No one is injured; no one gets out of control. And the point is properly made. Asked about the combat rehearsal process, Montgomery speaks from the heart: “The enacting of it is pretty tough because it’s very brutal, and to take it to a “real” place, even though it’s only fight choreography, is terrifying. The physical combat, itself, has had a very smooth evolution throughout the (rehearsal) process. We run the fight scenes before every show, and Lauren and I have a very strong trust that developed early on.” Without that trust, the play could never have the potent, positive impact it does.

The balance of the cast creates “normal” high school ambience, the background where the abusive relationship develops unchecked. Kelly Brooks as Angela’s best friend Jen cares about her friend but isn’t quite sure what to do to help. Dallas professional actor and producer Josh Blann plays Jen’s non-abusive boyfriend with an ease and affection that provides excellent contrast to the tightly wound CJ. Dancing at the prom, shopping, heading to class or reviewing prom photos on a cell phone (also projected on screen), the teen actors enliven Linda Daugherty’s hour-long script. Daugherty’s play does an excellent job of portraying the problem, and DCT’s cast efficiently executes an enjoyable and educational performance. Asked how she feels about Dont u luv me, Lauren Rosen exudes enthusiasm: “ It’s one thing to talk about these things, and a completely different thing to see it happening right in front of you. That’s why theater is such an important medium. It brings the issue to life and you get to see the consequences unfold right there. It can happen to you, your best friend or anyone. I think everyone should bring their kids, family, friends, everyone!”

Dont u luv me runs through April 26 at the Rosewood Center Studio Theater, 5938 Skillman Rd. in Dallas, Texas. Recommended for audiences age 13 and up. Performances are scheduled for Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturdays at 1:30pm and Sundays at 1:30pm and 4:30 pm. Tickets: 214-740-0051, or on-line: www.dct.org

Carousel: Denton’s First Class Ride

Keith Warren (Billy), Sarah Geist (Julie)

Quick: what Broadway show did Time Magazine name as the “best musical of the 20th century” in its 1999 “Best of the Century” list and composer Richard Rodgers describe as his all-time favorite in his autobiography Musical Stages?

Carousel. Surprised? If you had the good fortune to attend Denton Community Theatre’s recent production at The Campus Theatre in downtown Denton, you‘d understand why. The music takes your breath away. How it’s naturally interwoven into the dialogue with a nod to classical opera recitative weaves an auditory magic unrivalled by many other musical theatre shows.

Carousel is truly all about the music. Director Sharon Veselic chose wisely to emphasize the music over plot and dialogue in her production, infusing this 1945 classic with a fresh vitality far beyond nostalgic re-tread. Instead of placing her orchestra conventionally in front of the proscenium arch at The Campus Theatre, in front of the singers, she placed an uncluttered full stage width thrust runway downstage where her lead singers performed the majority of Carousel’s solo tunes so close to the audience they seemed part of an intimate concert. The orchestra remained in full view of the audience, dimly lit, elevated centrally behind the runway. Full ensemble choral numbers and the balletic dancers used an upstage level behind and slightly above the orchestra and swept down side stairways to spill into the downstage space when crowd scenes required. Veselic’s production revealed excellent use of a large cast on three different levels, while the ever-visible musicians kept the audience aware of the work’s dream-like magical ambience and accompanied the singers so that their voices held full focus. Projections of night sky full of stars, realistic photos of a fishing village and fanciful watercolor renderings of fishing scenes rotated off a screen mounted far upstage, the closest thing to a “set” in this production. Marvelous and free-spirited, Philip Lamb’s artwork projections gave just enough suggestion of “place” to ground the action in a New England fishing village without interfering with movement or seeming trite; Brad Speck’s lighting design and special effects enhanced the romantic mood and sustained the dream world quality of the performance throughout. In front of this effective, inventive artistry, the singers opened their throats and poured forth Richard Rodgers’ beautiful score.

The word “community” when associated with theatre can convey a less than professional quality performance. Amateur wannabes, folks with real day jobs, just a social outlet. In this production’s case, it meant that a community of fine artists gathered together to create a stunning performance. Keith Warren as male lead Billy Bigelow (the gutter-born carnival worker trying desperately to transcend his seedy life through love) brought richly soaring depth and passionate expression to his solos. The emotional content—Billy’s conflicted soul and desire to “make good”—came through more clearly with each song’s passing. His rendition of “Soliloquy” at the end of Act 1 was so powerfully and evocatively sung it would not have surprised me had the audience demanded an encore. A lovely pairing with Sarah Geist as Billy’s suffering girlfriend/wife Julie Jordan, the two leads voices shone solo and blended superbly in duet performance. Erika Ostermiller and Shane Strawbridge as secondary leads Carrie and Mr. Snow provided comic contrast and vocal balance to the tragically dark emotions of the main leads. Their imaginative Act 1 duet “When the Children Are Asleep” was almost a showstopper and exuded playful warmth as well as showcased their respectively fine voices. Act 2’s “Ballet”, featuring Emily Staniszewski choreographed by Katherine Gentsch, matched the high caliber singing in its professionalism and innovative interpretation. Over forty people performed in this Carousel, leads to ensemble; tempos, harmony, stage movement, attitude and expression all worked smoothly in concert to create memorable stage pictures as well as sharp musical definition. Hardly a dry eye in the full house at show’s conclusion. One certainly doesn’t need to drive to Dallas performance halls to enjoy excellent musical theatre performance in this region.

The original production of Carousel opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945, and ran for eight hundred ninety performances. It was considered innovative for its time, with its criminal anti-hero leading character, tragic plot and daring theme of spousal abuse. Based on Ferenc Molnar’s award-winning 19th century play set in Hungary, Lilliom, Rogers and Hammerstein lightened it up a bit for American audiences. In 1994 Carousel was revived as a joint production of The Royal National Theatre and Lincoln Center Theater, at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, an interracial production featuring Michael Hayden. The revival won five Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical, best direction, best choreography. It won five Drama Desk Awards. Audra McDonald, in her first Broadway role, won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. McDonald and Hayden received the Theatre World Award. A Japanese tour was followed in 1996/1997 by a major US national tour.

True Magic, True West: Sundown Collaborative Theatre

Bad blood between brothers. Curdles like fresh rattlesnake venom poured into a vat of rancid wolf piss.

Alex Worthington, Cody Lucas

When Sam Shepard conjures up a slice of hyper-real filial discord in his internationally acclaimed 1980 play True West, that’s how it feels. As mounted by Denton’s Sundown Collaborative Theatre composed of entrepreneurial young artists hailing mostly from UNT’s undergraduate drama program, the play springs to life like a pissed off rattler striking unsuspecting prey. It’s cunning. It’s forceful. It’s lethal. Makes magic on stage.

True West examines explosive, unresolved issues between two brothers over several days and nights, punctuated by two brief scenes with a Hollywood movie agent and the brothers’ mother. Since its premiere at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre where Shepard was the resident playwright, its lead actors have included Tommy Lee Jones, Peter Boyle, Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, James Belushi, Gary Cole, Erik Estrada, and Dennis and Randy Quaid. In 2000, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly played the leads in a Broadway revival, switching parts every so often during the run. Both were nominated for Tony Awards along with the play and its director Matthew Warchus.

Sundown Collaborative Theatre actors and director have taken on an estimable task in light of such company. Meaty roles like brothers Lee and Austin offer challenges to seasoned professionals, much less college students. The play is a director’s dream or nightmare, depending. Sundown Collaborative’s Cody Lucas (Austin) and Alex Worthington (Lee), along with director Travis Stuebing, meet the challenge head-on. The daunting balancing act is to maintain the rhythmic flow of the play while exploring dark and light, introspective and extroverted, sane and not so aspects of both characters. Lucas’ Austin seems so safe, so sensible, so responsible, at first; the audience immediately identifies with him as “normal” as they consider the monster-like idiosyncrasies and ignorant, cruel bluster of Worthington’s Lee. Playwright Shepard won’t let the audience settle easily. Comprehending this, Director Stuebing helps his actors sustain the fine-tuned realism required to create believable multi-faceted roles while avoiding simplistic good v. evil stereotypes. They connect, inspire each other only as brothers can, and ultimately escalate conflict into non-resolvable chaos. The disgust and horror response Worthington’s Lee engenders initially is equally matched by the disgust and horror evoked by Lucas’ Austin as his true character and motivation manifest in Act II. Blood will tell, as the saying goes. Sophisticated work by these under age 25 actors, they honor the exceedingly complex text well. I’d love to see them recreate the roles together in a decade.

Puzzlingly, the pivotal scenes with secondary actors could be much more convincing. Neither Karen MacIntyre as Mom nor Sean Ball as Saul dig deep into their characters, hardly seem to belong in the same play as Lucas and Worthington. Their scenes are meant to be revelatory and catalytic. The portrayals seem superficial, as though as actors they don’t understand why Shepard wrote them into the play. It doesn’t impede the tour de force effect of the brothers’ portrayals but does slightly weaken the overall performance.

Hard to create a play’s reality in an echo-prone, low-ceiling meeting room, with limited entrance/exit and lighting options, where the audience sits on folding chairs and an occasional church pew with obstructed views of onstage action. Performance art can overcome many logistical obstacles if the creative impulse sends it there. Sundown Collaborative Theatre creates an awesome artistic reality within the limitations of its space. In 2003, Wilson Milam mounted a lavish and updated production (including 20 working toasters) at the Bristol Old Vic. No expense spared. The first three rows of seats were removed “for fear that the audience would be harmed and a Perspex shield was installed for safety reasons”, preparing for the final showdown. I doubt the Bristol Old Vic created any more believable reality, no expense spared, than Denton’s Sundown Collaborative Theatre does with its gutsy, actor-based sparse production. Savagery can be so simple, done right….

Gut-wrenching pain and resentment, soul-deep and gunny-sacked for years, pervade this play and drive its characters to sub-human acts of desperation. Support these folks at Sundown Collaborative Theatre. Donate time and money- free pizza coupons, intermission refreshments and certificates to local thrift stores. (They’ll destroy a lot of furniture before the run’s end.) It’s okay. Their art’s in the right place.

Sam Shepard’s True West plays through April 18 at Greenspace Arts Collective, 529 Malone St. in Denton TX. http://www.sundowntheatre.com Stay tuned for info. about their production of Shakespeare’s Othello opening May 14.

Transcendence and Loss: Undermain’s Black Monk

“Those who warn against ecstasy are spellbound by modern society,” declares the Black Monk in Anton Chekhov’s novella of the same name. Functioning as metaphor for the pursuit of lofty goals and transcendent imagination, the character plays catalyst for debate between validation of a mystical existence v. common sense pursuit of tangible reality. When playwright David Rabe adapted the novella to the stage, (its premiere highlighted the Yale Repertory Theatre Company’s 2002-2003 season) he clearly had Chekhov’s lyrical musicality in mind and included description of several characters singing Angels Serenade by composer Gaetano Braga.

PHOTO by Brian Barnaud

It naturally followed that when Dallas-based Undermain Theatre selected Rabe’s adaptation of The Black Monk for inclusion in its 2008-2009 season, music would become a major part of the production. Resident Composer Bruce Dubose made sure that music is central to the ambience and sustained breathless quality of mystical doom that permeates Undermain’s production. Sorrowful and somber, the musical elements DuBose introduces enchant the audience with unworldly beauty. Pianist Ariana Cook, violinist Reynaldo Patino and vocal soloist Stefanie Tovar are crucial to the production’s success.

The play turns on a legend about a monk dressed in black that supposedly wandered a desert 1,000 years ago and caused simultaneous mirages of himself to appear in different countries all over the world. The crux of the legend is that 1,000 years after the day the monk walked, his mirage would return to earth and “reappear to men.” This apparition, played with unworldly restraint by Newton Pittman, reveals itself to the play’s main character, the overly intellectual Kovrin, and urges him to delve deeper into his mystical side. When he shares the unworldly experience with his pragmatic fiancée Tanya, concerns about his sanity alter their relationship and lead to the eventual downfall of all involved. Very Russian, very dark, very tragic.

It’s a testament to the collective artistic skills of Undermain’s cast and director Katherine Owens that the play remains dynamic and intriguing from start to finish, that the audience is not overwhelmed by the end of Act I. Undermain regularly takes on this sort of esoteric, ideological challenge and turns it into a vibrant creative endeavor. Directed to communicate the luxury-loving indolence of late 19th century Russian salon attendees, the play’s somber-attired actors gather for tea around a grand piano dressed with dimly lit candelabra. They sometimes chant, sometimes listen attentively to violin and piano duets or songs by Purcell, Glinka, and de Serasate as well as Braga’s Angels Serenade. It feels like time has spun backwards with the Black Monk’s exhortations.

The strident family drama emerges from within the dreamy musical setting. Patrician-featured, forthright Jonathan Brooks plays lead character Kovrin with relentless eloquence and veracity. Brooks as Kovrin puts up a valiant struggle; the audience hangs in with him throughout his tragic descent through delusional obsession and megalomania to his death. As his wife Tanya, Shannon Kearns-Simmons exhibits a natural bewilderment that logically moves from adoration to alienation to complete rejection of all that Kovrin becomes. Bruce DuBose as Tanya’s father, lord of the family orchard and arranger of her marriage to Kovrin, reveals a practical business side that launches into obsession as well, along with a profoundly devoted paternal aspect. All suffer loss, thanks to the downright creepy Black Monk’s intrusion, or Kovrin’s delusion about him. Over all the discordant grief, Stefanie Tovar’s liquid-toned voice and the piano and violin soar. The art of the imagination triumphs as Kovrin gasps his last breath in a moving, tightly woven synthesis of sound and soul ascendancy.

Undermain Theatre’s production of David Rabe’s The Black Monk runs through May 2, 2009. www.undermain.org

In photo, l to r: Jonathan Brooks, Stefanie Tovar, Shannon Kearns-Simmons, Bruce DuBose

Greek for Berliners: MBS Productions’ Oedipus Rex

It’s all Greek to me. Why is it that people are afraid of attending classical theatre — Shakespeare and the Greeks? Their plays offer some of the best writing, plots and characterizations ever seen on stage. Clear, logical, illuminating. Illustrating this is MBS Productions‘ current offering Oedipus Rex, a famous Greek play about a man who gets way too big for his britches with dire consequence. In an elegant, simple manner, Mark-Brian Sonna’s production sheds fresh insight into the ever-conflicted human condition and honors the tradition of one of the oldest and greatest plays ever produced. What’s so frightening about that?

Chorus by Bethany Hubbard

Good theatre doesn’t need a cast of thousands and a complicated set to make its point. In MBS Productions’ Oedipus Rex three Chorus members (who don’t sing harmony or wear sequined costumes) cover that required base for classical Greek Theatre and double in secondary roles, along with one member of the royal household. Anachronism adherents be damned, it may be traditional to cast a Chorus of twelve or fifteen to express various points of view and “witness” the play’s action in stylized enactment, but it’s overkill for today’s audience. We can think for ourselves, thank you. In addition, Greek theatre focuses more on character development than setting. Simplifying the set in the current production to an upstage curtain entranceway and a stage right altar to the gods allows the beauty of the language and the characters to hold deserved full focus.

What an emotional wallop this play delivers. Mark-Brian Sonna infuses the role of King Oedipus with dignity and regal bearing. He’s clearly a character used to making major decisions that affect the well being of many people. He doesn’t just act like a leader– he is one. Problem is he gets off on feeling omnipotent, and that offends the gods. He’s moved to a foreign land to avoid fulfilling a grisly prophecy (patricide and incest) and assumed a vacant kingship left open by a mysteriously murdered man and married the grieving widow. Problem solved, prophecy neatly side-stepped. Or is it?

As his wife and queen Jocasta, Alice Montgomery also exudes a regal bearing and a worldly-wise maturity. Her firm step and confident delivery tells that this woman has weathered many storms and has prevailed through her strong character and common sense. She creates a grounded mate for Oedipus who is prone to raging rants and mood swings. The four-person Chorus and minor character ensemble weaves effectively around the core couple almost like wraiths or spirits. Draped cloth covers heads and faces or falls back to reveal a character change when needed. As the truth reveals itself leading to suicide and self-mutilation, the chorus establishes the ambience and reflects response of the town’s inhabitants. Clear, logical, illuminating.

Directing the play as well as portraying Oedipus, Sonna incorporates appropriate stylized movement to balance the intellectual thought and emotionally charged expression of the work. Sometimes Greek theatre can seem so esoteric and discursive it’s hard to follow. Not here. MBS Productions uses a new, previously unproduced translation of the Sophocles play by Ian Johnston, which ideally suits Sonna’s movement-based directing style. The cast includes: Kevin Wickersham, Chris Hauge, Grisel Cambiasso and Joshua Scott Hancock. Each does an excellent job of bringing to life an aspect of this ancient great play in a way that allows it full resonance with a modern audience.

We’re all Berliners. We’re all just world citizens capable of being tripped up by fate and destiny,  like Oedipus.

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex by MBS Productions runs through April 25, 2009 at the Stone Cottage Theatre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison, TX 75001. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM. Tickets range from $18 – $21. Tickets on the show’s website www.OedipusRex.org or call 214-477-4942. www.mbsproductions.net

A totally downer life: WTT regional premiere

Based on a Totally True Story. High on style, shy on substance. There must be a discount on royalties for less than compelling plays about 20-something malcontents and their relationship challenges; why else would companies choose to produce them often? In its studio theatre space Water Tower Theatre presents a gay romance with attempts at dramatic overtones by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, of comic book and HBO series Big Love fame. WTT production values outpace this predictable script at every turn. Fast-paced direction can’t pull this one out, by the bootstraps or designer deck shoes. Aguirre-Sacasa has garnered a favorable rep in certain circles for his writing, including a GLAAD Media Award nomination and the prestigious Harvey Award (Best New Talent). His possibly autobiographical woe-is-us tale focuses on a gay, selfish, inconsiderate, 20-something screenwriter who suffers hideously from achieving success (poor baby) and soundly rebuffs those people in his life who might give a damn about him (who knows why?).

It is, like, a real downer.

Jared Eaton, Andrew Phifer

WTT’s clever staging (directed by James Paul Lemons) opens with film projection of The Flash cartoon footage, setting up potentially promising metaphorical comparisons between real life and fantasy. Where the writer hoped it would go? The multi-level, brightly lit, u-shaped set allows the contemporary story to zip along at hyper-caffeinated speed. Alas, the show tanks with every utterance from weasel-like main character Ethan (Andrew Phifer), lamenting about failed relationships, his successful career as a comic book writer (oh, the strain of it) and becoming an even more successful screenwriter (horrible, horrible). The most interesting characters crossing the stage are secondary: 1) a Hollywood producer with a heart-a-gold, designer handbag and oft-referenced never seen husband-business partner, played with saucy verve and perpetual LA euphoria by Mary Anna Austin. 2) Ethan’s sweet-natured father, divorcing and blazing new pathways to self-awareness, played by Barry Nash with natural charm and kind wit.

The plot? Ethan has to reveal his self-absorbed misery in play-by-play fashion–the first chance meeting with handsome, hunky boyfriend at a coffee house, the living together in bliss scene, the “why I can’t share myself with you” moment. He manages to drive off said lover Michael (surprise), written as little more than a compliant stereotype nice guy and played with resolutely wooden delivery by Beau Trujillo. Both actors are capable of believable, nuanced performance. I know they are; I’ve seen them do it. Not with this script. Jared Eaton rounds out the cast, filling in with several stock characters of a TV sitcom nature, and getting the most laughs. Displays an impressive set of pecs, too. The play concludes with a projected “screening” of the finale of Ethan’s labor of torture, his HBO script, as all characters join the audience to “watch it.” Best moment in the show.

Like cutesy gay-themed sitcoms? This play’s for you. Water Tower Theatre presents Based on a Totally True Story, a regional premiere in their Discover Series through May 3, 2009 with performances on Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM in the Studio Theatre at the Addison Theatre Centre. Seating is general admission with no late seating. Tickets $20 Box office: 972.450.6232 or http://www.watertowertheatre.org

PHOTO: Jared Eaton, Andrew Phifer

Five Tons & A Bird at the Greenzone

SEAGULL.

When all you really want is to give life the bird.

The play’s over! It’s over! ALL OVER! Well done, Mom. You totally fucked up my play. SATISFIED?— Alex      What are you so angry about? — Maria

Cast: The Seagull readings

Sans overpowering costumes. Sans rubber ferns. Sans foamcore scenery. Sans cheesy recordings of gunshots or train whistles.

Just raw emotion and the words to carry it. “Five tons of love.” Three takes.

Anton Chekhov (updated), Tennessee Williams (re-discovered), Emily Mann (unleashed).   You don’t write better than that. No, you don’t.

As expressed by: Heather Pratt, Josh Blann , Paul Taylor, Montgomery Sutton, Vince McGill , Emily Scott Banks Maryam Baig-Lush, Gregory Lush , T.A.Taylor, Kristin McCollum,  Parker Hornsby.

Sponsored by Project X at The Greenzone , 161 Riveredge Drive Dallas

No charge, donations gratefully accepted. Free wine.

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov : 8pm April 19 Oct. 1895: “I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female roles, six male roles, four acts, a landscape (a view of a lake), much conversation about literature, little action and five tons of love.”

The Notebook of Trigorin by Tennessee Williams. 8pm April 20

A Seagull in the Hamptons by Emily Mann. 8pm April 21 http://www.curtainup.com/seagullinthehamptonsnj.html

“As an actor, I try to choose something that I believe in, that isn’t a lie — something that is life-affirming, that is morally worthwhile, that is not mind-rotting or spiritually diminishing … This is how I contribute.”

--Kevin Kline

KDT TITUS: There will be Bard

Shakespeare. Still relevant? And how. When a Supreme Court justice weighs in about Master Will and makes the front page of the Wall Street Journal with his thoughts (April 18/19, 2009), The Avon Bard is definitely still relevant. Reflect upon the eerily modern themes of his Titus Andronicus, currently in performance at Dallas’ Kitchen Dog Theater. Inhale its relevance. But please don’t take it too seriously.

If William Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus, it first appeared between 1589 and 1592, a bit over four hundred years ago. Described by T. S. Eliot as the “worst play ever written”, it has confounded and puzzled critics, directors, producers, other playwrights and academics alike since its cloudy start. It’s just so darn relentlessly gruesome, even for violence-charged Elizabethan theatre. According to critic S. Clark Hulse “It (the play) has 14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3 depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of cannibalism—-an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines.” Barf bags could be handed out with programs. It wouldn’t seem ironic.

Where does a company go with such a Frankenstein of a play? We think we’re so far removed from the violence of tragic revenge with our sanitized Western culture, so why not set it in Iraq or Afghanistan, a modern staging? The insane invasion of Iraq resulted as a twisted sort of revenge justification for the 9-11 bombings of the World Trade Center; the conflict in Titus results from a private, murderous feud between the Roman general Titus and Tamora, Queen of the Goths. The Iraq invasion led to further atrocities, mass murder verging on genocide, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, rendition of many innocent people and detention at Guantanamo without defense, escalation of Al Qaeda adherents throughout the world and general destabilization in the Middle East. Similarly, Titus’ hasty violent actions and Tamora’s equally vengeful violent reactions create so much mayhem and destruction that very few of the play’s characters are left alive and/or whole by its conclusion. There’s one big difference. This play is funny. A modern staging would seem ill conceived, in poor taste.

Funny, you ask? That’s what makes it hard to stage. Kind of like Monty Python doing a slasher movie as a cartoon, Titus Andronicus is so overtly absurd with its non-ending gore and totally unreal situations it demands laughter. And yet it’s so overwhelmingly gruesome…. Clever folks at Kitchen Dog. Instead of giving the play a contemporary setting to match its modern adaptation by Lee Trull and Leah Spillman (which could have sent audience members retching to the bathroom or home to horrific CNN-like nightmares) they placed it in the long vanished Mayan metropolis of Tikal. This exotic setting heightens the fantastical aspect so the violence becomes just one wondrous element.

The audience enters the smaller studio space at Kitchen Dog, finding itself thrust deep into the dark, feral wilds of a S. American jungle, and sits all along one side of the space while buckets of stage blood spatter and assorted innards and severed hands spill across a multi-level thrust stage suggesting a Mayan temple. Meanwhile, original indigenous-themed accompaniment by international recording artist and SMU percussion professor Jamal Mohamed stirs up primal rhythms in a blood-curdling way no Elizabethan lute could ever aspire to. Evil lurks in abundance. At the play’s end, villain consort Aaron (Jamal Gibran Sterling) proclaims, “If one good Deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very Soul” as he is buried up to his neck alive, to die a slow, cruel death of thirst and starvation. The KDT jungle will hungrily welcome him home as one of its own.

Leading the stellar cast is company co-founder Joe Nemmers, who brings a gravity and surprising sensitivity to the title role, cause of so much destruction. At ease in Mayan loincloth and sporting a Mohawk-like wig that lends him an air of Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Nemmers masters the physical requirements of the role with naturalistic ferocity, while conveying Shakespeare’s soaring imagery with the soul-inspired clarity of a poet. It’s easy to sympathize with Nemmers’ Titus, hard as that may be to believe. Matching him slash for claw in ferocity and passion is company member Christine Vela as the villain goddess Tamora. Wild and conniving, lascivious, without conscience, she feigns sympathy with her subjects while plotting their deaths in a way that must have chilled the heart of ever-cognizant Queen Elizabeth I when she first saw the play produced. Vela enlivens her role as a “Wonder Woman of the Underworld” with reckless abandon, believable as a rabid wolverine that devours her own young. The supporting cast members, made up of regional professionals and SMU students, function as foils or objects for the two leads to battle over and destroy. Rukhmani Desai, as ill-fated Lavinia, comes closest to a real-life portrayal in her depiction of Titus’ daughter, a young woman raped and grotesquely brutalized. Rhonda Boutte as Titus’ relative Marcius gives moral compass and rational perspective to the horrors unfolding and pulls the audience back from blood-induced, numb stupor at the end with dignified, measured delivery. The only odd performance came from John Flores as Tamora’s King Saturninus; his vacillation between seriousness and buffoonery seemed disjointed, accentuated by a strange wig making him look like Moe of the Three Stooges, which fell off during his death scene. Lose the wig?

Was Shakespeare “ exploring the nature of a powerful empire…to see the human side of violence” as Titus director Christopher Carlos suggests? Was he portraying in code the resultant destruction of the soul of England through Catholic persecution at the hands of Elizabeth I’s unscrupulous henchman during the Reformation as British Shakespeare scholar Claire Asquith poses? Was he simply imitating the violent works of Roman playwright Seneca, contemporary to Shakespeare’s original setting of Titus? See Kitchen Dog Theatre’s production of Titus Andronicus for a bloody good time, at any rate.

TITUS ANDRONICUS, a Kitchen Dog Theater and Meadows School of the Arts production runs through Saturday, May 16 in the Black Box Theater at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) located at 3120 McKinney Avenue in Uptown.

For tickets: call the Kitchen Dog Theater box office at 214-953-1055;  buy online at www.kitchendogtheater.org

Bunraku Bonanza at The Ochre House

Isn’t there a law of physics that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction? I’m no science geek, but Matthew Posey’s Bunraku-based puppet comedy Coppertone II: The Pope of Chili Town uses this law to re-balance Dallas theatre’s humor quotient. Lately an unseemly number of self-indulgent, pompous, belabored “relationship dramas” about selfish, uninteresting, angst-consumed people have dominated the boards ad nauseam. From festival entries to full-length solo engagements. How refreshing to see a play that swings Dallas’ internal thespian pendulum back to an imaginary fantasy world peopled with ingeniously funny puppets for open-minded adults.

Coppertone II, himself

Bunraku. No, it’s not a new falafel pastry at Starbuck’s. Frequently associated with lovers’ suicide plays, “Bunraku” is often used among puppeteers to describe puppets that are manipulated in a way similar to those in traditional Japanese Bunraku theater, That means: human-sized with expressive, movable parts, (eyes, mouths, extremities) and up to three puppeteers on stage with each character, usually dressed in ninja-like black robes with faces shrouded. The main character in Posey’s production, Coppertone, has a particular movable ‘extremity’ that grows in such a manner to make many men green with envy and women laugh uncontrollably. That extremity may have not been envisioned in the 1870’s when the Bunraku puppet tradition got established in Osaka, Japan, but it elicits groans and whoops of delight from the audience at Coppertone II: The Pope of Chili Town.

This play’s action takes place in a bar run by jaded drug-peddling puppet Monte, played with Ted Danson as Cheers’Sam-like sarcastic wit by Xander Aulson. Monte engages the patrons or fights and makes up with his sleazy puppet wife Shinickwa (Walter Hardts) or coos with her over their ever present baby, who only says cuss words. Monte also croons a terribly funny rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” in Act II. Producer/director/playwright Matthew Posey plays the title puppet role of Coppertone, grumpy regular bar patron with unique growing appendage and a generally droll, dry reserve that contrasts with the wildly hyper-kinetic actions of the other characters. He sets off some of the high-jinks but seems almost oblivious, which makes his portrayal even funnier. The second woman puppet in the play is by far the most outrageous, x-rated and wildly funny character on stage, Topeka, an extroverted prostitute in love with Coppertone. The play’s most intense scenes focus on what Topeka has up her crotch (referred to much more profanely!) and how to remove said object; in Act I it’s a large slice of watermelon, Act II Monte and Shinickwa’s baby. Anastasia Munoz enlivens the Topeka puppet character with gusto and unabashed flair. She’s naughty; she’s garish; she makes a fabulously funny puppet.

Rounding out the cast are Trenton Stephenson as Coppertone’s pre-teen puppet son Spanky, who brings unending athleticism to the proceedings on a tricycle, and a voice-over that sounds like Paul Lynde by Ross Mackey as “the voice of Satan”. Coppertone makes a pact with this devil to save Monte’s bar and vanquish their arch-enemy Vladimir (also portrayed by Anastasia Munoz). The nature of the pact? See the show to learn its dire terms, appreciate its humor.

The puppets are decadently imaginative, the script clever if racy,  the pace furious and chaotic. Yes, it’s laced with raw language, stem to stern. If you’re easily offended, don’t go. According to  director Posey’s note, Coppertone II: The Pope of Chili Town “ is fashioned after the old “Punch and Judy Show”, only with teeth, that satirizes the importance of family values.” He might have added: and helps re-establish a certain irreverent, balance of hilarity to the Dallas theatrical scene. Ah, such relief!

Coppertone II: The Pope of Chili Town, by MATTHEW POSEY AND THE PIONEERS OF THE SUAVANTE-GARDE runs Wed.-Sat. at 8:15pm through May 9 at The Ochre House, 825 Exposition Ave. in Dallas. For tickets call 214-826-6273, or e-mail: matt@mysterionfilms.com

The Cemetery Club: no fooling around at CTD

+++EXTENDED THROUGH SUNDAY MAY 17TH+++

There’s nothing funereal about Ivan Menchell’s The Cemetery Club, now on stage at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas–nothing slouchy about it, either. Director Susan Sargeant has a real talent for teasing out comic moments from deep within dramatic scenes and illuminating humorous elements within revelation of universal truth, with genuine flair. She fills a panoramic palette with Menchell’s two act script about three elderly but spirited Jewish widows, girlfriends, living in Queens, who find their lives defined by routine visits to their deceased husbands’ graves and strive to search for more out of life.

Doting Dowagers & Willing Object of Affection

Morbid? Not at all. Vivid, energized script meets its match with versatile, confident director and five grounded, diverse, professional performers for an evening of superbly delivered one-liners, amusing comic bickering, a little schmaltz, some hubba-hubba, a whole lotta love….

Menchell, a Yale School of Drama grad and recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for playwriting, premiered the play at Yale Repertory Company and toured it to Broadway in 1990. In 1993, it found success as a genre movie directed by Bill Duke starring Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis, Diane Ladd, Danny Aiello and Lainie Kazan. It could be treated as dinner theatre fare along the lines of iconic TV series “Golden Girls”, but CTD’s director and cast never rely on stock shtick or milk the audience unduly for sympathetic response. They give it the full production treatment it deserves. Are you paying attention? Trust me. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry.

