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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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