Save Your No Kings Protests, King Hedley II Remains Defiant

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Review: King Hedley II @ The Arts Factory

By Perry Tannenbaum

With over 3,300 No Kings protests popping up across the USA and on three other continents last weekend, you can go ahead and call BNS Productions’ local premiere of August Wilson’s King Hedley II an example of serendipitous or awkward timing. But you couldn’t deny that Wilson’s tragedy, the first BNS piece to be staged at the Arts Factory, was timely.

While a record eight million US citizens took to the streets, many reclaiming turf that was only recently terrorized by ICE G-Men chasing down an imaginary alien threat, basic living conditions of the 1980s, shown vividly by Wilson in all their wildness and squalor, still plague our inner cities. Religion, magic, and honest hard work offer no surer cure than guns, crime, and hopelessness.

Wilson’s clear vision and wisdom targeted the Hill District of Pittsburgh, illuminating each of the decades in the 20th century from a distinctively African-American perspective, forming an incomparably epic ten-play Century Cycle. In some ways, The Century (or Pittsburgh) Cycle is also incomparably complex. Some characters appear in multiple decades, while others mentioned in one of the dramas appear onstage in another.

In achieving his Cycle, to further complicate matters, Wilson did not move through the decades of his Century chronologically. Amid this seeming haphazardness, King Hedley II, commemorating the 1980s when it opened in 1999, anchors the most cohesive trio of plays in the whole series.

King’s father appears in Seven Guitars,the 1995 play that Wilson wrote immediately before Hedley II, along with Ruby and Elmore – but we see them four decades earlier in the 1940s, when King Jr is in embryo. Prominently mentioned in Hedley II, Aunt Ester will finally be seen, some 81 years younger, in Gem of the Ocean, the first play in the overall Cycle, premiering unforgettably on Broadway in 2003, starring Phylicia Rashad, depicting the 1900s decade.

If, as Wilson has said, Aunt Ester is a folk priestess who symbolizes the weighty history of African American tragedy and triumph, then her death at age 366 during Hedley II marks an unmistakable low point in the Cycle. The tempest of contention that breaks out at her home in Radio Golf, both the final play in the Pittsburgh Cycle (depicting the 1990s) and Wilson’s final work, can be viewed as piling insult onto injury or as a kind rebirth.

Like Hedley I, King would take it badly if anyone didn’t call him by his regal name. In fact, when we first see him, he is returning home from a seven-year stretch in prison for killing a man named Pernell, who not only slashed King’s face, leaving a permanent scar, but also insisted on calling him Champ. Hedley Sr. also committed murder for the same reason, so if you caught the Charlotte premiere of Seven Guitars in 2015, you would assume, like father, like son, that Hedley II has no regrets.

Not yet.

There’s another side to King that promises a fresh start, for he states concrete ambitions of opening a video store, a venture that cannot fail, and begins planting a garden in his front yard. Both Tonya and Ruby, the wife and mother who have held down this rundown fortress for seven years, are skeptical: they can’t believe King can follow a straight path to success. As sure as that bad dirt in their front yard won’t grow anything, King is bound to take the crooked way and land back in jail.

Hearkening back to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Wilson sets up a similar situation in the ‘80s to the one the Younger family encountered in the ‘50s. Only Wilson’s is a far bleaker view. Walter Younger held down a job, started a family, and his little sister had middle-class dreams and prospects.

King is more primal and dangerous than Walter, no less easily swayed and played. You’d better not stomp on those seeds King planted, though he sees the common sense of fencing off his little plot to prevent accidental incursions. Barbed wire, a bit aggressive, is his choice for fencing.

We can hope that the GE refrigerators that King and his best friend, Mister, are selling around town came from a legitimate source, but Tonya knows her man better than we do and presumes they’re stolen. An additional reason to trust Tonya’s misgivings comes when Mister proposes a heist at a jewelry store that he has cased.

Meanwhile, smooth-talking gambler Elmore is back in town with an eye toward reclaiming Ruby, getting married, and settling down. Proof of his wiliness comes after he talks King into letting him in on the GE scheme. Smooth operator, but he’s playing with fire. Even Mister knows better than to shoot dice with Elmore until he can bring a crooked set to the game.

Toi Aquila R.J., who also portrays Tonya, has a secure grasp of the costume designs that give each of the major characters his or her own distinctive style. There is black menace for King, a Sporting Life hipness for Elmore, and a diva flair for Ruby, the former big band vocalist. These core four are the strongest performers in director Rory Sheriff’s shrewdly chosen cast.

