© 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
artsalamode.com
Information from this site may not be reproduced in print or online without specific permission from artsalamode.com
LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE
By Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron
Based on the book by Ilene Beckerman
Directed by Karen Carpenter
Blumenthal Performing Arts
McGlohon Theater
January 24 - 29, 2012
Love, Loss, and What I Wore is a polished piece of theatre with a superb five-women cast that grabs the audience from the moment everyone sits down and Loretta Swit, playing Gingy, a grandmother recalling her life through the clothes she wore, starts talking. We even get visuals of the dresses Gingy wore to various events, along with her sly commentary. Yet this is no exposition on haute couture. Every woman can relate to the riotously funny/poignant/traumatic moments associated with certain clothes.
We remember that special dress our mother bought us, the prom dress with matching prom date tuxedo that made us cringe, the boots, the first "training" bra, or the closet from hell that has caused every woman to cry out in frustration, at one time or another, "I have nothing to wear!" It all rings true because it's written by women, about women, and performed by women.
The five actor cast is excellent representing various shapes, sizes, and attitudes. The women sit at music stands as though it's a play reading, but the performances are so much more with the self-effacing Ms. Swit playing Gingy throughout, and also acting as narrator announcing the various scenes. The remaining four actors play multiple roles. (The contributors of the stories/scenes are mentioned in the program.) Along with Ms. Swit, Emily Dorsch, Daisy Eagan, Sonia Manzano, and Myra Lucretia Taylor give us an evening to remember. Emotions triggered run from riotously funny to nostalgic to heartrending.
The format is close to The Vagina Monologues, yet the subject matter here is more humorous, and allows us to laugh hardest at ourselves. The more serious moments about traumatic events or the losses we suffer just by living are moving and real. Yet, the show is more joyful than sad because although it points out our anxiety over our appearance, how we make fools of ourselves trying to live up to some ideal, ultimately we do figure out what is right for us.
The McGlohon Theater was packed with women, and a few "brave" men. And you can guess what all the actors were wearing, can't you--yes, black? This is a treat women of Charlotte, do not miss it! Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
THE AMEN CORNER
Written by James Baldwin
Directed by Ruth E. Sloan
On Q Productions
Duke Energy Theatre
January 13 - 28, 2012
James Baldwin was an African-American poet, novelist, playwright and social activist most popular during the Civil Rights movement. Raised in Harlem and influenced by his preacher stepfather, David Baldwin, James joined the Pentecostal Church at age 14 and soon became a preacher.
The Amen Corner, penned in 1954 by Baldwin, is an obvious testament of his experiences and struggles with religion and his worldly desires outside of the church. As in many poor African-American communities, there is typically a strong presence of worship and faith, and it holds true in this production. Set in a 1950s Harlem church, female pastor Margaret Alexander is a devout Christian and a by-the-word pastor who rules her seemingly dedicated congregation as well as her unsteady home with an iron fist. Singing, literally, nothing but the praises of the Lord, morning, noon, and night, Sister Margaret, played by award-winning actor Terry Denise Henry, thinks all of life's problems will be solved by quoting scriptures from the bible and doing only the Lord's work. Unfortunately, her sanctified world comes to a gospel halt when: her estranged and sickly husband Luke shows up at her doorstep; her confused church pianist son David is tempted by a secular life as was his father years ago; and her church family begins to doubt her leadership ability due to recent discoveries of past and present decisions.
The production begins, as many On Q productions do, with a booming musical number by the mixed choir and eventually commands the congregation to join in. This idea usually works well because it gets the immediate attention of the audience and causes them to tune in from the moment the lights go up. The opening musical number is inspiring and would challenge any professional church choir to rehearse more after witnessing their performance. The tiny set, divided into an intimate church upstairs and a quaint apartment downstairs, fills the space perfectly and the costumes are simple but effective. In addition to the main character Sister Margaret (Henry), lively moments give the show hope when Sister Moore played by On Q favorite, Lashea Stukes, displays her talents by eventually becoming Sister Margaret's nemesis after being one of her biggest followers early on.
The Amen Corner mirrors so many church communities due to the ongoing struggle with faith, the false sense of reality that often plagues some leaders, and the desire to believe that the Lord will heal all ailments, physical, mental, and spiritual. By the end of the show, attempting to lead a God-like life brings hard-working Sister Margaret to her knees and truly tests her faith and dedication.
Originally estimated by the producer at two hours and thirty minutes, on this night The Amen Corner actually ran unexpectedly close to three hours and thirty minutes and left a few patrons sleepy, tired, and frustrated by its closing at nearly midnight. Although the production is driven by beloved gospel hymns, and comical as well as serious moments, be prepared for a lengthy ride. Review by Dawn Cauthen
Dawn Cauthen is a freelance writer in the Charlotte area currently working on a screenplay, a novel, and many freelance articles. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Stage and Screen from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Uptown Magazine and Dawn enjoys reviewing theater productions, movies, and loves most things artistic.
Conflict and collaboration are crucial forces in theatre—as in the evolution of nature and culture. They're also vital elements in the stand-up comedy of Paula Poundstone. Appearing onstage with just a stool, soda, and microphone, Poundstone directly engages her audience, creating tension, cooperation, and the eruptive release of laughter, with many insights for a packed auditorium of hundreds in Charlotte's Knight Theater.
Dressed in a man's suit (black coat and pants, white shirt, with red and white tie), her stooped shoulders and intense stare made her look a bit like a cartoon buzzard, until she cracks a wry, mischievous smile. The curls of her black hair, directed forward at the sides of her cheeks, almost seem like horns when she challenges the audience with complaints and questions. Yet, she twists each idea in her flow of associations to invoke hilarious camaraderie, even with her "atheist" or political positions.
She starts by commenting on the local TV news, the dead body found behind the Flying Biscuit, and the "wedge" the weather-person warns about on the map. She describes the Republican presidential race as the tumbling laundry in a dryer, with candidates going up and down—and makes fun of various quotes, such as Gov. Perry's about evolution as "a theory that's out there." ("So is gravity," she said.) She talks often about her struggles in raising three adopted kids, now 20, 17, and 13. But she says that showing them the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest made them think "Mom's not so bad."
When a woman near the front cheers, Poundstone engages her in conversation about her job, which "ratcheted down," as the woman explains it, from singer to music director at a local Christian church. Poundstone finds a similar adjustment from a man with an injured shoulder, whose job goes from architect to code inspector to manager of an automated system. So she mimicks how he might have injured his shoulder by pushing a button. She also mocks the man's wife, an architect who moved to Montana for college because of the mountains there—with Poundstone pointing out that the school probably did not design them.
Such interrogations made others nervous about participating, including a woman who said she planned to leave town during the Democratic National Convention this fall, then delayed in admitting she will be renting her home to visitors. With these challenges to local identities, Poundstone pounds questions at certain spectators. Yet, she manages to win over the crowd with laughter, through the peculiar images that she mirrors of them and various media figures.
She makes fun of herself, too, stretching her face while complaining about puffy eyebrows, cruel jowls, and other surprises of aging—-along with the AARP cards she keeps getting in the mail. She points to ridiculous details in consumer product packaging, like staples that require 50% less effort, or a paragraph of explanation on the bottom of a tissue box. She repeatedly uses the phrase, "I just don't understand," drawing the audience comically inside her conflicts with kids, society, religion, media, and her own body. She even teased the crowd that she had OCD about talking, and couldn't stop, going almost a full two hours onstage and lying on the floor near the end (with her feet becoming puppets), until she found a final joke. But by then, she'd made us her friends, expressing gratitude to us for sitting through it all—-and leaving us reluctantly as a "great audience." Indeed, we'd been much improved by her wonderful improvisations. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
How does a play/musical come into existence? It certainly doesn’t spring fully-formed onto a stage. It starts with a playwright’s and/or musician’s idea and gets developed over time with many of hours of work. The award-winning Memphis: The Musical is impressive in putting all the elements together for a rousing/troubling/touching perspective on 1950s musical history. It’s not that long ago that a play with an interracial relationship at its center wouldn’t have had much of a chance of being performed in Charlotte. We can thank the Blumenthal Broadway Lights Series for giving us the opportunity to see these kinds of highly professional if controversial Broadway traveling shows. Yet, audiences today are more sophisticated and difficult to shock. What the play tries to convey, though, is the implication of that relationship in the 1950s.
Huey (an excellent characterization by Bryan Fenkart) is a none-too-smart, manic hillbilly, but what he can’t articulate in words is expressed in the soulful black music of Memphis. He makes his way to a black nightclub where he becomes fixated on Felicia (Felicia Boswell who can belt out those songs), the featured act, both as a powerful, talented singer, and as a woman. Felicia’s brother Delray (Quentin Earl Darrington easily projecting a commanding baritone voice) can’t stand Huey even though he promises to promote their singers. Delray accuses Huey of trying to steal their music, but Huey is undeterred because he is, in fact, a true believer, hence the first big number of the night “The Music of My Soul”. Huey becomes a disc jockey and despite the racism of the time begins to play black music on air. Humor is used extensively here as we laugh with and at Huey’s clumsy attempts to win over both groups. But white kids, and more importantly, the young demographic, tired of their parents’ constraints, start listening and the music becomes popular much to everyone’s surprise except Huey.
The character of Huey is thought to be loosely based on several disc jockeys of the time, including Dewey Philips of Tennessee, who promoted black music and helped ready the world for rock ‘n’ roll. The writers add some clever references, such as naming Huey’s disapproving mother (Julie Johnson another singer/actor with a big voice) Gladys, Elvis Presley’s mother’s name. Elvis is the man who some say actually did “steal” the music.
As for the love between Huey and Felicia, the play emphasizes how dangerous it could be for both the man and woman. Both make sacrifices to be with each other though the damage from a harsh, judgmental community, their friends, and families begin to add up. There is a realistic arc to the relationship: the giddiness of first attraction, the passionate commitment to each other, and the inevitable differences and problems that can tear any two people apart. Add to that the pressures of fanatic racism and it’s easy to imagine what can happen.
Kudos also to the large first-rate cast of supporting singer/dancer/actors, who perform energetically throughout including: Will Mann as Bobby, Rhett George as Gator, and William Parry as Mr. Simmons. The choreography by Sergio Trujillo is one of the highlights of the show. Also impressive is the multi-purpose set design by David Gallo that has a black and white “television” screen view projected above the stage in Act II reminding us how new it all was then. The colorful costumes by Paul Tazewell nod to the times but are vibrant and showy.
The musical numbers carry the storyline along in typical fashion for this form, giving each principal cast member his/her turn to shine. While the songs are delivered with gusto, only a few emerge that you may be singing to yourself on the way home.