The powerhouse trio includes: Ouida White as vivacious, romantic hopeful Ida, Linda Comess as resigned, reluctant participant in drab widow’s weeds Doris and Nancy Sherrard, larger than life and chasing revenge for her deceased hubby’s infidelities, as wisecracking Lucille. At her first entrance upstage, Sherrard sweeps into the cozy living room set, decked out in a full-length mink,  fairly glowing with self-important outrage, and barks out “Sonofabitch!” A once in a lifetime scripted entrance moment with maximum impact. The fun cascades forth.

Rounding out the tidy female ensemble in Act II is Susan McMath Platt as “the other woman” Mildred. Platt is a formidable comic force in her own right, clad here head to toe in yards of shimmering silver lame and cackling a laugh only a hyena could adore. As the sole male character on stage, butcher Sam, widower suitor to Ida, UNT Theatre professor H. Francis Fuselier holds his own with the sharp-tongued bevy of feisty females and brings some tender yin energy to their overpowering yang ambience. A multiple Rabin winner, Fuselier touches the audience’s hearts with his simple, low-key portrayal exuding sincerity and hope. Again, director Sargeant expertly guides her seasoned cast to find the natural balance between comic and dramatic moments as relationships unfold and life’s surprises take all off guard. Pleasure to watch these pros at fine-tuned play.

Set, lighting, sound,  and props by Wade J. Giampa, Tristan Decker,  Lowell Sargeant and Tish Mussey provide the ideal atmosphere start to finish. What a team! Costumer Aaron Patrick Turner must have had more fun than everybody else combined in designing and assembling the quirky, unique costumes that do so much to help each actress explore the tiniest nuance of character. Job superbly done.

No surprise, The Cemetery Club is a solid hit with Dallas audiences. It has been extended through Sunday May 17th. No downer funerals, no lugubrious laments, no fooling.

Tickets: 214.828.0094 or www.contemporarytheatreofdallas.com

Review as posted on Lakewood-now.net

George Wada photo From left: Linda Comess, H Francis Fuselier (seated), Ouida White, Nancy Sherrard

Plain Sarah: DTC work in progress

Sarah, Plain and Tall makes a powerful visual impression. It’s a family friendly musical based on Patricia MacLachlan 1986 Newberry Award-winning novella. Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director Kevin Moriarty chose to mount it as the company’s final production at the Kalita Humphreys venue, before the huge move to the new Dallas Performing Arts Center. The eye-catching set consists of a giant collage of weathered wooden siding that flies in and out, up and down, with dreamlike ease. Some of it defines exterior barn doors and windows; some opens to reveal country interior kitchen and pantry elements. Behind it floats ocean fog, or sky over prairie grasses, rolling on forever. The set immediately conveys a sense of the utilitarian power and dignity found in massive 19th century barns and helps to define the character of a play where the outdoors, a Maine seashore and a Kansas prairie, matters as much as any human character in the script. Elegant, simple and impressive, it’s softly lit to reflect the natural lighting of overwhelming seaside or prairie expanses. Kudos to scenic designer Anna Louizos and lighting designer Chris Lee.

Herndon Lackey, Becca Ayers, Max Ary, Kate Wetherhead

This show has evolved over the years from the book to a memorable 1991 television movie featuring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken to a 2002 children’s musical produced by New York City’s nationally recognized TheatreWorks USA, with book, lyrics and music by the same creative team who developed the current version (Julia Jordan, Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe). DTC bills the current expanded two-act incarnation as a world premiere. It features a prominent national cast, with one local youth actor, and is directed by the prolific, award-winning New York based Joe Calarco. It feels like a way, way Off Broadway trial run that’s more of a work in progress than a finished production.

Music: For many years musicals featured meager, fluffy plots as thinly disguised excuses to parade a string of show-stopping chorus numbers and virtuoso solos. Singers, with operatic vocal power and training, were usually un-miked. Social issues, when presented, played second fiddle to catchy tunes and sustained vocal lines. The pendulum has now swung. With certain notable exceptions, today’s typical “musical” emphasizes current social and/or political issues. It exhibits sterling special lighting and sound effects that require high-grade professional talents and equipment to execute, mikes its lead singers cleverly so they don’t need to “strain” or practice precise diction. The music folds into the show as downplayed afterthought, an accessory, almost an embarrassment. Why can’t there be balance? Not one memorable song emerges from this show.

Consider the vibrant array of 19th century Americana music and folk tunes, from sea chanties to mournful cowboy laments to rousing tent revival gospel tunes to lyrical love songs with Celtic influence. None of the music in Sarah, Plain and Tall reflects or draws recognizable inspiration from any worthy Americana tradition. Seems that would be a no-brainer for a quintessentially Americana musical. Given the roles they’ve played prior, DTC’s cast members are quite capable of outstanding performance. Not one has a genuine opportunity to showcase a trained, high caliber voice or advance the show’s plot, energy or emotional tension through musical exploration. Herndon Lackey portrays the male lead, widower Jacob seeking a bride. His voice hints at power and intensity, rich masculinity capable of expressing a full range of human emotion. He has portrayed Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. Aha. Watching him in Sarah, Plain and Tall, I wished I were seeing him in the former show. The only attention-getting number comes mid Act I – the comic duet “Let’s Never Do That”, interpreted enthusiastically by secondary leads Matthew and Maggie (Colin Hanlon and Cristen Paige). Interesting as it may be, it feels “tacked on”, exhibiting a different style, tempo and energy from anything else in the score. Curiously, the Song List in my press packet doesn’t list the duet, while the show program does….

Character and Plot: There is plenty of opportunity to reveal the thoughts and emotions of the play’s characters at adult levels. This version keeps everything fast-paced and superficial, as if it is still envisioned as playing to an under age 17 crowd with limited attention span. How does widower Jacob feel about the loss of his wife? There’s a marvelous solo opportunity. He grouches, growls and mopes. We get no sense of a loving relationship or a man longing for reconnection. He forbids his almost adult daughter to sing a lullaby his deceased wife would croon to her two children. Conflict! The lullaby could haunt the show, revealed a cappella in short phrases at first, woven in with increasing accompaniment later as Jacob grows beyond his loss and his daughter establishes her independence. Resolution? Lead character Sarah’s Act I expository solo “The Captain’s Daughter” hints at the reasons why Sarah is “peculiar”, a “loner”, but falls short of lasting dramatic impact. How interesting it could be if the song re-emerged in Act II, with additional verses allowing Sarah to show emotional depth. Instead, Sarah goes through a quick “Eliza Doolittle” type of superficial transformation, and Jacob and his reluctant daughter are completely won over by her change of clothing and a swimming lesson at the farm pond. It’s not convincing or inspiring. I can’t imagine too many regional theatre companies leaping at the chance to produce this show, as it exists, in an economy where people spend discretionary funds carefully. My guess is Sarah Plain and Tall will go through extensive revamping when it moves on. I’m sorry the Dallas production did not live up to its stunning set’s promise.

The Dallas Theater Center presents Sarah Plain and Tall through May 24 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater 3636 Turtle Creek Boulevard. Tickets: www.dallastheatercenter.org 214-522-8499

Merry Mayhem: Lyric Stage’s AS THOUSANDS CHEER

Well before Tom Lehrer, That Was the Week That Was, Laugh-in, the Smothers Brothers, Sonny and Cher and SNL mixed variety show entertainment with political and social commentary to the delight of satire-hungry contemporary audiences, composer/ lyricist Irving Berlin hunkered down with creative writer Moss Hart and came up with a fresh-seeming concept revue requiring a small cast. It was 1933, during the Great Depression. They titled the show they dreamed up As Thousands Cheer. A hit, it ran 400 performances on Broadway, no small feat in hard times.

Lyric Stage possibly chose to mount the production, running through May 9 in the Dupree Theater at the Irving Arts Center, because current economic times seem so déjà vu. It’s an evening of first class, high-energy high jinks and musical numbers that entertain while they gently jab at celebrities and social issues of the day. The pastiche of vignettes consists of sixteen self-contained scenes loosely based on the news, lives and affairs of the rich and famous of the time, including Joan Crawford, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Noel Coward, Josephine Baker, Mahatma Gandhi and Aimee Semple McPherson. The jokes don’t resonate sharply today, out of context; but the era isn’t so far removed that the cognitive gist of their satire gets lost. It’s smart witty, with a wealth of sophisticated double entendres and innuendos. SNL would do well to take notice.

Dancing, singing and creating the celeb send-ups is a well-balanced cast of six regional professional actors who appear to have as much fun performing as the audience does watching them. The ensemble includes Feleicia Benton, Shannon McGrann, Brian Patrick Hathaway, Doug Jackson, Randy Pearlman and Diana Sheehan. All have well-schooled, tuneful singing voices and harmonize excellently; they enliven their characters with style and clarity — singing, dancing or acting. Director Len Pfluger capitalizes on the unique strengths and complimentary attributes of his diverse cast. The show flows smooth and crisp, never missing a beat nor losing momentum due to set or costume changes or unclear characterizations.

The set defines the common theme tying the vignettes together. Each sketch illustrates different New York Times’ headlines projected on a 1930’s style classical arch transom spanned above the playing space. It’s quaintly nostalgic to view the newspaper motif, realizing it was the major means of communication then. Never depressing, not much takes itself too seriously in this production.

Several vignettes elicit the strongest applause during the evening. In Act I, the song Heat Wave illustrates “Heat Wave Hits New York” with sultry tongue-in-cheek aplomb. Diana Sheehan demonstrates what “heat” might mean as a comely weather-caster surrounded by a bevy of admiring lads. The final number of Act I surprises and delights: Easter Parade, featured later as a major movie production number with Judy Garland. In Lyric Stage’s version, Randy Pearlman, as an elderly gent, croons the tune as a gentle love ballad to Shannon McGrann, his frail inamorata seated in a high-backed wheelchair. Pearlman’s well-modulated voice exudes lyrical tenderness and understated sincerity that makes the song sound fresh and new. In Act II, the only truly serious commentary in the show comes in Scene 5. Feleicia Benton sings the heart-wrenching Suppertime below headline “Unknown Negro Lynched by Frenzied Mob”. She portrays a working class woman preparing dinner for her children while wondering how she’ll explain why their father won’t be coming home. Benton’s smoky tones caress the song with operatic pathos and emotive power. Curious to learn how audiences reacted to this vignette in pre-Civil Rights 1930’s…. This dark scene is followed immediately by the most completely realized and off-the wall send up in the revue: an imaginary British royal family ”coping with excess” under the NY Times headline “Prince of Wales Rumored Engaged.” Doug Jackson as king and Diana Sheehan as queen preside with Monty Python-esque self-congratulatory pomp as a daffy, frumpy royal couple who fail to comprehend their way less than wholesome Prince of Wales son, played with debauched ennui and lecherous eye for the maid (Shannon McGrann) by hyper-kinetic Brian Patrick Hathaway. Delectably shameful display of “naughty, naughty.” Tut, tut.
Gary Okeson accompanies the charming affair with easy mastery on a rich-toned, full-sized grand piano and triumphs as well as production musical director. As Thousands Cheer draws a polite crowd. Thousands may not exactly be cheering, but they certainly clap loud and long as they surge to their feet in approval at the show’s finale. Not a single off-color word uttered on stage all evening.
Final four performances May 7, 8, 9 at 8pm; May 9 at 2:30pm.

For tickets: 972-252-2787, www.lyricstage.org

Doug Jackson and Diana Sheehan in Lyric Stage’s AS THOUSANDS CHEER. Photo by James Jamison

All aboard: NIBROC Trilogy at Theatre Three

Seize the day. Brighter than any star and living often in larger than life terms, barely into their twenties, the Greatest Generation possessed an intangible and incomparable grace. Courage, vision, honoring one’s word, a pro-active work ethic: they not only understood the importance of integrity and character, they seized every opportunity presented to live lives that would reflect well on future choices. They seemed to realize they were key players at a crucial moment in Western history—all civilization held its breath as these energetic young people shouldered enormous responsibilities and made sacrifices that would provide a much better, safer world for future generations. They would not let evil and repression flourish. They knew that things really worth having were worth waiting for, would be better cherished if cultivated slowly, with respect. So it would go when they strolled down the path of true love.

May and Raleigh view the future

Live this experience of innocent, hopeful Greatest Generation love blossoming into passionate commitment when May and Raleigh meet and stroll down that sometimes thorny path together. Lead characters in Arlene Hutton’s celebrated romantic comedy trio of plays The NIBROC Trilogy, playing currently at Theatre Three’s intimate space Theatre Too, they don’t just make you fall in love with them vicariously; you’ll want to host their wedding shower, attend the marriage vows and fete them at the reception. Echo Theatre mounted the trilogy earlier this year at Dallas’ eclectic Bath House Cultural Center, where it had such enthusiastic response from audiences, many of whom came back repeatedly and filled the houses to capacity, that it made sense to mount a second run where new audiences could find solace and delight in its homespun freshness.

Fresh? A WWII romance? Isn’t that stodgy and old-fashioned? Hutton’s play Last Train to NIBROC, the first of the trilogy, tingles with such vitality you can almost smell and taste the strawberries Raleigh mentions bringing to supper at his sweetheart May’s family’s home. How many plays make your senses come that alive? There’s magic in the vibrant, multi-faceted portrayals created by Morgan Justiss as May and Ian Sinclair as Raleigh. Assuredness, ease and focus mark their characterizations in this second mounting. Not that they gave superficial performances before, but now Justiss and Sinclair know every nuance of each other’s character like longtime friends. No reflective pause gets rushed; every high emotional moment peaks in delicate crescendo, revealing their mastery as performers, the guiding caress of Pam Myers-Morgan and Ellen Locy’s direction, and the considerable genius of Arlene Hutton’s script.

All three plays flow naturally, viewed in sequence; or they can be enjoyed seen alone. The characters are minutely detailed with complex relationships that function as believable catalysts for action that swells and falls with the poetic grace of Edward Albee’s works minus any savage motivations. These are real people, humble, decent folk; you find yourself caring about every one of them.  May, Raleigh, May’s optimistic mother Mrs. Gill, Raleigh’s cantankerous mother Mrs. Brummett, and his willful sister Treva who shifts everyone into the second half of the twentieth century at lightning speed; they become old friends instantly. It’s no accident they make such strong impressions.

Arlene Hutton knows her craft from the ground up. She started performing at age 8 in her home state of Kentucky and went on to earn an MFA at the prestigious Asolo Conservatory in Florida. From there she moved to New York, like so many aspiring performers, where she got daytime television and costuming gigs and eventually earned an Equity card.  Since that time she has taught, lectured, and thrived as a guest artist at over fifty respected universities, conferences and professional/ academic venues worldwide, as a director, actor and writer. Hutton was named the Tennessee Williams Playwriting Fellow at the University of the South in both 2005/2006 and 2007/2008. She fell into playwriting in 1994, frustrated by the lack of dynamic, worthwhile roles for women. She immersed herself in the creative process, participating in a transformational Lanford Wilson retreat that influenced her NIBROC series in development. She took her writing to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival four times before Last Train to NIBROC first graced the stage on a tiny, tucked-away venue at the 1996 Festival in a short one-act version with The Journey Company, with two people in its first audience. “When I first wrote about May and Raleigh, it never occurred to me that anyone would be interested in what seemed to be an old-fashioned romance. I never really expected the piece to be produced; it was just some dialogue rattling in my head, demanding to be put on paper, one of my first attempts at writing a play,” she explains. She modeled the two main characters on her parents and their experiences , drawn from Appalachian family lore. “The plot is fiction; the details are fact.” After multiple revisions flowing from intense creative immersion, the fully realized first leg of the trilogy premiered  at the  New York Fringe Festival in 1998. It returned to Edinburgh, with its original cast, and played in a large venue to sold out houses. The production then moved to Off-Broadway, where it received a prestigious Best Play nomination from the New York Drama League. Last Train to NIBROC has delighted audiences at more than one hundred productions worldwide, including at Fort Worth’s Circle Theatre in 2002.
After the first production’s success, Hutton realized the characters had a bigger story to tell. She wrote the character of Raleigh’s mother for a longtime friend who had supported the play’s development since its earliest fringe incarnation.  The second part of the trilogy, See Rock City, where May’s and Raleigh’s mothers join the young couple, began as a fifteen page ‘wedding scene’, and the characters got fleshed out with in depth exploration at improvisational workshops. With the help of a development grant, she added two more scenes and got to continue working with the original Journey Company actors for a full year of rehearsals and readings, an almost unheard of luxury. See Rock City finally came together at the Australian National Playwrights Conference in 2003. Hutton wrote and conducted workshops of the final play in the trilogy Gulf View Drive at the New Harmony Project. The complete trilogy premiered in Los Angeles and played Off-Broadway at the 78th Street Theatre Lab in 2007. It received unanimously positive reviews and was named Critics’ Choice by every major publication, including the LA Times. It received six LA Weekly Theatre Award nominations, including Best Playwriting.

This is your best chance to get aboard for Hutton’s triumphant trilogy, its “last train” in Dallas for a while. The Dallas cast includes some of the most versatile performers in the region: Kristin McCollum as Treva, Susan McMath Platt as Mrs. Brummett, Nancy Munger as Mrs. Gill and Morgan Justiss and Ian Sinclair as May and Raleigh. Echo Theatre founding/producing partners Ellen Locy and Pam Myers-Morgan direct. Come seize the day for May and Raleigh, with hope and honor, integrity and joy.  Step out of our complex difficult present day world; get inspired in NIBROC to seek a more positive future.

Catch the trilogy: Thursdays through Sundays through May 31 at Theatre Three’s Theatre Too, 2800 Routh Street in Dallas’ The Quadrangle.
Tickets: 214-871-3300, www.theatre3dallas.com

Spirited tragedy: Sundown Collaborative’s OTHELLO

Attending a production of Shakespeare’s Othello is like watching a high profile match between two of the world’s greatest prizefighters. Its success depends on the relationship of its two main characters, no matter who else exists in the play or how it’s produced. Othello v. Iago: a classic battle between the soul of integrity and the heart of darkness begins and ends with these two.

Sundown Collaborative in Denton is a fledgling theatre company with vision firmly focused on an honest prize – the creative realization of genuine art. The company’s production values and amenities are minimal, the faithful exploration and enactment of its chosen theatrical text exemplary. In their current modern dress adaptation of Othello the dynamic, convoluted, enmeshed relationship created by Andrew Aguilar in the title role and Sean Ball as his ensign Iago rivet the audience’s attention from unsettling start to chaotic finish.

Aguilar is a stocky, broad-shouldered actor with a commanding, patrician presence and vibrant, healthy aspect. It’s easy to imagine him as a noble Moorish general, equally at ease in command of his soldiers or genially circulating at Venetian state affairs where his dark complexion would lend exotic appeal and gain female admirers. In contrast, Sean Ball is a slight man, fair haired and pale complexioned. His agitated awkwardness and homespun speech patterns immediately establish him as a lower class, opportunist grunt. He’s exceedingly ambitious, frustrated to obsessive rage by Othello’s promotion of career soldier-bureaucrat Cassio (played with convincing workmanlike soldierly demeanor by Drew Maggs) to a position of authority instead of his more worthy self.  Ball’s Iago weaves his revenge plot, entrapping the unsuspecting Othello, with chilling, credible precision. Ball creates Iago as a man who advances his interests by masterful manipulation and narcissistic will. He’s venial, predatory, reptilian, a conjurer of evil subterfuge. He dances around Othello like a feral beast silently stalking its prey, priming the precise moment to sink his fangs in with dissembling guile. Aguilar plays Othello as grounded and logical, a straightforward leader who sets high conduct standards for himself and expects his soldiers to follow suit without question. Blind to the target he makes of himself, Aguilar’s Othello never suspects Iago’s treason; it’s just not in his noble nature. The fine-tuned symbiosis between these actors exhibits a level of nuance and sophistication that would be admirable in performances by more mature, experienced actors. Both men are currently UNT students; their portrayals are solid accomplishments and reflect as well on director/ adapter and recent UNT graduate David Hanna.

In his director notes, Hanna says, “We had to look for a common truth between Shakespeare’s present and our own…to make Othello our own. Our Othello parallels the current conflict in the Middle East, not to take a political stand, but to connect Shakespeare’s tragedy to our own time.” Hanna believes the play’s essential emotion, unbridled jealousy, drives all the action and its resulting destruction. He keeps his main actors focused on their internal emotional struggles and allows the action to explode forth naturally as logical result of their pent up, conflicting motives and desires. The surging ebb and flow, reflective moments smacked up hard against fast-played scenes of intense physical violence, keep the play far from any static declamatory ambience.

The balance of Hanna’s cast, most UNT students and some in first stage appearances, work effectively as an ensemble.  Lauren Rosen gives a particularly haunting performance as the doomed Desdemona, revealing strength and passion along with brave resignation as her death approaches. Hers is no simple ingénue portrayal. Cody Lucas as Desdemona’s dim-witted, petulant suitor, the secondary character Roderigo, mirrors Iago’s overblown jealousy on a diminutive scale, bringing out its ludicrous, petty aspects and contrasting with the deeper tragedies of the deaths of Othello and Desdemona. Lucas captures the essence of his pitiful character, even with limited stage time or lines.
Occasionally the modernized adaptation bogs down in translation or the background sound/music overpowers the actors’ voices. Small complaints about a valid effort to bring a major tragedy triumphantly to life on stage.  Sundown Collaborative strives “to provoke thought and incite discussion”; their Othello warrants much contemplation and spirited exchange.

Othello continues Wednesday May 20, Thursday May 21 and Friday May 22 at 8pm
Greenspace Arts Collective
529 Malone Denton, TX 76201
www.sundowntheatre.com

CAST:
Othello: Andrew Aguilar
Iago: Sean Ball
Desdemona: Lauren Rosen
Emilia: Kristy Riffle
Cassio: Drew Maggs
Roderigo: Cody Lucas
Duchess/Bianca: Sarah Dowling
Montano: Ben Darling
Lodovico: Sam Harless
Brabanzio: Daniel Tuttel

Music & Sound:

Prelude – “Black Betty” by Nick Cave
going into II.i – “4th of July” by Soundgarden
II.ii (party) – “Yu-Gung (Remix)
going into III.i – “Is She Weird?” by The Pixies
III.iii (marriage ceremony) – “Lux Aeterna/Convergence” by Johnny Greenwood
opening Act 2 – “Wings Off Flies” by Nick Cave
IV.ii – “Falshgeld
V.i (fight scene) – “Ich Bins”
red scene in V.ii – “Tropar”
Curtain Call – “Mea Culpa” by Brian Eno and David Byrne

Indoor/Outdoor: the cat’s pajamas at Water Tower Theatre

Attributing human thoughts and emotions to feline or canine animal companions can become a suspect and saccharine endeavor. But not always. The folks at Water Tower Theatre should be grinning like Cheshire cats with the regional premiere of Kenny Finkle’s engaging domestic short hair romance Indoor/Outdoor in their main performance space. It’s got them sitting smack dab in the catbird seat.

Jessica Cavanagh Wiggers, Regan Adair: Oristano photo

Indoor/Outdoor had its world premiere in 2004 at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York and has played to sold out houses on both US coasts.  Finkle, an award-winning graduate of Columbia University’s MFA Playwriting program, started writing the play in 2002. “I had the idea to write a play about my cat (or rather several of the cats I’ve known in my life) for almost a year before this. I thought a play about a cat was a very, very, very bad idea. But the story kept coming back to me.” During the first act, the play feels faintly derivative, almost like a cat lover’s answer to that doggone guaranteed moneymaker Sylvia. Introduced by alpha tabby Samantha (played by earnest, energetic Jessica Cavanagh Wiggers, clad throughout in t-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes), the play chronicles her nine lives’ span filled with anthropomorphic adventures, from whiskers to tail. Lonely codependent geek boy Shuman (created with convincing understatement and dowdy, Hugh Grant-like rumpling by regional comic lion Regan Adair) adopts Samantha from the local shelter to fill a void in his life. Frustrating love and isolation issues result. Act One purrs along at a sit-com predictable rate, entertaining more because of the high caliber of acting and clean staging then the script’s content.  Then the evocative claws come out.

“I realized I wasn’t really writing about my cats at all but that I was writing about my own relationship with my partner and how challenging, thrilling, and surprising that was to me. And so I kept going deeper and deeper.” Enter fang-flashing, New Age animal empath Matilda, with authoritative clairvoyance as portrayed by statuesque, husky-voiced Renee Krapff, and a feral feline amour named Oscar, played by lean, muscular Joey Folsom in his WTT debut with an accent, attitude, wardrobe and physicality that could emerge from the Broadway musical CATS. Folsom’s Oscar struts in un-neutered and unfettered nonchalance, refreshingly straightforward compared to the other three characters. With the second pair’s arrival, Indoor/Outdoor launches into high farce crescendo with surprising emotional depth and unexpected plot twists. Fur flies and impeccable comic timing zings as the four engage in a group counseling “therapy” session conducted by zealot Matilda with mind-boggling intensity. Complications of inter-species communication captivate the full attention of the most catnap prone audience member. It’s delightful. And thought provoking.

WTT director Terry Martin orchestrates superb, balanced ensemble performances from his actors, enlivening four very different characters. Each requires an imaginative leap of faith on the audience’s part to remain credible. Playwright Finkle says, “Indoor/Outdoor for me is about letting go of what the outside world says is right or wrong or how much it’s worth and allowing yourself to trust that you do deserve to love and be loved.” Worldly-wise cats teaching inept humans how it feels to be really human and alive… the play is unequivocally and simply the cat’s pajamas.

Indoor/Outdoor runs through June 7, 2009 at the Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road in Addison, Texas.  Performance times are 7:30 PM Wednesdays and Thursdays, Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM.
Tickets: 972.450.6232 or online www.watertowertheatre.org
Scenic design is by Michael Sullivan, lighting design by Jared Land, costumes by Barbara Cox and properties by Tish Mussey.

Quotes from Kenny Finkle excerpted from his production remarks on Burbank, CA’s The Colony Theatre website: http://www.colonytheatre.org/shows/indoorOutdoor.shtml

Grapevine groovy: Under the Yum Yum Tree

1960 was a banner year for spectacular Broadway shows with stars at the top of their game. Camelot opened, with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews. Bye Bye Birdie brought a first rock n roll score to Broadway musicals. The Sound of Music, featuring Mary Martin, won the Best Musical Tony. The Fantasticks thrilled off Broadway audiences. A genteel, idealized sense of romance dominated the stage. Lawrence Roman’s bedroom farce Under the Yum Yum Tree, which ran for 173 performances on Broadway starting in late 1960, featuring Dean Jones and Gig Young, offered something fresh and different.

Jill Ethridge, Keith Warren (seated), Shane Strawbridge

Roman’s rather explicit and frank treatment of the emerging sexual mores of the era—“shacking up” and openly “free love”—may have offended some, but it ushered in a new paradigm for American comedy. The New York Times review praised the show, saying Mr. Roman had “a gift for keeping the dialogue lively”. This saucy, slightly dated romance still comes off lively and entertaining, viewing its opening night production at Grapevine’s Runway Theatre. The almost full house buzzed with merry anticipation before the lights came up; the audience chuckled, guffawed and sighed in delight as the scenes unfolded. Rabin and Column award winning Director Chris Robinson assembled a visually appealing cast of recognizable types with well-defined comic skills.  The “big” role in the play (played by a disgusted and resentful Jack Lemmon in the 1963 movie version) is that of a lecherous San Francisco landlord named Hogan and requires an actor who can tread the fine line between predatory opportunism and teddy bear vulnerability. Hogan appeals to and seduces a parade of ladies who rent apartments from him, using a carefully assembled bag of hackneyed tricks, predictable macho attire (including a garish, diabolical red suit) and what he clearly considers playboy charm with a much practiced boyish grin. He makes a continuously overbearing pest and fool of himself. Yet he exudes a sort of naïve cuddliness that allows him to gain entry to lots of pre-AIDS concerned boudoirs and makes him, almost unbelievably, a genuine sympathetic character.

It feels as though the role was written for regional comic talent Shane Strawbridge who bounds into it with delicious abandon. He balances both sides of his over the top character like a master juggler, using impeccably delivered comic timing and irrepressible positive energy. The audience can hardly wait to see what sort of new ‘attack’ he launches each time he sneaks or bursts onstage, into the apartment of one of his former conquests. Said former conquest, Irene, re-emerges and manages to inadvertently rekindle passionate flames as a sultry subtext to the main romantic plot. In a role that would look perfectly suited to a youngish Ann Bancroft, director Robinson has cast statuesque, glamorous blonde Staci Cook. Her glare could turn lesser men than Hogan to stone; her voice would command order from a division of randy Marines after a six months assignment on a deserted island. Tossing off pre-women’s lib one-liners like yesterday’s cigarette ashes, she creates the perfect match for Strawbridge’s Hogan and is equally relentless in her narcissistic invasion of the other two characters’ private lives. Local actress Jill Etheridge, pixie and vivacious to the point of hyperactivity, plays the show’s ingénue, Robin. With foreshadowing of the commitment-phobic 70’s, she debates marrying her honorable, devoted, handsome boyfriend. Maybe she should just live with him? And no sex…she’s a proper young lady, after all. As the sole ‘straight’ character in the show, regional leading man Keith Warren cuts a dashingly Cary Grant-wholesome picture as clean cut junior executive Dave trying to repress his natural desires while accommodating his insecure girlfriend’s unreasonable wishes. With the wildly randy behavior erupting around him and Hogan’s non-stop determination to offer him unwelcome ‘conquest advice’, Warren’s Dave struggles valiantly to take control of the situation with hilarious result. Warren’s “adult” delivery and droll expression works well in contrast to Strawbridge’s camped up, juvenile-acting Hogan and makes the romantic pursuit of his scatterbrained ingénue girlfriend really fun to watch. The 60’s costumes are perfect in detail and pastel color scheme (designed by Patsy Daussat). The multi-level chic San Francisco high rise flat makes an ideal playground for the sex-crazed foursome (Dennis Canright design with props by Ryan Mathieu Smith); and the 60’s romantic ballads as background sound provide an ideal torchy ambience (Wendy Bowman).

Feeling nostalgic and a trifle risqué? Under the Yum Yum Tree is the groovy scene to make. Dine out in downtown Grapevine before the show at one of its varied, sophisticated options— it’s a perfect date evening that could lead to…whoever knows what later on?
Under the Yum Yum Tree runs through June 7 at 8:00PM Fridays and Saturdays, 3:00PM on Sundays.
Runway Theatre
215 North Dooley Street
Grapevine, Texas 76051
(817) 488-4842
www.runwaytheatre.com

Flower Mound’s Wiser & Deeper Tuna

If there is truly no rest for the wicked, Rabin and Column award-winning stage director/actor Chris Robinson must be a very naughty boy. He just completed directing the delightful 60’s bedroom farce Under the Yum Yum Tree for Grapevine’s Runway Theatre (running through June 7). Now he’s appearing in the two-actor multiple character comic marathon Greater Tuna at Flower Mound Performing Arts Theatre. Did I mention he co-directed this Tuna production as well? Somebody give this man an award for creative endurance. Talk about living for art.

If you know the play Greater Tuna, it feels comfy as a favorite pair of dusty old cowboy boots. It’s been around the pasture and back, national and internationally speaking; but it’s always a welcome experience. If you aren’t familiar with the show, you’re in for a real treat as you encounter the homespun humor and wisdom of the nineteen denizens of the “third smallest town” in Texas, the fictional Tuna.