Much of the power that Jonathan Caldwell generates as King comes from those moments when he is open to reason, yet still seething somehow in these calmer moments. Explosions seem impending and inevitable. Tim Bradley as Elmore, on the other hand, sports a weaponized smile that conquers the ladies and confounds the men. As Ruby, Myneesha King gets to impress by belting a few bars, yet there’s no less sass in how her Ruby sees through both her son’s and her lover’s lies while succumbing to them.

For all that he packs into each of his plays, Wilson is anything but concise. Aquila’s anger as Tonya is as towering as her husband’s, and her monologue arguably encapsulates the passions and grievances that the playwright expresses most powerfully.

Yet there are ancient Greek elements artfully woven into Wilson’s script. Not knowing who you or your parents really are goes all the way back to Sophocles, most famously in Oedipus Rex, but the more overt thread in Hedley, the true prophet cursed with never being believed, goes back to Aeschylus and his pitiful Cassandra. Here in Pittsburgh this time, it’s Stool Pigeon, with Tone X laying heaps of Scripture on us all – and Wilson’s most delicious line:

“God’s a bad motherfucker.”

Now there’s some Greek attitude! Rounding out the cast is Andrew Monroe as Mister, appropriately the most inexperienced actor playing the most ordinary character. Not only does Mister bring King’s plight down to earth and help universalize it, but he also fails to move King with his pleadings – and to match his uncontrollable machismo when the heist goes down.

Deadly conflict between King and Elmore seems as foreordained as a dark storm first viewed on the far horizon. The best and zestiest view is at the Arts Factory through this weekend.

God of Carnage Bites but Merrily Refuses to Draw Blood

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Review: God of Carnage @ Theatre Charlotte

By Perry Tannenbaum

Human masterworks and monstrosities cover the globe, fly through the air, and reconfigure the sky, bringing breathtaking changes to land, sea, and climate. So it’s rather quaint to spend an evening with a playwright who has built her reputation on the notion that civilization is a thin veneer clothing our innate selfishness and savagery.

Morals, ideals, aesthetics, and manners were all shown to be shams in Yasmina Reza’s Art, her 1994 breakout sensation. Trading in her sharper scalpel for a blunter instrument – a wrecking ball – Reza gleefully bludgeoned the veneers of sophistication, liberalism, reason, consensus, and even adulthood in God of Carnage, an even more smashing Tony Award-winning success in 2009.

It’s an unabashedly macro takedown of humanity and the progress of the race. Yet it’s deeply rooted in the soul of art and in the tradition of drama. For Sophocles and the Greeks, the tragic joke was that, no matter how mighty or regal we might be, or even how brilliant, we were all the playthings of the gods. Modern science reframed the picture, grimly enslaving us to our inner demons while liberating us from external forces. For O’Neill, Albee, and other moderns, the prospects were no less grim.

What’s especially disarming about the new Theatre Charlotte revival is just how lightly this heavy Carnage can play. To say that director Brian Lafontaine takes an impish approach to this adult powwow between parents of two schoolkids would be a grossly misleading understatement. Once disagreements between the two couples, the two genders, and the two husbands and wives escalate, no holds, shticks, or slapstick are barred.

If I had to apportion the hijinks at the Queens Road Barn to Reza’s script and Lafontaine’s embellishment, I’d give a decided edge to Lafontaine’s frou-frou. The recent altercation that precipitated the comedy action, between Henry Novak and Benjamin Raleigh about 30 minutes after sundown at Cobble Hill Park in Brooklyn, NY, was surely more violent than what we will witness onstage, with two of Henry’s teeth broken by Benjamin’s bamboo rod.

But the hostilities that break out between the adults are more epic in length, malice, and pettiness. Outbreaks of empathy, conciliation, appreciation, and apology only compound the impacts of their childishness and breaches of decorum.

So does the sleek neatness of Chris Timmons’ set design, where not a single hair or tulip seems out of place. Our hostess, Veronica Novak, writes about Ethiopian culture and civilization while working part-time at an art history bookshop. Not the expected match for Michael, her husband, a wholesaler who traffics in doorknobs, saucepans, and toilet fittings.