Though the 1950s were known as a time of stifling conformism, people were secretly rebelling in various ways, and one way was music. How true this play is to the spirit of its historical era, and whether disc jockeys had that much influence is open to interpretation. The music would have eventually come to be acknowledged because it’s that good. Still, Huey and his fellow travelers must be recognized for what they risked for the love of the music, which is the universal language and continues to break down barriers. It does feel stereotypical in places, but it may be that we’ve heard about this struggle for so long now that we’ve become familiar with the stories, but that doesn’t make them any less moving. Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Do you remember where you were in 1987? What tunes did you blast in your car riding down the highway searching for yourself ? Did you and your best friend share a can of Aquanet on a Friday night while lip-syncing to Guns 'n' Roses, Poison, or maybe even Pat Benetar? Although a pre-teen, I was certainly old enough to enjoy a select few of these groups, minus the hairspray.
On December 26, 2011 in the heart of downtown Charlotte, the Belk Theater was transformed into The Bourbon Room, a popular Los Angeles bar in the 1980s where Rock 'n Roll's famous and 'wannabe' famous rolled through and left their mark. Plastered on every inch of grimy wall space were signed pictures of heavy metal rock bands, neon signs advertising live nude girls, and probably tons of things that we wouldn't want to know about. Lonny, played by an animated Justin Colombo, serves as the narrator as Drew, played by Dominque Scott, a busboy and big dreamer from Detroit, is ready for fame when he meets small-town waitress Sherrie, played by Shannon Mullen. They're both young, impressionable and naive, and seem to both want love and to live a big life in L.A. Then a German land developer and his confused son want to break up the party and create a strip mall right where The Bourbon Room is standing. The German father and son duo convince the mayor that the Rock 'n Roll lifestyle is not becoming and a more wholesome existence is better for the city. This creates mayhem with the city planner, and a huge fight ensues.
In the meantime, between long drives up the coast and writing tribute songs, Drew professes his longing for a "friendship" with Sherrie that seemingly grounds her feelings for Drew to a halt and drives her into the arms of another man. During a visit to The Bourbon Room, she becomes yet another groupie in love with a rocker after the famous Stacie Jaxx played by Matt Nolan (who has a stunning resemblance to another blonde late '80s rocker that penned "Wanted Dead or Alive") who showers her with the best love she's had--in a bathroom stall. Shortly after, Sherrie and Drew part ways and try to find fame on their own.
From beginning to end, heavy guitar-driven tunes such as "Nothin' But a Good Time", "Don't Stop Believin'", "We're Not Gonna Take It", "We Built This City" and many others blasted throughout the theater causing grand sing-a-longs among the patrons. It didn't take long for me to see fingers thrown in the air, tongues extended and heads bobbing up and down. During the show I was also guilty of commanding a few looks by loudly singing along to the more subtle ballad, "More Than Words" by Extreme, which was actually released in 1990.
Being a bit younger during this time, I did manage to miss a few jokes and references that received hearty laughs and outbursts from patrons. However, if you were a child of the 1980s and a fan of Rock, you would kick yourself by passing up this show. There was even a guy during intermission peddling the Rock of Ages soundtrack, which many purchased and probably blasted on the way home. Big dreams, loud music, and wild hair was the theme of this production and it will have you partying hard long after the curtains close. Review by Dawn Cauthen
Dawn Cauthen is a freelance writer in the Charlotte area currently working on a screenplay, a novel, and many freelance articles. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Stage and Screen from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Uptown Magazine and Dawn enjoys reviewing theater productions, movies, and loves most things artistic.
It’s Christmas Eve 1944 in London at the BBC Radio Studio. A singing cowboy group is booked to entertain the World War II troops and put on a show for the studio audience. But only the stage manager Mabel (Lauren Segal) shows up. Oh no! What to do? That gives you the flavor of the broad comedy style of Chaps! A Jingle Jangle Christmas .
On display is the old adage about show biz people that “the show must go on,” no matter what. So the staff of the radio team, mostly cranky Brits, dress up in them thar cowboy duds and miraculously perform their hearts out. Yes, it’s a thin premise, but the singers/actors on stage make it all worthwhile. The voices of this talented, cohesive group blend perfectly performing the harmonies of these classic Western songs. Some are not familiar, but almost everyone has heard of “I’m An Old Cowhand,” “Jingle Jangle Jingle Balls,” “Tumblin Tumbleweeds.” Then there is also a nod to the sentimental “White Cliffs of Dover”, a favorite of the British during World War II for its symbolism, paired with “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” written at that time for American soldiers wishing they were home.
This is a top notch cast with Lauren Segal appealing/perky carrying the lone female part. Joe Klosek is always watchable here playing Archie who finds he is a good match for the Western vibe. Kevin Roberge is droll and campy as the stuffy, hung over announcer. Brett Gentile is humorous as Stan the silent sound man on set adding the sound effects. Ryan Stamey is the prissy/asthmatic producer who has some funny bits as the stand-in “dummy.” Beau Stroupe has a stand out vocal range as Clive.
Really impressive is the set design by Chip Decker. Not only is the wide stage made believable as a radio studio with its own glass enclosed control room, it is functional and provides some fun surprises for the audience. The costumes by Jamey Varnadore, and the lighting by Hallie Gray are also effective. Music director Ryan Deal’s three musicians provide exactly what is needed as they perform on the set as the Tex Riley Band: Forrest Brown on bass, Brandon Buckmaster on fiddle and Jeremy DeCarlos on guitar.
Director Patrick Tansor does a nice job conveying the tenor of simpler, more innocent times. The 1940s radio shows recall good old-fashioned values and heartfelt feelings amid what has become sometimes cynical takes on the season. It’s a fun ride, buckaroos. Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and theatre and film reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Some have said the country has stepped back in time and fallen into a modern-day depression. Limited jobs, unemployment on the rise, and major crises in the home mortgage and banking industries. It's inevitable that history repeats itself, even if it's art imitating life and vice versa. The classic Christmas special, It’s a Wonderful Life returns to the airwaves yearly and is a staple in many homes across the country. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never watched it in it’s entirety. While doing something to get into the Christmas spirit, I’ve caught glimpses of it on the tube but chalked it up to an old black and white that I couldn't relate to.
How wrong I was. Live from WVL Radio Theatre: It's a Wonderful Life, is a slightly twisted adaptation of the movie It's a Wonderful Life produced in 1946. It is brilliantly performed by four radio actors held up in a studio on Christmas Eve with the fate of the station resting firmly on their shoulders. Radio actors Lee Wright, played by Nathan Crocker, and Mays, played by Michael MacCauley, both bring an element to the stage that I have not witnessed or appreciated in recent productions. Having to play several characters, live, has to be extremely challenging, but they pull it off seamlessly, as does Kathryn Temple as Evelyn Reed and Rachelle Roberts as Kitty Dale, transforming into several other characters throughout the reading.
The stage, is actually backstage, and is converted into a radio station with everyday household items manipulated for sound effects. An egg-beater twirling on a glass bowl for the ring of the telephone, a graduated chime for scene progression, and what seems to be a duck-calling instrument to emulate a taxi-cab ride. The audience, is, well, the live audience for the evening. Nearly sitting on stage, we applaud when the "applaud" light illuminates as the cast scrambles to beat the "On-Air" cue each segment.
In essence, we are witnessing four actors playing actors, playing many characters in a production whose two narrators are spying on the life of others who may have been affected had the main character never been born. It is fascinating to watch a play within a play unfold as we follow the main character, George Bailey, from an adolescent boy with big dreams to a defeated man with worries who has given up on himself.
Although the production was actually penned more than half a century ago, the issues still ring true today for many people. This adaptation is clever in many ways; talented actors playing actors, the love affairs that unfold between pages of a script, and a 1940s set make for a very innovative and engaging production. Review by Dawn Cauthen
Dawn Cauthen is a freelance writer in the Charlotte area currently working on a screenplay, a novel, and many freelance articles. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Stage and Screen from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Uptown Magazine and Dawn enjoys reviewing theater productions, movies, and loves most things artistic.
For all those precocious tomboyish little girls, Junie B. projects a feisty, ambitious, but essentially kind nature that we don’t ordinarily see. Most children’s stories and plays have little boy “heroes.” Yet Junie B. is not your grandmother’s idea of a fairy tale type girl who just wants to look pretty, marry a prince of a guy, and be taken care of for life. No, Junie B. wants be the boss, and probably will be a very competent one when she grows up. Author Barbara Park captures just the right balance of Junie B. Jones’s lovable and exasperating traits in her books, and it works on stage, too.
Most of the action takes place in the classroom right before the December holidays with the teacher Mr. Scary (an excellent Josh Looney) trying to corral his energetic students. School activities like putting on a play and assigning secret Santa gifts that try to provide lessons to kids--like working together and learning the spirit of giving--mostly go, happily for the audience, uproariously wrong.
Junie B. (Caroline Rigby, a good fit as the spirited Junie) has an ongoing clash of wills with classmate May (Casi Harris, superb). Junie doesn’t really like Casi, and Casi harasses Junie with her annoying habit of tattling on Junie. The other personalities in the classroom include Lucille the rich girl (nicely parodied by Mandy Moss), Sheldon the sweet but not altogether too bright kid (made an audience favorite by Jeremy Shane), Jose, another exuberant student (well-played by Kendall Payne), and Herb, Junie B.’s best friend whose quiet demeanor balances her lively spirit (Daniel O’Sullivan, who has to be calm amidst all the raucous action.) Drina Keen, usually in the orchestra pit as musical director, manages that function again, but is also on stage this time in two supporting roles.
Director Ron Chisholm knows how his actors should move, and move around on stage, and brings a sense of fun with various musical touches that you shouldn’t miss. The revolving set by Anna Sartin is clever, and with help from the lighting of David Fillmore, props by Pete Smeal, costumes by Jennifer Matthews, and sound by Colin Powers, Junie B. in Jingle Bells Batman Smells is an all around delightful show that both children and adults will enjoy. Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
A little boy’s first love is his mother. His worst fear? Adandonment. That’s the situation for the title character in Providence High School’s Chaos Ensemble production of Wallace and Women. This provocative autobiographical dark comedy was written by playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman when he was just eighteen. The character of Wallace (Jake Laxer, conveying mixed emotions well) is confused, guilt-ridden, smug, awkward, and ultimately so real it is difficult for the audience not to root for him.
The legacy of suicide colors everything that happens to Wallace after he leaves for school one day a happy second-grader only to come home and find his mother’s (a well-cast PJ Boyajian) body in a pool of blood. Suicide is an act of desperation, but can it be a selfish one as well? That is left for the audience to decide since we never learn the cause of her depression. Yet, Wallace makes no judgments against his mother, he only achingly misses her throughout his young life wishing he could have changed the inevitable.
Wallace’s steady support from his Grandmother (a humorous Olivia Dalzell) helps him go through the motions, but his mother is never far from his mind. Needless to say his relationships with women are strained. From his middle school girlfriend Victoria (the hilarious Kacie Roller), to the high school intellectual Sarah (Amanda Berkowitz), to the older college woman Lili (an appealing Dana Story), and his true love Nina (an earnest Madi Claus) (after a detour with Wendy, Savannah Hamilton), Wallace longs for, but is fearful of giving into love. The psychiatrist (Katherine Daly) is no help initially because Wallace uses caustic wit to keep her at arms length.