In some Greater Tuna productions, the director chooses to emph asize the farcical comedy of the piece with much shtick and gimmickry, dazzling the audience with the speed of costume and character transitions and the campy-ness of portrayals. FMPAT’s is a different sort of Greater Tuna, a wiser and deeper, thoughtfully paced, even reflective, production. Restaged as it is by Chris Robinson and Ryan Roach, with assistance from executive producer Scott Kirkham, this Greater Tuna maintains the humor and madcap pacing but allows the humanity to shine through. What gives this play the universal appeal it has isn’t just its comedy, it’s the deeply felt emotion that underscore the actions and motivations of its loony but believable characters. It’s better appreciated if the laughs just happen as the characters reveal their vulnerabilities and greatest desires. In accomplishing this feat FMPAT scores a genuine winner. Actors Robinson and Roach bring a depth, skill level and obvious joy to their performances that attest to their distinctive professionalism and dedication to performance art.

About Chris Robinson: He recently gave a Column Award winning performance as Natalie Green in Uptown Player’s acclaimed extended production The Facts of Life: The Lost Episode and reprised his role for a special engagement on RSVP Vacation Cruises. Chris has performed in the DFW theater community for over nineteen years, as well as at several regional theaters across the country. Chris has been seen locally at: Uptown Players, Stage West, Runway Theater, Garland Summer Musicals, Oklahoma’s Lyric Theater, and Garland Civic Theater: Chris has also appeared as Al Deluca in three productions of A Chorus Line. In addition to performing, Chris also directs, choreographs, and designs multi-media for many theater companies in DFW. A Rabin and multiple Column Award winner, Chris serves on the board of directors for The Column Awards and produces the multi-media for the ceremony each year.
About Ryan Roach: Charles Ryan Roach makes his FMPAT debut with Greater Tuna.  Ryan has performed throughout the DFW area, most recently as Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for WaterTower Theatre, where he has also appeared in Parade and Urinetown: The Musical. Roach’s diverse, encompassing work has received wide acclaim at Theatre Three, Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, Lyric Stage, Theatre Arlington, Stage West, Uptown Players, and Shakespeare Dallas. Roach has served on the Board of Directors for The Column Awards since its inception, and is a graduate of The University of North Texas and The British American Drama Academy’s Midsummer at Oxford program.

Greater Tuna encompasses the interactions of the town’s nineteen residents, ranging from the macho town sheriff to a sulky teenaged girl and her murderous thug brother to the town’s leading matron, its pompous reverend, and the wide-eyed president of the local humane society. All explore aspects of life againstthe backdrop filter of the town’s local radio station, through the perceptions of its radio DJ duo Thurston and Arles. Robinson and Roach create vivid, memorable portrayals and move smoothly through the myriad transitions. Can’t review Greater Tuna without a shout out to its intrepid costume designer, FMPAT’s Ryan Matthieu Smith. Not a hair out of place, every ensemble and funky wig supports both actors in the clear creation of all characters. Smith has designed for many theaters in the Metroplex and has received both Column Awards and Critics Forum Awards for his work. Ryan lives in Los Angeles where he has styled for Rachel Zoe, fashion designer George Clinton, and worked with renowned photographers such as Gilles Bensimon and David Lachapelle.  Ryan is also the artistic Director of The Wit Gallery in Dallas. He is currently producing two reality television shows and recently completed the screenplay for The Beautiful People.
Characters, in order of appearance-
Charles Ryan Roach:
Thurston Wheelis
Elmer Watkins
Bertha Bumiller
Leonard Childers
Pearl Burras
R.R. Snavely
Reverand Spikes
Sheriff Givens
Hank Bumiller
Chris Robinson:
Arles Struvie
Didi Snavely
Harold Dean Lattimer
Petey Fisk
Jody Bumiller
Stanley Bumiller
Charlene Bumiller
Chad Hartford
Phinas Blye
Vera Carp

Head down to Greater Tuna for a dose of impeccably timed comedy and the gentle revelation of universal human truth.  The show runs through June 7 at the cosy FMPAT performance space at 830 Parker Square in Flower Mound, just west of Lewisville on FM 1171.
Tickets: www.fmpat.org 972-724-2147
Make it an entire evening. Dine ahead of time at one of the finer Parker Square restaurants: http://www.parkersquare.com

Bios excerpted from the FMPAT Greater Tuna show program.

Greater Tuna is written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard

Casa on the Money: Always, Patsy Cline

During the music-filled stage fantasy about a fan’s encounter with country/pop singer Patsy Cline, the fan reports Patsy told her: “I don’t want to get rich; I just want to live good.” Maybe Patsy Cline did make that remark, but there’s no question about her estate raking in substantial bucks based on audience attendance and response to Casa Manana’s Always, Patsy Cline running through June 7 at the venerable Ft. Worth venue. Casting film and TV star Sally Struthers as the fan doesn’t hurt either.

Patsy Cline

In addition to Ms. Struthers, the two-act performance features Julie Johnson as the iconic song-stylist. Ms. Johnson graduated from Austin College in Sherman and has had a distinguished career in film, concert and on stage, including on Broadway. Through the evening she sings twenty-seven numbers, some in their entirety. With not much to the show’s plot or dialogue, it’s crucial that the “Patsy” embody enough of the singer’s persona and unique vocal style and interpretation to thrill the audience and carry the show along. Johnson fills the bill. In stature, expression and song, Ms. Johnson offers a smooth, effective presentation, creating a believable Patsy Cline.  She inspires spontaneous applause and cheers with her soulful renditions of Cline’s classic repertoire: Crazy, Sweet Dreams, She’s Got You. The show also contains numbers primarily associated with other artists. Although Johnson sings them well, in clear Patsy Cline style, they feel slightly out of place, like filler. Johnson has performed the role of Patsy six times.

Sally Struthers has a charming delivery and strong stage presence, but she doesn’t seem well-suited to the role of Louise, the blue collar divorcee who develops a passion and eventual letter writing friendship with Cline. Antics and predictable shtick dominate the dialogue scenes – often appearing out of context and distracting. Occasionally she delivers what feels like a mechanical line reading, particularly when addressing the audience directly. Her selection of a “random” cowboy audience member to drag up on stage for a dance looked and felt downright phony. Johnson singing as Patsy got shoved aside, hardly fitting playwright Ted Swindley’s intentions. The audience guffawed, but the scene came off as awkward and staged, not spontaneous. Struthers’ costuming as Louise in no way flatters her, makes her look dwarf-like, freakish, with heavy hanging hair blocking much of her face. It’s not a convincing, comfortable performance from someone with a lifetime of sterling accomplishment including Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. Why is someone of Struthers’ caliber and background touring the  summer musical circuit in this role?

Accompaniment, adding much needed vitality to the production, is provided with panache and accuracy by a six-piece band: W. Brent Sawyer on piano/ conducting, James Aaron on steel guitar, Rex Bozarth on upright bass, Drew Lang on percussion, Gordon McCloud on fiddle/guitar and Kim Platko on guitar. They provide excellent back up to Julie Johnson’s superior singing.

Always, Patsy Cline is a nostalgia hit, pleasing to attend, but offering little substance. Its success indicates the depth and range of musical impact the singer had, in spite of her death in a plane crash at age 30 after a short six-year career span in the 60’s. Die-hard Patsy Cline fans will adore Julie Johnson in this production. Newbies will enjoy the music, the light-hearted banter and maybe become Patsy fans, as well. And the Cline estate? Makes out like a bandit.
Always, Patsy Cline runs through Sunday June 7 at Casa Manana in Ft. Worth.
Tickets: 817.332.2272 or http://www.casamanana.org/summer/patsy.html

http://www.casamanana.org

Days of Wine and Roses at Rover Dramawerks

Wow. A two act infomercial, relentlessly torchy, about the nightmare of alcohol abuse and the shining hope Alcoholics Anonymous offers. Stage-worthy entertainment?  “You’d be surprised how much fun you can have sober” exclaims newly sober drunk Joe, clutching his little red book, to remorselessly plastered wife Kirsten near the end of Act II in  Days of Wine and Roses, by JP Miller.

Fun like a dead barrel of monkeys.

How does a theatre company select its shows? More specifically, why would Plano’s Rover Dramawerks select something so labored and preachy, so utterly depressing, no matter how well intentioned? I never saw the 1962 film, starring Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, and Charles Bickford. My only previous encounter with the work is the hysterical send-up skit of it Carol Burnett did on her weekly television show. Frankly, I prefer her version. Over the top works better for laughs. Come on, guys. There are so many fine works of stage drama out there that deal with alcohol and its detrimental effects on people’s lives; just because your mission is to “produce lost or forgotten works of well-known authors” doesn’t justify dredging up a trite downer like this play, an adaptation of a 1958 teleplay turned into a not-so successful Jack Lemmon vehicle. I asked Rover Dramawerks’ house staff if this was chosen as part of some sort of partnership with the city of Plano re: alcohol awareness, a social cause. Nope. Artistic merits.

I hate to see a good company waste its time (and money) and the talents of a strong director and a capable, if lost, cast on a play with a dated, wooden, soap opera bad script and predictable proselytizing plot. It even ends with main character Joe mumbling the Serenity Prayer. No chorus of angels? It’s not that I object to the prayer or its sentiments. Nor to the good work AA does. This play would drive one to drink if one didn’t already imbibe.

When this pet project of JP Miller’s emerged in 1958, he received high acclaim for the clear dramatization of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings (still a mystery in the early 1950s). The teleplay received strong praise for its non-glamorized examination of the alcoholic’s life descent. The New York Times’ Jack Gould raved in his review. “It was a brilliant and compelling work… Mr. Miller’s dialogue was especially fine, natural, vivid and understated. Miss (Piper) Laurie’s performance was enough to make the flesh crawl; yet it also always elicited deep sympathy. …Mr. (Cliff) Robertson achieved first-rate contrast between the sober man fighting to hold on and the hopeless drunk whose only courage came from the bottle.” Rover Dramawerk’s script (maybe not the teleplay’s?) is so stiff and trite it’s hard for the actors to look like anything but stereotypes of what a “drunk” should be. Kind of like watching “Reefer Madness” – perhaps it had relevant impact for its time, hard to take it seriously today, much less sit through it.

A note to parents of young children, like the ones with bored babes whimpering, sneezing and rustling two rows below me tonight:
This play is not for kids. Do not bring them with you. Get a babysitter. Or, rent the 1962 movie and stay home.

The cast: Jim Croall, Heather Hill, Erik Knapp, Daphne Coulonge, James Hansen Price, Robin Daphne Coulonge, Greg Hullett, Dana Harrison.
The director: Lisa Devine.
Bless you all; you certainly put forth honest effort. I hate writing negative reviews.
Days of Wine and Roses runs through June 21 at the Cox Building Playhouse in Plano
Tickets: www.roverdramawerks.com

On the Receiving End: Water Tower Theatre

“Let’s give this another try….”
The Receptionist at Water Tower Theatre delivers a mind-bending paranoia punch, and I don’t mean the saccharine kind served from a crystal bowl. It’s a wallop you don’t see coming. This one act play gives the idea of “being present and accountable” startling new meaning.

During the 2007-2008 New York theatrical season, Adam Bock’s dark comedy with savage underlying social commentary was produced Off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club. “I was the temp receptionist at a temp office. Then I got a job as a receptionist at a design firm in San Francisco and worked there for three years. I discovered I have a facility for it. Most people can’t do it….

The Receptionist is) about how people work, and how your work impacts you.” But there’s more.

This one clever hour jolt opens, innocently enough, on a middle management office boss, Mr. Raymond,  (Randy Pearlman) sitting downstage center in a chair under an intense light, delivering a monologue to unknown persons about hunting rabbits and the finer points of fly-fishing. Pretty jolly fellow, pretty innocuous monologue. Except there is something a trifle unsettling about him; several lines seem out of context, like his conclusion. “Let’s give this another try….”

The scene immediately widens to reveal a pleasant, generic blah office with blah wall art and blah office music (exquisitely executed by Clare Floyd Devries). The office receptionist, Beverly, (Nancy Sherrard) captures audience attention and never lets go. She launches into a non-stop rapid-fire mixed monologue conversation with multiple incoming phone calls and several in person arrivals. Director Marianne Galloway has fine-tuned this performance to thrum like a Stradivarius violin. Sherrard hits every beat, phrase and chord, from the tilt of an eyebrow to the motherly pause with an anxious phone-caller to the sympathetic ear for an officemate in romantic distress, like a first chair violinist. When does she breathe? Her portrayal is an unforgettable triumph, full of humor, pathos, diffidence and gossipmonger all at one time. Playwright Bock should see this keen realization. “I wanted to write about somebody who had to manage a whole bunch of different kinds of language,” he says. “She has to talk one way to someone she doesn’t know, another way to someone she knows but doesn’t like, another way to a friendly person, another way to someone walking in. I thought it would be great to watch an actress have to quickly shift between all those different languages.”

Enter Beverly’s office mate Lorraine, ever late, same lame excuse, always blubbering about her narcissistic boyfriend and her codependent inability to shed him. Jennifer Pasion brings a genuine quality to this role, even with its farcical behavior and laugh lines. Every office has a ditsy gal like Lorraine. Shortly after, “main office” three-piece suit guy Martin arrives for an appointment with Mr. Raymond but finds himself drawn into a silly flirtation with Lorraine. Robert McCollum’s smooth style and wholesome good looks present a predictable up and comer’s demeanor. Warm smile, polite, charming. Yet, there’s something disturbing about him, intangible, lurking, hard to shake off.

That’s all I’m saying. Other than The Receptionist is the tightest script on the boards, with some of the crispest ensemble acting and well-defined direction in Dallas today. Coming full circle, at the play’s conclusion, the sense and context of Mr. Raymond’s opening monologue hit with a thud, considering Pearlman’s deceivingly innocent delivery. Adam Bock says he wrote this one-act “in response to the politics of the time, 2006/2007”. Artistically speaking, it whisks the audience into a unexpected twilight zone. “Let’s give this another try”, shall we?

Water Tower Theatre’s The Receptionist runs through June 21, 2009 in the Studio Theatre at the Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road in Addison, Texas.
Performance times are Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM.  Tickets are $20.
WTT Box Office: 972.450.6232 or online at www.watertowertheatre.org.

Quotes from Theatre Development Fund’s “Live NY Performances” page

Bring it on! Trinity Shakespeare

It’s time to leap for joy, fans of classical theatre. This past week Fort Worth’s revitalized Trinity Shakespeare Festival sprang forth fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. It’s a bold birth, ready to make dynamic artistic statements and enliven the words of Western culture’s leading playwright with a vision that connects the Bard’s texts to the modern world. Under the guidance of T.J. Walsh and Harry B. Parker, the 2009 Festival employs two Texas Christian University venues to present combined professional/ student staffed and cast productions of comedy Twelfth Night and tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Not always perfect, they both do admirable justice to the plays and provide high caliber entertainment to full house audiences. No tentative rebirth!

You won’t encounter more masterfully designed, exquisitely beautiful or performance enhancing sets at any regional venue. Twelfth Night, designed by TCU professor and union designer Michael Heil, with credentials ranging across the US, Europe and Asia, creates lyrical magical surrealism on the proscenium-style Buschman Theatre at Landreth Hall. A massive rectangular panel floats upstage at the back of the uncluttered playing space, painted in rich Mediterranean hues to look like sky. It presides over all action and opens up the space with clean linear definition. While clearly man-made, it constantly reminds the audience of the setting’s proximity to nature and the play’s contrasting themes of artifice and truth. Fanciful, stylized, Styrofoam trees frame the playing space and reinforce the clean Mondrian-like linearity of the overall design. Readily movable elements, the actors use these trees to enhance the humor of particular scenes. Like the free-floating sky painting panel, the trees visually reinforce the contrast between the artificial and the real throughout the play. All other set elements are simple and uncomplicated, either carried in and out by actors or softly flown in from above. A whimsical triumph, takes the breath away.

Chiaroscuro, the contrasting use of light and dark elements in pictorial art, comes to mind in the earth-toned, austere reality of the Brian Clinnin set design for Romeo and Juliet on the thrust of the Hays Theatre at TCU’s Walsh Center. It feels like you’ve entered a Caravaggio or Rubens painting set in Verona, with jutting promontory, precarious “balcony” strung taut on wires high above and a rock-filled gutter bisecting the stage, reinforcing the theme of “two houses divided” when it runs red with blood. Without actors, it’s a peaceful scene; yet the shadows and tension created by the looming balcony, the jagged gutter and the downstage promontory portend of disaster to come. With the actors on stage, solo or in stage combat, the wash of “claire-obscure” light envelops them in every moment. Director Alexander Burns and Lighting designer Michael Skinner envisioned together well, arriving at exquisitely evocative stage pictures. The tragic waste of life, the sadness of parental loss, could not be better expressed through light and structural elements, even before the actors speak Shakespeare’s text.

What works on stage?
Twelfth Night: It’s David Coffee’s show as he croons and intones composer Martin Desjardins songs as the court clown Feste. He comes across as part conjurer/ part madman, seems to spin the illusionary tale of romance and mistaken identity. Secondary characters dominate the stage, from J. Brent Alford as irreverent drunk Sir Toby Belch to scheming, lusty Emily Gray as Maria, to indefatigable Daniel Frederick, clearly favored by the audience, who makes a completely geeky donkey of himself with reckless, joyful abandon any time he strides on stage. David Fluitt creates an unforgettable, suffering steward Malvolio, Shakespeare’s satirical depiction of the Puritan opportunists running amok at Elizabeth I’s court at the time. (Stephen Colbert has nothing on the Bard in the way of incisive character assassination.) Trisha Miller Smith has some lovely moments as Countess in mourning Olivia. I wish she had stronger lead portrayals to act against, so her transition from shrewish mourner to impassioned lover could become more clearly drawn.
Romeo and Juliet: Kelsey Milbourn delivers up a feisty, vibrant and eminently lovable Juliet; I wish she were cast with Montgomery Sutton, Romeo from Shakespeare Dallas’ recent production. Once again, secondary characters provide the most interesting, worthy portrayals: Emily Gray as the chatterbox, seedy Nurse and David Fluitt as Friar Lawrence deserve an entire play to themselves for their intriguing performances; Desmond Ellington makes a sympathetic, feckless Paris, and Bryan Pitts evokes a noble command as the frustrated Prince. Mercutio’s spellbinding “Queen Mab” speech seems unfocused and inconsequential as delivered. Tybalt, the “villain” of the play comes across more like Snidely Whiplash than a tragic hothead caught up in a pointless feud.  This is such a stunning play it’s easy to overlook some less than inspired interpretations. For the production visuals—set, costume, light, stage pictures, stage combat by Eric Domuret and for Richard Frohlich’s entrancing sound design –  ”it’s all one.”

Welcome back to life, Trinity Shakespeare. You’re needed; your aspirations and accomplishments are honorable. I’m delighted to see such enthusiastic, engaged audiences. Bring it on!

Trinity Shakespeare Festival runs at TCU through June 28, with Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet in repertory.
Tickets:
817-257-5770
boxoffice@trinityshakes.org

Hitch a death-defying ride: The Ochre House

“Time is precious and there’s no accounting for it.” So sayeth the writer iconoclast Hunter S. Thompson who suicided at his Colorado retreat on February 20, 2005. Pretty mild comment for a guy who hung out with Hells Angels, was a liberal poster child for the NRA and regularly pissed off the media establishment with his scintillating, irreverent Rolling Stone features (23 years’ worth).  Hunter S. Thompson defies pigeonhole categorization from the git-go. Anybody who tries to capture his essence in stage portrayal submits to a freak show funny-house experience from Hell in just trying to keep up with the energy and free associative thought patterns of this mad genius. Hitch a ride with Matthew Posey’s Ochre House production of 14 Death Defying Acts: An Autopsy of Hunter S. Thompson.  I dare you to survive it without altering your perception of the universe….

Matthew Posey as Hunter S. Thompson

GONZO JOURNALISM: it’s on the books, named in honor of an article Thompson penned in 1970. It’s a narrative journalism style that thrusts a defiant metaphorical finger in the faces of sanitized AP writers everywhere. Subjective experience, slice of life, first person perspective, facts be damned. Let the reader live the experience as the words spill from the writer’s pen.  Jump right into the FUBAR mess of it. Thompson handily set the editorial world on edge and booted it right off a cliff. That’s exactly what Matthew Posey’s production accomplishes. And how. Pass me another American Spirit with that tequila shot. The fourth one.

Scene opens with Hunter (Posey) alternating between typing madly on a worn typewriter and searching his hot pillow hotel room for more pills and booze to get lit. He needs to get to LA. He’s joined in short order by three characters: Gonzo, a puffy, pallid version of the writer who looks like he stepped out of an Elvis Presley Convention, post 1970 (Xander Aulson); seedy, smacked out Leach (Kevin Grammer) with his “girlfriend” an inflated rubber titty lady he alternates between mauling, abusing and cooing over; and Juan, Thompson’s real life son (Ross Mackey) who comes attached to a wailing electric guitar and seems oblivious to his dad’s peculiar ways. They cram themselves into a “car” of sorts, with booze and pills a plenty; the road trip to LA ensues, at least in Hunter’s mind. Highway footage upstage projected behind them manifests the travelogue. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that Gonzo and Leach are versions of Hunter, at various life stages and altered states of inebriation or drug-induced madness. Posey as Thompson seduces the mind as he drones gonzo gab non-stop, while manning the wheel. Sometimes the cast changes places in the speeding car when different aspects of Thompson rise to the forefront of chatter. Gonzo journalism as living art. Surely Thompson is leering down from some far-off constellation, fried to the gills, old typewriter at hand, laughing and spitting and cursing his approbation in one foul-mouthed cigarette-stale breath. Ha! If you’re a writer, you’ll go home itching to flick on the computer and not look up for hours. If you’re a boozer or into pills, you’ll stop off on the way home to stock up. If you’re a virgin voyeur, you’ll have a baptism you won’t soon forget. Don’t pray you can escape, once you’ve settled into your seat. Why would you want to? It feels better than first time sex on cocaine and is totally legal. The mood-enhancing music, the off kilter lighting, the relentless, raging voice of Thompson pounding words into your head, best sensually provocative yet literary high in town.
Hunter S. Thompson died at his self-described “fortified compound” known as “Owl Farm” in Woody Creek, Colorado, at 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

14 Death Defying Acts: An Autopsy on Hunter S. Thompson
Written, directed and performed by Matthew Posey
Runs through June 27, Wed.-Sat. @ 8:15 PM
THE OCHRE HOUSE
825 Exposition Ave., Dallas TX 75226
TICKETS: $15.00 (cash or check at the door)
FOR TICKET RESERVATIONS: (214) 826-6273; theochrehouse@gmail.com

King & Us: a triumph, no puzzlement

Like falling in love at first sight…within the first couple of minutes of the entrances of Mrs. Anna (Luann Aronson) and The King of Siam (Joe Nemmers) in Lyric Stage’s The King and I, the audience finds itself smitten. Good thing, too. This is an unforgettable production, resplendent with a wide array of vocal power, imagination-sparking visual imagery, masterful choreography and the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization’s original Robert Russell Bennett’s orchestration for thirty-five-piece orchestra. What a let down if Mrs. Anna and the King didn’t strum audience heart strings with full resonance. This show’s a winner in every aspect.

Luann Aronson, Joe Nemmers: James Jamison photo

It’s the first time since 1951 that any audience has seen or heard The King and I as it was fully envisioned. Bruce Pomahac, Director of Music for The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization describes the re-creation process, “For four years we’ve been tracking down and examining the original Broadway scripts, scores and instrumental parts in order to put back into the show pieces of the puzzle that have been missing for over fifty years.” To see this musical performed by Lyric Stage’s 2009 cast feels like how it must have during an earlier era when the musical theatre art form dominated the imaginations and tastes of a performance-hungry public. Opening night’s full house adored and cheered and wept over this stunning re-creation. What a score—full, rich, enhanced with tuba and harp and percussive elements, it results in an orchestration that illustrates, foreshadows, accents and sets the tone for a dynamic story of love and transformation.
The believable characterizations and engaging chemistry of Anna and the King of Siam as portrayed by Aronson and Nemmers facilitate the triumph. Ms. Aronson exudes a calm, lady-like grace, and a steady confidence attesting to character and life experience. It makes her a commanding figure, even swathed in the restrictive bodice and huge hoop skirts of late 19th century Western culture, a “burka” of sorts. At the same time, she reveals vulnerability, a modern, human side, so easy to relate to today. Her vocal technique and interpretation are impeccable. Her “Getting to Know You” is as full of warmth and personal delight in addition to lyrical voicing as her “Hello, Young Lovers” reveals the mature sorrow of a widow still capable of deepest passion. This sets the audience up to understand her ultimate entrancement with the King of Siam. And what a king Joe Nemmers creates. Slightly shorter than Aronson, Nemmers dominates the stage through force of personality. He possesses the regal bravado of a caring, intelligent man deeply committed to leading his people wisely yet more and more confused and overwhelmed by an encroaching world that threatens his entire culture. Nemmers has a complicated challenge. Not only does he have to convey the personal transformations of a man falling in love in spite of himself and learning restraint in dealing with other people without losing regal demeanor and control, he has to overcome its Yul Brynner stereotype. Like Brynner, Nemmers isn’t a powerful singer; but that’s where the similarity ends. He infuses the role with a masculine vitality and endearing innocence that makes him a powerful delight to watch. He’s fresh, as though the role has never been performed before. The audience can’t wait to see his exchanges with Mrs. Anna explode. The spontaneous joy and romantic fire generated by their triumphant “Shall We Dance” deserves encore repetition. The audience is swept away by the revelation of honest attraction as its reality overtakes the King and Mrs. Anna. We are all left breathless. Positively breathless.

The Lyric Stage production of The King and I teems with excellent performances. Adrian Li Donni excels in superior vocal delivery and clearly defined acting as the Concubine TupTim’s illegal lover Lun Tha as if Broadway great Alfred Drake has been reborn. The lovers’ duet “I Have Dreamed”, sung with statuesque, glamorous Jung Eun Kim as TupTim, soars to glorious operatic heights in Act 2, while firmly remaining mainstream musical theater, thanks to the talent and skill of the two performers. The Uncle Tom Ballet with twelve dancers plus eight leads and an onstage percussionist, choreographed by Ann Nieman, is a completely transformational, evocative performance unto itself.

The King and I, considered by Oscar Hammerstein to be “our best work”, is about as politically incorrect as a 1951 musical can be.  Yet given the sensitive, respectful staging and interpretation by Music Director Jay Dias and Stage Director Cheryl Denson with a boldly undisguised multi-cultural cast, it makes a potent statement about the clash of incongruent cultures in a fast-paced modern world. We in the Dallas/Ft. Worth region are so lucky that the National Endowment for the Arts saw fit to award Lyric Stage with a grant to mount this magnificent production. Please don’t miss The King and I. It’s no “puzzlement” that it’s a stunning success.

Performances of The King and I continue June 25, 26 and 27 @ 8:00 PM and June 28 @ 2:30 PM.  Performances are in the Irving Arts Center’s Carpenter Performance Hall, 3333 N. Mac Arthur Blvd, Irving, Texas.  Tickets, priced from $20-$50, are available online @ www.lyricstage.org or by calling 972-252-2787.

Shakespeare Dallas Rides Again

Bonanza, Blazing Saddles, Dallas, Deadwood…and Shakespeare Dallas, all in one ten-gallon mental picture? Yeehaw. Shakespeare Dallas turns on the heat this summer with fetching Western-style stagings of two of the Bard’s best: The Merry Wives of Windsor TX and The Taming of the Shrew. Theatre companies across the country spend considerable energy and time re-imagining Shakespeare’s works in novel ways to make them appealing and readily accessible to today’s audiences. Few do so with Shakespeare Dallas’ comprehensive mastery.

The Merry Wives of Windsor TX erupts as a rip-roaring 60’s era thigh-slapper from its cheesy Olde West storefront set emblazoned with a giant Texas map and a garishly tipsy neon sign sleazily promoting the ‘Garter Inn’ to its toe-tapping hoe-down celebration of marital bliss at Act II’s conclusion. The play’s signature practical jokes, double entendre machinations and marital scheming bound along at unbridled full gallop thanks to the cleverly detailed modern script full of topical references and jokes as adapted by production director Rene Moreno. His re-vision and direction build upon the play’s intrinsic structure, enhancing the scenes and characterizations without losing the original’s sense, even with broad Texan accents. Added musical numbers and current motif innovations foster hilarity. The surprise “Dating Game” send-up at Act I’s conclusion, hosted by the lascivious Nurse Mistress Quickly (comic talent Kara Torvik-Smith in virtuoso form), makes delightful use of Shakespeare’s comical dueling suitors. Act II’s torchy 70’s style pop love song, worthy of Lionel Ritchie, delivered in dulcet tones here by handsome crooner Joseph Maddox, decked out in a snow-white suit with cherry-hued follow spot and choreographed groupies in matching disco-era attire, reflects the Access Hollywood-style nature of the play’s overblown “match-making.” A terrific comparison in modern guise.

Moreno sweeps his large cast of actors on and off the multi-level set as smoothly as Clint Eastwood herding doggies on a ‘Rawhide’ Hollywood cattle drive. Natural, comic stage pictures burst forth in rapid succession with energy and purpose. “Contemplative” monologues, love protestations, thwarted horse and gun play, bodies hustled about in a huge laundry basket, and a stunning Dia De la Muerta “fairy dance” around the Windsor TX Oak Tree keep the laughs and surprises coming fast and loose while unfolding the tale with clarity and definition. The acting ensemble seems to relish the bawdy mayhem they create so effectively.  “Straight guy” T.A. Taylor as the cuckolded Mr. Ford, Drew Walsh as an ingenious, ingenuous Boy Scout, Constance Gold Parry and Kateri Kale as “merry wives” fresh off the page of a Danielle Steele novel, and Christian Taylor as unwilling marriage suitor Slender, the play’s  ‘Nancy boy’ dressed as an unholy cross between Andy Warhol and Lyle Lovett, all entertain and honor the text. Aaron Roberts as  love besotted, murderous French physician Dr. Caius and Michael Johnson as meddling Irish priest Hugh Evans interject yet another layer of utter silliness into the play, along with managing understandable ‘furrin’”accents.  Bradley Campbell is perfectly cast as unbearably pompous, self-impressed John Falstaff; a master of nuanced delivery and physical comedy, his well-honed skills work handily with director Moreno’s over-the-top vision.

The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Shakespeare Dallas’ Artistic Director Raphael Parry, presents equally compelling potential for an Old West realization and is handsomely mounted. Directed as a farcically light melodrama, the production struggles to find a modicum of balance between stylized physicality and more serious themes. A darker play dealing with multi-layered human emotion and issues, Shrew loses impact enacted as a farce. Kate’s capitulation speech at Act II’s conclusion felt particularly awkward with this treatment; Kate (Lydia Mackay) appeared ill at ease throughout the production. Petruchio’s distractingly odd costume as the Easter Bunny in the wedding scene in no way enhanced the play or helped in his character’s development. The choice seemed inserted for cute effect, not for coherence or plot illumination. Ian Leson made an intriguing, laid back, Petruchio in his sexy Paladin black attire, minus typical bluster and fury. I would have preferred viewing him in a production where the dramatic co-existed with the comic. It was pleasant to see the ingénue role of Bianca played with piquancy and spunk by the well-cast Danielle Pickard, instead of sappy compliancy; her  Bianca also seemed better suited to a different production. It’s an attractive presentation even if the style fights the play’s sense.

Shakespeare Dallas rides again and proves that it’s worth enduring an evening of lawn sittage, excessive perspiration and bug spray for a healthy dose of The Bard.

The Merry Wives of Windsor TX runs Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays through July 24. The Taming of the Shrew runs Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays through July 25 at the Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre off Grand Avenue in Dallas.