We rightly presume that the neatness, the stylishness, and the tulips emanate from her. On the other hand, both Reza and Lafontaine appreciate the special comedy spark that hostile women can ignite more readily than men. That’s why Reza has Veronica and Benjamin’s mother, wealth manager Annette Raleigh, initiating the most startling fireworks. Lafontaine delights in piling on additional aggressions from his women, Jenn Grabenstetter feasting on Veronica with serial hurler Aimee Thomas on the counterattack as Annette.

The menfolk are mostly on the receiving end of attacks, so Reza fiendishly contrives to make them as supremely irritating as their wives are judgmental. Most outré and obnoxious is Paul Riley as Benjamin’s dad, Alan. Like Veronica, Alan has also spent quality time in Africa – with a radically different, primal takeaway.

Lafontaine has special affinities and insights into Alan Raleigh, since he played the role in the 2012 Charlotte premiere at Actor’s Theatre.

We can only guess that Lafontaine yearned to be even meaner, obnoxious, and amoral than he was. That was my takeaway from Riley’s Alan, as he pokes among the objects in the Novaks’ bookcase and allows himself peeks at the upstairs. Mostly, he infuriates everyone by rudely answering his cellphone every time it buzzes, no matter how involved he should be in deliberations with his wife and hosts.

Unless you find it more irritating that, aside from frankly admitting that he has fathered a savage, he is spearheading damage control for his client, a big pharma company responsible for a widely available drug newly found to cause hearing loss and ataxia. That insider info hits home when Brandon Samples, as Michael, is obliged to take a phone call from his hospitalized mom.

One of the people Alan and Pharma are victimizing is now on the line. The same drug has just been prescribed for Mom.

So maybe Riley is most obnoxious when he arrogantly declares that his hosts shouldn’t be eavesdropping on his privileged attorney-client conversations. There’s a lot to choose from with Alan.

And a blizzard of suffering that the Novaks must endure, especially when Annette barfs all over her hosts’ coffee table and their precious art books. You might say that we’re a bit out of control at this point, belly-laughing at the panic and queasiness that ensues from the phlegmatic deluge. What an odd thing to unite these families in damage control!

Lafontaine decrees that Samples shall be the queasiest of them all, likely taking his cue from Reza, who makes this dealer in doorknobs and toilet fittings surprisingly skittish about handling his daughter’s pet hamster. Quite a different sample of Samples than we saw last October when he portrayed Hercule Poirot.

What makes Michael irritating is subtler than what we readily see in Alan. He seems at first to be the resurrection of Yvan, the conciliator in Art who tries so valiantly to agree with both Serge and Marc despite their wildly differing views on modern art and Yvan’s impending marriage. Similarly, everybody seems to be making a good point in Michael’s view.

Such pliability and ambivalence, under Reza’s merciless scrutiny, prove to be as fundamentally amoral and uncaring as Alan’s jaded pragmatism. That’s what opens the floodgates of Veronica’s fury when the compliant Michael breaks rank with her. Grabenstetter, notwithstanding all her sophistication and empathy for “the tragedy in Darfur,” snaps like an alligator, pursuing her husband around their living room like a rabid wolf. Serves him right after Samples’ scene-stealing response to the massive vomiting.

Aided by some very fine Antigua rum, Thomas also gets a marvelous character arc to track with Annette, overcoming her nausea, attacking her spouse, and avenging herself on Veronica. That pleasure, sad to say, did not quite allow me to forget my earlier difficulties hearing Thomas when she was still in her diffident cocoon.

God of Carnage doesn’t exactly match Hamlet for length and power, but its captivating turbulence stems from the same source: the push-and-pull of visceral urges struggling against societal norms. The Novaks and the Raleighs do lose control like their savage sons, but they lose it like adults rather than 11-year-olds.

So there’s hope for us. That amazing restraint is the heart and conscience of this singularly chaotic comedy. Maybe that’s why we have so much fun. Get ye to the Queens Road Barn!

NC Baroque’s A Musical Offering Merits Enthusiastic Acceptance

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Review: A Musical Offering @ Davidson Bach Festival

By Perry Tannenbaum

March 7, 2026, Charlotte, NC – Since I hadn’t reviewed a North Carolina Baroque Orchestra performance at Davidson College Presbyterian Church in over 10 years, you are welcome to conclude that my return trip this past weekend was also my first sampling of the Davidson Bach Festival, which launched its first season slightly less than a year ago. In some respects – age, size, duration, number of venues, and variety – the Davidson fest is like the Charlotte Bach Festival in miniature. They don’t import a world-class chorus or perform the mighty masses and oratorios, and they don’t offer noonday lecture concerts with choir, orchestra, AV presentations, and scholarly erudition.