Director James Yost again shows his special touch with young actors, and his expert vision even with limited resources. The uniformly good ensemble cast remains on stage as Wallace goes through the phases of his life, each one entering and contributing to his pain/growth. They sit in a semi-circle watching the action (and occasionally and cleverly work in various prop items). Visual projection above the stage announces the girls/women’s names, as well as showing photos of Wallace as he goes from the boy to young man. Student directors Brian Garcia, Natalie Lane, and Kara Spangler are to be commended, and Maddie Shuler’s haunting original music is especially helpful and touching, adding an extra dimension to the show.
Despite the subject matter, Wallace and Women is less grim and more hopeful and funny than you would expect. It is well-worth the trip to the Duke Energy Theater to see this talented ensemble. Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Based on an impromptu jam session that took place at Sun Records Studio on December 4, 1956 with iconic musicians Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, Million Dollar Quartet is a jukebox musical that vividly brings this unlikely collision of stars. More than anything the musical is an homage to Sam Phillips, the man who discovered all four men who would shape American music for so long. The production lets the audience witness this playful, sometimes combative, always fascinating meeting of these demi-gods of music.
The evening is ostensibly for Carl Perkins (played with share cropper gusto by Lee Ferris). Perkins, once at the top of the charts, is looking for another hit and feels abandoned by his mentor, Phillips. Sam Phillips (played by Christopher Ryan Grant) acts as narrator throughout the musical, and recounts that evening where he must decide whether to stay with his tiny studio or move on to RCA with his discovery, Elvis Presley. Phillips brings in his new discovery, Jerry Lee Lewis (a scene-stealing role played with comic brilliance by Martin Kaye) to add some much-needed life to Perkins’ increasingly lack luster tunes.
The evening is made all the more dramatic by two things: the impending visit of Elvis Presley returning to Memphis to visit his family and stopping by to pressure Phillips to join him at RCA; and a visit from Johnny Cash who has been avoiding Phillips for some time. Phillips throughout the show struggles with his decision, but still desperately wants to get Cash to re-sign with him once his contract expires. Presley is played by Cody Slaughter who manages to embody everything we remember about “the king,” while still creating a dynamic and believable character. Derek Keeling’s Johnny Cash is also mesmerizing and Keeling’s deep baritone voice is astoundingly accurate and evocative. Rounding out the cast are Kelly Lamont who plays Elvis’ girl friend, Dyanne, who has her own dreams of music stardom (Ms. Lamont brings down the house with a very hot rendition of “fever”); Chuck Zayas as Perkin’s older brother who plays bass; and Billy Shaffer on drums.
All of the actors, we are told, are actually playing the instruments while they sing, and there is some truly accomplished playing going on. The musical is most successful when the men are performing. They manage to channel these icons at the height of their prowess and the stage almost sizzles with electricity as we witness these giants of music playing, creating, and struggling. What plot there is, is handled well enough. Phillips betrayal by almost everyone he discovered is poignantly handled; the individual conflicts of each character add depth and interest, but it’s still mostly there to try to elevate the production from the likes of “Beatlemania” to something more profound. I’m not certain that is completely successful.
But as a recreation it is stunning. The performers are top notch and we are sucked into this astounding moment in time. Rock favorites like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and “Great Balls of Fire” bring the house down.
The musical is energetic and brought the audience to multiple standing ovations near the end. Though I’m not the biggest fan of jukebox musicals, I thoroughly enjoyed spending an evening with these legendary men. Review by Tim Baxter-Ferguson
Tim Baxter-Ferguson is professor of Theatre at Limestone College and Chair of that program. He has had his plays produced throughout the United States and Canada.
When we're moved by news stories or photos of others suffering in distant parts of the world, are we exploiting their pain for our pleasure? Margulies's 2009 play brings this question home—as a photojournalist returns to New York with her boyfriend, after surviving a roadside bomb in Iraq, and experiences emotional explosions at home despite familiar comforts.
For this show, the Duke Energy Theatre has been turned into an intimate thrust stage with chairs on three sides. Onstage are elaborate shelves with many knickknacks, a bathroom door, a globe, couch, chairs, lamp, Persian rug, coffee table, kitchen counter, and fridge—in an artfully designed set by Elizabeth Allmon. Sarah (Elise Wilkinson) enters, wearing a leg brace, arm sling, and facial scars (on the opposite side from her limb injuries). She is helped to a chair by her longtime boyfriend and war-correspondent colleague, James (Eric Tucker). He hovers over her lovingly, but she's impatient to be healed, independent again and back at work taking photos of war victims.
There are many sides to Sarah, as a tragicomic hero and photographer, not all of which are fully explored in this production. Despite an eight-year relationship with James, she fell in love with the local "fixer" (a guide and interpreter) in Iraq, who was then killed by the same bomb that injured her. She's even more in love with the adrenalin rush of her job, with the art of photography, and with her mission in which "lives are at stake." Yet, she also loves James, who cannot take any more terror in his work and apathy from magazine editors, especially after surviving a marketplace explosion when a victim's brain matter splattered in his face. He admires and competes with Sarah's courage, yet tries to lure her into accepting the comforts of home.
The conflicts between them, and within each, are mirrored in curious ways by the couple who visits them in their Brooklyn home, from winter to spring to summer. Richard (Joe Copley) is Sarah's former flame and current photo editor. At midlife, he decides to enjoy the rest of it with a young woman half his age, and to have a child with her—while still traveling vicariously through the photos and stories of his journalist friends. His girlfriend and then wife, Mandy (Ali Bill), brings a youthful energy, naiveté, and yet uncanny wisdom to the darkness that haunts the journalists' home.
The actress who plays Mandy is the most delightful and comical feature of this production, embodying a new generation's optimistic struggle with the horrors of the world. Ironically, she shows more compassion toward the victims in Sarah's photos, or even to animals in a nature show on TV, than the toughened traveler. And yet, she defends Richard well, in arguing against James that there must be a balance of joy in our lives (as she becomes a new mother), and in our mass media, along with occasional awareness of others' suffering.
Flashes and shutter clicks between scenes (with lighting and sound design by Trista Bremer and Samuel Fisher) remind us that theatre, like photography, both exposes and distances, communicates and exploits the victims of real violence elsewhere. The "cinema of cruelty" book that James is writing, while watching horror movies at home, becomes a way to understand and yet avoid the true horror of his Schadenfreude. As Sarah eventually realizes, she's "made a living off the suffering of strangers."
Perhaps this play will also challenge the Charlotte audience to question how our national interests and media appetites, through crusades around the world, bring us security and excitement at home, yet destroy homes, families, and cultures "over there"—and here when soldiers return, injured for life, or in body bags that we no longer see. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
One of the pleasures of "seeing" the Charlotte Symphony perform is watching the various instruments being played, to the movement of the conductor's baton. But with this performance there's much more to watch. Aerialists hanging on silk, a cube-frame being twirled, hoops and pins juggled by a clown, magical costume changes, couples dancing in air, and golden strongmen—all to the rhythms of a dozen symphony favorites.
For music purists, it might be distracting. To fans of full Cirque du Soleil shows, the performances here are minimal, with just one act at a time, involving one or two people in a narrow strip of the stage, about 15 feet in front of (or flying over) the orchestra. Yet, for most in the audience, as shown by the standing ovation on the first night, and after-show interview enthusiasm, it's a perfect match. Like Disney's original Fantasia, this show blends fantastic imagery with beautiful music—but it also adds live, circus-theatre excitement.
Several pieces, from Ravel, Smetana, and Strauss, are performed by the orchestra without circus acts. This allows the audience to watch the dancing bows, waving brass, flying drumstick heads, and swirling baton, as direct illustrations of the music. Perhaps such traditional viewing is even more enhanced, though, with Cirque spirits haunting the stage.
Olympic gymnast Christine Van Loo climbs two purple silk ribbons and then continually transforms her body, like a caterpillar-butterfly. She ties the ribbons around each of her limbs, in various ways, hangs upside-down, turns the silk inside-out, poses, twists, and spins—to Khachaturian's "Dance of Ayshe." Then, Aloysia Gavre and Sagiv Ben Binyamin (veterans of many Cirque shows) dance a contortionist tango, holding each other with handstands, one-foot balancing, and impossible intertwining, to Marquez's "Danzon Number 2." And then, Vladimir Tsarkov, in a red, black, and silver Harlequin suit, with white-face and red-cheek makeup, juggles three to six, large, yellow rings to another Khachaturian dance from Gayane. Russian aerialist Alexander Streltsov also spins a cube-frame, making it fly over his head, during another Gayane piece.
Elena Tsarkova, in sparkling white tights, performs a contortionist balance dance on two tall stools to Tchaikovsky's "Valse," as a beauty who's not sleeping. She also does a magical series of costume-change tricks, with the help of Tsarkov and Abreu's music. Gavre stuns viewers, too, with an aerial hoop dance to Rimsky-Korsakov: twisting, spinning, and flying over the orchestra and audience, even hanging by just her feet.
To Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," Binyamin performs another strength-displaying, gymnastic feat, climbing and hanging from a single thick rope, which he also makes dance below him. To Dvorák's "Slavonic Dance," Tsarkov and Tsarkova juggle colorfully lit batons and dance with a long pink ribbon on a stick. To Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Valse, Streltsov and Van Loo do a duo, red-silk climb, hang, and fly—with their silk turning into wings. In the finale, with Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor," Polish strongmen Jaroslaw Marciniak and Dariusz Wronski become the golden icons of muscular artful balancing–in impossible and amazing ways, such as one doing a handstand on the other's head.
Charlotte's Bairos does a wonderful job, too, as circus master and orchestra conductor, sharing his personal enthusiasm for the Cirque performers and encouraging those new to the symphony to attend again. Hopefully, they will, with memories at the stage edge enlivening their view of the music. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
With over 40 performers onstage, elaborate scenery, fantastic costumes, and many strong voices, CPCC's The Magic Flute offers a fine introduction to Mozart's famous fable about love, magic, and destiny. This three-hour opera, translated into English, also gives insights about eighteenth-century values in Europe that formed a legacy still with us today—as a bonus to Mozart's delightful music.
Prince Tamino (John Kaneklides) meets the bird-catcher Papageno (Thomas P. Hughes) on a rocky crag, beautifully depicted with a tall painted canvas (in a set designed by Julie Landman). Through the powerful magic and eloquent singing of three lovely Ladies (Grace Kidd, Marcella Smith, and Daidree Tofano), they escape a dragon-serpent with a "Where the Wild Things Are" head and 11-person body, including 2 cute kids at the tail. (Costumes are designed by Emily McCurdy.) They then go on a quest to rescue Princess Pamina (Melinda Whittington), who's been captured by Sarastro (Dareion Malone), high priest of the Egyptian gods, Isis and Osiris.