Tickets: www.shakespearedallas.org, 214-559-2778

PHOTO: Constance Gold Parry, Bradley Campbell, Kateri Cale in The Merry Wives of Windsor TX

Review as submitted to lakewood-now.net

Theatre Three’s Americana Song

A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it or it could be
who’s hungry and where their mouth is or
who’s out of work and where the job is or
who’s broke and where the money is or
who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is.
– Woody Guthrie

On the heels of its much praised landmark production of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, Dallas’ Theatre Three launched performances of a tribute to iconic American folksinger Woody Guthrie in the intimate Theatre Too space on June 19, 2009. Strong on tunes and light on biographical detail, Woody Guthrie’s American Song reflects the prolific songsmith’s connection to the working classes of the United States through an ensemble of five men and three women, singing while accompanying themselves on a range of acoustic musical instruments in a humble setting.

L-R: Daniel Svoboda, Alexander Ross, and Willy Welch

Deemed the “original folk hero” by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when inducted into it at its 1988 opening, Woody Guthrie spent much of his life touring the country vagabond-style from east to west, observing ‘real folks’ and commenting on their trials and tribulations through his unique musical ballad style of song. Twenty-four homespun, heartfelt tunes, some better known than others, fill the two act span of this production, as the ensemble strolls in and out, solo or in twos and threes, while the remaining cast members casually attend each other’s performances seated or standing about the space. It’s easy to imagine how Guthrie entranced transient workers gathered around hobo town campfires from the engaging presentation style of the production. The June 22 audience clapped and sang along when invited by the performers (Do Re Mi”, “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya”, “This Land Is Your Land”) and appreciated the depth and forthrightness of the musical revue unraveling before them.

Theatre Three’s ensemble transitioned seamlessly from one number to the next, with each voice featured in outstanding solo moments or blending well in harmonic interplay. Sheryl Etzel, Doug Jackson, Natalie Wilson King, Arianna Movassagh, Alexander Ross, Daniel Svoboda, Willy Welch and Christina Harpine on fiddle comprised the cast. Alexander Ross’ soulful interpretation of “Dust Storm Disaster” and Natalie King’s rousing rendition of  “Union Maid” stood out as particularly representative of the Guthrie spirit at opening night’s performance; all singers brought their varied slices of Americana to vivid life with guitar, banjo, piano, bass and mandolin accompaniment.

NEA grant recipient playwright Peter Glazer, the creator and original director of Woody Guthrie’s American Song, came by his interest in the subject naturally. A 60’s born son of parents deeply involved in the political labor movement, his father Tom was a folksinger contemporary of Guthrie’s. Glazer conceived of and created the work in the late 80’s, partly in backlash to the Reagonomics-based greed of the era. Since 1988, the musical revue has been produced in more than seventy-five theaters around the country, winning rave reviews and numerous awards along the way, including three Bay Area Theater Critic’s Circle Awards for productions at Berkeley Repertory Theater and San Jose Repertory Theater. “Woody’s material is seductive in any time,” Glazer said. “It resonated in its moment many decades ago as well as the late 80’s. It isn’t any less seductive given the climate it appears in, and that’s its beauty. I didn’t want to strip it of politics,” he said, “but I didn’t want the audience to forget they were dealing with theatrical entertainment [either].”

Theatre Three’s production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song continues through July 26 at the intimate Theatre Too space, ideal for enjoying this production.
Tickets: 214-871-3300 or on-line: www.theatre3dallas.com

Photo Credit: Ken Birdsell

CTD’s Chapter Two: No Simple Simon

I am not much of a fan of Neil Simon’s plays, but I try to remain open-minded if I review one. Contemporary Theatre of Dallas’ current production of Simon’s Chapter Two should thrill true-blue Neil Simon devotees. Don’t let my ambivalence deter you.

Marcia Carroll, Scott Latham: George Wada photo

Simon wrote this two couple comedy with dark overtones in 1977 after he moved to California, which may explain its rapid succession of short cinematic-like scenes. The entire first act is a string of such short scenes, all expository in nature. I found myself wondering when the prologue would end and the action begin.

The play is billed as semi-autobiographical. Simon, a widower, had recently wooed and married actress Marsha Mason. In this play the main character, a successful middle-aged novelist, has problems getting over the death of his first wife and meets, woos and marries a soap opera divorcee on a whirlwind whim. When the play was adapted for film in 1979, Marsha Mason played the part of the second wife, which must have felt odd.

In CTD’s current production, ever-capable director Cynthia Hestand has assembled a strong cast of regional actors very suited to the characters they portray. Quick study Scott Latham plays novelist George with a steady ease and familiarity that belies the fact he took on the role a scant two weeks before opening, when the original actor became ill and had to withdraw. Lots of initiatory lines, some non sequitur, scads of complicated blocking—it’s rewarding to watch a real pro negotiate those challenges sans bobble and make it look like he’s had a full rehearsal schedule to grow into his role. Opposite him as the soap opera actress Jennie is the well-versed and nationally experienced Marcia Carroll. The chemistry clicks immediately between the pair, thanks to their complimentary skills and director Hestand’s firm grip on Simon’s wordy script. Jennie spends a lot of time fussing, whining and groveling, once she marries George. She never lets up. With a lesser actor, the profusion of codependent dialogue would have been hard to take. There is a shockingly unexamined and out of character surprise in Act II—stage violence — Jennie slaps George twice, hard; he then knocks her to the floor. Did Simon really write it that way? Did he find spousal abuse funny? The actors pick themselves up and go on with the scene, never discussing the violent outburst or altering their relationship in any way because of it. I never could relax afterwards, wondering if/when the abuse might emerge again.

As comic contrast, Jennie’s best friend Faye attempts to have an extra-marital affair with George’s brother Leo. The well-matched romantic team of Sue Loncar and super-kinetic Ted Wold romp through their scenes, pre-Viagra, providing welcome relief from the narcissism, dismissive cruelty and incessant nattering of the lead couple. Loncar can toss off a pithy comic line with perfect deadpan timing; in Wold she has found a sparkling match. The off-kilter, middle-aged Yin Yang energy generated between Loncar and Wold is worth the price of admission, alone.

Neil Simon’s Chapter Two opened on December 4, 1978 at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. In January 1979 it moved to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre where it garnered a very respectable run of 857 performances. It was nominated for the 1978 Tony Award for Best Play. Clearly celebrated at its time, today Chapter Two feels over-written; its unexpected episode of spousal abuse veers off a cliff from the rest of the play. CTD’s production team has worked its usual magic with sumptuous set, costumes, sound, lights. The acting ensemble and director could hardly improve upon their performances. Fans of Neil Simon: go to.

Contemporary Theatre Of Dallas’ Chapter Two runs through July 19, Thursdays through Sundays.
Tickets: 214-828-0094, www.contemporarytheatreofdallas.com

DCT: Pocket Full of Dragon Luck

The good folks who run the show at Dallas Children’s Theatre must have their very own Luck Dragon. Americans for the Arts, the national non-profit that advocates for the arts in Washington DC, just announced the 2009 recipients of National Endowment for the Arts grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Close to $30 million in awards (a miniscule sum compared to bank bail-out or military funds) has been designated to support 631 local arts entities nationwide, all affected adversely by the economic recession inherited from the GW Bush administration. Twenty grants went to arts organizations in Texas. Dallas Children’s Theatre has the singular honor of being the only theatre company in the North Texas region selected for inclusion. Rated by TIME Magazine as one of the top five theater companies in the nation performing for youth, the company website says, “Dallas Children’s Theater serves more than 270,000 young people and their families through its main stage productions, national touring company, and education and outreach programs.” A worthy entity to endow with stimulus funds.

Everyone should have a personal Luck Dragon: a fantastic creature with all the beneficial attributes of a unicorn, ET, Tinker Belle and a magic carpet rolled into one. Falkor the Luck Dragon, as created by regional equity actor Gregory Lush, energizes the show in Dallas Children’s Theatre’s current production of German author Michael Ende’s beloved 1979 fantasy hero’s journey tale The Neverending Story. Lush’s Luck Dragon feels real, brims over with such playful enthusiasm and genuine caring; most audience members (adult and child alike) would love to tuck him in a pocket and take him home. Fantasy tales are hard to bring to life on stage, when cinema can do much more with special effects. DCT’s production is so engaging you forget it isn’t a movie. Balancing colorful visuals as screen projected settings with Kathy Burks’ life-sized Taymor-like multi-cultural puppet magic, DCT Associate Artistic Director and play Director Artie Olaisen creates a believable yet entrancing fantasy reality. His human actors develop interesting characters both easy to relate to and follow. It can be a challenge to hold the attention of today’s youth audience; the rustling and oohing and whispers I heard reflected an audience quite wrapped up in the stage action.

Appropriate for ages seven and up, the tale revolves around life dilemmas faced by a lonely, timid boy named Bastian Bux, played with Harry Potter-like charm and sincerity by Alex Heika, a sophomore at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. Bastian loves books and acquires a strange story “with no end”. As he turns the pages and lives the tale, roaming across the Swamps of Sadness and the Silver Mountains in the world Fantastica, he meets all kinds of creatures of the imagination with lessons to teach. He encounters sorcerers and bats, witches and night hobs, gnomes and spiders, a Childlike Empress (ethereal Heather Pratt), a young earnest hero Atreyu (debut performance by SMU graduate and Dallas Theatre Center associate Andres Ortiz) accompanied by his lovable, loyal horse Artax (Karl Schaeffer) and the scheming, evil Gmork (played with dastardly menace by David Lugo).  The 1985 Hollywood film version may have popularized this saga, but the stage adaptation by Canadian playwright David S. Craig and DCT’s production do equal justice in faithful and breath-taking realization. There’s something really special about seeing a fantasy world come flesh and blood alive. Gregory Lush’s brave, winsome, sparkling, ever playful, ever watchful Luck Dragon, with a splendid costume that could rival anything Michael Jackson ever dreamed up, seals the deal.

Celebrate the National Endowment for the Arts’ stimulus grant to Dallas Children’s Theatre by attending this lyrical, imaginative production of a stunning children’s fantasy tale. Maybe you’ll find a Luck Dragon in your pocket? Catch it before it fades away.
Cast includes: Alex Heika, Andrés Ortiz, David Lugo, Douglass Burks, Gregory Lush, Rhianna Mack, Karl Schaeffer, Heather Pratt, Anastasia Munoz, Sally Fiorello
Artistic team: Director – Artie Olaisen; scenic design – Randel Wright; lighting – Linda Blase; costumes – Aaron Patrick Turner; sound – Marco Salinas; puppet design – Kathy Burks Theatre of Puppetry Arts
Tickets: 214-740-0051; www.dct.org
The Neverending Story runs through July 12 with an evening performance on Friday July 10 and matinees July 11 and 12.

Forgotten Wanton: Pope John XII

Absolute Johnny on the spot! Consider it a sin of omission to not attend MBS Productions‘ narrative drama John XII. A unique interweaving of historical fact and torchy romance, the former never lapses into dry and dull while the latter piques the prurient keyhole voyeur in all who attend the enactment mass. Bless me, father, for all your sins…..

Joshua Scott Hancock(l), Kevin Wickersham(r)

Picture this. It’s 956 AD, in Rome, lots of jockeying for power in an unstable state. The feudal lord currently holding sway has just appointed as pope an 18-year-old nobleman, known for “excesses”, not even an ordained priest. The 18-year-old should be easy to manipulate or kill off if he proves a problem. No one considers he might be brilliant at political games, himself, and a master of vicious court intrigue. No one foresees that he could have the charisma and general appeal of a Bill Clinton and earn such adulation from the common people that he becomes a political force to reckon with. Sound like the set up for a risqué historical novel?  Fact is, it’s fact.

Mark-Brian Sonna possesses an uncanny ability to ferret out forgotten, unique, historically based situations that lend themselves well to dramatization. This original play, John XII, portrays events re-created from the brief span of time, with even briefer details, that one Octavius became Pope John XII. His edicts set precedent for the separation of church and state, the election of the Pope by a body of Cardinals and the creation of the Pope’s permanent home, The Vatican, on undesirable land at Rome’s then outskirts known as Mt. Vaticanus. Never heard of him? The Church has suppressed his place in history due to his actions, appetites and “excesses.”

The play is no intentional allegory for current US politics, but it’s hard not to spy certain similarities to recent movers and shakers in its characters. The youthful, arrogant, over sexed, rapacious John reveals hints of Tom Delay, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton, or what they might have been like had they lived in tenth century Italy as one person. Chill your blood? Slim, slight Joshua Scott Hancock, with firm jaw and direct gaze, portrays John XII as a combination budding statesman and utter monster, amoral down to his toenails and obsessed with advancing his own agenda, from the bedroom to the halls of state. You don’t exactly empathize with Hancock’s boyish creation thanks to John’s blatant savagery, but he inspires intrigue as he reveals the inner workings of an absolutely brilliant and unbalanced mind. This is no doddering potentate in training. Want to eliminate a potential threat to the papacy? Have him castrated and let him die of septicemia. With so little historical record to go on, Hancock does an admirable job of creating a tangible, interesting reality. If a repellant one.

As Berengarius, the senior mastermind responsible for appointing John as Pope, tall, gaunt Mike Hathaway defines the play’s context. He schemes to advance his own nefarious goals in the manner of Karl Rove, quiet but lethal. He provides the only real obstacles to the young pope’s success as he towers over him like a crafty, care-worn vulture. In Act One, he appears capable of taking down the precocious upstart. In Act Two he seems to accept John’s out-maneuvering without much fuss. Or does he? A fascinating character as developed by Hathaway, he could warrant his own play separate from John XII. Much lurks beneath the surface of a placid, calm demeanor: do not turn your back. Ever.

John’s sometime lover, dim-witted but devoted, Adalbert, never learns from his stupid mistakes but engages audience pity with the sincerity of his devotion and genuine hurt after John uses and ditches him, in a clean, consistent, utterly human portrayal by Kevin Wickersham. He’s the only sympathetic character in the play and the only one who goes fully nude.

The play’s three other characters are one-dimensional shadows that add atmosphere but advance little, compared to the interactions of John XII with Berengarius and Adalbert. There is already a lot happening here. Still, expanding the role of the senior priest Liutprand, played with barely masked outrage and disdain by David Swanner, would reveal a broader picture of the culture wars and life and death political jockeying of the time, the challenges a young pope faced in making his sweeping changes that still affect governance today.  No character reminds one of GW Bush. They think and express themselves much too clearly.   Yes, John XII gets done in, but I won’t reveal how.

Tickets  available for added Saturday and Sunday matinees: August 1 and August 2 at 2:30 PM

The show will run through Sunday August 2, 2009 at the Stone Cottage Theatre, 15650 Addison Road , Addison TX 75001 .  Regular show times are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM .

Tickets:t www.MBSProductions.net or call 214-477-4942.

This play is rated NC-17 for adult language, and male frontal nudity. You must be 18 or older to attend.

PHOTO CREDIT: Bethany M. Hubbard

FIT to be tried: Festival 2009

July in Dallas means it’s time for the Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Cultural Center by White Rock Lake. Cooperative groups of artists without permanent performance spaces unite to bring to life unique, forgotten, overlooked or original one-act productions. Some are plays, others hard to define. All tend to the “edgy”, whether that means socio-artistically inspiring or over a cliff. The well-attended yearly event, now in its eleventh year, surprises and enchants, offers over four weekends something to appeal to or confound the theatrical sensibilities of just about everyone who relishes off the beaten path productions.

Rehearsing The Old Woman in the Wood

What follows is my evaluation of: THE DRAMA CLUB’s The Old Woman in the Wood by the Brothers Grimm, adapted and directed by Jeffrey Schmidt; AUDACITY THEATRE LAB’s Arsenic and Roses by Brad McEntire, directed by Jeff Hernandez; PEGASUS THEATRE’s Know-No by Matt Lyle directed by Kurt Kleinmann; WINGSPAN THEATRE COMPANY’s Seagulls by Caryl Churchill, directed by Susan Sargeant.

The 2008 Bath House Cultural Center website explains that “FIT was created in 1999 as an outlet for smaller companies without a permanent performance space to give them an opportunity to produce seldom seen, new, or avant-garde works. FIT exists to promote awareness and growth of Dallas area theatre through collaboration, participation and cultivation.” Of the four performances viewed so far, one stands out as a sterling example of the FIT mission. Jeffrey Schmidt’s adaptation of The Old Woman in the Wood is a highly imaginative, multifaceted, sometimes confusing adaptation of a lesser-known dark Grimm fairy tale for adult audiences. Interdisciplinary art forms in wide ranging scale intermix through dance, puppetry, percussion, nature, music, song, and magic. Styled almost as a children’s interlude with broadly drawn characters and grotesques, it makes an  artistically effective adaptation appealing to adult sensibilities. Maryam Baig Lush creates an intriguing heroine with nuanced vocal technique and precise, stylized movement. John Davenport, as the tree-encased human Lush’s character comes to love, provides fascinating visual and emotive characterization in spite of his “costume’s” movement limitations.  The forest setting he is part of looms provocatively, brooding and lyrical, and fully informs the performance space. John Flores uses a wealth of vocal and puppetry skills in expressing and flying an enchanted dove puppet that changes to reflect the main characters’ emotional and psychological growth, a feat of pure metaphorical magic. The production is a lovely “fit” for the venue and festival, hard to imagine in any other setting. And, according to the playbill, the play’s communally designed and constructed set and props are mostly made from found or recycled items. A+ for cooperative creativity on all fronts. The other three productions don’t rise to the same creative level. Perhaps there is good reason for these plays to be “seldom seen.”

Audacity Theatre Lab claims its mission is to develop and produce dynamic new works—“new interpretations” or “incubation and exploration of original works”. Arsenic & Roses offers little more than soap opera-style realism, not much fresh or new about it. Another ho-hum predictable entry in a long line of twenty-something romance and angst plays, this two-person show offers no unique or fresh perspectives on life and love or with the characters presented. Someone needs to let the actors in all three of the following plays know they don’t need to yell, grimace, thrash about or storm around the intimate acting space to be seen, heard and understood. Interesting that the least “realistic” production, the stylized adaptation of a fairy tale, offers layers of nuance and subtlety, whispers and silence, while its more naturalistic companion productions brim over with strain, din and artifice. It’s as though the latters’ performers attended a Loud, Fast & Busy Is Better School of Acting together and hope to outdo each other in declamatory technique. Ouch.

Jeff Swearingen is a sophisticated actor with normally commanding physicality, ill cast and/or poorly directed in Arsenic & Roses. He flounders, sleep-walks the role without conviction. No chemistry develops with Teresa Valenza’s character, no chance for it, given the pretentious overacting and lung exercising she exhibits non-stop. Destroy a dozen roses  centerstage at the top of the show, mostly ignore the proliferation of debris, tread all over the petals and stems like they aren’t there the rest of the time? Disappointing, pointless effect. Opportunity lost.

Pegasus Theatre’s director Kurt Kleinmann is known and respected for directing tight, suspenseful, highly stylized, large cast performances on a full-sized proscenium stage set, triumphant feats. Matt Lyle’s surreal script offers Kleinmann the chance to do something entirely different in The Bath House’s quirky semi-thrust intimate space with just two actors. Not an inspired realization, the intentional repetitiveness of the script verges on boring as directed; props are cumbersome and puzzling; the static perimeter set adds nothing to the play’s off kilter fantasy world that the two actors can interact with creatively.  A. Raymond Banda has some curious reflective moments, very effective, as he floats in and out of his desires and reality.  But Lorina Lipscomb is so busy being “active” and vocally out of control that no believable relationship can develop between the two. She really doesn’t need to shriek to be heard in the space, honest.

Wingspan’s Seagulls has the potential to be an ideal entry in FIT. Eminent postmodernist feminist playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1978 three-person play about an average British woman who gains celebrity status for an unusual talent is full of exquisite imagery and metaphorical language. It’s a delicate dramatic work, exploring the instability and fluctuating self-worth of an everyday housewife turned freakish celeb. Susan Sargeant has a lovely knack for directing such concept plays, so I can’t imagine why her three actors chomp up the text and scenery like hyper-caffeinated fiends. The two women employ English accents—Emily Gray’s native born, Cindy Beall’s painfully not so. Andrews Cope gave an exceptionally heart-wrenching performance as the stuttering Billy Bibbit in Contemporary Theatre of Dallas’ recent One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In Seagulls his speech is so garbled and rushed, it’s almost incomprehensible. All three actors race through their lines, again overly loud. They win the white noise competition. It’s not a customary Wingspan Theatre Company performance. Like The Old Woman in the Wood, Seagulls feels quirky enough to be hard to mount outside a festival setting, wish it had been brought to life with the deliberate pacing and artistic nuance of The Drama Club’s original adaptation.

The Festival of Independent Theatres runs through August 8 with festival passes as well as single tickets available. The other plays are: Rite of Passage Theatre Company’s Angry Glances by Clay Wheeler, directed by Christopher Eastland; White Rock Pollution’s Holy Rollers by Edmund Penn, directed by Tom Parr IV; One Thirty Productions’ Under A Texas Canopy by Ellsworth Schave, directed by Larry Randolph; Echo Theatre’s Overtones by Alice Gerstenberg, directed by Brandi Andrade. Please don’t yell, y’all. I beg you.

For tickets, call 214-880-0202

Take Two: FITS 2009

Week Two at the Festival of Independent Theatres held annually at White Rock Lake’s Bath House Cultural Center—here are reviews of three of the four remaining shows.

ECHO Theatre’s Overtones

Often taking on controversial political and social issues of the day and producing them with the savagery of a moose cow in heat, ECHO Theatre focuses on presenting the works of female playwrights. This year’s FITS entry, its eleventh, had its original production in 1915 and comes across a little stale now. Not much new or unique here—concept, script or production. Overtones is considered Chicago-based playwright Alice Gerstenberg’s signature piece. According to the FITS stage notes, “it became her most popular and widely produced play…her legacy to American theatre.” Sigmund Freud had just toured the US with his “new ideas” about the power of the unconscious. The play portrays two properly attired, stuffy Victorian matrons, with alter egos (here in black stretch pants and leotards) flitting about like invisible mosquitoes, while they discuss the prospects of one woman’s painter husband. The Victorian ladies exhibit decorum; the black-clad mosquitoes spout non-stop catty commentary. We get the play’s drift in its first three lines. There is no growth, reversal or transformation. The women were teen-aged rivals for the same man, a painter. One married him; the other now wants to lure him back. The alter egos express the women’s inner desires and feelings, in contrast to the excruciatingly sedate, superficial conversation that takes place over tea. Think The View on an average day with uninhibited loud-mouthed devils lurking over each woman’s shoulder. I found the portrayal of the Victorians too sedate, the alter egos too frenzied. At no moment do we wonder if the two women could become friends or allies. This may have broken new theatrical ground in 1915, but. Isn’t its result exactly where the patriarchy has always endeavored to keep women: at odds with each other? Hardly a proto-feminist statement: divide and conquer…Overtones is directed by regional actor and Echo Theatre producing partner Brandi Andrade in her directorial debut. Cast includes—Tracie Foster, Ginger Goldman, Leslie Patrick, Lauren Paige Patterson. I have high expectations of Echo Theatre.

Rating: C- for production, B for historical interest.

Rite of Passage Theatre Company’s Angry Glances

Lots of well-respected local talent pulled together to help Rite of Passage Theatre Company produce the original play Angry Glances by the company’s producer and Plano native Clay Wheeler. Rite of Passage exists to support young “coming of age” theatre artists. This cast includes regional well-known professionals Charles Ryan Roach and Marianne Galloway and is directed by Baylor graduate Christopher Eastland. The other cast members are newcomers Quinten Quintero, a recent SMU graduate, and Baylor graduate Cassie Bann. All four performers create lively, believable characters and are well suited to their roles. Unfortunately, the play is less than excellent work in process. Far too many short scenes necessitating massive furniture and set changes mar the production, almost to the point of becoming comical. The plot wanders; the dialogue fluctuates between flat realism and heightened melodrama; out of place Shakespearean elements pop up every so often. A bizarre, abrupt, unsatisfying ending finally chops off the continuous moving about of set pieces. This small production proves that excellent actors cannot overcome an inadequate script, no matter how hard they try.

Rating: A for community effort, directing and casting, D- for unworkable script.

One Thirty Productions’ Under A Texaco Canopy

Every year at FITS one company steps up to the plate, digs in its ensemble cleats, takes focused aim, swings with all its creative might and hits a metaphorical home run that knocks creative endeavor far out into the universe. This year it’s One Thirty Productions’ turn.

Morgan Justiss, Shane Beeson: Under A Texaco Canopy

Known for producing traditionally safe afternoon entertainments geared to more conservative tastes, One Thirty’s production of Ellsworth Schave’s magical surrealist Under A Texaco Canopy triumphs with unexpected zest and freshness under the guidance of seasoned director Larry Randolph. The play opens pleasantly, quietly, at a leisurely pace, lulling the audience with its homespun 1950’s quaintness, then veers off into an edge-of-seat surreal treatment of life and death issues through masterfully drawn characters and sheer plot magic. Stan Graner captures the heartfelt essence of Slim, an average man baffled by and deeply disappointed in life with gritty grace and bone-tired physicality. Relish his mid-play monologue about “looking back” as it soars with spirited revelation while torturing him to contemplate and deliver. Newcomer Donny Avery enlivens Slim’s callow, not-so–bright sidekick in almost syncopated contrast to Slim’s darker personality with casual ease. Regional professional Shane Beeson creates a strange protagonist, equal parts unnerving and sympathetic, always intriguing, in full command of his role and the space. Morgan Justiss’ comely, eerie waitress with a heart of steel is tangibly lovable and not exactly of this world at the same time. This is the one to see, folks. Go back to re-savor its delight-filled transformational arc before the festival ends.

Rating: Script, direction, execution, cast, set, FITS mission — A+ across the board.

FITS runs Thursdays through Sundays through August 2, ends Saturday August 8. Tickets: 214-880-0202

PHOTO: Enrique Fernandez C.

Second Thoughts: Some Guy(s)

There’s nothin’ you can do

To turn me away

Nothin’ anyone can say

You’re with me now

And as long as you stay

Lovin’ you’s the right thing to do

Lovin’ you’s the right thing…

I’ve got a prediction and a lament. I’ve seen some fine productions this summer around the DFW region. I predict when fall colors and temperatures afford welcome relief from August’s bleached out sultry frazzle, Second Thought Theatre’s Some Girl(s) by Neil Labute will have proven itself the audience hit of the summer crop.

Jessica Wiggers, Ashley Wood, Lulu Ward, Catherine Dubord

Dallas loves its gorgeous, spunky women, particularly when they’re all decked out in full display – fashionable attire, plenty of visible cleavage, clean-shaven legs in full view up to there, risqué undies on a select few…the ladies of Some Girl(s) don’t disappoint in any such respect. What’s more, director Jonathan Taylor assembled five of the brightest female talents in the DFW pantheon to get down to the thespian business challenge of bringing the various gals to life. Captivating, nuanced, sexy, righteous, vindictive, wounded, vengeful, fully fleshed out, in every sense. Diane Worman, Catherine DuBord, Lulu Ward, Natalie Young, Jessica Wiggers. Eye candy with creative minds ablaze.

I know you’ve had some bad luck

With ladies before

They drove you or you drove them crazy

But more important is I know

You’re the one and I’m sure

Lovin’ you’s the right thing to do

Lovin’ you’s the right thing…

So what’s my lament? Ashley Wood’s portrayal of Guy, the Man, the pivot around which all these fulsome babes swing. Neil Labute writes exquisitely crafted, visually potent plays in which men are sometimes shown to be total jerks. In Guy’s case, he’s more complicated than that. How does Mr. Wood fall short? There’s hardly a woman alive over the age of 35 (unless she married early and hung in with it or joined a reactionary religious cult) who won’t recognize this type of codependent verging on sociopath man. He’s a true love addict, needs a woman’s touch and adoration as much as oxygen. He just can’t function unless he’s leaving one behind and wooing the next one, heart, mind, soul and body, a better one, he hopes, he prays. A goddess to fulfill all his needs.

Hold me in your hands like a bunch of flowers

Set me movin’ to your sweetest song

And I know what I think I’ve known all along

Lovin’ you’s the right thing to do

Lovin’ you’s the right thing

To perfect this serial synchrony, he has developed amazing technique that works every time, almost Pavlovian.  Know him, ladies? He’s not the handsomest man at the party, but he’s the warmest, the most empathetic. He looks deep into a woman’s soul with sincere, steady gaze, like no other has done before. His hand brushes hers so softly, or her cheek, or the nape of her neck with non-invasive innocence, sending electric shocks pulsing through her body. It’s how he reels her in. It’s so personal. And oh so calculated. And his lips, a bit moist and slightly parted, just beg for her kisses. Somehow he knows just the right moment to flick them with his tongue tip to catch her gaze. Mesmerizing. A human Venus flytrap. I suspect none of this went into developing Mr. Wood’s portrayal. His decision? The director’s?

Nothing you could ever do

Would turn me away from you

I love you now and I love you now

Labute understands this character implicitly.  This sort of man would never, ever return to revisit “old flames”– (the past is inconsequential; the current love is the only true one) — unless he had ulterior motives. As an audience, we need to see Guy re-work his magic on all the exceptional women from his past and wonder where he’s really going. The revelation of true motive should arrive, and satisfy, as a total zinger. Hence my lament. Mr. Wood plays Guy as a fun-loving ex-frat guy on a final bender before the chains of matrimony descend. It’s almost anticlimactic to learn the truth, and it’s harder to fathom what all the women saw/still see in him.  No meaningful eye contact, no sensual touch to captivate the imagination and fire off the afterburners. Darn. Perhaps if Second Thought had hired a female director to helm the production? Any number of wise womyn exist in the region, Latina and otherwise.

It’s still a fun show, just to see the sterling gaggle of gals do their artistic best and give Guy his comeuppance. Bound to top the list of audience preferred plays, Summer 2009.

Neil Labute’s Some Girl(s) runs through August 1^st. Catch it fast.

Thursday @ 7:30pm, Fri-Sat @ 8pm.

Addison Theatre Centre Studio Space, 15650 Addison Road, Addison, TX.

Tickets: WaterTower Theatre Box Office 972-450-6232 or www.secondthoughttheatre.com

Even though you’re ten thousand miles away

I’ll love you tomorrow as I love you today

I’m in love babe

I’m in love with you babe

Let’s close now.

© 1972 Quackenbush Music Ltd., Carly Simon music & lyrics

Photo: Brian Bartaud

Coppertone III: Asylum, Just Like Coors Light

Remember back in your halcyon pre-teen days when you were sent to some mosquito-infested summer camp and had to write and perform a skit with your cabin mates at the session’s “last” campfire, to show off how much fun you’d had? You didn’t have time or incentive to perfect the humor or script, devise believable costumes or sets. Your goal became to come up with something utterly outrageous and preferably gross, focused on body parts and/or functions, and included unrelated pop/rock music on a cassette player for background noise. Something that might tick off the wholesome, early-rising powers-that-were, a twinge of  incipient anarchy?

That’s what Ochre House’s current production of Coppertone III: Asylum feels like. It consists of two sets (not well-defined enough to be acts) of loosely-at-best scripted skit, with crammed together whiffs of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Mommy Dearest and Rocky Horror informing the tone through Bunraku-style puppets. The full house opening night audience came prepared to roar with laughter at the lowbrow, kinda lame humor and got a bellyful. A rubber vagina painted to look burned to a crisp: such savory, sinful, funny, yummy good times.

Coppertone III: Asylum doesn’t offer the dimensional characters or stylized artistry of Matt Posey’s Coppertone II: The Pope of Chilitown, almost a parody of August Wilson, presented earlier this year. It’s not even remotely in the same league as Posey’s 14 Death Defying Acts: An Autopsy of Hunter S. Thompson, his superlative nihilistic absurdist portrayal of the bastard daddy of narrative “gonzo” journalism. But my guess is that the Coppertone III: Asylum audience would come out of the Thompson piece with a stress headache, feeling like they’d been slipped a bad Cosmo at the latest trendy restaurant and wondering what it was all about. They had a really good time watching Posey’s current show; who am I to buck mass appeal? Just look at what presumes to be arts entertainment on television, with huge, loyal audiences. Go to.