Yet there are aspects of this relative simplicity that can be prized. Unlike the Charlotte fest or the Oregon Bach Festival, its regal template, Davidson hasn’t ventured beyond Bach so far. Nor has it hopscotched around the city or the college campus, cleaving exclusively to the Presbyterian. Upon reacquainting myself with that sanctuary, I found what many would consider an advantage. Although the organ at St. Peter’s Episcopal, in uptown Charlotte, can speak in earthshaking thunder, an organist performing a concert for over an hour at Davidson Presbyterian can be viewed far more comfortably. You have to turn around in your pew to even glimpse the organ and the organist at St. Peter’s. Even then, you’ll only see his back, often at a greater distance, and always in dimmer light.

That was my only pang of regret when I opened the festival program and recalled that the “Bach Birthday Bash” with award-winning organist Chase Loomer was scheduled for the following afternoon. Meanwhile, “A Musical Offering,” with three Bach concertos (culminating in a Brandenburg) and a Trio Sonata from his Musikalisches Opfer, would provide ample consolation for missing tomorrow’s rumble. Playing lead oboe or flute on three of the four pieces, Sung Lee was certainly going to draw the most scrutiny.

On the other hand, harpsichordist Francis Yun seemed destined to lurk inconspicuously behind the other musicians until the opening movement of the treasurable Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Unless you were already with the epic harpsichord cadenza in the opening Allegro, you had little idea how emphatically Yun would emerge.

The same can be said, of course, for the myriad Bach compositions known to us chiefly by their featured instruments and BWV numbers. Familiar melodies lurk in them that multitudes of music lovers will instantly remember, but only specialist musicians and musicologists can anticipate. For most of us, Bach’s delicious Easter eggs are only further scrambled by the multiple times he might repurpose his best melodies in various compositions.

The Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor, BWV 1060r, starting off BC Bach’s “Musical Offering,” is an apt example. Starting out as a concerto for two harpsichords and strings, it was recast into a Violin and Oboe version. Either way, there were sighs of satisfaction – and relaxation – when the melody of the opening Allegro was recognized with its delightful echo motif. Lee was partnered with violinist Jeanne Johnson for the main instrumental interplay, perhaps even more beautifully in the middle Adagio movement, because it sounded less familiar, with a more minor-key flavor. As one becomes more experienced as a listener, one appreciates the variety of Allegro that sensitive and discerning soloists bring to the stage. The closing Allegro here was brisker than the earlier one.

Even if you were sitting in the second row, as we were, the hall was part of the sound, softening it. Yet the second piece, the Trio from A Musical Offering, was more subdued in various ways. The ensemble was reduced by half to four players, and all were seated in a chamber music style. Compared with recent recordings we might sample on Spotify or Apple Classical, NC Baroque’s chamber ensemble played the second movement Allegro conspicuously slower after a perfectly judged Largo with gorgeous counterpoint.

Lee, Yun, violinist David Wilson, and cellist Barbara Krumdieck meshed beautifully throughout, rightly reveling in the sonority of the penultimate Andante, which is always slowed down – even on the Kujiken brothers’1994 recording, the best of the bunch. Less of an outlier than the earlier Allegro, the concluding movement was also a bit lethargic, better propelled by Krumdieck’s continuo. Overall, the interpretation aligned best with the 1974 recording by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, where the middle movements are marked Allegro Moderato and Andante Larghetto.

Everything about the E Major Violin Concerto No. 2 sounded wonderfully familiar to me, even the slow movement. Bach lovers could have come to the catchy melodies through this BWV 1042 violin version, almost perfectly judged at Davidson Presbyterian by soloist Janelle Davis, or a subsequent BWV 1054 harpsichord version, pitched a full step lower. Davis was very close to the speed that unlocks the opening Allegro’s full flair and immersed herself lyrically in the middle Adagio. But it was Davis’s joyful playing in the closing Allegro assai that made this Concerto such a tough act to follow.

In hindsight, Davis’s joyous tempo provided the perfect launching pad for Yun’s prodigious three-minute rampage, climaxing the opening Allegro of the Brandenburg 5. Tempo-wise, the whole movement was perfectly grooved. A little more ardor from Lee in the middle Affetuoso would not have been amiss, but we ascended to a far loftier plane when Bach’s harmonies flooded the music. Though a little less prayerful and sublime than the opening Allegro, the final movement of this immortal concerto – especially appealing with Lee sparkling jubilantly – is no less quintessentially Bach and baroque. Every time we recall these bookended gems, we realize that they’re living inside us all the time.