They are given this mission by the Queen of the Night (Heidi Kirschenheiter Vega with a magnificent voice), who appears out of a large full moon and down a grand golden staircase. From the Three Ladies, Tamino also gets a magic flute and a portrait of Pamina that makes him fall in love with her. Papageno gets magic silver bells. And they both get three spirit guides for their journey (performed quite well by the boy singers: Andrew Dale, David Benton, and Ryan Merritt). Such a quest by men to save a beautiful maiden has many parallels in various cultures. But when Papageno, who's covered in feathers and can't stop talking, meets the Moor, Monostatos (Thabang Masango), they each see the other as a "devil." This reflects a specific fear of the animal-like or dark-skinned Other, that we inherit (and are still working through today) from the dominant European ideal of the heroic white male—despite Enlightenment values of universal rights and democracy.
Likewise, Tamino sings about the ideals of "man and wife" leading a "godly life" through romantic destiny. But that requires that Tamino and Papageno be trained to control their passions—by the benevolent despot Sarastro, who, it turns out, kidnapped Pamina to save her from her possessive, murderous mother. Thus, the lyrics in Mozart's music sometimes reveal patriarchal fears and projections, as with the warning, "beware of women's crafty scheming," under the watchful scheming of Sarastro. A beautifully painted backdrop illuminates this patriarchal legacy—with huge wings of an Egyptian figure turning into notes on a staff, underneath an Eye of Power with golden rays shining over the pyramids.
And yet, Papageno's clownish charms (well played and sung by Hughes) provide an almost rebellious parody against such "be a man" demands. In this production, the Moor also gets a laugh by licking his lips for "one little kiss" with Pamina. (Both the Moor and Sarastro have interesting African features and accents, through the casting choices here.) Eventually, Papageno learns to hold his tongue and the hand of his destined match, Papagena (Brianna Valencia), though he first meets her as an old woman, before she transforms into an ideal young female, bringing babies as further mirrors. Pamina also learns to not give up, or kill herself, after Tamino refuses to speak with her, in his trial under Sarastro's divine orders.
So, the couples end up happily and wisely together, as "the sun's glory vanquishes night." We might believe in that, given the beauty of the music here (despite some uneven singing by the male chorus of a dozen priests, who also have uneven borders on their robes). Yet we might also wonder how the eye atop the pyramid on our dollar bills watches over our values today, through operatic, romantic, mystical, and political desires. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
For fans of sketch comedy, like the brief satirical pieces on TV's Saturday Night Live, there's another lively treat available from a local company that first performed at CAST last summer. This assortment of laugh bites has many satirical flavors in a more complete package—with projected slides, set pieces, props, costumes, and a short movie that show a further degree of professionalism, along with the actors' delicious performance twists.
Lee Thomas (a new Figurine member) offers several monologs, sprinkled throughout the show, as the cheerful stoner Kaleo. He recites his poem about celebrities with food names, then wonders about ordering Swiss cheese in Switzerland and a Danish in Denmark, and then considers how "cool" it would be to have women wear food-odor perfume. The food, identity, and romance themes then continue with "Pick Up Artist," in which Jack (James Walker II, another new member) uses tears and stories about losing his beloved wife to get hugs from women in a Starbucks.
Likewise, identity tricks are explored in "Jesus' Makeover," when writers for the Trinity Broadcasting Network are pressured by their dominatrix boss (Julie Janorschke-Gawle) for new show ideas, to make Jesus more popular with today's TV audience. Then, in "The Bank Took My House but Not My Soul," Tom Olson (the Figurines' fearless leader) plays a destitute stock broker panhandling on the street, yet still trying to wheel and deal for money, as his wife finds a new man to keep her in pearls.
Even more intriguing, "OMG" explores how friends can meet in person, yet speak in an exclusive, cell-phone texting code. And "What Can Brown Do For You?" parodies the UPS ad slogan with a superhero deliveryman (Walker), demanding the recipient's signature.
Gayle Taggart plays various interesting roles, including an Old Woman in a retirement home, who changes her mind about whether to enjoy the high life of gambling, boozing, and sex—at life's end. Lee Thomas also shape-shifts from the stoner Kaleo to religious TV writer to befuddled friend to businessman to a send-up of Tom Brokaw to a lonely man in his attic, lying while in an online dating game. Glynnis O'Donoghue (a new Figurine) shines, too, in many distinctive roles, especially as a nun and female president. So do Walker, Janorschke-Gawle, and Olson, as all six Figurines create hilarious caricatures of current dysfunctions in different social environments.
Some of the strongest parodies appear in the second act. In "The Blackenator Saves the Catholic Church," Father Paul (Thomas), Sister Katy (O'Donoghue), and a Jesus statue are saved from irrelevancy by the pimp-magic of a mystically hipster (Walker), with a long fur coat, "soul injector," and bling-bling crucifix. In "Demon Be Gone," Sister Katy appears again to confront a mischievous 5th-grader who's possessed by the dead spirit of a salty, greedy, sex-starved sailor (Olson). Olson also shows his prowess at sudden personality switches onstage in "Layover," playing a man with a karaoke form of Turret's Syndrome, who still manages to charm a lady in an airport. And other ladies (O'Donoghue and Janorschke-Gawle) become fierce contenders in a televisSKETCHed presidential debate (with Thomas as Tom Brokaw), showing the logical, yet absurd extremes of current political positions.
The show might have a better rhythm if it ended with one of these four, riotously funny pieces, instead of offering three more. But the final piece, "He Said/She Said," does give some timely jabs at the Renaissance Festival now in our area. And the overall effect of this assortment of tasteful parodies proves that Dysfunctional Figurines has grown a step, as a quality satirical review. Fortunately, they've also gained a second weekend of performances, for those who miss the first. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
It may be the funniest show of the year. Durang's comedy, about a 30-something couple finding new love beyond the absurdity of therapy, bears many references from decades ago, but it gains a new vibrancy on the small, piano-bar stage of Petra's.
Prudence (Leslie Ann Giles) answers a personals ad, meeting Bruce (Stephen Seay) in a restaurant. He says precisely the wrong things, while idealizing her, especially when he mentions his male lover. Prudence and Bruce each seek help from their therapists, then meet again in the restaurant, and eventually in Bruce's home, where Prudence also meets his lover Bob (Jay Russell)—and everyone talks with Bob's mom on the phone. All three in this love triangle, plus the two therapists, go for a final round of farce in the restaurant, with a gun firing, water throwing, hilarious climax and potentially happy end.
Funniest of all is Tania Kelly as Mrs. Wallace, Bob's therapist, making cathartic sense out of her character's absurdity, by finding wonder in her frustrations. She gets stuck on saying the wrong words and needs her Snoopy doll as a consultant. Yet she's tickled with delight at objects in her desk drawer and cheers the odd directions of her patient's (or porpoise's) positive-thinking and assertiveness. Christopher Jones, as Dr. Framingham, is less likeable and often too loud for the intimate audience space—with his hollow macho poses and his overblown rage at his patient, Prudence, who won't submit anymore to his seductions. Austin Houdek is a bit too quiet, on the other hand, as Andrew the waiter, who gives a little more attention to his customers when threatened by a gun.
Yet, the play is finely directed throughout—with minimal set pieces working well and scene changes executed smoothly by the actors. They also use silent moments and scene transitions perfectly, for comic effect and meaning. Even the offstage space becomes significant, when Bruce and Bob fight loudly there, while Prudence waits on the couch, cringing in uncertainty.
Bob eventually finds hope for change, as the zany Mrs. Wallace encouraging his self-expression with a cap-gun. And Bruce, as a "partial crackpot," helps Prudence to stare "into the abyss" of the audience. Together, with the good and bad effects of their treatments, they turn ridiculous failure into a new awareness, through trust in love's possibilities, as the best therapy, along with laughter. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
This play's focus on a gay couple might be off-putting to some in the Charlotte community—given the tumult here over Angels in America 15 years ago. But the current production of Next Fall explores issues of concern to all of us: life, death, and the possibility of an afterlife, human and divine judgment, illness and health, parent and child communication, and the desire to save or change the person one loves.
In the present, the play takes place in a hospital waiting room (decorated in a striking mix of natural wood, garish green, and silver trimmed rectangles)—and then around the bed of Luke (Josh Looney), who is in a coma, after being hit by a taxicab in New York City. His friends are gathered to support each other in this time of crisis: Luke's partner, Adam (Christian Casper); Luke's boss at a candle shop and Adam's good friend, Holly (Sheila Snow Proctor); and Luke's ex-boyfriend, Brandon (Scott Alexander Miller). Luke's mother, Arlene (Polly Adkins), and his father, Butch (Jerry Colbert), have come from Tallahassee to be there, though they've been divorced from each other for over 20 years. While they're waiting and getting bits of news, while Adam tries to get inside Luke's room although he's not a family member, and while he fights for more time with his comatose partner, against the father's authority, periodic flashbacks are shown.
In the flashback scenes, we get to see Adam and Luke's initial meeting, their breakfast together after a first night of lovemaking, their moving into an apartment together, Butch visiting that apartment, Adam, Holly, and Luke conversing there, Adam meeting with Brandon in a park to discuss his relationship with Luke, and Adam confronting Luke about wanting him to change. The main conflict between Adam and Luke, throughout these scenes, is that Luke is an Evangelical Christian, who continues to pray, despite his repeated "sin" of homosexual activity, and who believes he will spend eternity without his partner in heaven, because Adam does not believe in Christ.
The two leads are sometimes dressed in their underwear, but signs of affection are kept discreet (with a kiss on the forehead, for example, rather than the lips). Both actors are superb in their roles, as is the rest of the cast. The set, designed by Chip Decker, is also excellent, with amazing transformations from the hospital rooms (even showing Luke in bed with his vitals' monitor) to rooftop reception, to home kitchen, to apartment entryway and living room. Comic spices are added to the recipe throughout the show, through the dialogue's ironies and actors' choices.
It becomes more and more apparent, through flashbacks, that Adam is a hypochondriac, fearful of his mortality, feeling guilty about his sexual orientation, even imagining God's punishment—while refusing to believe in a Christian cosmos. Luke is in conflict with himself, as well as with Adam, about needing to believe in Christ, heaven, the Rapture, and the Last Judgment, while sinning through his love for Adam. As Adam points out, Luke believes that a killer of homosexuals could go to heaven, if he's a Christian, though Adam goes to hell. Brandon eventually helps Adam, and the audience, to understand that Luke has "moved the line" in becoming his gay partner, thus living in sin—through love and loyalty. And yet, the physically fearful Adam seems to envy (or find consolation in) Luke's certainty about his destined afterlife and God's ordering of the world, especially as the play returns to the present crisis.