I describe this play as “Coppertone Light”, as satisfying as Coors Light.  Ochre House performers Josh Jordan, Trenton Stephenson and Elizabeth Evans are okay, I guess. When they learn their lines enough to close the gaping pauses hamstringing the dialogue, the play’s lack of depth, humor and commentary won’t be so obvious. I sure miss Xander Aulson’s, Walter Hardts’ and Anastasia Munoz’s spot-on performances from the earlier production. Trenton Stephenson reprised his earlier role minus its zany physical energy. Matthew Posey’s torchy rendition of “What Kind of Fool Am I” pales in comparison to his gut-splitting performance of “My Way” in the previous show. Sequels never  quite have the “zing” of originals.

Enjoy Coppertone III: Asylum for what it is. Shakespeare it ain’t, but then it isn’t the grossly overpriced third string touring show of Legally Blonde, either. Support local theatre, particularly if it’s not performed in a huge glass and concrete box with preferred parking for Lexus cars….

The Ochre House’s Coppertone III: Asylum rolls out its version of bedlam through September 19, Wednesdays through Saturdays. It’s at 825 Exposition, just down from the Amsterdam Bar and around the corner from the Meridian, two grungy, delightful watering holes. Many more choices beyond Coors Light.

Call for tickets: 214-542-8931.

2009 DFW THEATRE CRITICS FORUM AWARDS

“In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.” Pauline Kael

Pity the poor theatre critic. More often reviled than revered. Seen by some as an unqualified evil scourge inflicting him or her-self on innocent artists of unquestionably high principles and spreading base lies to bolster an inflated, insecure ego. Underappreciated and most often unpaid, why any arts journalist would repeatedly subject him or her-self to the trying ordeal of writing reviews is a wonder. Yet, here in the DFW region, a bevy of brave, determined wordsmiths settle into their reserved seats most weekends, pen and paper or laptop in hand, to view live theater and share their opinions in print, on line and across the airwaves.

This past Saturday eight such critics, members of the DFW Theatre Critics Forum, met at the home of Turtle Creek News reviewer Martha Heimberg to share potluck lunch and decide what accomplishments to highlight from the 2008-2009 theatre season.

“My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges,

and sweet’s the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges.”

Dorothy Parker

My first year to get included in the group, I wasn’t sure what I’d encounter: rancorous food-fights or nuanced, impassioned discussion of specific performances? Would I be an odd woman out with my favorite performances?  Au contraire. It was a delightful afternoon. What came across was how much everyone cares about the arts and artistic community. It was a lively discussion, peppered with laughter and enthusiastic camaraderie. Not everyone saw the same shows; not everyone felt the same about the shows they saw. There was a surprising amount of commonality of appreciation, from the old hands and us new faces on the reviewer scene alike. We expressed a lot of admiration for the hard work and artistic contributions made over the year.

So when you read Lawson Taitte’s article about the DFW Theatre Critics Forum meeting in the Dallas News, or read about it in The Voice or click on Theater Jones or my blog here, or wherever you find it, realize its results represent sincere analysis and respect for the performance arts scene.

If you’re not mentioned this time, maybe next year is your turn….

Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum Awards, 2009

(shows that opened between Sept. 1, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2009)

DIRECTION:
Jac Alder: Lost in the Stars, Theatre Three

Robin Armstrong: Incorruptible, Circle Theatre and Vincent River, Theatre Britain

B.J. Cleveland: The House of Blue Leaves, Theatre Arlington

Ellen Locy and Pam Myers-Morgan: The Nibroc Trilogy, Echo Theatre

Doug Miller: Click Clack Moo, Dallas Children’s Theater

Rene Moreno: The Seafarer, Stage West and This Is Our Youth, Upstart Productions

Katherine Owens: The Black Monk, Undermain Theatre

Ed Smith: The Bluest Eye, Jubilee Theatre

Jonathan Taylor and Christina Vela: The Pillowman, Kitchen Dog Theater

T.J. Walsh: Defiance, Theatre Three and Twelfth Night, Trinity Shakespeare Festival

NEW PLAY OR MUSICAL:
Death! The Musical by Scott Eckert, Pocket Sandwich Theatre
The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson, Dallas Theater Center
Hello Human Female by Matt Lyle, Audacity Theatre Lab
Under a Texaco Canopy by Ellsworth Schave, One Thirty Productions

ACTOR:
Jonathan Brooks: The Black Monk, Undermain Theatre
David Coffee: Twelfth Night, Trinity Shakespeare Festival
Michael Federico: Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, Kitchen Dog Theater
Vince McGill: A Raisin in the Sun, A Soldier’s Play and Seven Guitars, African American Repertory Theater
Jerry Russell: The Seafarer, Stage West; On Golden Pond, Contemporary Theatre of Dallas
Lee Trull: The Pillowman, Kitchen Dog Theater
Drew Wall: Defiance, Theatre Three; A Skull in Connemara, Second Thought Theatre; This Is Our Youth, Upstart Productions
Ted Wold: The House of Blue Leaves, Theatre Arlington

ACTRESS:
Sue Birch: Vincent River, Theatre Britain
Diane Casey Box-Worman: Defiance, Theatre Three; The Goat, Kitchen Dog Theater
Catherine DuBord: Some Girl(s), Second Thought Theatre
Emily Gray: The Norman Conquests, Stage West; Romeo and Juliet, Trinity Shakespeare Festival; Seagulls, WingSpan Theatre Company
Julie Johnson: Always…Patsy Cline, Casa Manana
Regina Washington: Neat, African American Repertory Theater
Wendy Welch: The Light in the Piazza, Theatre Three
Kimberly Whalen: The Light in the Piazza, Theatre Three; West Side Story, Lyric Stage
ENSEMBLE:
As Thousands Cheer, Lyric Stage
The Nibroc Trilogy, Echo Theatre
Topdog/Underdog, Upstart Productions
A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant, Circle Theatre

CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION:

John Arnone: scenic design, The Black Monk, Undermain Theatre
Bruce R. Coleman: costume design, Trysts in Toledo, Theatre Three

Terry Dobson and Vonda Bowling: Music direction, Lost in the Stars, Theatre Three

Bruce DuBose: music and sound design, The Black Monk, Undermain Theatre

Cameron Cobb: violence and gore design, Titus Andronicus, Kitchen Dog Theater

John S. Davies: makeup design, The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, Contemporary Theatre of Dallas

Design team: Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, Trinity Shakespeare Festival

Matthew Posey: Puppetry design, The Coppertone Trilogy, Balanced Almond

John de los Santos: choreography, Altar Boyz, Uptown Players

Aaron Patrick Turner: costume design, The Neverending Story, Dallas Children’s Theater

Jeffrey Schmidt: Production designs, The Old Woman in the Wood, The Drama Club

TOURING PRODUCTION:
A Chorus Line, Dallas Summer Musicals
The Play About the Coach, Rocketship Productions at the Out of the Loop Festival
Rent, Dallas Summer Musicals

SPECIAL CITATIONS FOR ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION:

1) B.J. Cleveland, for his outstanding achievement during his 27-year association with Theatre Arlington (15 as artistic director), and for his unstoppable energy.

2) Irma P. Hall, co-founder of the African American Repertory Theater, for her lifetime contribution to North Texas and national performance art.

3) Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center, for reintroducing a resident acting ensemble to the DTC, and for his generous spirit of community building.

Participating Critics:

Joan Arbery: D Magazine and Renegade Bus

Alexandra Bonifield: Critical Rant & Rave, Dallas Examiner, Renegade Bus, THE Magazine

Martha Heimberg: Turtle Creek News

Arnold Wayne Jones: Dallas Voice

Elaine Liner: Dallas Observer and TheaterJones

Mark Lowry: TheaterJones and THE Magazine

Punch Shaw: Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Lawson Taitte: Dallas Morning News

Joy Tipping: Dallas Morning News

PHOTO: African American Repertory Theater’s A Raisin in the Sun, directed by William “Bill” Earl Ray

Sticky Wicket: Echo’s Mauritius

Why do some playwrights think it’s a good thing to people their works with selfish, unpleasant, generally repellent characters? Even Edward Albee and David Mamet, masters of creating malevolence and unadulterated nastiness in the folks that fill their texts, give their reprobate characters redeeming qualities and balance their vitriol with more sympathetic types. It’s not a dismal, alienating experience to attend their plays, no matter how dire the motives, actions or consequences. In contrast Theresa Rebeck’s play Mauritius, currently in production at the Bath House Cultural Center with Dallas’ Echo Theatre, presents five cold, hard, selfish miserable characters, none of which inspires a single drop of audience sympathy or empathy.

Leslie Patrick, Pam Myers-Morgan photo

It’s an odd play to start with and concerns stamp collecting, which masks an unresolved sibling rivalry, which in turn falls prey to con games with sexual overtones. Picture this play as the start of a plot for Angela Lansbury’s Murder, She Wrote, before the series writers add in the murder victim element for suspense. As is, the only suspense generated concerns wondering who gets to keep Grandpa’s stamp collection and if it’s maybe fake….

Rebeck has had a prolific career as a writer, notable in this circumstance for high profile TV dramas like L.A.Law, NYPD BLUE and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. She has certainly made estimable income doing this commercial work (quite a lot more than I will ever make writing stage reviews), an admirable achievement. Her play Mauritius feels like a working model for a TV script for one of her successful show gigs and is one act too long for the substance it contains as presented.

Echo Theatre’s mission, to “unearth the power of the female voice by presenting works written by women for the stage” takes them into unexpected corners and vistas of artistic expression. As usual, their show is superbly cast and smoothly directed. The lighting, sound, sets and costumes create a vivid, believable picture on stage. Too bad the material isn’t up to the company’s capabilities.

Mauritius, by Theresa Rebeck, runs through September 26, 2009 at The Bath House Cultural Center. Terri Ferguson directs, with set design by Kateri Cale, sound by Pam Myers-Morgan, lighting by Bryan S. Douglas and costumes by Terri Ferguson. The cast includes: Leslie Patrick, Brian Witkowicz, David Meglino, Tony Martin and Brandi Andrade.

Tickets: 214-904-0500 www.echotheatre.org

Vigilant Sorrow: KDT’s VIGILS

Kitchen Dog Theater hosts a benefit for the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation on Friday, September 25, in honor of our nation’s fallen firefighters. Benefit performance tickets to Noah Haidle’s Vigils will be sold for $25. $10 of every ticket sold will be donated to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. The performance begins at 8 PM reception to follow, sponsored by Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill and iFratelli Pizza.

For tickets, please call 214-953-1055 or buy online at www.kitchendogtheater.org.

Touch fire in ice. Feel the burn. The stabbing, searing agony of loss and lingering memories, torturous and addictive, re-imagines itself with a vengeance, casting all in reach into a hellish half-life. The numbness of existence after such loss punishes worse than death, each breath drawn rougher than the last, each step taken more cumbersome, any attempt at escape accompanied by gut-wrenching remorse like raging harpies, clawing at the eyes, eliminating restful sleep. No matter the pain and self-destruction involved, the moth returns to the flame. Until the inner fire fades and the ice simply melts away. And the heart can open.

Kitchen Dog Theater captures the excruciating essence of a wife’s experience of loss and her attempt to free herself from its clutches in the southwestern premiere of Noah Haidle’s Vigils. After her firefighter husband (Matthew Gray) perishes in a conflagration while attempting to save a child’s life, the Widow (Tina Parker) exists in a dim world where she alternates between re-living pivotal moments in her marital relationship and surreal conversations with her husband’s soul (Ira Steck), which she has imprisoned in a recessed wall box over their living room sofa. All sequential action takes place in her tiny studio apartment, present and past. High above the playing space floats a raked walkway where over and over and over the audience watches the fully rigged out, brave fireman battling a furious blaze in dramatic, mesmerizing counterpoint, calling out to a wailing child, “Hold on, I’m coming.” The cries cease. The flames engulf the struggling man. It’s almost more than an audience can sit through. Imagine how it feels to be the widow, reliving it for the five thousandth time. Enter a new man, the Wooer (Jim Kuenzer), who cautiously, clumsily, kindly attempts to draw the Widow out of her self-imposed Hell and to inspire her to release her dead husband’s captive soul to the universe, to the heart of God, or beyond.

Hyperrealism meets surreal conceptualism and intense psycho-suggestion. Like lightning the play moves from domestic interlude to self-reflection to classic high drama. It’s a breathtaking, satisfying experience. LA based director Aaron Ginsburg, founder and co-artistic director of Meadows Basement, considered one of LA’s best performance ensembles, creates taut, unforgettable stage pictures while spinning his cast through rapid-fire exchanges and carefully choreographed repetitions. Each actor is so at ease, exhibits such trust and commitment to the ensemble, it’s as though they are complimentary musical elements in a chamber-sized oratorio. Not one misstep or miscued line delivery, not one extraneous movement, yet totally natural and plausible. Vital, focused, in your living room real. Vigils must be equally exhilarating to actors and director alike at performance’s end, to know they have given all to the work and created a transformational reality, to recognize how profoundly they have affected an audience, and to realize how well they have served the theatrical muse. A deep bow to the production team: Stage Manager Ruth Stephenson, Set Designer Craig Siebels, Lighting Designer Laura McMeley, Costume Designer Christina Dickson, Sound Designer John M. Flores, Dance Choreographer Elaine Hewlett, Fight Choreographer Bill Lengfelder, Props Designers Jen Gilson-Gilliam and Judy Niven, and the glue that binds it all together, Technical Directors Abby Kraemer and Michael Wang. All worthy artists.

Vigils runs through Saturday, October 10 in the Heldt/Hall Theater at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) located at 3120 McKinney Avenue in Uptown.

For tickets or information: 214.953.1055 www.kitchendogtheater.org

About the playwright: Noah Haidle’s plays have been or will be produced at South Coast Repertory, The Long Wharf Theater, The Goodman Theater, The Woolly Mammoth Theatre, The Huntington Theater and The Roundabout Theatre Company. Haidle is currently working on a new play commission from The Goodman Theater and a screenplay for Scott Rudin Productions. He is a graduate of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Le Compte Du Nouy Awards, the 2005 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights and an NEA/TCG theater residency grant.

PHOTO– by Matt Mrozek. Top to bottom: Matthew Gray, Ira Steck, Tina Parker

Julius Caesar Says, “You lie!”

Does a company producing the classic political tragedy Julius Caesar leap heart and soul into emphasizing its current cable news event parallels at risk of losing touch with the classical text, or does it focus on classical interpretation, ignore modern relevance and risk boring and losing today’s audience? I prefer Shakespeare Dallas’ productions of the Bard’s comedies to their interpretations of his tragedies. With the comedies the director’s hand and vision are always clear and connection to modern times evident, relevant and celebratory. Their productions of the serious plays seem to attempt to straddle both approaches and end up being muddy, neither fish nor fowl.

Brutus (Anthony L. Ramirez) & the Zombies, Jared Land photo

If I didn’t already know the play Julius Caesar, I’d have come away very confused after seeing Shakespeare Dallas’ opening night performance of it at the Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre.  Lots of spectacle, vivid sound effects, flashy swordplay and histrionics — sure hard to follow the plot as presented or understand the nature and motivations of the key characters. Well-done, the plot and character elements could be superbly conveyed on a bare stage without lighting and sound effects, with actors in neutral-toned casual dress. A perturbing visual cacophony permeates this production.

Shakespeare Dallas’ actors present either broadly drawn caricatures (title role, Brutus and conspirators) or a reality TV like swagger with way understated vocal and facial expression (Mark Antony, Octavius, and peeps). In what world do these characters co-exist? A benumbed nonchalance and bizarre physicality pervade the stage during murder and suicide scenes, almost as though the physical acts are of secondary consequence to the actors speaking their lines. Per example: after the  monstrous ritual murder of J. Caesar in Act I, the conspirators amble around the stage as though Caesar’s mangled body is a piece of furniture, not in-your-face graphic evidence of their horrific savagery. Have these men killed like this before? I don’t think so. They proceed to wave their bloodstained hands around in the following scene like zombies, almost comic. Was this an intentional ghoulish effect, or did the costume mistress threaten the actors with bodily harm if they “got any of that nasty stage blood on the nice costumes”? It presents a most distracting, disconcerting picture. To what end? What is going on?

Speaking of costumes, ouch. Is this production set in any particular time period? Is there a defined costume theme? I’m nonplussed. In Act I the conspirators wear a type of modern day business suit attire while Caesar looks like a cross between a generic pontiff and an Elvis impersonator. Mark Antony and youthful friends are attired somewhat like 1990’s punk rock idols, visibly tattooed. Act II heads off in another direction. The men’s costumes seem like a cross between Star Trek uniforms and 1920’s aviator outfits with knee boots and breeches, an attractive enough jumble on the younger actors, but a bit like Tom Delay’s dance attire on the mature fellows (surely unintentional?). When Brutus adds a gaudy, short smoking jacket to his boots/ breeches/ Star Trek ensemble I pictured Liberace and wondered how this attire helped to reinforce or develop the tragic decline of the “noble” character Shakespeare created. Very confusing. Disappointing.

I hate writing negative reviews, so I’ll stop here. This is a truly great play, stuck in a baffling, hodgepodge production. Should have known something was awry when the music blaring from the speakers pre-show was by The Beatles. Huh?

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, as presented by Shakespeare Dallas through October 3 at the Samuell Grand Amphitheatre, then at Addison Circle Park October 7–11. Directed by Raphael Parry.

Features many fine performers: Anthony L. Ramirez, Aaron Roberts, Adrian Spencer Churchill, Austin Tindle, Hilary Couch, Ginneh Thomas, Justin Locklear, Michael Johnson, Francis Fuselier, Eric Devlin, Mike Schraeder, Randy Lee Chronister, Calvin Roberts, Matt Fowler, Josh Hepola, Thomas Brazzle, Ryan Martin and Alex Worthington

Tickets: www.shakespearedallas.org

Spell Me a Song: T3’s Bee-Dazzlement

Can you spell PREDILECTION? That’s what the nearly full house audience demonstrated tonight at the opening of Theatre Three’s production of the Tony award winning, internationally produced, Broadway play turned musical OPUS The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. They loved what they witnessed and gave it a rousing standing ovation at FINIS.

PREVARICATE: that’s what I’d be doing if I said I entirely concurred with the favorable assessment. While the merits of the production outshine its shortcomings, it has some issues that cause me CONSTERNATION.

Theatre Three's Spellers

This musically demanding work awash with subterranean psychological complexity deals with the beneficial transformation that excelling in anything can cause in eccentric people who don’t “fit in” with the cool crowd, whether in a junior high classroom or at an office holiday party. The Spelling Bee setting creates the MILIEU for self-discovery. Contestants assume the roles of children but offer a more mature perspective; similarly, school staff managing the contest reveal more than professional mentoring demeanor. REVELATION of the transformational process takes place within the fourteen-fifteen musical numbers created by William Finn to accompany Rachel Sheinkin’s book, as in Stephen Sondheim’s OEUVRE. This musical seems deceptively easy to produce, a “kids’ show”. But it’s not.

The show’s youth-like VIGOR lends itself readily to a rushed pace. Director Bruce R. Coleman focuses his actors on maintaining the playground recess-like, buzzing tempo, making it difficult to understand words to some songs. That’s a problem when the songs carry much of the sense of the show. A CONCOMITANT result of the hurtling tempo, subtle, tender moments and depth of portrayal get sacrificed. Characterization becomes CARICATURE. With a few exceptions (Alexandra Valle as Marcy and Chad Peterson as Leaf) there isn’t much going on here below the surface.

What’s with humor based on putting people down for their IDIOSYNCRACIES or differences from perceived “norms”?  I heard and watched people all around me cackling with glee at the scripted jokes while I winced at the pervasive sarcasm and poor taste ribbing based on culture/ ethnicity/ pedophilia/ domestic abuse/ religious and sexual orientation. (Define guacamole: Guacamole is Mexican pudding). Why is that funny? If that’s your kind of humor, this is the show for you.

It’s a visually pleasing endeavor with a minimalist set and freewheeling, playful costumes, props and backpacks constructing a representational junior high MONTAGE (Set Design Jeffrey Schmidt, Lighting Design Amanda West, Costumes Bruce R. Coleman). Musical accompaniment excels (Musical Director Terry Dobson or Ass’t Musical Director Vonda Bowling on piano, Mike McNichols or Justin Preece on percussion, Peggy Honea on bass and Ellen Kaner and Michael Dill on woodwinds). Random audience members incorporated into Act I add to the general hilarity, although some are more “random” than others. Theatre Three’s The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee spells well enough to make it to the second round but not to win a championship trophy.

The cast includes: Amy Mills, Paul J. Williams, Darius-Anthony Robinson, B.J. Cleveland, Megan Kelly Bates, John Garcia, Arianna Movassagh, Chad Peterson, and Alexandra Valle.  “Guest” appearances by Corey Stoner, Morgan Justiss, Nick Evin and Mary Norman, opening night, thrilled the crowd….

Runs Thursdays through Sundays through Sunday October 25.

TICKETS: 214-871-3300 or www.theatre3dallas.com

Grim Gardens at Watertower Theatre

Everybody suffers with Grey Gardens, now in production at Dallas’ WaterTower Theatre. Endlessly! The characters suffer; the actors suffer; the audience suffers. Most of all, the play suffers. This musical is a perfect example of a prevalent malady in today’s theatre—it exhibits promise, an intriguing plot, dynamic characters, and memorable music in Act I. Then Act II inflicts itself upon everyone after  intermission, and all suffer. Endlessly.

I realize that Act II is somewhat loosely based on a thirty-year-old documentary examining the decline of the high-class Bouvier women who inhabited a creaky old mansion in disgusting disrepair in the 1970’s. But that‘s no justification for not connecting into the actions, characters or story arc so well created in Act I. I don’t feel the audience should have to conduct extensive filmography research prior to attending to have a solid clue about what the hell is going on. Why are these old gals stuck there, with scads of cats, refuse and “rabid” raccoons? The door isn’t locked. No reason given, just a chaotic jumble of disconnected musical numbers strung together aimlessly.

Endless suffering.

No song in Act II advances the play’s arc one iota, no matter how powerful its stand alone impact. “The Revolutionary Costume for Today”: is the main character singing this an aspiring protestor of some sort? What is she protesting? How does she relate to the person she was in Act I?

“Jerry likes My Corn”: why should we care? Who IS Jerry? A homeless person? A thief? An unwashed, underage gigolo? Who pays him to show up with used appliances and eat corn on the cob? Is he a Samaritan? A distant relative? No hint.

“Choose to be Happy”: a choral number, featuring the main female character Edie in different ‘revolutionary’ garb, the rest of the cast striding about in choir robes led by someone purporting to be Norman Vincent Peale. Honest to gosh. Why is he in this play? Don’t give me that “it’s in the documentary” line. Plays should stand alone, from start to finish. This one disintegrates into nonsense. The playbill quotes main character Edith Bouvier Beale, “It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean. It’s awfully difficult.”

I couldn’t agree more.

What a disappointment! Act I is a delight. Diana Sheehan, Pam Dougherty, Kimberly Whalen, and Gary Floyd interact and sing beautifully, create a fine ensemble of zany, fascinating characters. R. Bruce Elliott portrays the family patriarch with believable gruff pomposity. Secondary characters Kaylee King, Dani Altshuler, Kenne Sparks and Matt Moore flesh out their scenes and advance the story with wit and nuance. What follows does not.

Christopher Pickart has designed an impressive multi-level set that translates readily from crisp Hampton mansion to seedy firetrap and provides a range of settings for all matter of scenes. The lighting compliments the mood with some fine creepy projection work, and the costumes and wigs fit the period while allowing the actors to establish strong portrayals with abandon and energy. (An exception: young Jacqueline Bouvier’s equestrian attire is totally 2009, in no way reflects the type of riding habit a proper young horsewoman would have worn in 1941.)

Diana Sheehan’s singing, voiced with a tremolo vibrato popular in the 40’s yet clear as a bell, is exquisite. Go for her divine performance and delivery. Ignore the fact that Act II is grim.  “You know what I mean?”

Grey Gardens, a musical in two acts by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, directed by Terry Martin with musical direction by James McQuillen, runs at WaterTower Theatre at the Addison Theatre Centre through October 25.    .

Tickets: 972.450.6232; www.watertowertheatre.org

I have no photo from this production.

Bright Monkeyshines at DCT: Junie B. Jones

She defies definition and breaks the rules. She’s a real live wire with an abundant, overactive imagination. Too big for her britches? Definitely. Junie B. Jones is a vibrant character with charm and energy to burn, and kids love watching her get herself into scrapes and back out again. Unscathed!

Lisa Schreiner (Lucille), Jessica Jain (Junie B. Jones), Ashley S. Duplechain (That Grace) Photo by Mark Oristano

Regional theatre audiences are fortunate to have one of the nation’s top-rated children’s theatre companies based here in Dallas. The company’s production of Junie B. Jones & A Little Monkey Business is a stellar example of why the National Endowment for the Arts selected Dallas Children’s Theatre as the only North Texas theatre company to receive a 2009 grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The show is a non-stop delight for both young and old. Based on the beloved 1992 children’s book series by Barbara Park, with book, music and lyrics by Joan Cushing, DCT’s Junie B. Jones & A Little Monkey Business follows the intrepid kindergartener through ten musical numbers and a snappy story line. Depicting the arrival of a little brother for Junie, a cast of six adults, some playing multiple characters, creates the world she inhabits and helps her find a way to accept the newest family member with enthusiasm, not dismay.

Recent University of Calgary graduate Jessica Jain infuses the main character with a natural wonder and sweetness that balances her signature hyper-physicality and outrageous ideas. Her clear, strong voice soars with earnest emotion and holds focus start to finish. Lisa Schreiner, DCT’s PR director, enlivens the dual roles of Junie’s very expectant mother (oblivious to her daughter’s concerns) and Junie’s wealthy kindergarten friend Lucille, the ultimate Miss Priss. She is so outrageously funny as the snobby, self-centered Lucille who sings with a swooping quivery vibrato, kids watching her had tears running down their faces they were laughing so hard. Chad Patrick Smith switches effortlessly between the roles of Junie’s classroom nemesis “Meanie Jim” and that of Junie’s kindly, supportive Grandpa. The rest of the cast forms a crisp professional ensemble, and includes Ashley S. Duplechain, Deborah Brown and Karl Schaeffer (DCT Artist in Residence) in a triple-hitting combo of roles. Knitting it all handily together under the able direction and choreography of Nancy Schaeffer (DCT’s education director) are award-winning set designer Randel Wright and lighting designer Linda Blasé, regional musical director, orchestrator and composer Adam C. Wright, and long-time professional costume designer (stage and film) Leila Heise. They all make it look so easy to pull a fast-paced, complex show like this together. Sit back and enjoy the magic they create from an adult perspective and appreciate how much enjoyment DCT’s Junie B. Jones & A Little Monkey Business brings to young audiences. Suitable for ages 5 and up.

Runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through November 1, 2009 in the Baker Theater at DCT’s Rosewood Center for Family Arts. Tickets: 214-740-0051 www.dtc.org

WingSpan Theatre Goes A-Haunting

T’is the season for the macabre.  At theatres throughout the metroplex, a bizarre witch’s brew of overblown, melodramatic slasher tales with sloshing buckets of stage blood compete for audiences with camped up singing trans-gendered dancing maniacs sporting layers of black eye-liner and fishnet stockings. Gleeful ghouls and goblins will emerge by the hundreds to celebrate the season as Halloween creeps into view. Over at the Bath House Cultural Center, spooky at night any time of the year, WingSpan Theatre Company offers a blood-curdling, scary tale; stone cold sober, based on real events, without a whiff of camp or melodrama. Don’t bring the kiddies….

My Sister In This House, by Wendy Kesselman, portrays the circumstances in an upper class French home in 1933 that led to the mysterious, savage, grisly murder of the homeowner’s wife and her grown daughter by two live-in maids, the Papin sisters, with unclear motive and shady past. (And possibly an “unnatural” affection for each other.)  The dead women’s eyes had been gouged out, faces beaten unrecognizable. The sisters used a kitchen knife, a hammer and a pewter pot that had stood at the top of the stairs. Treated at the time as a celebrity murder on O.J. Simpson scale, some viewed it as a symbol of class struggle. Books, multiple films and stage plays emerged, even opera, inspired by the actions and fates of the sad, mad sisters. Jean Genet’s The Maids, play later adapted to a film directed by Christopher Miles, gained notoriety for its portrayal of sadomasochism and power play ritual.

Whitney Wilson, Catherine DuBord: Photo by Lowell Sargeant

Distinguished American playwright Wendy Kesselman won the national Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 1981, for the version WingSpan performs, My Sister In This House. Making excellent use of the shadow-filled nooks and crannies at the unique Bath House Cultural Center performance space to bring this taut-wound, no nonsense play to life, WingSpan’s production treads a fine line between realism and the grotesque with superlative, understated assurance. The audience feels an invisible cord tightening around its collective neck as the sisters go progressively berserk with desperation and enmeshment.

Played with complete honesty, intimate detail and mutual trust by Whitney Wilson and Catherine Dubord, the Papins transform effectively from neat-as-a-pin, compliant servant girls to disheveled, cold-blooded murderers while the effete, foolish homeowner’s wife and daughter are too self-absorbed to notice or to see what’s in store for them approaching.

Upstairs/Downstairs fashion, scenes play in counterpoint with only occasional interaction between the two pairs of women. Yet tension mounts like a vise clamping down. Susan Sargeant (Madame) and Stephanie Stuart (daughter Isabelle) inhabit a selfish, narrow-scoped bourgeois world, creating a well-defined mother-daughter relationship whether trying on hats or playing cards or bickering. Madame exhibits a cruel need to dominate. Isabelle reacts with passive-aggressive ennui. They treat the maids dismissively, callously, yet in keeping with the cultural norms of the era. Did they drive the sisters to murder, or was it something else? The play leaves the audience wondering, wondering….

Award-winning international director and UNT drama professor Marjorie Hayes guides this production with a firm vision and the wisdom to follow the play’s arc as written but not to wrap it up too neatly at the end. Nobody knows for sure, for real, what happened that evening to cause the Papin sisters to snap and commit murder. Respecting the art of this finely crafted, haunting work involves letting the candle flicker at the finish without quite snuffing it out.

A stuffy, cluttered bourgeois set with a pretentious stairway to nowhere, somber, morose lighting and perfectly pitched sound with excellent inclusion of song and radio snippets help make this odd and disturbing play a worthy, intriguing experience. The sisters’ final moments of disintegration at the end reveal Dubord and Wilson’s depth and courage as performers as they brush hard against madness and evil and strike a universal chord of sorrow.

My Sister In This House runs without intermission through October 24^th, presented by WingSpan Theatre Company in cooperation with the Bath House Cultural Center.

Tickets: 214-675-6573  www.wingspantheatre.com

Enchantment on The Road to Qatar

“We want you to write musical. How much?” Stephen Cole didn’t take it seriously when he received e-mail from Dubai. An award-winning New York musical theatre writer with international production credits, theatre awards, definitive books on theatre and major screen options in his life, he shrugged it off. The inquiries persisted.

Saved by a camel!

The Dubai interests hired musical theatre composer David Krane, with twenty-nine Broadway show hits plus dance music and additional score adaptation credits for the Oscar-winning Chicago on his CV. Stephen and David embarked on an international artistic adventure together, fraught with unimaginable madness and excess.

They wrote their show in five weeks, under constant scrutiny and duress. It resulted in the first American musical to premiere in the Middle East. Ever. Accompanied by a 70-piece orchestra, it played in a giant soccer stadium in Qatar, for the Emir and 1000 of his closest friends. Its climax featured twenty camels dwarfed by the performance space and included a bit on Muhammad Ali. “Las Vegas on steroids.”