The Revolutionists Mixes Comedy and High Ambition

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Review: The Revolutionists @ Warehouse PAC

By Perry Tannenbaum

Badass. That’s how Lauren Gunderson describes all the women in her feminist fantasia, The Revolutionists. On the heels, high and low, of the touring edition of Suffs that premiered at Belk Theater, the Warehouse production of Gunderson’s 2016 script – with a second all-female cast in the same week – underscored one of the subtler achievements of the suffragists who aided the passage of the 19th Amendment 96 years earlier.

Men and women now openly admire all these badasses and cheer them on!

Cheers and laughter were high among Shaina Taub’s aims when she wrote and starred in Suffs as revered feminist Alice Paul. Gunderson feels compelled to diligently remind directors and actresses who bring her historical script to life that this is a comedy. Since all of her women are living during the apocalyptic Reign of Terror in 1793, midway through the French Revolution, the shadow of the fearsome guillotine looms large.

None of them supports that notoriously bloody revolution.

Charlotte Corday, the most badass, actually embraces the guillotine, the likely consequence of her intent to assassinate Citizen Marat, the radical newspaper influencer. Calling for the same liberté and égalité in her native Caribbean that have toppled the monarchy in Paris, Marianne Angelle, a free black spy, hopes to skirt the guillotine while opening the eyes of the Revolution to the hypocrisies of slaveholding and continued colonial power. And Marie Antoinette, “less badass” than the others, is desperately fleeing the chopping block, hoping to rebrand her clueless, free-spending, and heartless reputation on the fly.

They all converge on the feminist playwright of the day, Olympe de Gouges, in urgent need of her eloquence. Corday has the simplest need: a memorable exit line to proclaim at the scaffold, one that will resound for eons to come. Marianne could use a sharply worded manifesto – with a soft touch – that furthers the cause of her homeland. Marie merely needs a total rewrite and makeover: redemption, whether or not she deserves it.

What a godsend de Gouges is! When we first saw the comedy in 2018, produced at Camp North End by PaperHouse Theatre, it was easy enough to see Olympe as a rather transparent surrogate for Gunderson, shaping the comedy she ostensibly tailors for Marie. Directing that production, Nicia Carla decreed that her Olympe discard her quill in favor of an anachronistic BIC ballpoint, letting us perceive Gunderson’s guiding hand throughout.

Historically, it’s even more complicated: de Gouge really wrote a comedy in which she, a character in her own play, taught the downfallen Queen Marie a lesson. She also penned a manifesto, the courageously feminist Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, punching her ticket to the scaffold. From that perspective, it’s possible to see her, quivering and quailing here as she crafts her Reign of Terror comedy, as the inspirational fountainhead of Gunderson’s fantasia.

With no less than four subtitles: A Comedy, A Quartet, A Revolutionary Dream Fugue, and A True Story.

At the Warehouse Performing Arts Center up in Cornelius, director Reneé Welsh-Noel mutes the anachronisms and the wink-wink meta approach until late in the second act, when Gunderson explicitly decrees that the fourth wall must be broken. Welsh-Noel and scenic designer Chris Tyer utilize the larger space and richer theatre resources at the PAC to offer the playwright’s quartet multiple platforms to declaim, orate, stab, and achieve martyrdom.

One of these doubles as de Gouge’s desk or, if you will, the table in her salon. A glorified picnic table, to be honest. Even her highness deigns to sit herself at this humble furnishing, but a legit settee looms further upstage for Marie’s more regal lounging. Assuring fluidity between scenes, the remaining scenery is sparse: a jut of a snub mantle on the back wall, with a scattering of ornate picture frames.

Except four projections from Jessica Zingher, most of the other frames are blank. They all seem to float apart from the action, though they are preternaturally relevant – like a gallery of images in Gunderson’s mind or her surrogate playwright’s. Making the space more emphatically Olympe’s, sheets of writing paper litter the high-concept floor, a multitude of testimonials to her pathological writer’s block.

Maybe Tyer’s concept mystically correlates the excess of strewn paper below with all the jet blackness inside the empty frames above.

It certainly testifies to the intensity of action from Olympe that yields such a welter of messy futility: the frenzy of the times. Welsh-Noel seeks to keep a vortex of swiftly paced action swirling throughout the evening, spreading her actors across the wide space, amplifying confrontations, with them threatening and lunging at each other. Tension and urgency remain ridiculously high under the shadow of the guillotine. Like a comedy.