Luke is also in conflict with Butch during the flashbacks, as Adam is in the present. Luke's father seems to know, yet refuses to discuss that his son is gay and that Adam is his lover. He does acknowledge that he changed his mind about his son becoming an actor, feeling pride while seeing him onstage. Yet Butch condemns his son, indirectly, by saying that an actor in a photo with Luke was too gay and "swishy" for the role.
The characters' names are meaningful, in this regard, with Luke as young and smiling brightly, Adam as older and earthbound, Butch as traditional and severe, almost a "red neck," though the actor has long gray hair, suggesting another side to him. So are references throughout the show to Our Town and its nostalgic ghosts, as well as Huckleberry Finn here, with the photo of actors in Luke's play.
Arlene tries to mediate, but has her own inner conflicts with addiction, with Butch having left her for another woman, and with her nostalgia for Luke as a child. (The play stalls a bit during a hospital chapel scene, when Arlene reminisces.) Holly shows inner conflicts as well, but keeps her spirits up, as a nurturing friend that each of the others turn to, for wisdom and hope. And this play offers both to the audience, through its engaging web of past and present conflicts, about this life and the next, about the fallen and the believers. It may be especially meaningful to those who are dealing with similar conflicts among friends or family members. But it could be valuable to all who are trying to understand, and sometimes laugh at, the dramas that humans cause (unlike other animals) through not being sure, collectively, why we exist and what we should desire. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
Though I'd learned about The Harlem Renaissance era in school, people like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were the front runners whose names were plastered between the pages of history books and on the minds of literature lovers. Rarely did I hear of Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron Douglas and Countee Cullen, to name a few. For The Love of Harlem recounts the lives of these and several other brilliant minds that contributed to the legacy of the era and the many issues they faced existing in such a racially charged society.
The show explodes onto the tiny set with dancers skipping on stage to ragtime beats and the main cast harmonizing a beautiful ode to Harlem. Though the space is limited, the crew makes good use of it by crowding the cast around in a semi-circle to simulate a cotton club dance floor. The musical intro commands finger-snapping and shoulder-bouncing from most of the audience, but is a bit too long. After a few minutes my guest and I were eager for the actual show to start.
Often congregating in the upstairs apartment of writer Wallace Thurman, the group affectionately known as "The Negro Literati" would discuss the woes of being the colored rebels of their time and how to handle the harsh criticism they received from their white counterparts because of their non-conforming ways.
The entire production displays the talented and diverse voices of the characters as well as the perfect sounds from the accompanying band. The tunes are so spot on that I could close my eyes and feel like I was standing on a Harlem street corner inhaling the musical tunes from a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy.
In addition to focusing on the rebelliousness of Negroes during the Harlem Renaissance, the play makes much mention of the sexual confusion of many in the group. Subtly visiting this topic in the first act, it seems the second act focuses solely on the characters that were troubled and torn between the love of their careers and the taboo sexuality they were trying so hard to renounce.
While the musical performances are just as entertaining throughout the entire production, it quickly shifts from social battles to internal ones and ends with a quick history lesson about the deaths of certain members. I would love to have known the accomplishments of each character and how their fascinating lives ended.
The set, mostly provided by 1510 Antiques, creates a true 1920s ambience as do the costumes, complete with flowered headpieces and short dresses that shimmied when the actors shook.
The show left me with more knowledge and appreciation about this era that pioneered what I love most - the arts. The musical performances are phenomenal, even one from a player that is extremely comical but purposely tone-deaf. Outside the issue of a major shift from societal battles to sexual struggles, For The Love of Harlem is extremely entertaining and inspiring for those who have a passion for creativity. Review by Dawn Cauthen
Dawn Cauthen is a freelance writer in the Charlotte area currently working on a screenplay, a novel, and many freelance articles. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Stage and Screen from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Uptown Magazine and Dawn enjoys reviewing theater productions, movies, and loves most things artistic.
How do they do that? The ingenious set for John Tartaglia’s ImaginOcean is a happy underworld sea inhabited by brightly colored talking creatures. The black lights used bathe set, characters and audience with an iridescent glow that includes the bubbles that float down on the audience. With lights off and the black back drop, the audience can’t see the actors manipulating the characters or swirling the various fish, fauna and other objects of the ocean moving happily around the stage.
The story focuses on a treasure hunt by the three main creature-characters: Tank (Jonathan Carlucci), Bubbles (Haley Jenkins), and Dorsel (David Colston). As they follow the treasure map they have adventures and meet other inhabitants they would otherwise not have known. The message is to not be afraid to take chances, use your imagination to take you places you wouldn’t otherwise go, and be a good and loyal friend.
Several of the young children in the audience responded by calling out the name of the characters when they seemed lost, including one little boy who was especially worried about Bubbles – very sweet.
The actors’ voices are distinct enough to distinguish them even when singing. The songs are catchy theatre-type music that children like and can accompany. Vocal responses and clapping are encouraged by Mr. Tartaglia so that children are not expected to be inhibited, but they do have to remain in their seats because it is dark in the theater.
The show is less than an hour long, an ideal length for young children who respond to puppets, singing, and visually stimulating stage shows. Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
The Jets vs. Los Sharks? A bilingual Broadway revival of the classic musical, West Side Story? What's our country coming to? Well, this new (2010) version of a 1957 musical, based on Shakespeare's tragedy of "star-crossed lovers" (Romeo and Juliet), evokes more of the Latin side—of Maria, Anita, Bernardo, and the Sharks—reflecting a change in our cultural awareness today. The Jets are not the dominant gang anymore.
Only one scene might be confusing for those in the audience who do not know Spanish: when the Puerto Rican youths debate the merits, wants, and compulsions of being in America. But new meanings are explored in a Spanglish context here, around a familiar song and its refrain, "I want to be in America." This dream means, to the boys, that their gang must meet in a "war counsel" to fight for territory in New York City, while their girlfriends question that compulsion to fight. Despite the nostalgic quaintness of this musical, showing all-male gangs (without drug-dealing), in smoothly choreographed dance-fights, using their fists or switchblades and cute terms from the 1950s, it gains a current, edgy resonance at this and many other points.
Spanish lyrics and dialogue throughout the show are couched with English terms to help all in the audience, even those not familiar with the original, to follow the plot. And much is gained by having the Sharks speak or sing in both English and Spanish. Maria sings, for example, more genuinely and movingly in her mother-tongue about feeling "pretty" ("Me Siento Hermosa") after falling in love with the white-boy Tony.
Distinct dance styles in the gangs—the Jets' high kicks and pop-up leaps versus the Sharks' suave Latin swirls—also show the cultural gulf that the lovers must cross. The violence that erupts from the boys' "extra feelings," in both styles, evokes a visceral sense of how contending ethnic values continue to cause harm, across many generations. That's still true today, not just in New York, but also here in Charlotte and throughout the "New South," with our rapidly growing Latino and other minority populations, plus recent white immigrants, crossing "Old South" families and customs.
Spectacular sets and lighting effects (designed by James Youmans and Howell Binkley) place this musical in New York a half century ago: under a highway bridge, in alleyways, in a bridal shop, in Doc's drugstore, at a dance in a high school gym, or in Maria's bedroom. But they also make it contemporary to us. The shadows of the bridge, high above the young hoodlums, with jagged fire-escapes and eroding buildings around them, frame their conflict in an extended poetics of social structures. A chain-link wall at the stage edge, with a solid, weighty angle of the bridge looming overhead for the "Rumble" between the gangs, shows how they've been confined by their social contexts and turned into animals. Tony must climb a fortress-like, wrought iron balcony to reach Maria's bedroom. Yet the lighting also provides more abstract, symbolist touches at certain points, painting shards of purple across the gang groups or a shocking brightness behind Tony and Maria as they approach the audience, emboldened by their love.
The performances are superb—with excellent choral dances, eloquent singing voices, and finely tuned acting as well. Ross Lekites, as Tony, is especially poignant in dwelling on his new love's name, singing "Maria" high and low, loudly and softly, expressing both a fierce passion and reverent prayer. Evy Ortiz, Michelle Aravena, Gizel Jimenez, and Kathryn Lin Terza, as Maria, Anita, Rosalia, and Fernanda, also hit the high notes—and long extended ones—in sweetly touching and boldly impressive ways.
Doc at the drugstore, Glad Hand at the high school dance, and the cops, Krupke and Lt. Schrank (played by John O'Creagh, Wally Dunn, and Mike Boland), all reveal, in distinctive ways, the failure of adults to mediate or provide a cure for the violent energies of "delinquent" boys in both gangs. The Jets sing comically about being fated by such a view of them—with lyrics about a "social disease" gaining new meanings through the actors' gestures.
After that, the musical moves again toward its tragic end, exposing how youthful passions, insecure identities, and miscommunications, lead to honorable but vengeful demands. And yet, the cultural mix here, with more Latino influences, encourages the hope that love and awareness will continue to change hearts and minds, toward new unions and respectful distances, between individuals and groups (hoy y mañana), even more than in the past. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
Just when the economy is down and the rate of divorce is up, Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn, a mismatched married couple from Los Angeles, create a quirky true-to-life comedy about their life together and what the future holds, if they don’t kill each other first.
Set in an intimate restaurant in the heart of L.A., Jeff Kahn, played by Scott Richard Foster, awaits the arrival of Annabelle, his always late, always on the phone wife of 10 long years. On this particular evening the two are celebrating their wedding anniversary but it can’t seem to begin until the other half arrives. Annabelle Gurwitch, played by Antoinette LaVecchia, barrels into the eatery like a Jersey Shore brunette, with a Smart Phone super-glued to her ear and her booming voice bouncing off the wine glasses. Shortly after winning the cell phone fight, the night begins with Jeff's account of the torturous but lengthy attempt at courtship he forged with Annabelle over a five year period.
Jeff is a regular guy who wants what every man wants out of life--sports, sex, and beer. If he can experience them within seconds of each other and happen to involve his gorgeous wife, he can die a happy man, as long as she croaks first. Before slipping into an ordinary life, Jeff persuades Annabelle to slip him her phone number at a potluck dinner. For the next five years he chases her, stalks her, even babysits her cat, all while she forgets about him like foreign currency that has depreciated. Jeff constantly professes their destiny to be together, even though she can’t remember his name.
Annabelle, an obvious savvy but scatter-brained busybody jumps in and out of relationships and hasn’t noticed the wonderful guy that she runs into every couple of years named Jeff Kahn. One day, after another failed relationship, it dawns on her that Jeff is worth a third, maybe fourth look. The two marry and years later, the relationship tables surprisingly turn slightly when she has a peak at Jeff’s Facebook page that reveals his popularity with the ladies. This prompts Annabelle to follow suit and do what most beautiful, secure wives would do--join the club.
As the night continues over glasses of sacred but plentiful Pinot Noir, and completely different accounts of the coming of ages of the Gurwitch/Kahn union, patrons seemingly identified with the bitter truths of how children, families, and careers can interfere with the sustainability of what they perceive as an unbreakable merger between different worlds.