International disaster potential? The producers hired an emotional Italian opera director, a British cast, Russian dancers and a language-challenged Bratislava chorus, none of whom had ever worked together —-to perform Jewish Stephen and David’s creation. In Qatar. In English.  To everyone’s relief: a triumph.

Returning to the US, Stephen and David felt compelled to write a show about their experience– it was so darn funny, and a prime example of the arts as catalyst for international cultural diplomacy. Result: The Road to Qatar, now in its premiere run at Lyric Stage in Irving.

Imagine a musical that combines the hijinks of the Bob Hope/ Bing Crosby “buddy movies” in a tongue-in-cheek Cole Porter review style send-up while taking a stab at fostering Middle East peace. A skilled, versatile ensemble, four men and one woman, with impeccable timing and consummate mastery of physical comedy technique, comprise the cast and romp their way through the adventure, even portraying a camel at the show’s finale. Phillip George, with enough international, national and regional credits and Best Of’s to cram full a pirate ship’s hold, directs. He keeps the action crisp and focused, facilitating the mayhem, while maintaining its underscored cross-cultural sensibility and soul. The commonality in “being human” comes across as much as the hysterical differences. Bruce Warren’s transitions from the macho, terrorist-like film actor/ “consultant” Farid to flamingly gay, incompetent Italian opera director/ diva Claudio bring tears to the eyes. Bill Nolte creates an unforgettable picture as the pompous, overblown Egyptian producer Mansour, clueless about theatre, obsessive about schedule. The cast includes Brian Gonzales, Lee Zarrett and Jill Abramovitz as an enthused, out-of-touch translator who finds ‘personal freedom’ in London.

The show would benefit from an intermission. So much takes place with rapid-fire energy and speed; the audience needs a break to fully ingest the chaotic fun. The Road to Qatar runs through October 24^th at Lyric Stage.

“Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.” Funnier, too.

Bioneers Bumps Carson Film

The 2009 Bioneers Conference bumped Rachel Carson to the back of the bus, a puzzling faux pas. It relegated the award-winning film A Sense of Wonder, adapted from acclaimed actor Kaiulani Lee’s internationally celebrated one woman play about Rachel Carson (mother/catalyst of the modern environmental movement) to  last day screening at its 20^th annual eco-conference in Marin County, California. The showing of this much-lauded film, subject of a Bill Moyers Journal on PBS program, was buried amidst a handful of “break out sessions” on the final day, late Sunday afternoon, when many of the event’s several thousand participants had already packed it in for the year and headed home. Maybe twenty people attended the screening. The Q & A session following, with playwright/actor Lee in attendance, clearly puzzled her (used to performing the live version to packed, enthusiastic houses of 1000 and up). Irony emerged upon reviewing the Bioneers 2009 “Moving Image Festival” schedule—on opening night, Friday Oct. 16, the conference featured films A Sea Change and Witness to Hiroshima in the Rachel Carson Tent at the Marin Convention Center Grounds. Not intending to denigrate those worthy films, it would have honored the environmental movement better as well as the memory of the tent’s namesake to feature the film about her in this time slot at the start of the conference, in her own tent, when more people would/could have attended. We need to understand where we came from in order to comprehend where we are in order to plan where we need to go. Rachel Carson, as definitively portrayed in the play turned film, is living proof of what one person can accomplish, a “mere” woman no less, in a male-dominated movement. Unfortunate placement, surely unintentional?

Kaiulani Lee as Rachel Carson, sea by Maine cottage

“There wasn’t an environmental movement fifty years ago; it was Carson’s book Silent Spring that created the modern environmental movement.” Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall minces no words in assessing Rachel Carson’s impact.

It’s 1962. What we watch at first on screen, documentary-style (Act I of the stage play) is a strong-willed woman struggling with packing her belongings to leave her beloved seaside Maine cottage for what may be the final time, to return to city life, publishing deadlines and the rigors of breast cancer treatment. Through Kaiulani Lee’s masterful, inward-drawn portrayal, Carson emerges as a principled, articulate, analytical woman with dry wit and enormous compassion for all living beings. In no way deifying Carson, Lee shows us a real woman who suffers, worries about her adopted son’s future, feels frustration with the perversity and cruelty of others and places huge demands upon herself to speak truth and fight for the rights of nature. “The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth, the same with literature.”

In Act II, set two months later, Carson paces her office in Maryland, anguished yet determined. The publication of Silent Spring, causing a huge uproar, has thrust this very private woman into full public debate over its dire conclusions. She finds herself engaged in full battle with the nation’s leading chemical companies and government regulatory agencies, willing to do anything to discredit her and prevent her from getting her wake-up message to Congress and the US populace. The press hounds her. Requests to address universities and scientific conferences flood in. And her health is deteriorating. Rachel Carson fights on.

No dry eye left in the tiny Bioneers audience. Lee’s portrayal of Carson is so vivid and real, all watching want to reach through the screen to take her by the hand and reassure her, “We’re with you, Rachel, we’ve got your back.” In 1962, when Carson fought her brave battle to expose the devastation of pollution and won, hardly anyone knew there was a war to wage, much less a paradigm to shift. The film’s final image leaves the audience filled with awe, at both Carson’s accomplishments and Kaiulani Lee’s breathtaking performance. Believe in the impossible and act; follow Carson’s no nonsense lead, so lovingly nurtured by Lee. The birth of a movement.

A Sense of Wonder, the stage play, written by and featuring Kaiulani Lee, has toured the United States, Canada, England, Italy and Japan for sixteen years. It has been the centerpiece performance of major educational, environmental, journalism and conservation conferences. The Broadway award nominated Lee brings over thirty-five years of stage, film and television experience to her depiction of Rachel Carson and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Bowdoin College for her distinguished contribution to performing arts. In 2007 Kaiulani Lee appeared as Rachel Carson on Capitol Hill, where she performed the play for Congress.

The film adaptation, A Sense of Wonder, directed by Christopher Monger, was shot in HD by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler at Carson’s cottage on the coast of Maine. Since its premiere tour in March 2009, the film has shown so far to well over 10,000 people in more than 175 cities from Mexico to Canada.

The yearly Bioneers Conference co-founders describe their three-day event with pre and post-conference day long eco-seminars as “the network of networks of visionary innovators with breathtaking solutions to restore people and planet.” Too bad so few 2009 Conference attendees had the chance to gain insight and inspiration from A Sense of Wonder.

To learn about the film and play, go to http://www.asenseofwonderfilm.com/

To learn about the Bioneers and the yearly environmental conference:  http://www.bioneers.org/

Waltzing A World Without Collisions: Master Harold…and the Boys

S. African playwright Athol Fugard must be one heck of an optimist. The son of an Afrikaner mother and a father of Irish Huguenot descent,  he began writing plays in 1959, plays that took direct exception to the bigotry and repression of the apartheid regime ruling S. Africa at the time. After his first play appeared in 1961, the South African government passed censorship laws that forbade racially mixed casts and/or audiences in theaters. When the English BBC broadcast that play in 1967 the South African government confiscated Fugard’s passport, and he was not allowed to leave the country until 1971. Rage could rightfully dominate his works. Instead, they are infused with a poignant poetry and compassionate portrayal of the human condition unmatched by many playwrights living today. Fugard’s plays explore the transcendent possibilities of the human soul and reflect his evident optimism about human potential. Optimism that has proven to be justified.

Andrew Bourgeois, William Bill Earl Ray, Christopher Piper: Buddy Myers photo

His play Master Harold…and the Boys, considered his best by many, made its premiere on Broadway in 1982. Among its awards were the 1982 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play, the 1983 London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Play, Leading African actor Zakes Mokae won the 1982 Tony Award for Featured Actor in a Play, and the play, itself, was nominated for best play at the 1982 Tony awards.

At the same time, Master Harold…and the Boys was banned from production in South Africa. Today South Africa is producing a filmed version of the play for 2010 release starring Freddie Highmore and Ving Rhames. The Emmy winning director Lonny Price, Master Harold in the original 1982 Broadway show, directs the film. Definite justification for Fugard’s optimism.

Metroplex audiences can see an exquisitely executed production of Master Harold …and the Boys right now—playing at the African American Repertory Theater in Desoto through November 1st.

Three characters lead desperately grim lives. Restraint and dignity crash into despondent rage and frustration, climaxing in an act of utter humiliation. Somehow love and hope redeem them all by simple acts: flying a kite…and by the transformational images conveyed of ballroom dancing, Fugard’s “world without collisions”. With subtle direction by Sharon Benge, the ensemble cast of William Bill Earl Ray, Andrew Bourgeois and Christopher Piper convey the dismal realities of each man’s existence, the dark anguish they each hold deep inside with barely containable restraint and the soul-healing power of love and forgiveness that lights the path to a peaceful, hate-free future.

When you go to this production, you will see one of the best-written plays by a living playwright today. And you will also see one of the finest performances in our metroplex for this year.

For tickets to Master Harold…and the Boys, call 972-572-0998 or visit African American Repertory Theater  on-line. www.aareptheater.com

Buddy Meyers photo

L to R: Andrew Bourgeois, William Bill Earl Ray, Christopher Dontrell Piper

DTC’s Dream Inaugurates Wyly Theatre

Cedric Neal (Puck), Matthew Steven Tompkins (Oberon)

Dallas Theater Center embarked October 30 on its new venture at the Wyly Theatre in Dallas’ Arts District with a visually stunning, hyper-kinetic take on William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mostly an adaptation that uses the Shakespeare classic as a launch pad, it sometimes felt like High School Musical meets Hair. Director Kevin Moriarty adorned the sumptuous, austere cavern of a performance space with wall graffiti a la Basquiat on monumental scale, chalked on progressively by a spry slew of Booker T. Washington high school students, representing Titania’s fairies. By the play’s 2^nd act euphoric nuptial conclusion, filled with cascading balloons, soap bubbles and cast members crooning pop and rap-style songs (tuneful and entertaining), the walls were awash in crayola-hued tones and the audience surged onstage to join in. I half expected to hear “Let the Sunshine In.”

No, this is not your college English teacher’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A definite downer for traditionalists or purists, it was a hit with the opening night audience. I’m not sure how some audience members felt about actors crawling over them, aisle by aisle, or treading across the backs of their seats, or how they felt about getting sprayed with nerf balls in the “battle scene” between Oberon and Titania’s graffiti minions or getting soaked by Oberon’s giant water gun. Everyone else enjoyed watching the “by-sitters” squirm under assault.

Expository, illustrative sections of text and key plot elements are eliminated, perhaps in favor of maintaining warp-speed pace and entertainment value for today’s audience. Sometimes the “battle between the sexes” between the young lovers lost in the Athenian forest (never present in any visual way) looked like an extreme gym workout with non-stop yelled conversation. Subtlety, even delicacy, normally exists in this play, if not this production.

Matthew Steven Tompkins as a regal, commanding Oberon in Bruce Springsteen-like costume with mesmerizing vocal power and tone delivered a strong performance, as did lithe Cedric Neal as his mischievous sidekick Puck. Neal made frequent “amends” with his delectable singing voice. The audience hit of the show was Chamblee Ferguson, excelling with a virtuoso, over the top performance as “rude mechanical” Nick Bottom. Turned into an “ass” by Oberon’s magic marker, he’s also the hammy hero of the play within the play. Such clever, inventive ways to die may have never graced an improvisation class, particularly the symbolic sawing off of all extremities with a soft rubber sword. The audience roared their approval.

Stunning, surprising visuals, exhilarating displays of speed ladder-climbing, superbly sung and danced musical numbers, all wedded to one of Shakespeare’s most revered romantic comedies—it added up to a resplendent hit for Dallas Theater Center’s inaugural performance in the Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre. Consider bringing a raincoat if seated close to the stage.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through Nov. 22 at Wyly Theatre, AT&T Performing Arts Center, 2400 Flora St., Dallas TX. This production is part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, a national initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

For tickets, 214-880-0202, www.dallastheatercenter.org

Talk Radio at Upstart: Catch the ‘Tude

Elias Taylorson as Barry Champlain

Check out the audio interview with featured actor Elias Taylorson on This Week in the Arts.

Tough to find a DVD of Oliver Stone’s 1988 screen adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s Pulitzer-nominated play Talk Radio. A cult favorite flick featuring Bogosian and a fresh-faced Alec Baldwin, it’s not filed by the hundreds on the local Blockbuster shelf. People who know it OWN it. Ever seen it staged? Got the cojones to produce it? This tension-riddled, cynical play about a fictitious Cleveland-area shock jock, surly, chain-smoking, booze-swilling Barry Champlain, who runs his mouth and eviscerates his soul non-stop in front of a “live audience”, has prescient, ominous relevance for today. Guess that’s why when its stage revival hit Broadway in 2007 it knocked a metaphorical crater in the Great White Way.

Directed by Tony Award-winner Robert Falls and starring Liev Schreiber, it garnered Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama League award nominations for Best Revival of Play and Best Actor in a Play. Additionally, Schreiber was awarded the prestigious Drama League Award for his Distinguished Performance. Playwright Bogosian commented, “Talk Radio kind of surprised people, because they revived it last year, twenty years after it had been written, and it felt fresh. But that’s because I don’t really write about topical stuff; I write about American attitudes, American values, my values, my attitudes.” A Play with ‘Tude.

It takes a theatre company with ‘tude to do it justice. The creative folks steering Dallas’ Upstart Productions possess those creative cojones to embrace Talk Radio and make it their own, sweeping the audience right along with them. Their production running at the Green Zone off Irving Blvd. through November 21 is a must-see for media junkies, aspiring shock-jocks and lovers of knife-edged, realite theatre alike.

It starts when you pass through black velvet drapes and beneath the dark On Air sign to find your chair on the risers facing the inward-driven playing space. You’ve just traveled through time to find yourself a fly on the wall inside the recesses of an  1980’s era radio station in Cleveland, Ohio. Across the back of the space spans weird little glass-faced cubicles where sound techies and programming staff work their voodoo so the “talent”, the DJ’s du jour, can focus on spinning LP’s and amusing themselves aloud to anonymous nobodies. Center stage, unlit, perches a long desk with mikes and headsets, various recording paraphernalia and a black leather office chair behind, empty. The staff bustle and tweak things in their glass-fronted boxes, anxiously readying the ‘show’ for the next diva as the audience gets seated, subdued, expectant.

With no fanfare he bursts onto the scene, all business, harried, cigarette hanging from his lips. He hurls himself into the chair, barking orders with accustomed cynical vehemence, sans pleasantries or eye contact. The man creating talk radio has arrived. Like a conductor with baton, he pulls the mike to his face and the sound tech counts him down to airtime. The On Air sign flashes crimson. Barry Champlain has ascended the throne. He’s controversial and popular, and he doesn’t give a damn. He’s ready to dish out as good as he gets to a twisted, adoring public. Don’t mess with him; he might hurt you.

Eric Bogosian wrote this play with Tad Savinar, this role, for himself, based partly on the real life of cutting edge sensation shock-jock Alan Berg, murdered by a racist for his provocateur style and risky subject matter. It made Bogosian’s career.  Upstart Productions features Elias Taylorson in the title role. It may prove to be a defining role for him as well.

It’s all Barry on the mike, never a hint of Taylorson acting as Barry. Regional director Regan Adair has created intense focus with classical pace and rhythm. Barry bounces in a blink from fending off a stream of wackos on air to dressing down his co-workers to hard-edged negotiating with the smarmy, controlling station manager, played with reptilian officiousness by Shane Beeson. The non-stop barrage never gives Taylorson time to pause or think; he simply reacts in character, lit cigarette dangling and booze close at hand, in what amounts to a poetic but offhand stream-of-consciousness performance. At moments he seems like a benign fatherly figure dispensing kindly advice; other times he seems like a cornered, rabid beast, lashing out at tormentors. Without warning he crumbles into a bewildered, exhausted loner — the weight of the world’s soul bearing down on him. The fluctuating beats flow naturally, as if he is living them. The other characters flutter around Barry in oddly syncopated yet naturalistic harmony, again reflecting the thoroughness of director Adair’s artistic vision and the trust and focus of this tight, professional ensemble.

Long before Lockerbie, the Unabomber, McVeigh and 9-11, or the likes of Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, Barry Champlain (nee Alan Berg) hunkered close in to his microphone amidst clouds of cigarette smoke, and prophesied a drugged-out, fear and hatred-riddled future in a nation consumed with trivial, consumerist pursuit. Powerful commentary for its era. Upstart Productions explores current relevance in the work and sends the audience out to ponder what the future may hold. They got ‘tude.

The excellent cast includes: Joey Folsom, Lulu Ward, Raquel Lydia Leal, Tony Martin, Meridith Morton, Michael Rains, Darren Steptoe and Clay Wheeler. Joel and Scott Bayer, Scott Payne and Mason York designed the time-suspending set, lighting and sound.

BONUS! Post performance, Upstart shares an informative video documenting an interview Elias Taylorson conducted with Judith Lee Berg, ex-wife of Alan Berg, the model for Barry Champlain, and Stephen Singular, Berg’s biographer. Stick around for the facts.

Talk Radio runs through November 21 at the Green Zone, 161 Riveredge Drive. Co-produced with Project X.

Tickets: www.upstarttheater.com

Link to Lawson Taitte’s Dallas News feature on actor Elias Taylorson:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/columnists/ltaitte/stories/DN-talkradio_1104gd.ART.State.Edition1.4bbe2db.html

My Nightmare on Pearl St.

Like most theatre-loving folks in Dallas and as a regional theatre critic, I was very curious to see what the experience of attending a performance the new Wyly Theatre would be like. I got my chance this past Friday night, October 30, when Dallas Theater Center inaugurated its use of the Wyly Theatre with the production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I call the evening “My Nightmare on Pearl St.”

WYLY: Giant Gray Water Cooler

It took a while for my press pass to get confirmed by DTC staff, but when it did, I learned they arranged a parking pass for me at “the garage” so I wouldn’t have to pay $15 to park. I was instructed to “enter the garage from Pearl St. to get my parking pass.” Sounded simple. Seek parking pass, Wyly Theatre garage off Pearl St.

I hardly ever go downtown. Why would I? The theatre productions I review weekly are performed at a wide range of accessible venues in neighborhoods throughout the community. The closest I generally get to downtown is Deep Ellum for Undermain Theatre or Uptown for Kitchen Dog Theater. Plenty of free parking, close to the venues, with interesting bars and restaurants nearby for post-show discussion. I didn’t feel the need to Google the location; after all, the Wyly Theatre is a tall building standing off alone, probably sporting a prominent marquee of some sort, right? Hard to miss. I figured I’d get on Pearl St., cruise down to the theatre and park in its garage, as instructed. Just to be on the safe side, I left home fifteen minutes early, to allow for traffic.

I get to Pearl St., no problem. Except, it’s one way. Not the way I need to go. I know the general location of the venue, so I start exploring the frustrating one-way, ‘no turns allowed’ zigzags one has to follow to negotiate downtown Dallas’ street maze. If there are street signs, I can’t see them at night. I know I’m somewhere close as I can see the lipstick red of the Winspear Opera House as I foray along. Oddly, I can find no sign saying, “This is the Wyly Theatre”, or “Wyly Theatre Parking Here”. Five minutes pass. I go by what looks like a giant old-fashioned evaporative cooler, a tall, grayish box-y building. Not attractive or welcoming. Maybe the Wyly? Nothing much near it except the Winspear glowing like a space ship in full bloom about a football field away. I keep making turns, sure I’ll see a line of cars going into the bowels of the earth below the building, with signs and uniformed attendants. Finally I come across a line of cars heading into a parking structure. Delighted, I join the queue. This has to be it; I won’t arrive late. As I approach the attendant gate, it occurs to ask if I’m at Wyly parking. There are no signs anywhere, none that I can see. Wouldn’t it be silly to be at the wrong garage? “You’re at the Meyerson, miss.” Oops. I glance at the LONG line of cars behind me. “How do I get out, and where is Wyly parking?” I ask in panic. Told to “drive on through” with a shrug as though this is an everyday occurrence, I begin the labyrinthine search for an exit, recalling the Minoans and Sartre, realizing that at least three of the four cars parading along ahead of me are being piloted by lost souls, too. Another five minutes passes, feels like half an hour. The exit looms, and I pull to its lip. “Right Turn Only” greets me, again no street signs. I am truly lost now.

“The Wyly, a tall box of a building wrapped in a skin of aluminum tubes, is standoffish outside and yoga-flexible within; in classic Koolhaas form, the 600-seat theater dares the Dallas arts establishment to complain about its severe, basement-level concrete lobby, the almost punitively narrow main staircase and a terrace lined with bright-green fake grass.” Christopher Hawthorne, in the Los Angeles Times

I note again that giant grayish water cooler structure looming darkly, and there appear to be cops wearing reflective orange vests on another street corner a half block away, directing creeping carloads of confused people. Maybe they’ll guide a lost soul?  Cheerily, they point me to the Winspear. I insist I’m there for the Wyly. “The WYLY.  It’s over there?” Cop smiles broadly. “It’s got no parking yet, miss; you have to park under Big Red.”  Big Red: a revelation. I turn left to approach Winspear parking entrance off yet another no-name street. To my amazed delight, the attendant has my name on his press-parking list, and I’m waved on in. By now, my “extra” five minutes have elapsed. My heart races, even if my car cannot due to the line of lost souls chugging ahead of me, seeking similar respite. I park my 2004 Kia Hatchback on Lexus P2, exhale a huge sigh and follow two ladies in stiletto heels to an escalator up. Up? I’m feeling disoriented by now. Am I still in Dallas or on some weird glass and concrete planet?

We arrive at ground floor level by Big Red. I can see Giant Gray Water Cooler some distance away. Trying not to fall into a dusky reflecting pool at walkway level, I approach another orange-vested gent. “Is that the Wyly over there, and how do I get to it?” I query him.  “Just hop right in this golf cart, young lady, and I’ll buzz you on over! There’s a long, steep slope and I’d hate to see you fall in the dark, hurrying down it.” Golf cart? I notice a flotilla of them. Steep slope? And howdy, more concrete. A bonanza for the skateboard set, ought to be real interesting to negotiate in heels when black ice season hits. So, the terrain is flat around here…why dig a hole with a steep slope to bury the theater entrance below ground level? How will limos or cars with elderly and disabled people pull up close to disgorge their attending patrons? I flash on a sudden image of a graceful circular drive, landscaped attractively with colorful, live plants, flowing under an elegant, arching portico, bright-lit and welcoming. A bevy of handsome doormen bustle to assist patrons to alight. Chandeliers, buzz, merry anticipation? Wishful thinking. Back to dark, steep slope in a golf cart. Fake greenery. Grim aspect. It doesn’t even look like a theater.

Jeremy Gerard (former Dallas Morning News theater critic), in Bloomberg News: “In the Wyly, “There seems to be no quiet way for the actors to make exits and entrances; footsteps on metal stairs throughout the building pierce the walls, as do noises from the lobby. The seats are torture-chamber hard. All that stacked technology, I guess, required the entrance to the theater to be below the plaza level, down a concrete hill that seems to invite tripping.”

I emerge from my chariot and enter the Wyly’s main doors that remind me of a 1960’s science fiction movie set. I’m hoofing it now, don’t want to miss the opening moments of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 8pm curtain. Can’t be hard to locate my seat.

I get my ticket at the press table and go through more sci-fi doors. Stairs loom ahead of me. LOTS of steep stairs. In grey metal, dimly lit. Whoa. No time to lay carpet before opening? I trudge slowly up, placing my feet carefully. On the landing, an usher purrs, “Thanks for going slow up these stairs, that’s very wise of you.” Ominous, yet. “Where is the carpet?” I wonder. “Gosh, these stairs are ugly and slippery. Hope there’s an elevator.” I’m baffled.

I find my seat on the ground floor, against the back wall, toss my purse and press packet into the empty chair bucket next to me and fall into mine. I need a stiff drink, but the show’s about to start, once the junior league chairman of the auxiliary committee to redefine art as we know it for the next century concludes his opening remarks. What’s this? No cush for the tush? Hard grayish plastic bucket seat, following the grey metal stairs motif. Ouch! Rough to sit through O’Neill’s Desire under the Elms or Stoppard’s The Invention of Love in chairs like these. Venue booking requirement; only short one-act plays, please, seats hurt audience bums too much for longer performance.  How much did Dallas pay for this theater? Does the architect hate audiences? Did he ever take time to sit in these seats? I’ve sat on high school gym bleachers more comfortable than this. These seats will be easy to wash–just hose them down. Note to self: if you ever return here to review, bring ample stadium pillow for comfort.

Then I look up and around. The seating here is raked, so why can’t I see the stage? A man, average-sized, no Afro, no Stetson, sits in the row below, directly in front of me. I can’t see most of the stage through his head. I’m no midget. A seat with an obstructed view in a theater that cost how much? I shift to the empty seat to my left. Better, I think, until I realize my view of stage right is now blocked by a huge, grey, (no other color will do) column. A seat with an obstructed view in a theater that cost how much? I’d be pretty mad by now if I’d paid for this.

Finally, relief! Shakespeare’s words begin to grace the air. It’s a fast-paced show with much running up and down levels, climbing ladders, and entrances and exits from all sides of the modified thrust stage. There’s a catwalk about five feet above my head. I realize I’m missing dialogue because of the loud clomping of the herd of elephants, “fairies”, charging pell-mell down the ramp above to get to their next entrance on time. No baffling? No carpet? More bleak grey metal surface perhaps? Another venue requirement: only produce shows here where actors are barefoot and tiptoe along the catwalks. Whose ridiculous idea was this?

Intermission arrives. My neck aches from leaning way over to try to view stage right action, and I can’t feel my derriere. I stand up. Presumably there’s a ladies’ rest room and a BAR, somewhere, but I may need to rappel back down the slippery metal stairs to find them. I stretch and eat a breath mint. Pass on bathroom and adult beverage. At least for here. Visions of Knox-Henderson late night.

The play ends with cascades of balloons and soap bubbles, loud music and dancing, commingling of audience and cast in what feels like the final scene from the film Slumdog Millionaire. I find an exit out of Giant Gray Water Cooler Wyly at street level. I don’t have to climb the steep slope back out of the hole in the ground.  I pause at the street corner en route to Big Red, marveling at the discomfort and confusion I’d just experienced. Who will want to endure it when winter comes, when rain and ice and wind whip across the vast emptiness between the Winspear and the Wyly, with no way to avoid their onslaught? Didn’t the architect learn about Dallas weather?

I ride a crowded elevator with other exhausted, stressed playgoers to Lexus P2 and slide into the comfy, padded driver’s seat of my lowly Kia. Before I turn on the ignition I find I can’t stop smiling. I really love reviewing Dallas’ regional theatre. Visions dance on my dashboard. I picture Undermain Theatre with its congenially tended parking lot right next to it on Main St. and Flower Mound Performing Arts Theater with its rustic charm, up close ground level access, free parking. I smell the breezes wafting off White Rock Lake by the Bath House Cultural Center and recall the warmth of its reception/ gallery/ box office area, the friendly staff. I recall how welcome I feel at well-lit WaterTower Theatre in Addison with its two clearly designated performance spaces, ground floor accessible, and easy to find bathrooms. Right next door is the Stone Cottage where MBS Productions performs with folding padded chairs, but no obstructed view in the house. I don’t mind sharing the one bathroom with Mark-Brian’s cast. At Lyric Stage I can drive right up to the brightly lit entrance and drop off a companion before I park in the lot adjacent; the excitement of live theatre spills out of the building from its ample carpeted  lobby. No obstructed views and well-padded seats help make attending theatre there a pleasure. At Shakespeare Dallas’ Samuel-Grand Park setting, I set up my folding chair wherever the PR director escorts me to, ease back and enjoy a great view with snack and libation right out of my own ice chest. In Ft. Worth, there’s free parking after 6pm in the downtown garages on the square. Whether I’m heading to elegant Bass Hall or intimate Circle Theatre, I feel safe strolling to any of the eight or ten restaurants not five minutes from either venue before the show, or after, even if I’m alone. There are no steep concrete slopes to negotiate, unprotected from severe weather. I’m so glad the metroplex has a wide array of thriving performance arts groups and venues that serve the needs of attendant audiences and artists so well. My Nightmare on Pearl St.? It offers a different sort of memorable experience. I wish the Wyly Theatre speedy resolve with some of their evident opening challenges. I also wish Dallas Theater Center, flagship theatre company for the region, the very best with productions at its new, modern venue.

“Although Los Angeles is often dismissed (and misunderstood) by Europhiles as a city with no center and no heart, Dallas would be the better example….The Arts District is the cultural version of that city. Here star projects sit in self-satisfied isolation, unrelated to each other, unconcerned. If these buildings are supposed to be part of an effort to ‘regenerate’ or ‘reconnect’ the city center, they have failed.” Edwin Heathcote, in Financial Times

Quotes pulled from Scott Cantrell’s article in the Dallas Morning News Sunday, November 1, 2009: “Critics weigh in on Wyly Theatre and Winspear Opera House”

As Minds Lie: Second Thought Theatre

Bryan Lewis, Chad Gowen Spear: David Leggett photo

A Lie of the Mind. I want to call it “LIES of the Mind”. All the characters in this play inoculate themselves from life’s painful realities with lies. Layers of ‘em. That’s only one aspect of Sam Shepard’s dramatic masterpiece about spousal abuse, family dysfunction and the path of self-destruction his despondent, degenerate characters crawl down.  It’s more like LAY of the land; get a handle on this ‘lie of mind’.

Who wants to sit through a three-act play about such grim subject material, anyway? What soap opera: isn’t life sad and seamy enough? Here’s the genius of Sam Shepard. He writes about really messed up people and makes it so interesting the three acts fly by. If the play is executed well, that is. In Dallas’ Second Thought Theatre’s case, the company rises to the occasion with style, grit and relish.

Aside from being fascinating to watch at some squirrelly, voyeuristic level, this play is amazingly cathartic. An actor just can’t sleepwalk his/her role mumbling the lines and looking rough and raunchy bespattered in stage blood and gore. Nope. He/she has to inhabit a role, find plausible motivations (within the ‘mind’s lie’) for irrational behavior and hold the audience perched taut on seat edge through a highly tortured search for transcendence. Kind of like juggling hand grenades, wondering if they’re live or not. Try really hard not to drop one, but keep on juggling.

Helming Second Thought’s production is Mac Lower, a youngish but seasoned director who has studied with Sir Peter Hall, participated in the Edward Albee New Playwrights Workshop and the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. He gives his actors the freedom to follow outrageous instincts and become monsters enmeshed in their fantasies and lies, while leading them through a grounded reality that looks on the surface like “normal” life to an audience’s gaze. He has the Second Thought cast leap, eyes open, into a dark abyss of mind exploration.

Consider the two mothers in the play. Sylvia Luedtke plays Lorraine, mother to the play’s protagonist, psychotic wife abuser Jake. In order to keep him safe from the world that forces him to act like a monster (not his fault, not a bit), she attempts to imprison him in her home in a near catatonic state, killing him with “kindness” and cream of broccoli soup. When he flees, she simply burns the house down. Luedtke portrays Lorraine as an All-American mom, just looking out for her boy and cleaning up after, with simple sincerity and the utter conviction she has the world by its tail and is following the most logical game plan. She’s nuts, but the audience buys her rationale as she treads a fine line between over the top caricature and naturalism. Luedtke has amazing interpretive instincts as an actor; Lower’s direction makes excellent use of them.

Nancy Sherrard plays Meg, mother of Jake’s now brain-damaged wife. Meg is abused, herself, bullied by her cruel sadist husband Baylor, played with relentless, ego-inflated self-delusion by Barry Nash as an unredeemable misogynist bigot. Sherrard has a huge presence on stage and often plays commanding roles; yet her character in this play is beaten down and soft, has retreated to a selective reality fantasy world where she no longer engages in any confrontation. Impeccable timing and nuanced line delivery inform Sherrard’s acting in any role she takes on; here, working with director Lower, she uses these well-honed skills to reveal a cloying simplicity punctuated with brief moments of mental clarity like ephemeral puffs of smoke. Pitiful yet believable, crazy as a loon, she creates a superb metaphorical contrast to Luedtke’s hyper “action mom”.