Costumes from Welsh-Noel and Zingher add spice and flair, flouncy and beribboned for Marie and continental ninja for Corday. By contrast, Angelle’s outfit pops with Afro-Caribbean color and style, an equally bold statement.

Brave as Olympe may have been in real life in her attempts to champion women’s rights and to reconcile the radicals with the royals, Gunderson infuses her inspiration with her own trepidations over putting your life on the line with your plume. So it’s an ambivalent and bumpy ride for Lisa Schacher as Olympe, one that alternately accentuates the comedy and drama, both of which would suffer if Gunderson’s concoction were more sure of herself.

Jennifer Adams is mostly at the comedy end of the spectrum as the deposed, soon-to-be decapitated Marie: too vain to skulk through the streets in disguise, she materializes in Olympe’s parlor, announcing her own entrance and assuming everybody is talking about her. Yet Gunderson allows her dopiness to vanish at times, giving way to clairvoyance at her brilliant moments and allowing Adams to display maternal feelings – to Marianne, of all people.

Her most charming moments perhaps come when Adams puts aside Marie’s regality and snobbery to become rather childish in her candid enthusiasm, the glue in the quartet’s sisterhood. Sororité!

My chief difficulties with this production came from the eternally serious women, Jane Elvire as Marianne and Marissa Dibilio as Charlotte – though each of them lands a barb or two at the lighter women’s expense. Likely because of her authentic Haitian roots, it took me a few minutes to attune myself to Elvire’s lilting accent, with a couple of relapses later as Marianne’s actions and words become more urgent.

With her bounty of natural dignity and presence, Elvire is exactly what Gunderson had in mind when she described her as “the sanest of them all.” Whether through instinct or through diligent research into Marianne’s historical parallels, Gunderson burdens the free Caribbean black woman with the most adversity to deal with. Ultimately, her sufferings help the playwright pierce Marie’s silly, frilly façade in some of the quietest, most human moments of the evening.

From a dramaturgical standpoint, Dibilio’s dashing outfit may be Welsh-Noel’s most audacious decision. Dressed like that, you multiply your chances of not being admitted to Marat’s bath by his servants and bodyguards. But it helps Dibilio look the part, though paintings of the famed assassin, in action or brooding at the Bastille, opt for more conservative clothes.

At times, Dibilio falls into the trap of sounding too natural in her gripping performance, lowering her voice when she gets really close to other players. When we can hear her, she’s quite compelling.

From the opening, when we hear a falling guillotine and Olympe’s first words are “Well, that’s not a way to start a comedy,” we’re clued in to Gunderson’s aim to mess with us. Talk about audacity, she’s serving us notice that she’s presenting a comedy that writes and rewrites itself before our eyes.

That’s not really possible, is it? But what The Revolutionists accomplishes is nearly as impossible: reminding us that, in horrendously troubled times, the noble words and actions of our finest writers and activists will certainly outlast tyrants, bigots, and bullies. While making us laugh between bloody plunges of the guillotine.

“Boundless” Celebrates Connection After Fretting Over It

Review: Boundless at the McBride-Bonnefoux Center for Dance

By Perry Tannenbaum

Loud woolen plaids are back in action – on the loose with louder goofball leggings. And the eternal question, pointedly asked, rings out again at The Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance: “Do you, do you, do you, do you wanna dance?”

Like Breaking Boundaries two seasons ago, Charlotte Ballet’s Boundless is a non-stop evening in three parts, showcasing three artforms. If you missed Boundaries in fall 2023, you should definitely repent by picking up tickets, heading out to 701 North Tryon, and checking out what all the shouting was about (through March 21).

On the other hand, if you’ve already tasted that Breaking Boundaries brew, you’ll find that most of the barrels have been refilled. The world premiere choreography this time around is Nicole Vaughan-Diaz’s On Three, after which you’ll leave the Center for Dance at intermission and decamp in the lobby, where four different instrumental duos will be entertaining during the 14 non-educational performances.

A staircase dramatizes the musicians, enclosing them as it winds upwards to an urbane, dimly lit balcony above. Scaling the wall with the stairs is a fine exhibit of action photos by Quinn Wharton, showcasing current members of the Charlotte Ballet troupe. Across from that display, a horizontal display of more Wharton photos on the eastern wall faces that diagonal rise. And there’s also a video installation by Tobin Del Cuore.