During this candid look at the inside of a marriage that may have reached its peak, Jeff and Annabelle find humor in the truth about themselves, their parenting skills, and what it really takes to survive marriage and cross the finish line with a wine glass in one hand and your sanity in the other. Review by Dawn Cauthen
Dawn Cauthen is a freelance writer in the Charlotte area currently working on a screenplay, a novel, and many freelance articles. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Stage and Screen from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Uptown Magazine and Dawn enjoys reviewing theater productions, movies, and loves most things artistic.
Each of us has a dark side. Each of us is viewed in different ways by different people in various social contexts. Hatcher's adaptation of Stevenson's 1886 novel shows the good and evil personality of its main character—with four actors playing various alter-egos of the doctor, as he becomes the violent criminal Hyde.
For this play, CAST has created a second performance space in its new location in NoDa, a theatre in the round with a stage larger than in its former Plaza-Midwood home, yet still with the intimacy of two rows of seats. With a much larger lobby and bar area as well, CAST has not recast the entire audience experience with a full make-over. But miniature mystery doors are given as tickets and creepy paintings hang over the audience heads. Inside the performance space, grey bricks and pale windows appear around the audience seats. A dirt and brick pathway wraps around the central raised stage, with benches and tables rising ingeniously out of that platform (designed by Elizabeth Shanks), at various points during the show.
The costumes (by Wendy Yang) also reflect inner things being exposed in ghostly ways. The men have period suits, faded toward a dull white, with subtle stains that show wear, like pages in an old book. The fronts of the women's bustle skirts are eroded away, showing cage-like hoops and crossties around their legs and undergarments, again all a pale white.
Director Audrey Alford has choreographed multiple Hyde figures, as various intense body types (Robert Crozier, Tom Moody, Bruce Florence, and George Pond) merging with and spinning off the agonized Jekyll (Jon Bowlby). The audience also gets a role at times, as actors perform along the edges of the wall behind their seats and above them, transforming the space into a nineteenth-century anatomy theatre—or a London street with second and third-story observers. Video projections on the stage floor and jarring music around it put ironic, postmodern spins on the show as well.
Intriguing transformations are offered by Zendyn Duellman, as Jekyll's loyal servant Poole and various edgier characters, and by Michelle Fleshman-Cross as Elizabeth, who falls in love with Hyde and then sees Jekyll, trying to warn her about him as a freak. Full physical intensity and sharp distinctions are given in the multiple male roles also, as Crozier, Moody, Florence, and Pond portray various friends and victims of Jekyll—along with the monstrous and yet human aspects of Hyde. Ian Fermy adds several significant figures to the tale.
But the origins of Jekyll's passion are left unexplored by the script—or left to audience psyches to uncover. Is he a scientist experimenting with the life and death drive in nature, and thus endangering those he loves, like Dr. Frankenstein with his monster and Elizabeth? Is he a doctor who becomes addicted to the wonder drug he's created, being its first test-subject? Is he a psychologist exploring the roots of brutal crimes by finding their potential in himself? (Hyde pours acid on one victim and cuts the words "wrong one" on her back. He kills another victim with his cane, beating him over 50 times.) The play shows the quaint horror of a well-educated man, over a century ago, turning rabid toward his friends and lover. Yet, such crimes still occur today. Maybe we deserve more insight about the potential for Hyde in each of us during this Halloween season of spooky masquerades.
Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
Many generations of Americans have experienced the Addams Family, in various media: New Yorker cartoons since the 1930s, TV sit-coms and animated shows in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s, and two movies in the 1990s. But what are the Addams characters—Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Grandma, Wednesday, Pugsly, Lurch, Thing (the hand), and Cousin Itt (the hair)—doing in a Broadway musical in the 21st century? What is the continued meaning of these comically creepy creatures, and their generational struggles, beyond just nostalgic entertainment?
Audience members can snap their fingers along with the original TV tune, as the red satin curtain is opened by Thing as a disembodied hand. The show shifts from a family reunion in the graveyard with ancestral ghosts (wearing gray and white costumes of different periods) to various interior rooms of the Addams mansion in New York's Central Park, to a tree and swing there, and back to the graveyard. There are spooky, fun, and fantastic backdrops and scenic devices, such as cartoonish portraits of ghoulish relatives in the home, Cousin Itt crossing the stage (like a possessed wig chasing a piece of curtain tie that looks like "it"), and Fester floating toward and dancing with the full moon he's in love with. (Set and costumes are designed by Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott, puppetry by Basil Twist, special effects by Gregory Meeh.) The music, songs, and dances are very eclectic, combining Latin beats, old-fashioned show tunes, bunny hops, the twist, tango, flamenco, and even a bullfight finale as the Gomez v. Morticia conflict resolves.
Gomez (Douglas Sills) charms the audience with his suave sensuality, mischievous wit, and passionate voice, giving the stereotype of the Latin Lover intriguing twists. His asides to the spectators increase their sympathy, especially through his songs about feeling "trapped" between his wife and daughter. Yet, the stronger poses of Morticia (Sara Gettelfinger) are also appealing, with her stern concerns about their teen daughter, Wednesday (Cortney Wolfson), falling in love with a boy from Ohio. Gomez promises Wednesday that he won't tell her mom her secret that the boy, Lucas (Brian Justin Crum), has given her an engagement ring. But Morticia eventually draws the truth out of them all, as Lucas and his parents visit the Addams mansion for dinner and the traditional family game of "full disclosure," based on the Spanish Inquisition.
Uncle Fester (Blake Hammond) speaks and sings wittily to the audience, as a partial narrator across the stage edge. He becomes a focus, too, through his passion for the moon and his organizing of the phantom ancestors to help Wednesday and Lucas prove their love for each other. Lurch (Tom Corbeil) is charming as well, as the stiff, zombie-like butler, who only speaks with evocative non-verbal sounds—and then surprises the audience toward the end with his articulate singing voice. Pugsley (Patrick D. Kennedy), as the youngest in the family, has many mischievous and artful moments: being joyfully stretched on the rack by his sister, using a potion to keep his sister from leaving with her boyfriend, and hitting the high notes while expressing such fears. Grandma (Pippa Pearthree) is just as intriguing as she flirts with the 80-somethings in the audience or shows off her potion collection.
All of these characters, wonderfully performed, have their meaningful moments, offering a perversely comical view of the traditional extended family, which has been lost in many American homes today. Indeed, Morticia's threat to leave Gomez, because he hid the truth from her, as well as Wednesday's ironic rebellion in desiring a "normal" family, may resonate with current concerns about our fractured home lives. Lucas's parents, Mal and Alice Beineke (Martin Vidnovic and Crista Moore), may also reflect today's aging boomers, as they rediscover lost passions—with happy, hippy attitudes emerging from the no-nonsense business man and his superficially rhyming wife.
Some of the songs and plot points seem overly simple and predictable, even as parodies. Alice tells Mal to let their son Lucas "follow his heart." Wednesday sings of her teen angst as being "pulled in a new direction." Yet, the witty twists at these moments, along with insightful lines, lyrics, and relationships throughout the show, make these comical horror characters from prior decades reconnect with today's hopes and fears. They also show us the perennial, mysterious conflicts of young lovers, aging relatives, ancestral spirits, and a long-term marriage, with sex and death drives disrupting the "illusion" of what's normal. Thus, we might learn, as the Addams wryly sing, to "move toward the darkness and smile." Maybe even become more aware of the ironies in our fears of our own weird neighbors.
Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
If you want to have fun in Charlotte leave your deep philosophical thoughts at home and head to the Duke Energy Theatre at Spirit Square to see Xanadu The Musical. Based on the 1980 film Xanadu, which did not do well with audiences, the material has been reworked by playwright Douglas Carter Beane who brings his own comic sensibility to the show, making sly references to the flopped movie and building up the Greek muses/gods angle to parody us foolish mortals. Though the movie wasn’t a hit the music was, and the movie has since become a cult favorite.
The Greek Muses come down from Mount Olympus to Venice, California in 1980. The “sisters” all have different functions. (In the show, as written, several of the muses are played by males.) The youngest, prettiest muse Clio (Lauren Marlowe Segel) wants to help a struggling artist named Sonny Malone (Joe McCourt), who has decided to end it all. Instead she convinces him to persevere and follow his dream, and in turn he falls in love with her. He has no idea who she is and knows her as Kira. The oldest sister muse Melponene (Lisa Smith Bradley), and another sister Calliope (Kristian Wedolowski) are jealous of Clio because their father Zeus has promised her Xanadu, some kind of paradise, if she fulfills her mission. They are determined to get her banished from Mount Olympus by having her fall in love with the mortal Sonny.
Coincidentally Sonny wants to take over the Xanadu Theatre in Venice to have live shows, art gallery openings, etc. He meets with owner Danny McGuire (Billy Ensley) who had previously met Clio years ago and had fallen in love with her, then known as Tangerine. After they parted, he became a cold-hearted businessman, but this episode awakens his long distant feelings.
Cleverly directed by Glenn T. Griffin, the show contains many humorous, whimsical touches. The sister muses often stand observing the action as the “Greek chorus” posturing and sometimes commenting either verbally or non-verbally. Flip one-liners about the movie and even the present show are hilarious. Mr. Griffin winks at the audience and lets us in on the joke, making it that much more enjoyable.
The utilitarian one-set design by Tim Baxter-Ferguson provides room for roller skating, the outside structure of a theatre, or Mount Olympus. The costumes by Jamey Varnadore are lush and colorful, the lighting by Emily Eudy complements the action, and the choreography by Robbie Jaeger is simple but effective taking into account the non-professional dancers in the cast. Music director Marty Gregory and band members Alex Mauldin, Jeremy DeCarlos, Don Jaeger, and Kaio DeSouza provide consistent accompaniment for the singers/dancers with the well-known songs.
As Clio, Lauren Marlowe Segal anchors the show. Her singing voice is bright and vigorous, not to mention she spends much of the show on roller skates. Joe McCourt brings a California speak to the naïve artist Sonny. He and Ms. Segal are well-matched as a young couple. Lisa Smith Bradley is in good voice and finally gets a role where she can vamp it up as one of the evil sisters. Kristian Wedolowski goes all out as Calliope--a big man, he is over-the-top funny playing girly girls. Billy Ensley not only brings his considerable acting smarts to the role of Danny, but his elegant tap dance with Clio is one of the highlights of the show. In fact, the entire cast works very hard to please the audience and includes: Steven James, Jenn Quigley, Iesha Hoffman, and Ian Johnson.
It’s obvious that much hard work went into the show. The cast have varying degrees of expertise in different areas. And there are some hiccups and glitches. Some of these may improve as the show goes on, but it’s not an issue in a campy show like this. Everyone is there to have fun, and you will have fun, too, when you see Xanadu.
Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Have you heard the expression, “pulling out all the stops”? Well that’s what director Alan Poindexter and Children’s Theatre of Charlotte have done with Seussical. They provide a fantastical sensory jaunt via Dr. Seuss’ trippy imagination and the talents of the cast and tech/crew.
It would be difficult to imagine childhood without Dr. Seuss now, given how beloved his books are with kids and adults, and the way some of his words and phrases stick in the mind. “Thinking” was a big thing with Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss). He apparently thought we did too little of it, and thus suffered at the hands of those suspicious of it. But reading to children who make no judgments (not yet anyway) and are open to new ideas can help adults hold onto that quality. It’s there. We all carry inside us the children we used to be, but some push that childish wonder away while others let it enhance their lives.
As the creators of this musical intend, Seussical takes the stories a step further, and the audience sees the characters come alive before their eyes. The familiar tales are here, though some pass swiftly in this jam-packed show, and Act I can leave the audience somewhat dazed.
There could be no better Cat in the Hat than Mark Sutton. As narrator, he prowls the stage witnessing and explaining the action with constant vigilance. The show immediately opens with the Cat leading the cast in the musical number “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!". This production number is a good indication of what the audience is in for with this energetic show. Much of the action centers on Horton, (Chaz Pofahl, in good voice and with an affecting performance) from the story “Horton Hears a Who” as the tender elephant that wants to save the speck called Whoville and all the little Whos. He bonds with JoJo (Sam Faulkner, great job/voice) who is the Mayor’s son and also an outcast. This bonding leads to one of the musical highlights of the show, “Alone in the Universe.”
What a cast. Each actor brings a certain sensibility to his/her character including: Susan Roberts Knowlson as the lovesick bird Gertrude, Andy Faulkenberry as the Mayor and Olivia Edge as Mrs. Mayor of Who, JoJo’s perplexed parents, Lucia Stetson as the wayward party bird who takes flight from responsibility, Caroline Farley as Cindy Lou, Beau Stroupe as Schmitz/Yertle, Nicole Watts as Sour Kanagaroo, and Katlyn Gonzalez as Baby Kangaroo. Working together in admirable unison are the Bird Girls Casi Harris, Caroline Chisholm, and Mandy Moss, and the bad-boy Wickersham brothers Jonathan Adriel Watkins, Ashton Guthrie, and Mekhai Lee. Also Julia Kelly as Thing 1, and Susannah Upchurch as Thing 2. Annabel Lamm is adorable as elephant-bird Baby Ellie.
Kudos to everyone in the large cast for the hard work it must have taken to coordinate choreographer Ron Chisholm’s inspired dance numbers. Drina Keen and her band are likewise to be commended for excellent musical accompaniment. Impressive too, are the colorful costume designs of Connie Furr, outstanding lighting design with multiple projections and effects by David Fillmore, sound design by Elisheba Itloop (important in a musical), props by Pete Smeal, and the stark yet striking scenic design by Ryan Winegar with help from scenic artist Tim Parati. This production even managed to get dry ice on stage!
Suessical is playing through October 23. Do not miss this experience.
Review by Ann Marie Oliva
Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Extreme dance and theatre. That's what this is. Experiments that move bodies beyond their limits, finding centrifugal tricks in large steel machines and scaling walls to defy gravity—with nine dancers who leap, fall, tumble, and flip to make intertwining collective forms.
They're from Brooklyn and their techno DJ tells the audience to make noise and take photos, post them on the Web and spread the news. Their choreographer won the MacArthur "genius grant" 14 years ago and then developed SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics). Slam they do now, often and hard. But they also fly, just as impressively.
There are large steel frames around them and, throughout most of the show, live video on a huge screen behind them, intercut with clips of Streb explaining facets of her work. In the piece called "Impact," dancers climb, hang from, and bang into a Plexiglas wall, while it rotates. They do flips off the top, or slide down upside-down. Thus, Streb says, they explore forces and directions in the dynamics of space and the human imagination.
In "Rebound," they do more flips and body slams, timed to interweave or make multiple person piles, on a flat padded board and short springs. In "Crush," they play with a steel I-beam hung on a chain, spinning and swinging it, while running and leaping around it, dodging and diving under it, hanging from it, and keeping their heads barely out of harm's way.
In "Fall," the dancers do just that—stunningly—from 10, 15, and 20 feet above the mat. (One might wonder, though, about the potential for eventual brain damage in such macho displays, as with American football players.) In "Artificial Gravity," they run, fall, and leap on a revolving stage, timing their flips to land between one another. A few even lean backward, as if sitting on an invisible chair.
The second act involves larger machines. There's a counterweighted arm on which one dancer flies in a circle, while others fall like dominos and rise again under her. Or a rectangular box in which the dancer contorts and reshapes her body against its walls. Dancers also hang from wires to walk up a wall and climb vertically down against it. Then the wall is set at a 45 degree incline and they run up and slide down, making various patterns. They make even more fanciful designs with the wall horizontal, while video of it is projected on a vertical screen, as if they're on a low-gravity moon walk and acrobatics adventure.
The finale includes a huge, metal, rotating hamster-wheel, with dancers running inside and out, doing flips within it and flying off it. Throughout this show, the "action artists" convey amazing energy and fierce concentration. They share their intensity with the audience, not only in physical feats of strength and beauty, but also with expressive faces, gestures, and vocalizations. They explore spaces, shape forces, play with machines, and inspire dreams—in the numerous stages of the minds of those watching as well as the one they're performing on. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
It’s upstate New York at the end of the nineteenth century. Middle class homemaker and new mother Catherine Givings (Hanley Smith) can’t produce enough milk to feed her daughter. Her husband (Christian Casper), a progressive doctor who administers electric therapy to “nervous” women, can’t express enough love for his wife to fulfill her romantic dreams. His patient, “hysteria” sufferer Sabrina Daldry (Lauren Dortch Crozier), can’t sleep, can’t play the piano, and doesn’t want anything to do with her frazzled husband (Lee Thomas).
No one in Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room seems capable of letting go – until, that is, they discover Dr. Givings’ vibrator therapy, and the services of the play’s working class characters, nurse Annie (Julie Janorschke-Gawle) and wet nurse Elizabeth (Tanya McClellan). Dr. Givings’ vibrators – one for women and a different, more draconian model for the male hysteric, artist Leo Irving (Catori Swann) – revitalize the Daldry’s marriage and inspire Leo to paint again. Dr. Givings is visited with visions of new, better electric inventions, while his wife, Catherine plays doctor with Mrs. Daldry, and Mrs. Daldry does the same with nurse Annie.
If this sounds like a fun, farcical romp, it is, at least in the play’s first act and the first scene of the second where we meet the self-absorbed, bohemian Leo. After this last, hilarious scene, though, the play’s comedy inexplicably ends. Where we expect things to spin out of control, they do just the opposite, as the play begins to focus on its message, how our own society is perhaps just as repressed as that of a middle class homemaker’s in the 1880s.
In fact, set the play in Norway, and you might see shadows of Ibsen’s A Doll's House, with Smith playing a sharper, more eccentric Nora Helmer. Chip Decker’s set most certainly references the 1879 play, as does Smith in Catherine’s monologue about the weight of the things in her domestic space standing in for a life. Unlike Nora, though, Ruhl’s character wants her husband’s love and affection, not his money and protection. And this is the key to Ann Marie Costa’s production’s relentless charm. The performances, the set—even the dramaturgical research displayed in the lobby—are at once serious and fun, filled with energy, and well worth your attention. Review by Jeanmarie Higgins
Jeanmarie Higgins is Assistant Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte where she teaches Theatre & Society and Dramaturgy. Two of her plays—Science Fair and To Moscow!—are published by Playscripts, Inc.
In the first moment of Don Cook’s ambitious new play, Stigmata, Carmen Ruiz (Divina Cook)—high-powered Wall Street broker, inveterate heartbreaker, and Forbes Woman of the Year—wakes to find herself incarcerated in a gray cell. We, along with Ruiz, spend the next 90 minutes figuring out how and why she ended up there. She demands to know where she is, but gets no answer. So she settles in, appealing to her unseen jailors for creature comforts—her Rolex, a bathrobe, and a proper breakfast. When it becomes clear that her captors are not going to torture her, Carmen figures out that in order to get free, she must simply explain herself, defending the selfish life choices she has made. In the process, we follow her hard-won rise to wealth and fame despite years of suffering at the hands of her real torturers, that is, her mother and other bullies. Each successive object the guard passes her through a flap at the bottom of her door pulls Carmen back to her childhood, where she tells stories from her life. When these stories are particularly difficult to tell, she transforms into the character of her hopelessly abused teenaged self, locked in a closet by her mother over a secret we spend the play puzzling out.
Cook’s script is suspenseful and taut. But even so, some of the most moving sections of the play are simply descriptive, filled with lush detail. On a train out of town—fleeing her nightmarish childhood—Carmen describes the “kind woman with forks and spoons” who teaches her how to use a formal place setting in the dining car. She describes the first kind strangers she has ever met with the uncanny detail of the simultaneously foreign and familiar. Meanwhile, the Nebraska landscape passes by, days pass, and Carmen steps into the Chicago summer, remembering: “the heat hit me like the steamy towels my father used to soak his face in when he shaved.” Divina Cook makes these scenes active, one of many aspects of her performance that harmonizes with Mr. Cook’s writing. Less successful are “business speak” sequences devoted to Carmen’s exploits in the financial world, leading me to question whether her character needs to be so extremely successful, so preoccupied with money, or so hated by the public.
As intimate as the line-by-line writing is, so is the performance space. The Warehouse Performing Arts Center is intimately set with perhaps 40 audience seats, a small stage, and no backstage at all. Ray Maloney’s set design works with rather than fights these limitations, and he takes advantage of every possible inch of stage space without crowding the scene. This intimate, simply staged play might well read better with more space between Carmen and the audience, so that she might look more trapped in limbo, and less as if we are sharing her cell. The Warehouse space allows us to take the emotional journey with Carmen, but doesn’t let us think much about her plight, so close are we to the action. Divina Cook, too, faces (and meets) the challenge of playing intensely emotional scenes with very little breathing room. A larger space also might afford Mr. Maloney more opportunity to use light to make transitions between past and present clearer.
Overall, this script, actress and production are thoughtfully wrought and, quite simply, impressive. In this critical climate of post-feminism, it is refreshing, even important, to experience work that wrestles with feminist issues without apology and head on. The challenges of growing up a Latina girl from a strictly Catholic household, in family and work worlds that have been historically dominated by men, Carmen reminds us that not so very long ago, industries traditionally run by men didn’t have a “glass ceiling,” but, as she puts it, “a double thick iron door.” Review by Jeanmarie Higgins
Jeanmarie Higgins is Assistant Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte where she teaches Theatre & Society and Dramaturgy. Two of her plays—Science Fair and To Moscow!—are published by Playscripts, Inc.