Can one sympathize with a wife abuser, particularly when one sees the hideous bruising and brain damage inflicted on his wife, the result of savage beatings? Jake is deranged and dangerous, easy to make him a one-dimensional sadistic jerk. Lock him up, fry his ass. Shepard works his artistic magic and gives this character the play’s charge to seek and find transcendence. Chad Gowen Spear merges childish unreasonableness with child-like bewilderment in creating the role. Intensely physical yet reflective, the actor reveals an ever-changing kaleidoscope of attributes and motivations in a presumptively “unthinking” character. Gowen Spear looks like a man who “thinks”; in this role, he must feel first. His mind “lies” on unexpected ground. Director Lower pushes this actor to experience such intense suffering as Jake that it carries him and the audience to a new perspective on the life experience of an abuser.  Unusual and unforgettable portrayal.

Guess what, abused wife Beth isn’t just a stereotypical victim here. She’s also pretty handy at dishing out abuse. Oddly enough, her brain-damaged state renders her as the clearest thinker in the play. Anastasia Munoz embraces physical roles with complete abandon. Director Lower ekes every last drop of kinesthetic sensibility out of her performance as Beth. The audience aches with her every bruise and broken bone then watches in horror as she evolves into an inadvertent abuser, too. It’s quite a transformation.

Rounding out the solid ensemble cast are Duane Deering and Bryan Lewis as innocent family members swept up in everyone else’s misery and Elizabeth Evans as Jake’s sister desperately trying to flee the codependent dysfunction surrounding her. They all look and feel like “family” and work as both foils and catalysts for the main characters’ actions. Superb casting all around by Mac Lower.  What a fine study of the potential for and expression of madness where “a mind lies.”

Realistic multi-level set design by Chris Jenkins, effective sound with original composition by Heath Gage and lighting by Jason Driggers creates the right ambience.  Marty Van Kleeck’s costumes reinforce the stark realities of each character while helping to maintain an overall subdued sense of impending doom.

A Lie of the Mind, by Sam Shepard, runs through November 14 with one matinee on November 8 at the Addison Centre Studio Space next to Water Tower Theatre.

Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com, 800-838-3006

Information: www.secondthoughttheatre.com

Ochre House’s Empty Room: Fill your Head

Rock music mantra “free your head,” echoed across the late 60’s-early 70’s, when our nation’s repressive government pitted a frightening arsenal of mind control techniques against the drug and free spirit ideology-induced revolutionary paradigm shift of a rebellious generation.

"If you cooperate, things will go much easier...."

SDS, the Weathermen, Socialist Workers Party members, Earth First-ers and the artists and musicians who crystallized their diverse, anarchy-leaning thought into bumper sticker slogans and catchy acoustic tunes found themselves arrested, interrogated, imprisoned, fined, black-listed, blackmailed and sometimes killed off for real or perceived nefarious infractions.  True civil disobedience was met with harsh retribution, as it would be today. Snitches and CIA operatives infiltrated naïve, idealistic “focus groups” and cells of dissent with ease. The clashes of the forces of ordered control and those who seek to undermine them provide stage worthy fodder to fill the mind.

“Lots of people do a lot of horrible things in the name of right.”

Or so thinks Kevin Grammer, local actor, creative persona and regular member of Matt Posey’s The Ochre House acting company, THE PIONEERS OF THE SUAVANTE-GARDE. With Empty Room, running at The Ochre House through November 21, Grammer dips his peripatetic big toe into the play-writing pond and disturbs the still, deep waters with quicksilver ripples that make you wonder what unplumbed tsunami of thought may lurk behind.

Empty Room is a short five-character play, with four of them on stage. It takes place in a blank room, a timeless lock-down holding cell. Two TV monitors, facing the house, are mounted above the cell, where on-going interrogation can be viewed in counterpoint to the scenes progressing main stage.  On stage characters lament, berate one another, cling tight and deal with the waiting limbo madness with various degrees of resignation, distrust or paranoia. It could be now; it could be 1969. Catalyst for much of the interaction, spoken of sadly by all, is a sister, killed accidentally when a bomb goes off in her hands. Civil action gone awry. Each stage character disintegrates as the interrogation torture begins, delivered by a crisp, courtly doctor in bowtie and suspenders played with firm but polite reserve by Grammer, himself. How does the mental torture of regret affect the mind? Does physical torture affect the mind less? After they return from individual ‘sessions’, does the room the characters occupy seem emptier?  You decide.

The solid cast of Empty Room includes Laurel Whitsett, Mitchell Parrack, Brian Witkowicz and Kevin Grammer. Grammer wrote and directed the play; Matthew Posey designed the set, lighting and sound. Roll up your pants legs, Mr. Grammer, and wade on into the oceanic possibilities of crafting plays. The water’s fine.

As is Empty Room.

The play runs through November 21, Wednesdays through Saturdays, at 8:15 pm. The Ochre House is located at 825 Exposition Avenue, in the same block as the Amsterdam Bar. Plenty of accessible, FREE parking.

RESERVATIONS: (214) 826-6273

“How do you stop terrorism? Quit participating in it.” Noam Chomsky

PHOTO: left to right,  Kevin Grammer (Doctor), Brian Witkowicz (Man 2), Laurel Whitsett (Woman), Mitchell Parrack (Man 1)

Full Sail Ahead: Port Twilight premieres

Mad Scientists in Port Twilight by Len Jenkin

Sci-fi thrillers make perfect viewing for autumn nights. Undermain Theatre sweeps into Fall 2009 with the world premiere of Port Twilight: or A History of Science (A Chronicle of Folly, Wisdom and Madness). It’s a sci-fi fantasy/ thriller by Len Jenkin, one of the nation’s most distinguished playwrights, directed by Lakewood resident and Undermain Theatre’s artistic director Katherine Owens. Owens met Jenkins while touring a production in New York more than a decade ago. In 2006, Undermain’s production of Jenkin’s Margo Veil: an entertainment, also directed by Owens, earned kudos from The Dallas Morning News as the number one pick of the seasons’ top ten productions. Jenkins’ credentials and awards are quite impressive: they include three Obie Awards for directing and playwriting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, a nomination for an Emmy Award, four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a PhD in literature from Columbia University. His stage plays have been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, Germany, France, Denmark, and Japan. Dallas is honored.

A member of a group of New York based writers known as “The Language Playwrights” with pronounced language-based, lyrical focus, Jenkin feels right at home in Undermain’s unique, always magical performing space under Main St. in Deep Ellum. Mel Gussow of the New York Times opines, “In his plays, Len Jenkin often takes us on dark midnight rides to mythic environments…he leads us through a stretch of the American landscape tantalizing our senses and creating a haunting world.” He could be describing the fantastical ambience of Undermain Theatre, as well.

In Port Twilight, the landscape plays a defining role. Owens brought in two leading Texas scenic painters and designers, Linda Noland and Terry Hays, to create a layered landscape effect in the performance space, like public murals. The designers worked furiously for over a month, using the same techniques to create the murals that Michelangelo used in decorating the Sistine Chapel. At completion, over two hundred feet of painted muslin in bright color schemes energizes and encases the whole underground space, including wrapping around the numerous columns that define the performance area.

Owens says working with Jenkin on his plays is inspirational as well as good fun. Jenkin came down from New York (he teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts) in October to sit in on rehearsals. Both director and playwright felt the production was moving along so well, they decided to take time off and play one afternoon at the Texas State Fair. All Undermain designers involved with Port Twilight joined in on the outing. Owens laughs about the excursion:” Four and a half hours later we got back to the rehearsal space. I was so exhausted keeping up with the merriment, I fell sound asleep for three hours in the theatre, with people working all around me.”

When Port Twilight opens this Saturday night November 14^th, all that imaginative exploration, lyrical writing, hard work painting and good times playing will come together. Like magic.

Undermain Theatre’s production of Port Twilight: or A History of Science runs through December 12 at their Deep Ellum location in the basement of a six-story red brick building at 3200 Main Street, Dallas, TX between Hall St. and Exposition Ave.

Plenty of FREE, well lit, accessible, cordially attended parking.

For tickets, call (214) 747-5515 or go to www.undermain.org

PHOTO: Danielle Piccard, Ariana  Cook, Josh Blann and Christian Taylor

Ashley Randall, photographer

Don’t pity this whore: Slasher at Kitchen Dog

Slasher is way too bold and bright to pity as a whore. Kitchen Dog Theater’s production of Alison Moore’s national stage hit is more of a bright-eyed, new ‘recruit on the street’ type of play, a saucy tart oozing charm and redemptive qualities in flashing neon-lit burn. Moore’s high dudgeon farce weaves two close-hooked themes like patchouli incense through the production; one is an exploration of manipulation and (s)exploitation, the other examines aspects of good and evil.

Don't mess with Frances

Not a whit heavy-handed, the only hammer near this production is wielded by wheelchair-disabled mother Frances who smashes her painkillers as personal release and declaration of war on cheap porn. Go, Frances.

All the fun and frolic’s in the action, just like in the slasher film genre the play pillories, replete with a breadth of blood-smeared, jiggling tits and ass revealed alluringly en route to chainsaw. The plot unfolds like the film Waiting for Guffman: sleazy film producer (Chris Hury) blows into town and cons local ingénue Sheena (Martha Harms) into becoming the “last girl” killed in his newest slasher venture, i.e. his ‘star’, with more lustful intent than artistic sensibility. But wait, he’s no match for the pragmatic, independent-minded Sheena who negotiates a high pay package for her film appearance (“It cannot be exploitation when they are paying me this much money”), nor for her Bates Motel savage mother Frances (Lisa Hassler), spouting Gloria Steinem-speak on one hand, through drug-addicted haze, and wielding a home-made bomb in the other. Don’t mess with this Mama, no how. Add a sweet, sprightly, dim-wit aspiring film assistant (Drew Wall), minor “luv interest” for Sheena, and a parade of Kentucky-fried catalytic characters and disposable wenches, some with hatchets imbedded in their skulls and revealingly clad (Leah Spillman); Kitchen Dog serves up a theatrical feast heftier than a Manwich Sanwich with a heaping, ketchup-laced side of Hamburger Helper. Mm-mm, good.

Clare Floyd Devries’ set defines the space mostly vertical, with pulsating neon lights and two raunchy portraits (one a nasty slasher dude, the other a wide-eyed blonde babe) flanking the stage area and stretching way up into fly space, painted by Cathey Miller. Mama Frances enters through a backlit upstage arch on her ‘power-chariot’, Jaws-like accompaniment pumping up every time she motors in ready for battle. Garish lighting by Suzanne Lavender defines the wholly unwholesome mood. Cameron Cobb goes to extravagant and perverted lengths, utterly delightful, in creating original music and sound design and choreographing the lurid fight/seduction scenes. What’s a genuine slasher-flick without a dose of gratuitous sexploitation masquerading as a fight scene? How many such films did Cobb endure viewing to get that slimy ambience down pat? Christine Vela’s costumes and Jen Gilson-Gilliam and Judy Niven’s props are the cheesy cat’s pajamas, like Cool Whip and sprinkles on this 7-11 banana crème pie special.

Good clean fun!

Director Tina Parker’s ensemble purrs along in chaotic, cartoon-like squalor, portraying the unfolding dichotomy of good and evil with merry vengeance. Rebekah Kennedy as Frances’ school-aged daughter gives a nice turn as a school-focused innocent, oblivious to all the chaotic folderol unleashed around her. Don’t bring your Tums; it goes down real smooth.

Considered “a gathering point for theater professionals and critics to take the temperature of the American theater” (St. Paul Pioneer Press, April, 2008) the 33^rd Humana Festival honored playwright Allison Moore by featuring her play Slasher in its 2009 line-up. The Humana Foundation has sponsored the festival for thirty years, the largest and longest-running current partnership between a theatre and a corporation in the country.

In the spirit of SLASHER’s fusion of theatre and film, Kitchen Dog Theater, spearheaded by SLASHER director and SAG member, Tina Parker, has partnered with the Screen Actors Guild’s Dallas branch to host a benefit night for the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. The SAG Foundation (www.sagfoundation.org) provides healthcare for actors in need, emergency financial relief for families, and a variety of education and literacy programs. Its mission is to “enhance the lives of actors by investing in programs which help them in their professional endeavors and the communities in which they live.” All tickets to the benefit will be $25 and $10 of every ticket sold on November 20th will be donated to the SAG Foundation. Attendees will also enjoy a post-show reception with the cast and members of the Kitchen Dog company.

Slasher at Kitchen Dog Theater runs through December 12

Tickets: 214-953-1055 or www.kitchendogtheater.org

Zen-ergy Shoots the Moon at Undermain Theatre

Watch a small child get lulled to sleep by a fantastical tale that concludes in total peace and quiet. As the final moment of Undermain Theatre’s production of Port Twilight: A History of Science wound down to a silent, “zen-ergized” finale on opening night November 14, I could feel most of the audience join me in a collective gasp, breath caught in sheer delight. I felt like that small child.

"Enjoy yourself: it's later than you think!"

The chameleon-like wonder of it, the pulsating wave after wave of lyrical language and startling sensory effect that infuses every atom of playing space, the humorous tangents commingled with ominous pauses like droplets of honey and tart lemon on the tongue, we watched, fascinated, as mere, foolish humans struggled to solve enormous universal riddles while barely managing mundane existence. Hard to call it a play, more of a mesmerizing meditation carried out by ritual celebrants commonly known as “actors.” It is, indeed, a true staged celebration of life.

Ogle the set design, enthralled, when you walk into the theatre. Over two hundred feet of muslin stretches throughout every recess and blank wall of the labyrinthine space, wraps around the support columns, disappears back stage, drifts out towards the lobby. Boldly splashed in radiant, resplendent graphic display, the panorama was meticulously hand-painted over a month’s time span by fine artists Linda Noland and Terry Hays, under the guidance of Undermain’s Tony Award-winning set designer John Arnone. A nod to Lascaux’s cave art flows into comic book characters that twist into Picasso-esque fantasy worlds and strident graffiti that would fit naturally into a New York subway tunnel. Strings of tiny, white lights dot the landscape, far and near, twinkling at appropriate moments like magical fireflies. The visual impact is as brilliantly evocative, reminiscent of special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The expansive panorama depicts the whole universe unfolding before your eyes, draws you in deeper and deeper…and deserves mounting in a museum or gallery once the play closes.

I am no quantum physicist. No way! But the multiple threads of odyssey-like tale in Port Twilight weave together with such structured rhythm that I suspect the presence of some genius algorithm driving them along. Ten actors play a myriad of overlapping roles and stroll or scamper in and out of each other’s scenes/ realities. In one, a young girl (Danielle Pickard) wanders the landscape in search of love and acceptance, encounters an obsessed, fatalistic scientist neighbor (Josh Blann with a  hair-do from Hades) and finally finds her heart’s desire (Ian Sinclair).

"Too many detours" Josh Blann

In another reality, a blasé middle-aged couple (slicked back Jonathan Brooks looking like a 60’s movie idol and Shannon Kearns-Simmons adorned all Neiman’s sheik in black cocktail ensemble) alternate between addressing the audience from lawn chairs in the jaded town of Port Twilight like a slightly inebriated Greek chorus, snubbing each other, and assisting a dominatrix research scientist (Stefanie Tovar) in a search for extraterrestrial contact. Along the way they re-connect with each other. Another thread lampoons the machinations of bad script writing and LA-textured B-movie filmmaking (Jessica Cavanagh, Arianna Cook, Bruce DuBose, Josh Blann, Ian Sinclair) with satisfying resolution. In yet another scenario, a crazed rabbi mumbling rote incantations (Bruce DuBose) wanders aimlessly through several layers of reality, in vain search of a new Messiah, accompanied by a bedraggled orphan servant (Ian Sinclair). What they find, (loincloth clad, feral Christian Taylor) is unanticipated. There’s more, which I won’t spoil for the reader by describing. At routine intervals, a chorus line of scientists in dark sunglasses and white lab coats dances vaudeville-style while singing the 40’s samba tune Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think). There’s an intense, apocalyptic video interlude and a wacky alien machine puppet with a huge exotic head and moving appendages with flashing red lights. A menacing organ grinder (Kent Williams) with a monkey dispensing Chinese fortunes from a tin cup strolls through many threads and directly accosts the audience, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Does he hold the key to the universe?  The end arrives and steals everyone’s breath away. Enjoy yourselves, y’all.

Undermain’s versatile acting ensemble is in fine form here, drops nary a line, misses no quintessential physical moment. With the endless cacophony of non sequitur action rounding the play’s arc, the cast demonstrates admirable trust and focus. This show could not reach its kinesthetically stunning heights without the dedicated work of a superlative tech crew.  The “unsung stars” are: John Arnone (scenic design), Giva Taylor and Angus Deardoff (costume design), Steve Woods (lighting design), Bruce DuBose (musical composition), Jeffrey Franks (video design), Jessica Barnett (stage management), Brooks Aubrey (prop fabrication), Ben Bryant (master electrician), Rob Menzel (audio consultant), Sean-Michael Galgano (sound board operator), Sean Springer/ Erik Cardenas (additional creative construction). Quite a team; take a much-deserved bow.

And then there is the Merlin of the piece, playwright Len Jenkin. Jenkin’s credentials and awards include three Obie Awards for directing and playwriting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, a nomination for an Emmy Award, four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a PhD in literature from Columbia University. His stage plays have been produced throughout the United States, as well as in England, Germany, France, Denmark, and Japan. Dude knows his stuff.

Undermain Theatre’s production of Port Twilight: or A History of Science runs through December 12 at their Deep Ellum location in the basement of a six-story red brick building at 3200 Main Street, Dallas, TX between Hall St. and Exposition Ave.

Plenty of FREE, well lit, accessible, cordially attended parking. But…watch out for poorly marked “no parking” spaces on the street.

For tickets, call (214) 747-5515 or go to www.undermain.org

PHOTOS by Ashley Randall

Top: (l to r) Danielle Piccard, Ariana  Cook, Josh Blann and Christian Taylor

BOTTOM: Josh Blann

Swamped with Misfortune

What a technical delight. Jeffrey Schmidt directed as well as designed set and sound for Theatre Three’s current production of Lanford Wilson’s 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Talley’s Folly. His creative juices and resourcefulness shine in assembling the derelict boathouse set for the play. It’s simple and effective–all elements recyclable, re-used lumber, found objects, masses and strips of paper, crumpled up old show posters. The diverse elements seem incongruous, yet the finished design exudes the tangible ambience of a formerly elegant, now derelict, shanty on the edge of a swamp. Easy to picture the mosquitoes that must breed and swarm there, the nests of poisonous snakes that lurk under its disintegrating pilings. Wilson’s quirky WWII romance soars with lyrical flights of language and imagery that dive off into unexpected turns of phrase and reflection. Director Schmidt’s inventive, innovative set couldn’t be more appropriate for this play, with his sound design and Amanda West’s moonlight-washed lighting design intensifying its impact.

Unrequited, Unquiet Love

Unfortunately, the acting does not follow suit. This play is basically one long lover’s spat, with the inevitable peaks and valleys of communication that a spat entails. Chuck Huber as oddball suitor Matt demonstrates intriguing potential in his opening monologue, which curiously loops back upon itself for self-examination and pulls the audience in close. Huber understands how to utilize a script to reveal subtext, the power of silence, and how decisive movement can inform a character like no words ever can. But from the moment Shauna McLean baldly shouts her entrance as Sally, all possibility of nuanced performance or interaction dissipates like the morning mist around the boathouse. Hers is a stressful, unconvincing performance. She appears to have been given a single stage direction, “Enunciate clearly and speak loudly. VERY loudly.” She grimaces and yells, which doesn’t give Huber’s Matt much of a place to go, much less the evolving love affair any basis for credibility. Nobody yells his/her way into a love affair.

Two issues here: first, fine that Theatre Three does not mike its actors. Teach the actors how to project properly so a whisper can be heard and understood as well as a shout. McLean’s voice must be pretty hoarse after each performance. Second, Huber’s character Matt gets irrationally agitated numerous times, which should physically threaten Sally. McLean delivers her lines that she’s leaving but makes next to no effort to do so, in spite of Huber not blocking her avenue of escape, in spite of him behaving threateningly. She seems to shrug his emotional explosions off, hardly notice them? The culminating kiss at play’s conclusion looks out of place, does not reflect mature acceptance of love’s power. It doesn’t make logical sense. Huber and McLean look attractive together as Matt and Sally; but with her strained delivery, lack of subtle expression or appropriate physical response, there is little believable chemistry generated. It’s a poignant, intriguing play with abundant emotional content and a romantic setting to die for. Too bad it suffers the misfortune of early demise in this particular realization.

Talley’s Folly runs through December 20 at Theatre Three. Tickets and Reservations: Theatre Three’s Box Office at 214-871-3300, option 1 or www.theatre3dallas.com

Photo Credit: Ken Birdsell
L-R: Shauna McLean, Chuck Huber

Good Things, Still Waiting: Stage West

Good things come to those who wait, or so the saying goes. Walking out of a performance of Scottish dramatist and poet Liz Lochhead’s play Good Things at Stage West, I realized I was still waiting. I have tremendous respect for the wide-ranging body of creative work created by Stage West artists. Earlier this year they mounted an admirable production of Thornton Wilder’s demanding, complex, experimental, three-act opus The Skin of Our Teeth. An unwieldy, at best, play. Tough and long for a modern audience to follow, it’s even harder for modern actors, barely versed in enacting the ‘well-made play’ tradition, to perform with believable characterization given its abrupt leaps from stylized comedy to political theatre within a surreal over-arching apocalyptic world view…. Stage West really pulled it off and provided as much of a satisfying audience experience as any company that doesn’t have Julie Taymor’s production budget and technical execution team could hope to do.

So why present Good Things by Liz Lochhead? It’s Scottish, with at least four dialects, maybe more. I lost count. I don’t know them. I watched four qualified actors playing multiple roles wander adrift in a sea of clumsy voicing, occasionally falling out of whatever dialect they were attempting completely. So distracting. With the plethora of available well-penned American comedies, why does any company choose to stray across the pond and face its actors with the prospect of trying to create strong characters while speaking in foreign accents, dialects, idioms they aren’t familiar with? And then expect the audience to follow along cheerily and comprehend it, too? The 20-somethings seated near me fidgeted and checked text messages with increasing frequency as the play proceeded, as the dystopian challenge of making ha-ha out of another culture strained their patience. Mine, too. Will they come back, after a dose of this?

Then there is the play, itself. Act I is a long expository set-up dealing with a middle-aged aged woman trying to come out of her shell and start dating again: pratfalls, lost shoes, mixed up identities, ex-husbands, summer/winter romance, repressed desire, a full bag of tricks, like many American plays. Then in Act II we learn a stalker has pursued the woman relentlessly. What has been light and funny suddenly goes dark, very dark, when it’s revealed the stalker either commits suicide or gets accidentally run over by a bus. Just ask any woman who has dealt with a stalker. It’s NOT funny. This play becomes Not Funny with muddy Scottish accents.

Love ya, Stage West! I’m patient and devoted and glad to wait for good things to come. Jim Covault directed Good Things with creative input from Jerry Russell. The cast included Stephanie Dunnam, Jim Covault, Amber Guest and John S. Davies (with closest to comprehensible accent). Jim Covault designed the set and co-designed costumes with Peggy Kruger O’Brien. Lights by Michael O’Brien, props and décor (voluminous and detailed) by Lynn Lovett.

Good Things by Liz Lochhead ran at Stage West Oct. 29 – Nov. 29.

Their holiday offering A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol opens December 10, features Bradley Campbell, Lana K. Hoover and Jim Johnson and is directed by Jerry Russell and Aaron Albin.

For tickets call: 817-784-9378, or visit www.stagewest.org

Rim Rock Opera Delights at Circle Theatre

So much holiday fare leaves a flat taste in the mouth like last year’s store-bought sugar cookies. It’s got all the razzle-dazzle of tinsel, shiny ornaments and consumerist frenzy but misses the true heart and soul of the holiday by a country mile.

Hitch your team of mules to your buckboard and trot on over to Circle Theatre at Sundance Square in Ft. Worth. Their holiday offering, the world premiere of the “rim rock opera” A Lone Star Christmas, will tickle your funny bone, please your ear, keep your toe tapping, drive a tear down your cheek and honor the core of the love lesson mean ol’ Scrooge learns in the classic Dickens tale.

Combining bluegrass, swing, country ballad, and a cappella voicing, it’s stitched together by a kindly, homespun storyteller (Gary Moody, who also penned the book and lyrics), who steps in and out of the action at appropriate moments, Circle’s production offers a gentle unfolding of the adaptation. It sways along in tempo with the Taylor-Made Boys’ guitars and upright bass (Charles Crawford, Rick Norman & Gary Taylor), poised upstage for much of the show like at a West Texas barn dance.

Sound corny? Not a bit. It’s more fun than a “horned frog on a red ant hill.” The cast of six plays multiple roles, sings non-stop and strolls in and out with easy grace as the narrator unfolds his story. The humorous, dire fate of Jacob Marley (played with charm and gusto by Jeff McGee) contrasts vividly with the poignant daydreams of Mrs. Cratchit, and Scrooge’s loss of his life’s love Belle as the love of money overtakes him. The singing voices, while not always perfect, please the ear and fit the musical style. One song “Oh Ebenezer/ Lie to Me” hints at the rhythmical complexity of Sondheim and makes you want to holler out ‘encore’ with its melodious harmonies and soaring sadness. John Venable, a tall, slim handsome drink of water in tight jeans, delivers an outstanding vocal performance with tender interpretation of Scrooge as younger Ebenezer and as Bob Cratchit. Burl Proctor as older Scrooge brings a rough-edged vigor to the role, equally at home center stage nasty and growling or pleading his case trailing after a ghost. He makes the redemptive transition believable. Director Chris Robinson keeps the scene transitions snappy while honoring the overarching gentle tempo of the piece. Eddie Floresca’s choreography flows smooth and natural, and Drenda Lewis’ cheerful costume choices define characters and mood alike. The versatile stage ensemble includes: Rachel Rice, Heatherton Hardy Wilson, John Venable, Burl Proctor, Jeff McGee and Gary Moody.

Take a break from the rush, crush and commercial frenzy. Remember what richness of joy love and generosity can bring this season with Circle Theatre’s A Lone Star Christmas Carol.

CD’s of the music, produced and performed by Gary Taylor and Lloyd Maines are available in the theatre lobby.

A Lone Star Christmas Carol, book by Gary Moody, music and lyrics by Gary Taylor and Gary Moody, runs through December 19. Reservations: 817.877.3040 or www.circletheatre.com

PHOTO: Front row:  Rachel Rice, Heatherton Hardy Wilson
Second row:  John Venable, Burl Proctor, Jeff McGee
Third row:  Gary Moody, Gary Taylor

Good Times of the Season, Yah, Ya Know, at Stage West

A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol? What sort of high carb Minnesota goulash casserole is Stage West serving up for its holiday entrée? A cheery one, with a Waring-style blender mix of farcical high-jinks, zany, hug-able characters, and a romantic story loosely crafted (as in goose) on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, set in a small-town Minnesota bar in blizzard conditions. Director Jerry Russell’s impeccable comedic instincts insure that all musical numbers (eighteen of them) flow naturally, feel like vaudeville routines, get funnier as they proceed along and somehow never detract from the play’s ice-thin plot’s unfolding.

Is this a play or a musical? It’s requires a leap of faith for the local audience at first. Lights flashing and pulsing, the karaoke machine sitting downstage right in the barroom set takes over and turns itself on at will, engaging the hapless characters onstage in spirited song and dance, from wherever they are standing, whatever their dialogue. About the third ‘interruptus’, the audience gets the hang of the show’s tongue-in-cheek format and starts chuckling; thereafter, they’re rooting for the gags, eagerly awaiting the next twist of homespun farce or musical hyper hyperbole as it launches. Stage West’s production takes aim and pleases, across the board. Hugs earned all around, in spite of the title.

A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol is no lame, haphazard second stringer in the major market success department. The brothers Olson, Paul and Phil, who wrote and composed the show, hail from Edina, Minnesota. A major part of the play’s genuine charm arises out of these brothers’ ability to poke fun at themselves and at the Minnesota cultural stereotypes they create within the Scrooge tale. In addition, like A Tuna Christmas following close on the success of Greater Tuna, this holiday adventure tags along after its triumphant predecessor. Stage West’s press release reveals: “Don’t Hug Me was a smash hit in Los Angeles, where it won four Artistic Director Achievement Awards, including Best Original Musical.  It was so successful that three theatres booked the sequel even before it was written.  A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol opened in five cities simultaneously in 2006, playing for sixteen weeks in Los Angeles to sold-out houses.”  The show’s tone may feel hokey-dokey-pokey, but it’s as classically styled as a Noel Coward production.

Stage West’s cast brings the right complement of energy, talent and ensemble professionalism to the enterprise. Bradley Campbell and Lana K. Hoover play a couple resigned to the fact their marriage has lost its luster, Gunner and Clara, with Bradley doubling as the “Scrooge” who needs to learn a lesson about love and generosity.  Randy Pearlman and Mary Jerome-Autrey play a second couple at odds, Knute and Bernice, he hopelessly in love with her, she dazzled by the idea of stardom away from the bar and mundane life. Jerome-Autry also doubles as the pseudo-Tiny Tim of the show, almost bringing the house down in Act I with her rendition of “You Can Call Me Tiny”. Tying the Dickens tale together is Jim Johnson, playing aging roué Sven Yorgenson, with a penchant for Dean Martin impersonation. He also performs as the ghosts who visit the bar to educate the Scrooge-like Gunner. Oozing smarmy charm like a leaky tube of suntan lotion on a hot tin roof, Johnson’s Sven and the ghosts he plays, thinly disguised, amplify the hilarity to high pitch in Act II. “The Bunyan Beguine” could make one pee one’s pants as Johnson delivers it. And there’s a karaoke sing-a-long at the end for the laughter-inebriated audience to join in on the fun. Oh, the ribs do ache.

Holiday stage fare in Ft Worth is a winner this season. Enjoy dinner at Stage West’s café and see A Hug Me Christmas Carol first. The next night dine at Sundance Square and attend A Lone Star Christmas at Circle Theatre for a different, enjoyable experience. Stage West’s A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol runs through January 17. The company will host its popular New Year’s Eve party on Thursday, December 31, an evening featuring the performance, followed by light food (including traditional black-eyed peas) and a champagne toast at midnight.  Reservations and information are available through the Box Office (817-784-9378), or on the website, www.stagewest.org.

PHOTO:     Bradley Campbell (bottom), Lana K. Hoover & Randy Pearlman

Lyrical magnificence: Black Nativity at Bishop Arts

The show begins in complete darkness, silence. When the curtain rises, a simple wooden cradle rests upstage on a small raised platform strewn with straw. The women enter, slowly, decisively, tall and short, clad in colorful, flowing robes reflecting their African–American heritage; and their music inhabits the space. “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Earth-born elegance. Incandescent artistry. Celebratory, heart-pounding rhythms drawn from classical to gospel repertoire. Looking for a unique way to honor the spirit of the season and community-driven, superior performance art, too?  Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity provides that magic.