Completing the clubby feel of intermission, festive audience members line up for food and drink, so they can be toting a soda or a highball while viewing the exhibits or claiming one of the precious few cocktail tables downstairs as they nibble to the music and schmooze. On the night we went, it was Jonah Bechtler on keys and Noah Kibonge on soprano sax, pumping out jazz standards such as Bobby Timmons’ “Moanin’.”

As in 2023, the transition inside the studio for Ohad Naharin’s garishly colorful Kamuyot made all the charming diversions of the intermission pragmatic. The grandstand of seats facing the permanent studio space was folded back and collapsed into the wall behind where we had sat. Unassigned general-admission style seating was set up on each of the four sides of the performance space, two rows deep.

There’s only one hard-and-fast rule to the seating. Don’t sit in the seats reserved for the dancers.

If your first impulse is to sit in one of the four front rows, be aware that one or more of the 15 dancers will be asking you to join them on the floor. Cool with that? Great. You can even multiply your interactions with the dancers by sitting next to one of their reserved seats, for over the course of Kamuyot, multiple dancers settle into each of these spots.

Not so eager, shy, or on the fence? Row 2 figures to be your best bet. If your defenses are defeated, you can still catch a dancer’s attention and snag an invite. Or just hold hands for a moment of connection as I did.

Over the space of 28 months, my memories of Kamuyot had faded somewhat, so there were pleasurable reminders of buried treasure in my memory bank: the loud plaids, the Israeli choreographer’s affection for “The Theme from Hawaii Five-O,” his signature “gaga” dance moves, and my own experience of getting out there on the floor with the dancers. What couldn’t be forgotten were those broken boundaries.

So in a curious way, a divide reared up between those of us who vaguely or precisely knew what was coming and those who were seeing it for the first time. Simultaneously, I felt as if a barrier had fallen between me and those who had seen Kamuyot before. We found ourselves discussing that experience more readily.

Resolved to be less of a participant this time, I found through this less visceral approach that Naharin’s structure emerged more boldly. The scheme is an evolution from solos and pairs to ensemble sections, from solitude and loneliness and antagonism to community. One female dancer writhes laboriously across the performing floor early in the piece, eventually drawing the attention of two men who soon engage in a one-sided shadowboxing bout.

Even at the apex of this progression, when a single dancer would initiate a sequence, and he or she drew a crowd of imitators forming a fresh ensemble, you could count on a single outlier to carve her or his way through the heart of the group – usually exiting the hall without taking a seat. The hyperactive mass and the contemplative individual are repeatedly juxtaposed. Feel free to identify with either the celebratory or meditative aspect of Naharin’s spectacle – by diving in, holding back, or simply weighing these options.

Kudos to anyone who instantly grasps the meaning of Vaughan-Diaz’s deceptively simple title. On Three signifies the pact that two or more people make to synchronize their actions and begin at the same time. Bandleaders and chorus masters know the drill. Rock-scissors-paper-match competitors instinctively adopt it. Synchronicity, trust, and fair play are wrapped up in the ritual.

Yet that connection between intent and Vaughan-Diaz’s choreography remained opaque for me as her piece began. Entrances by the 10 dancers, circling a perpendicular setup of chairs, were markedly dilatory and unsynchronized, though there was some similarity in their pacing and dolefulness in designer Aaron Muhl’s dim lighting.

Flickers of intent began to spark once all the dancers were seated. One of the women, in a Kerri Martinsen costume a bit less drab than the others, sauntered over toward another chair where a guy sat. No hello, no eye contact, she just lay down in front of the guy, knees up. A triggering soon occurred after what my count of three would have been, and there was extended interaction and even some contact between the woman and the man.

None of it was particularly human, let alone intimate. When the man escorted the woman back to her seat and placed her in it, he seemed to have been humoring her. So the bigger surprise for me was when, moments later, the guy sidled over to the woman’s chair and assumed the same recumbent position she had modeled before. Something had happened between them, for they now reprised their relationship with a new dance episode in the same rudimentary and mechanical style as before.

Afterwards, the piece was largely pairs and chairs, different dancers coupling once the ensemble had removed, returned, or rearranged the chairs. The shape of the piece seemed to evolve from primal separateness toward ritual and trust as more of the dancing was done by more of the ensemble, but I’d doubt many in my audience perceived an arrival at the satisfying destination Vaughan-Diaz describes in her video:

“It’s the eye contact you make before being caught in a fall. It’s this agreement before you do something that cannot be done alone.”