Lovers of pop rock, ballroom dancing, and New Age ideals may find this unique combination in a new musical presented by Actors Scene Unseen in Charlotte. Act One occurs in the Crystal Ballroom of Memphis, Act Two at the Royal Classic Competition in London. The songs of Joe Jackson are used throughout, with fine performances by the "Blaze of Glory" Band, led by Alan Kaufman and with choreography by Candace Jennings.
Story lines and dialogue scenes are loosely tied to the Jackson songs, with occasional narration by Luke (Matt Carlson), who leads the audience into a realm where "dreams are made and shattered." Carlson's great voice and smooth moves are welcome highlights to the show. So is the moving mini-drama of David (Steven B. Martin), a traumatized, alcoholic, Afghan-war vet, and his courageous wife Deirdre (Kara M. Martin) who tries to save him through dance. David sings about his confusion and alienation: "What's a man now?" And he's reprimanded by the ballroom instructor for "dirty dancing." Later, Deirdre sings powerfully about trying to reach her husband, as he drinks multiple shots, showing that "bitterness is a black hole."
A survivor of Sarajevo, Valentina (Cynthia Farbman Harris, another powerful voice) presents more hope about transcending the loss of her husband there. But the stringing together of various Jackson songs does not allow for a complete story line to any of these characters, nor to the others involved in the dance lessons and competition. Combining rumba, waltz, and tango with pop rock music is oddly innovative, but again constrains the opportunities for artistic expression.
The set design is minimal, using signs above the stage, enlarged photos, and other projections. Yet it helps to hold the various pop tunes and dance numbers together.
This show is mostly a revue of Jackson's songs. The resulting mix of music, dance, and drama—with various levels of expertise among the performers—may need a generous audience to value the many efforts involved. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
Why do family members become cruel to one another? In Tracy Letts's new Pulitzer-winning play, over a dozen complex characters battle for supremacy, self-control, or the possibility of love—while meeting in an Oklahoma home, due to the patriarch's disappearance. And this three-act, ensemble tragicomedy allows CAST to show that they have moved to a higher level of quality in their new home in NoDa, with an impressive, multilevel set and fine acting throughout the cast.
It's amazing how funny this play can be, and how many psyches it explores, while showing family situations that are so painful. Beverly Weston (George Gray), a retired academic, poet, and alcoholic, speaks to the audience at the start of the play, as if with an afterlife view of things. He then interviews a young, parentless, Native American woman (Karina Roberts-Caporino) and hires her as a live-in nurse and cook for his pill-addicted and mouth-cancer plagued wife, Violet (Polly Adkins).
Bev mysteriously disappears after that—and various family members come from across the country to help the matriarch cope. Passions intensify when Bev's drowned body is found and his funeral wake turns into a vicious truth-extorting ritual. Both the weak and strong, kind and cruel characters become sympathetic in this play, through its multiple tragic arcs of women vying for power and yet wanting men to stabilize the scene, while the men fail to fill a patriarchal hole.
In a tour-de-force performance by Adkins, the elderly Violet becomes childishly playful, babbling incoherently yet meaningfully, while lost in a fog like the drug-addicted mother in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. But she also takes command at the dinner table, pinning each of her three daughters and their men with fierce questions, like a female King Lear. Her sister, Mattie Faye (Anne Lambert), is just as stinging, throughout the play, as she picks at the insecurities of her full-grown, yet emotionally immature son, Little Charles (Peter Smeal). Letts's well-made play, with CAST's casting, offers a lovely irony and then tragic twist, as Little Charles, a huge man, summons the courage to admit and even sing his love for Ivy (Jennifer Hubbard), the most diminutive of Violet's daughters, although a dark secret is eventually revealed about their heritage (as in many Henrik Ibsen plays).
Mattie Faye's husband, Charlie (Charles LaBorde), fails to take charge as the oldest male at the dinner table, but he does give his wife an ultimatum to protect their son, appealing for generosity from her, even as we learn of the guilt that fuels her meanness. The youngest of Violet's daughters, Karen (Frances Bendert), discovers that her fiancé, Steve (Tony Wright), might do more than smoke pot with her 14-year-old niece, Jean (Madeleine Moore). Yet Karen still leaves with Steve to continue her desperate romantic dream. Her older sister, Barbara (Paula Baldwin), shows greater strength in confronting their mother and intervening in her pill popping. But her heart melts when Sheriff Deon (Dervin Gilbert), a prom date from decades ago, reappears in her life, after her husband Bill (Brett Gentile) finalizes their separation, while also trying to protect their daughter Jean from her wrath.
Although placed in Oklahoma, and exploring how "the plains" mood is like the blues, this show relates to what many in the audience might experience in their Southern homes and extended families. CAST has put teepees and large, Native American dream-catchers (with pill and liquor bottles) in the lobby. Spectators also get prescription bottles as tickets to their seats. And yet, the three-floors of the Weston home, along with several stairs and landings, many rooms, and a front porch with screen door, work in very specific ways during this play—in a set beautifully designed by Dee Blackburn.
As in the 1983 Lawrence Kasdan film, The Big Chill, the various characters here resituate their identities by revealing surprise relationships and painful secrets after the death of someone who connected them in various ways. But August: Osage County also explores our current anxieties at the waning of patriarchy—through the microcosm of one family and its extensive dramas. CAST provides an excellent opportunity to experience this, with realistic traumas and hopeful dreams that catch many insights, at the right theatrical distance. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
Many of us are nostalgic for the Sixties era, whether we lived then or not. James Cartee's one-man show, portraying gonzo journalist and novelist Hunter S. Thompson, presents various comparative points between our time and that era, beating the drum of history for 90 passionate minutes.
An American flag forms the backdrop for the small set, with a desk onstage, typewriter, phone, newspapers, pill bottles, carafe, shot glass, and pistols, much of which goes to the floor during the show. Cartee is a whirlwind of energy, often changing moods, shirts, and hats, though perhaps peaking too early with his outrage at society and challenges to his audience. And yet, he portrays many poignant points in his character's story, while tearing up the stage and interacting with his imagined readers beyond it.
The play covers the years 1968-70, and also represents Thompson's suicide in 2005 at the age of 67. The character explains his gonzo attitude for getting at the heart of a story by throwing himself into it, blurring the lines between non-fiction, fiction, and political activism. Likewise, Cartee throws himself into the role, showing Thompson's personal and professional battles.
Thompson tells about the birth of his son, but also how he and his wife lost several other pregnancies. He reenacts his private interview with Richard Nixon in the back of a limousine, showing both sympathy and hatred for this political nemesis. Thompson evokes Mayor Daly's brutal "army of cops" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he was beaten along with others in the crowd. He describes the seductive edges of insanity, alienation, intoxication, and political provocation—recounting his wife's miscarriages, his articles being banned, his drug use (with speed as a safer "pick me up" than acid), and his leadership of the "Freak Power" party in his run for Sheriff of a Colorado county.
Thompson criticizes liberals as being too comfortable to fight for "fundamental and necessary change." In a similar way, Cartee offers a disturbing portrayal of this famous character from the Sixties. His Hunter S. Thompson is funny and scary, creative and destructive, while representing the truth-seeking, revolutionary idealism of the Sixties and its bad-trip dangers. Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Theatres of Human Sacrifice, and Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.
THE IRISH CURSE
By Martin Casella
Directed by Glenn T. Griffin
Queen City Theatre Company
Duke Energy Theatre at Spirit Square
August 4 - 20, 2011
Set in a cluttered Catholic church basement, Martin Casella’s The Irish Curse, follows in real time the heartfelt trials of a small group of men who all face one problem—they find themselves lacking physically in one particular way. Billed as the “Vagina Monologues” for men, Casella’s men bemoan their shortcomings in sometimes poetic, usually hysterical, and often thought-provoking ways. It’s a tribute to the playwright, the cast, and the excellent direction of Glenn T. Griffin that this subject doesn’t wear out its welcome—though it comes awfully close. Ninety plus minutes of frank discussions of all things penis could have proven to be a crude and tedious bore. However, Casella treats his subject matter with a light hand, and Griffin’s taut direction keeps the play moving.
The conceit of the play is simple enough. Father Kevin Shaunessy (played with affable charm by John Hartness) and contract lawyer Joseph Flaherty (another tragic figure played with affection by the always wonderful Hank West) form a support group on a dare for the under endowed. Though the play doesn’t really make it clear, it apparently is also a stipulation that one be of Irish descent to be part of the group. It is a very small group (in more ways than one); the only other regular members are Rick Baldwin, a student of sports medicine played by QCT regular Justin Younts, and Stephen Fitzgerald, a tall, gay cop who is willing to give but not receive, if you get my meaning. Fitzgerald is played with frenetic intensity by James Glinski. The group’s routine is interrupted by the entrance of Keiran Reilly, a true Irishman complete with a thick brogue and Irish charm. Aaron Mize plays the stranger and manages this innocence and despair of the character very well.
The ensemble plays well together and keep the patter light enough to gloss over some of the clunkier moments in the script. Casella is best when playing broad. His humor is spot on. Some of the longer political diatribes are particularly clever. It is when the play seeks pathos that it is most difficult to believe. There are two references to attempted suicide brought on by tiny penises that, had they been played for laughs, might have been successful, but both mentions yanked me out of the world of the play. When the playwright ratchets it back a bit and speaks more frankly about the self doubt the men feel because they cannot measure up, it works a little better.
Kristian Wedolowski’s set design makes good use of the space. The theatre’s own stained glass windows are exposed, as are the existing exits. The detritus of an upcoming rummage sale litter the basement, and folding chairs and tables complete the space. It is a deeper and wider configuration than Queen City usually uses, and it was nice to see the characters explore the space. Alfie B. Griffin’s costumes are subtle yet extraordinary.
The Irish Curse explores everything from love, to politics, to religion, all through how it relates to man’s fascination with his penis. Though the structure of the play is formulaic, it tackles a subject matter that many have shied away from, although the play’s conceit that lives are destroyed by the lack of a few inches might be difficult to grasp. It would be hard to argue that men are not obsessed with penises and terrified of how they measure up. In a world where we are bombarded with advertisements for “natural male enhancements,” and men subject themselves to dangerous vacuum devices, weights, fat injections, and surgery (all of which are discussed in the play), it is clear that any discourse should be welcome, and Martin Casella’s charming play is a good start.
Obviously, this is not a play for children, from beginning to end the play is pretty clearly focused on one thing. I encourage all men to go see this. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before and it might be comforting to know that though you may be larger than baby corn or a cocktail weenie (as some of these characters compare themselves to), all men at some point in their lives are insecure about their bodies and about what it might mean to be a man. Women might also find some comfort in the fact that men are just as messed up as far as body image goes as they might be. Perhaps more. Review by Tim Baxter-Ferguson
Tim Baxter-Ferguson is professor of Theatre at Limestone College and Chair of that program. He has had his plays produced throughout the United States and Canada.