“My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.” Langston Hughes

Adjacent to the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff sits a first-class, unassuming performance venue that entertains, educates and serves over 15,000 children, adults and thespian artists every year with cultural relevance and diversity. Through December 20^th, TeCo Theatrical Productions at the Bishop Arts Theater Center presents African-American poet, activist and playwright Langston Hughes’ retelling of the Nativity story, Black Nativity.  He incorporates traditional Christmas hymns, all interpreted in Gospel style. When the show was first performed on Broadway on December 11, 1961, it was one of the first plays written by an African-American to appear there. And it featured 160 performers arranged by age group and vocal range, with full orchestration

In TeCo’s production, a smaller cast fills the stage with their remarkable classically trained voices and fine acting presence. Included in the ensemble of eleven performers are the members of the acclaimed New Arts Six ensemble, including their director as play narrator.  This unique collaborative of classically schooled women artists focuses on producing original musical/theatrical works and utilizes Spirituals to musically record history and folk tradition. What a rare opportunity to see New Arts Six employ the full range of their diversity of talents in performing Hughes’ breathtaking two-act masterpiece. The ensemble includes: Glenda Cole Kay (lyric coloratura, opera and oratorio touring artist, DISD instructor); Dorothy Regina Powell (mezzo-soprano, internationally sought after opera and choral touring artist); Linda Hall Searight (contralto, featured classical soloist and tenured DISD teacher, touring artist, founding/artistic director of the Grammy-winning recording choir, God’s Property); Gale Washington Tyler ( lyric soprano, writer, actress, arranger, extensive performing experience with symphonies, orchestras and opera companies in Europe and the US, Masters in Music from SMU); Monya Davis Logan, music director and pianist ( UIL accompanist, teacher with Dallas Symphony’s Young Strings Orchestra, former instructor at Booker T. Washington  School of Performing Arts, Music Director at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church; Cynthia Dorn Navarrete, director/ narrator ( extensive performance experience in major feature and industrial films, TV movies, commercials, voice over and on stage). Their performances are riveting, in solo or harmonizing with the five other skilled singer/performers joining them on stage. These five include Crystal Pool, Brandon Dillard,  Jacqueline Lawrence, Aubrey Stephenson and Trey Birkhead. Voices soar with precision and soulful abandon.

This minimalist production may not be what Langston Hughes originally envisioned, but it captures and distills the majesty and musical eloquence of his work in a way he would surely approve of. Hughes is one of the earliest innovators of jazz poetry as art form and is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1960, the NAACP awarded Hughes the Spingarn Medal for distinguished achievements by an African American. In 1961 Hughes was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1963 Howard University awarded him an honorary doctorate. If you see no other holiday performance this season, you owe it to yourself to attend this rich, reverent, inspired, magnificent production of Hughes’ work

Tickets for Black Nativity are $15 in advance and $20 at the door, reserved seating.  Showtime starts at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday nights and 3:00 PM Sunday matinees. For ticket information, call (214) 948-0716 or to purchase tickets online, visit www.tecotheater.org.

The Bishop Arts Center is located at 215 South Tyler Street in Oak Cliff.

A South Pacific Love Affair: Lexus Broadway Series Opens at the Winspear

Romance and realism can make entertaining bedfellows. What could be more entrancing than to watch two realistically depicted people fall deeply and believably in love on stage? Getting to watch them do so as they sing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s melodic, romantic songs with impeccable vocal styling, talent and a gorgeous production enveloping them evokes euphoric thrill.

"There is Nothin' Like a Dame"

Given Rodgers and Hammerstein’s extensive output of romantic musicals and the stilted, cliché-ridden staging their works often endure, it’s easy to forget the true artistry in their creative collaborations. The Lexus Broadway Series presents the Lincoln Center Theater’s production of the duo’s 1949 classic South Pacific as their opening selection at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Opera House and delivers a fresh, vibrant performance that wins the audience’s hearts from the moment the leads Nellie and Emile exchange first love-struck glances.

Not one iota of diva mindset “don’t touch me, muss my costume and make-up, or get in my light” body language emanates from anyone on stage in this production. Leads to ensemble, they are all beautiful and engaging and cut exquisitely romantic pictures, whether in WWII uniforms, evening attire, period swimming suits or even (briefly) less. All performers exist vibrantly in the moment, whether wooing a potential sweetheart, dancing in a USO-style girlie revue, lounging about the island’s “seashore” or atop the WWII fighter plane that rolls onstage in Act I to the audience’s amazement and delight. Dreamy, dazzling, pure stage magic.

This production’s Nellie, Carmen Cusack, wraps the audience around her little finger as soon as she steps onstage and launches into “A Cock-Eyed Optimist”, with definite hint of Patsy Cline-like country twang and infectious spirit of genuine fun. After all, Ensign Nellie Forbush hails from down-home Little Rock and describes herself as a ‘hick.’ Houston native Cusack is an international singing artist with major cast recordings and leads in national tours of Phantom of the Opera and Wicked under her trim, girlish belt; her fluid, clear voice could melt icebergs and her sincere charm drive many an admirer to fantastic escapist dreams of island romance. Matching Cusack in every aspect is the ebullient, glamorous, dashing Jason Howard, performing as Emile de Becque in this US tour with support from UK Equity. Howard conveys an old-fashioned chivalry and mature elegance in his demeanor while matching any 2009 Romeo in youthful vigor and earnestness while pursuing love and arguing for tolerance of mixed race relationship. Who wouldn’t want a modern-minded lover with the manners and panache of a free spirited entrepreneur from the “greatest generation” era? Howard’s characterization blends the classic and modern with every gracious movement and word he utters. And when the man sings? His confident, resplendent baritone soars out through the multiple levels of the gorgeous, new performance space, a superb test case for the Winspear’s resonant acoustics. In addition to singing opera and musical theatre from Strasbourg to Seattle, Howard has recorded a personal solo tribute album to Gordon MacRae and Howard Keel. Seize the opportunity to appreciate his rare vocal talents and his defining portrayal of a Rodgers and Hammerstein iconic romantic lead.

Providing relentless, zany comic relief and a surprisingly caring workingman’s perspective is the inventive, expressive, physically fearless Matthew Saldivar as mischievous, scheming Luther Billis. An MFA graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Saldivar has originated major classical and modern roles on and off Broadway.  Whether leading the chorus of singing/dancing Seabees in ”There is Nothing Like A Dame” or dancing over the top drag in the Act II high-energy romp ”Honey Bun” with Nellie, Saldivar informs his role with hilarious vigor and spot-on professional comic timing.

Offering a satisfying performance with a powerful, youthful tenor voice in contrast to Jason Howard’s mature baritone, Anderson Davis makes a handsome, thoughtful junior romantic lead as Lt. Joseph Cable, physically fit but not narcissistic and steroid-pumped. Davis’ Cable evolves believably from a cocky Princeton-educated snob to the conscience of the play, as an advocate for racial tolerance.

Lt. Joe Cable and Liat

His passionate response in the courting scenes with the young Polynesian girl Liat (Sumie Maeda) seems to take him by surprise and reveals his growing awareness of the common bonds of humanity. Rodgers and Hammerstein took a risk here in bringing racial tolerance to the forefront in 1949. A politically relevant musical may have seemed disgraceful, out of place, at the time. Davis’ Cable gives the tolerance issue prominent dignity and makes his point in “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” without diminishing the play’s dominant romantic themes. Keala Settle’s physical energy and presence as the bold temptress, roustabout and camp huckster Bloody Mary fit her role excellently, although her rich, dark voice seems occasionally muffled in her microphone, making her words, sung or spoken, indistinct.

This South Pacific possesses a gutsy sensuality and abandon, reveals a willingness to risk all for higher purpose, whether that purpose be true love or love of country and freedom from tyranny and repression. The people living on the island setting are isolated and close to siege and imminent destruction from the enemy Japanese nearby. The consistency of these themes in set design, revealing period costumes (not always flattering), technically complicated moments, musical abandon within classically correct delivery and honest romantic exchanges reflect and reinforce a conscious artistic decision on show director Bartlett Sher ‘s part. He positions what is often considered a dated nostalgia piece into a fresh context able to connect well with modern sensibility and tastes. All design artists, Catherine Zuber with costume, Donald Holder with lighting, Scott Lehrer with sound, Michael Yeargan with set and Ted Sperling with musical direction, share in the well-knit success of this absolutely entrancing production.

Watching this South Pacific feels like peering down a time-warp telescope into the lives of real people in 1949. James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific inspired the show’s book, by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. Most politically aware of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s shows, the musical portrays the everyday lives and loves of soldiers and civilians on two remote Pacific islands during WWII, when things weren’t going so well for the Allies. Instead of glorifying or demonizing he impact of war on people’s lives, the musical depicts its effects on an intimate human scale.  Humans are dominated by nature and larger than life events in the colorful, provocative set design by Michael Yeargan. The painted sky as massive upstage backdrop filling the back wall which flows effortlessly from sunset to clear blue mid-day to darkening clouds, the fighter plane poised waiting to fly into battle stage right, the massive drop down map of the Pacific “Theater” dominating the “war room”– all effectively reinforce the pitiful smallness of human existence while allowing its participants to find true meaning in everyday relationship. The audience shares vicariously, hungrily, in this connective experience.

One technical issue: several audience members seated in the center orchestra section mentioned they were distracted seeing cast members entering and exiting the set from both sides during major scenes and wished sight lines had been better reviewed and entrances masked off. I had no such problem seated stage left.

Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times over half a century ago, described the original production of South Pacific as “a tenderly beautiful idyll of genuine people inexplicably tossed together in a strange corner of the world.” He could be describing this Lincoln Center Theater production. If superior art educates and illuminates as well as entertains, Lincoln Center Theater’s production of South Pacific as performed at the Winspear earns superior marks on every artistic level. And it makes it oh so easy to fall in love.

Photos: Peter Coombs

Sumie Maeda as Liat; Anderson Davis as Lt. Cable

My Best of Live Theater in DFW 2009

Magic on stage in the Dallas-Ft. Worth region. A wealth of creative theatrical endeavor: satisfying, dignified and quirky, heart-warming and spine-chilling, thought-provoking and side-splitting, high art to lowly farce. Performance ritual reveals truths of the human condition through magical transformation. Or we hope that happens. Here’s what wove that special magic for me this year, of those I had the privilege to review.

My 10 Top Productions of 2009

• Talk Radio, Upstart Productions: Regan Adair, director
• The Nibroc Trilogy, Echo Theatre: Ellen Locy and Pam Myers-Morgan, directors
• The Black Monk, Undermain Theatre: Katherine Owens, director

Any of the above three shows could hold the #1 slot. I loved every one, went back several times. All featured taut, dynamic, evocative scripts. All featured superbly balanced acting ensembles with sophisticated, nuanced direction. All presented fully realized worlds with detailed, seamless technical execution. Their artistry soared. I chose Upstart Productions’ play for #1 after much deliberation. Its bold success amazed me. Talk Radio is only Upstart’s third show; yet their production made as powerful an artistic statement as the larger, longer established companies’ plays did. Very few shows I saw this year are scripted as innately static (cast stuck in sound booths, lead tied to a microphone most of the time) and “talky” (disembodied voices for page after page of phone calls) as Talk Radio. Yet there was nothing sedentary about it. Overwhelmingly and immediately it captured the audience’s full attention with its unique, well-delineated setting and through the nerve-jangling, suspense-filled energy the spontaneous-feeling phone calls created. It never let up; in fact, it continued to build to the final monologue, thanks to director Regan Adair. The “show” started long before any major players stepped on stage. Director Adair, widely respected and versed as a leading actor in the metroplex, understands the full blown sensory importance of mood, timing and setting. He fully embraced the opportunity to create a vivid, detailed late 80’s world in the pre-show as the catalytic motive-defining setting for his cast, in a realistic but fictitious radio station. The station was full on up and running before audience members entered and took their seats. Its dynamic seized focus before even coats could come off and programs get perused, Adair’s directorial intent. National political commercials aired (Bush/Dukakis, Willie Horton), along with weather, news reports and station identification in a loop recorded by some of the area’s leading talent in cameos. Cast members bustled about their “normal” duties as station employees, establishing the gritty realism, the bustle, the impersonal disembodiment of an on air world, the anticipation surrounding the arrival of on-air personalities, long before any word was spoken. I felt like I’d entered a magic time machine. I sat, fly-on-the-wall fashion, fascinated, watching a real live event unfold, not a stage play. Adair’s comprehensive vision created a vibrant, viable world, again, before one word was spoken. I respect the superior work of all three companies; Talk Radio earned the #1 slot for its audacious commitment to excel, with the wise and seasoned guiding the dynamic, fresh and raw, upholding the Upstart mission statement.

• Trinity Shakespeare Festival, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet: J.T. Walsh and Alexander Burns, directors
• South Pacific, Lexus Broadway Series at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Opera House: the Lincoln Center Theater’s revival on tour, Bartlett Sher, director, Ted Sperling, musical director
• Lost in the Stars, Theatre Three: Jac Alder, director, musical direction by Terry Dobson and Vonda Bowling
• The Road to Qatar, Lyric Stage: Philip George, director, David Caldwell, music director
• A Raisin in the Sun, African-American Repertory Theater, William “Bill” Earl Ray, director
• 14 Death Defying Acts: An Autopsy of Hunter S. Thompson, Balanced Almond Productions: Matt Posey, director
• Oedipus Rex, MBS Productions: Mark-Brian Sonna, director

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those are ten 2009 shows I might take along (in virtual reality) to a desert island if I retreated from civilization. Some other noteworthy productions I’d happily include: a tiered, multi-faceted, pathos-filled Vigils at Kitchen Dog Theater; the macabre My Sister in the House from Wingspan (imaginatively directed by UNT’s Marjorie Hayes); Lyric Stage’s The King and I, with original score, multi-cultural cast and splendid ballet sequence; Rene Moreno’s lively re-imagining of Merry Wives of Windsor, TX for Shakespeare Dallas and his taut, charismatic direction of This Is Our Youth for Upstart Productions; Circle Theatre’s facile realization of Steve Martin’s intellectual comedy Picasso at the Lapin Agile; Stage West’s bold, brave mounting of Thornton Wilder’s three act baffling experimental opus The Skin of Our Teeth; and Kevin Grammer’s promising emergence as a playwright with Empty Room at The Ochre House. I could go on, but my private desert island isn’t a continent. It’s been a diverse year of theatre, resplendent with creative variety, nevertheless.

And artists to celebrate?

Performances by Male Actors: David Coffee (Trinity Shakespeare Festival and Picasso at the Lapin Agile); Akin Babatunde in Theatre Three’s Lost in the Stars; Bradley Campbell in Merry Wives of Windsor; William “Bill” Earl Ray in African-American Rep’s Master Harold…and the Boys; Shane Beeson in Under a Texaco Canopy (One Thirty Productions) and Talk Radio (Upstart Productions); Jonathan Brooks in Undermain’s The Black Monk; Ian Sinclair in The NIBROC Trilogy (Echo Theatre); Daniel Frederick, Trinity Shakespeare Festival and Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Circle Theatre)

Memorable Performers--"The Nibroc Trilogy": Ian Sinclair, Morgan Justiss

Women Performers of Note: Susan McMath Platt and Morgan Justiss, The Nibroc Trilogy (Echo Theatre); Tina Parker, Vigils and Psychos Never Dream (Kitchen Dog Theater); Catherine Dubord, My Sister in This House (Wingspan); Marianne Galloway, Rabbit Hole (Contemporary Theatre of Dallas);   Anastasia Munoz, A Lie of the Mind (Second Thought Theatre); Nancy Sherrard, A Lie of the Mind (Second Thought Theatre) and The Receptionist (Water Tower Theatre); Diana Sheehan, As Thousands Cheer (Lyric Stage) and Grey Gardens (Water Tower Theatre): Lauren Rosen, don’t u luv me (Dallas Childrens Theatre) and Othello (Sundown Collaborative)

Directors: Rene Moreno, This Is Our Youth (Upstart Productions) and Merry Wives of Windsor, TX (Shakespeare Dallas); Mac Lower, A Lie of the Mind (Second Thought Theatre); Jerry Russell The Skin of Our Teeth, Stage West; Marjorie Hayes, My Sister in This House (Wingspan); Katherine Owens, The Black Monk and Port Twilight (Undermain): Regan Adair, Talk Radio (Upstart Productions)

Poulets de Printemps: Some of the most creative work I saw this year was presented by “spring chickens”, daring young lads and lasses still in college or recently exited and blazing forth with energy, commitment and passion. I’m talking about Cody Lucas’ Sundown Collaborative in Denton and Broken Gears Project  Theatre that debuted at Dallas’ The Hub Theater. The former opened its season with Shepard’s gritty, demanding True West, followed shortly after by Shakespeare’s ominous tragedy Othello—ambitious undertakings, to say the least. Uneven at times and light in technical merit, both productions still gave highly effective interpretations of complex, demanding stage works and exhibited breathtaking moments of true artistry. Such promise thrills me.

Sundown Collaborative's "True West"

Demonstrating his budding talent as a producer and artistic director with Sundown and as an actor equally at ease in period or modern plays, Lucas also excelled in his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in UNT’s Vincent at Brixton, A talent to reckon with, in present and future.

Then there is Broken Gears Project Theatre, which closed its inaugural offering December 19 at The Hub Theater. Undaunted by the scope and demands of a major work, like Sundown,  Joey Folsom and  Andrew Aguilar’s company presented an inventive, gripping production of Eugene O’Neill’s expressionist drama with political overtones, The Hairy Ape. Main character Yank, a demanding role for a mature actor, was portrayed with gravitas and potent believability by Brad Smeaton, still in his twenties. Director Joey Folsom, fresh off a memorable cameo acting role in Upstart Productions’ Talk Radio, created memory-burning moment after striking moment across the convoluted arc of this sophisticated, demanding work, incorporating stunning sound and movement effects an experienced director might never dream of. Next to no set, lousy acoustics and primitive lighting, spare costumes, some odd casting choices. Still, it was palpably mesmerizing theatre. Andrew Aguilar’s portrayal of a real caged ape in the play’s final scene brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes every time I recall it. Now. That’s Memorable. Theatre.

Best Performance of 2009

In October, Elias Taylorson created a riveting virtuoso portrayal of Eric Bogosian’s signature character, shock jock Barry Champlain, in the stage version of Talk Radio, co-produced by Upstart Productions and Project X: Theatre.

“It’s all Barry on the mike, never a hint of Taylorson acting as Barry.” (Critical Rant & Rave Oct 2009).

Seething with a desperate ferocity, Taylorson’s portrayal demonstrated such visceral realism and integrity it was hard to remember he was acting. On stage for almost the entire play and held captive on mike, assaulted non-stop with random rapid-fire talk show callers, he held his audience at seat’s edge, even as Barry’s vulnerability emerged and he sank into disillusionment and alcohol-induced resignation in the final moments. It was a masterful feat to keep the energy coming strong while allowing the character’s intimate unraveling to permeate his performance. In addition, Taylorson’s research for the role led him to Denver where he created and filmed a compelling short documentary (now undergoing review for screening at film festivals) about murdered real-life talk radio host Alan Berg, the inspiration for Bogosian’s Barry Champlain. In future, this chameleon-like actor deserves serious consideration for other powerful leading roles. Put simply, he can electrify the stage.

A word to patrons at decade’s end: What a real difference cash can make to the success of a fledgling arts group. The next generation of theatre artists in the metroplex, the passion-filled edgy ones, the visionaries burning the midnight oil, all need your support. Want to see the arts thrive in Dallas/Ft. Worth’s future?  Fund the little guys, the bold upstart ventures, the youthful collaboratives peopled with dedicated talent balancing Starbucks jobs with college final exams while producing Shepard and Shakespeare and O’Neill in their ‘free time.’ For your entertainment. They need your tax deductible donation; it’s time to do your part in these tough economic times. Plant the seeds that can establish a glorious Eden. That’s how you can truly make a difference. It’s not just about big, shiny, new buildings.

PHOTOS:

Train to NIBROC, Echo Theatre: Ian Sinclair, Morgan Justiss

Sundown Collaborative’s True West:  Alex Worthington, Cody Lucas

Talk Radio shot by Marc Rouse: Elias Taylorson

Limited Vistas: Amy’s View at Theatre Three

Sir David Hare, internationally honored actor, playwright, stage and film director, is considered one of the finest British playwrights living today. Earning a BAFTA Award (1979), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1983), the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear (1985), the Olivier Award (1990), and the London Theatre Critics’ Award (1990), he has seen his distinguished works played with great success to audiences around the world, interpreted by some of the world’s finest actors. Amy’s View, playing at Theatre Three in Dallas through January 31, 2010, received its World Premiere at the Royal National Theatre’s Lyttleton Theatre in London in June 1997 with Dame Judi Dench and Samantha Bond in the key mother/daughter roles, repeated by them at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in 1999.  Closing my eyes during the opening night performance at Theatre Three, I could imagine hearing Dench and Bond’s voices in the roles and envision the singularly resonant chemistry and conflict they must have generated together. Amy’s View is a substantial challenge to mount in terms of scope, complexity of characterization and thematic context. It’s a granite-faced mountain of a play with gentle slopes leading up to it. Theatre Three’s cast straps on its climbing gear with ambition and care, yet it bogs down when the slopes grow steep and intense.

Linear in structure, this play takes place over a sixteen year period from 1979 to 1995 and deals with two intriguingly interwoven themes: unconditional love, or “sacrificial love” as playwright Hare describes it, and the clash of public art forms: theatre v. various manifestations of modern pop culture. Over four acts, or scenes, layers of personal relationship pour forth in intensifying cascades of revelation. The divergent cultural perspectives clash in a sort of counterpoint to the family drama, reinforcing the personal challenges and providing catalytic fodder for the oppositional characters to latch on to in conflict. I am not sure if any Dallas cast could truly master this play. I respect the Theatre Three cast’s valiant effort, while at the same time I am acutely aware of the production’s shortcomings.

Scene One, the exposition, should crackle with dramatic tension and pause and define the characters in opposition much like players on a chessboard. When Esme, the grand dame actress mother, enters, she should command the stage space with accustomed, regal aplomb and dictate the tempo of all that transpires. Rapier-sharp repartee and maddeningly slow deliberation are her fine-tuned weapons. She should own the stage. All other characters should feel vulnerable, whipped about by her whim, her slightest glance. Connie Coit certainly looked the part and has the vocal power and quality to deliver it.

Theatre Three's Connie Coit, Kevin Moore, Danielle Pickard

Sadly, her entrance seemed tentative, her motives not clearly defined; she never quite commanded the space. As the play’s primary catalyst, she never exhibited the drive or energy to light requisite fires. With so little to react to, the other characters appeared hazy and isolated from each other. Amy, the protagonist, played by Danielle Pickard, needed to demonstrate, throughout, the very soul of pure unconditional love. Mostly she seemed frustrated that no one will listen to her. She grew more strident, bitter and unloving as the play proceeded. Her climactic histrionic scene was very stage-y, did not arise naturally. I watched her acting the role but felt no sorrow for her character’s circumstance. Hare wrote Amy’s View as the middle part of a trilogy about love relationships; it’s integral that Amy embody “unconditional love” with truth and simplicity.

As Dominic, Amy’s narcissistic, ambitious lover/husband, riding the tide of materialistic pop culture, Kevin Moore had the presence, charisma and voice to carry his role well. In Scene One, he wears a ridiculous moppet of a wig and a wife-beater t-shirt that make him look more like a hunky biker dude circa 2002 than an aspiring bohemian filmmaker in 1979. As his character matures through the play, he might as well be playing different characters. Often his costume distracts, does not seem to fit him properly in later scenes, nor reflects the fashion-conscious sense of a media empire entrepreneur on the way up. He looks “frumpy.” Moore is handsome and intense, offers a focused delivery with a sardonic, leonine physical quality. He’s well cast as Dominic. I could not tell if he didn’t grasp the arc of his character’s development as an actor, or if he was simply directed in a disconnected way from scene to scene. In any case, the goofy Scene One wig does him, and the play, a real disservice.

The other three characters help advance the plot with actors who look appropriate to their roles. Sonny Franks as Esme’s suitor/ investment advisor Frank brings a lumbering, bewildered everyman energy to the work, appealing in contrast to Moore’s Dominic. But Franks gives the audience little to ponder when it is revealed late in the play that he has taken risks with Esme’s investments he never took with his own. Did he intend to control her by losing her fortune, or was it circumstantial? Terry McCracken, with a convincing British accent, and Jason Kennedy, also perform.

In most major reviews of the initial productions of Amy’s View, the play’s set and its transformation over sixteen years are discussed as an element of primary importance. “The curtain pulls up and opens like an ever-widening camera lens,” which is an interesting concept, as the play is metaphorically a “series of snapshots from a woman’s life.” (Terry Byrne, Boston Herald. Boston, Mass.: Apr 26, 1999). Theatre Three’s set seems thrown together using random thrift shop elements in the first scene, dowdy rather than opulent; Esme’s deceased husband’s paintings, hung floating over the main entrance, look like the work of a mediocre dilettante, rather than classy representations of a lesser-known impressionist, as the play describes them. As the play progresses, we see less furniture on stage. Its loss neither conveys encroaching poverty nor the passage of time. The final scene, played on an elevated theatre stage dressing room, rolled in on castors, looks curious, trendy, but doesn’t help to define Esme’s final brave moments of resolve and illumination. Theatre Three’s Talley’s Folly set made an encompassing statement, illustrated its playwright’s work exquisitely. The set, costumes and other technical elements of this production look hastily thrown together with little plan. This shortchanges the production.

Amy's View on Broadway with Dame Judi Dench, Samantha Bond

For Theatre Three to open up Dallas theatre in 2010 by mounting Sir David Hare’s Amy’s View is a bold, ambitious and admirable undertaking. I think one 1999 reviewer summed up the play’s overall needs best: “Amy’s View, David Hare’s play opening tonight at the Barrymore Theatre, could easily, but for the presence of Judi Dench, be taken for nothing more than a bit of witty and stylish fluff, a soap opera, a fictional theatrical biography of the pitiful last 16 years in the life of a fading actress.”  No Judi Dench. No defining theatrical experience.

Amy’s View runs at Theatre Three through January 31.

www.theatre3dallas.com

Seattle Shakespeare’s Electra-Illumination

“I call upon Persephone and the Furies: bring back my brother. My life is a river, it floods with grief….”

Seattle Shakespeare’s Electra, in Sophocles’ play of that name, tells it like it is and screams and wails her raging sorrow. No holds barred, she bears her ravaged soul, her desperate anguish, her longing to reunite with the one being who can help her assuage her obsessive grief over the horrific murder of her father by her mother and her lover, by murdering them. It sounds like bad soap opera festering at Wagnerian pitch, but Sophocles’ savage tragedy, written several millenia past, transcends such skanky gutter-crawling. A bare-chested, au courant adaptation by Irish playwright and medieval scholar Frank McGuinness transports the classic’s relationships and events to modern-day vernacular and ties them to broad universal experience while emphasizing the intensely personal, familial. Directed for Seattle Shakespeare Company by Sheila Daniels at the Center House Theatre, the SSC production merges ominous suspense with ritualized grieving and bloodlust, squeezing every last tortured drop of the play’s lifeblood onto the stage, into the receptive minds and senses of an enthusiastic opening night audience. Electra - illumination.

As the audience strolls to their seats they pass by Electra (Marya Sea Kaminski), kneeling and keening in a small cubicle to the side of the house entrance. She crouches back to audience, framed dimly by flickering candles. It makes a frightening, morbidly intense and entrancing sight. A bald-faced voyeuristic moment, Electra’s unscripted presence defines the play’s tone as the passing audience peers momentarily into her most private grief. This is a personal agony to witness, one about to explode with vengeance; find comfort, resolution in it if you dare. She seeks peace at any cost. Any cost.

Playwright McGuinness has written multiple new versions of classic dramas, including works by Ibsen, Chekov and Euripides. He created this fast-playing 90 minute action version of Electra for a London West End production in 1998, which then moved to Broadway where it received significant acclaim. The distinguished Zoe Wanamaker starred in both versions in the title role. McGuinness contends that the recent violent civil war in the Balkans inspired his version of Sophocles’ revenge drama. It’s a palpable conceit with Seattle Shakespeare’s gritty, tight-strung staging.

The eclectic mixture of modern and classical aspects in set, costume and movement works effectively for the most part to maintain convincing focus on parallel realities. (Andrea Bryn Bush – scenic design; Melanie Taylor Burgess – costume; Jennifer Havlin – dance, and Gordon Carpenter – fight choreography). Two huge Greek columns, wrapped in chain link fencing, flank the upstage acting area; more chain link, hung in irregular torn chunks, defines the upstage entry hall to the house of murdered king Agamemnon, Electra’s father. Soft muted lighting infuses the space with a cinema verite gloom, while the upstage hallway is lit harshly by a string of bare light bulbs (Andrew D. Smith – lighting design).The Servant (Todd Jefferson Moore), Orestes (Darragh Kennan) and his companion Pylades (Tim Smith-Stewart) enter the first scene attired to suggest modern paramilitary and stride about in modern guise. No hint of declaiming or unnatural posing. Following in kind with contemporary, naturalistic movement and delivery style, Electra emerges with her Chorus of Women, all wearing plain muslin Greek-style tunics mixed unobtrusively with modern hairstyles. When Aegisthus (John Bogar) arrives in the play’s final scene, all spiffy in a modern white linen suit, he seems to have stepped in from a different play, a discordant time and style-bending element.

This is foremost an actor’s play. Raging and recoiling with grief, spitting vengeance or cringing in near catatonic despair, Kaminski as Electra spellbinds the audience with her raw energy, intense focus and vocally-powerful delivery. Grief emanates as much in sighed whispers as shrieks from her nuanced interpretation. Her Chorus of Women friends serve to reinforce her angst, utterly unable to stem the swelling tide of grief and rage. Director Daniels balances Kaminski’s compelling, raw performance with realistic, dynamic ones from the other actors, pointedly visceral, swept over or domineering. Darragh Kennan’s Orestes exhibits curiously Hamlet-like indecision, a careful demeanor, until whipped to a murderous frenzy by sister Electra’s rage. He murders without thinking, goaded on by sisterly love and desire for vengeance that washes over him like a roaring typhoon. With the revenge enacted she will find peace; it is his task to bring her this, a duty of brotherly love. And yet the horror of the deed, the savagery, hangs in the air over both at the end with evil portent. This costly “peace” will not last for long, one senses. As Clytemnestra, elegant Ellen Boyle exhibits officious disdain and patience worn past the breaking point by daughter Electra’s explosive outbursts. Completely self-serving, Boyle’s Clytemnestra fails to see how her actions and attitudes drive Electra further over the brink into murderous, consuming madness. As the compromising younger sister Chrysothemis, Susannah Millonzi paints a clear picture of a cooler-natured, pragmatist who understands the household’s power structure and sees no constructive end to Electra’s violence. Like Orestes, she is unsure of the correct path to pursue. Her exhausted refusal to participate in the vengeful bloody scheme only serves to fuel Electra’s determination to enact revenge. Finely portrayed, Millonzi creates a sad character. Todd Jefferson Moore’s Servant provides well-time comic relief early on and offers a superbly delivered monologue describing a terrible chariot race wreck where Orestes supposedly gets dragged to death under his horses’ hooves. Feel the horses’ surging power and gulped breaths; see and hear the vivid chaos of flying chariots and downed, broken charioteers littering the course…all a clever fabrication intended to deceive.

If you think Greek tragedy is just pompous and boring verse plays, think again. Seattle Shakespeare’s Electra has enough spine-tingling tension and suspense to please the most devoted action flick fan, enough poetic grandeur to thrill purist scholars of the Classics.

It’s Electra-illuminated.

Sophocles’ Electra, adapted by Frank McGuinness and directed by Sheila Daniels for Seattle Shakespeare runs Thursdays through Sundays through January 31, 2010.

Tickets: 206-733-8222 www.seattleshakespeare.org

New York Times review of the Broadway production: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/23/theater/theater-review-settling-the-score-with-dragon-lady.html

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Zoe Wanamaker as Electra:

http://www.zoewanamaker.com/stage/electra.html

PHOTO: Marya Sea Kaminski as Electra and Ellen Boyle as Clytemnestra. John Ulman photo