Pretty disturbing, then, that Vaughan-Diaz imagines the “one, two, shoot” ritual of children playing odds-and-evens needs to be rediscovered by adults. Or that it’s in danger of being forgotten. Deliciously timely and dystopian for anyone seriously alarmed by our divisions.

“The Flick” Flip-Flops Audience and Stage

Review: The Flick at Theatre Charlotte and Independent Picture House

By Perry Tannenbaum

From time to time, it’s nice to see Theatre Charlotte showing greater confidence in its audience and extra audacity in its programming. Recent seasons have seen increased excursions beyond bankable fare, such as A Christmas Carol, Misery, Murder on the Orient Express, and Rumors, to more daring and provocative frontiers such as Violet, Every Brilliant Thing, I and You, and Detroit ’67.

God of Carnage is on deck for next month.

Now we’re in the midst of a run that’s even more daring and experimental than their 2016 concert version of Caroline, or Change, which was staged out in the lobby of the Queens Road barn. The current production of Annie Baker’s THE FLICK, directed by Kyle J. Britt, goes even further out on a limb.

It’s very high-concept, for now we go past the theater doors leading to the front and rear of the orchestra, entering instead through the stage door. Instead of heading backstage, we hang a right – and take our seats onstage, looking out into the orchestra where we usually sit and the light booth beyond.

Tonight, that orchestra is the stage and the light booth is a projection room aiming blinding light at us, for Baker’s notorious Pulitzer Prize winner takes place in a movie theater, one of the last in America that still shows movies made on 35mm celluloid. Famed for its epic length, sustained pauses, and glacial pace, The Flick had premiered Off-Broadway in 2013 at Playwrights Horizons and revived, with the original cast, at the Barrow Street Theatre, where I reviewed it in 2015. Avenging myself on that production at my computer turned torture into a bit of a picnic.

Without that mischievous consolation, I presumed that my wife Sue was sufficiently traumatized not to wish to see this faithful sketch of the quotidian a second time. Wrong. Until midway into the second act, she had totally forgotten The Flick.

Nightmare City. Properly braced for the epic slog, I found myself charmed by the Theatre Charlotte version, for Britt goes the extra mile – recalling the greatest Carolina Actors Studio Theatre forays into experiential theatre – in making The Flick a moviegoing adventure. An elegant ramp bordered by chrome railing is slung over the couple of humble steps that normally lead you backstage at the Old Barn.

The new entranceway is draped in black curtains and discreetly spotlit, duplicating the ambiance at a multiplex when you leave its indoor boulevard and plunge into the darkness of one of the theaters. If you’ve seen the movie posters promoting this special Theatre Charlotte presentation, you’ll already be impressed by Britt’s ability to capture the deathless noir flavor of the Pulp Fiction movie poster.

Seeing this sly Tarantino homage, perfectly sized and displayed in that spotlit alleyway, adds a wonderful frisson to the evening. For those who weren’t as thoroughly braced as I was for the inaction and inertia to come – or less advantageously seated than we were – that evening grew very long. In the heart of Greenwich Village in the summer of 2015, I troubled to time the show: playing time clocked in at 2:54 plus a 19-minute intermission.

We can further admire Britt for speeding up the action to narrowly beat those Off-Broadway timings. He’s actually bucking the odds.

Brilliant concepts can start to crumble when they collide with reality. When David Zinn designed the set for the legendary Barrow Street, he could take liberties. His theater could be four rows and achieve reasonable verisimilitude, but Britt must play the hands he is dealt. That’s 13 rows of seats at the Queens Road barn, and if you want your actors within reasonable proximity of the stage, you’ll need them to traverse seven or eight rows to replicate the same intimacy we had at Barrow Street.

Each exit between Baker’s many scenes must traverse that extra distance, threatening to further lengthen our playing time. When we first see Aedan Coughlin, as Sam, schooling John Felipe, as Avery, in the finer points of cleaning up theater trash between ushering stints, Britt wisely spaces them at opposite sides of the aisle. So it’s plausible that both men must raise their voices to be heard.

Even so, Coughlan, as the disgruntled senior usher, is the more consistently audible, showing the newbie the ropes and schmoozing with Felipe. That gap didn’t narrow significantly as Sam continued his chattering and coaching toward the front seats. Avery does seem to emphasize the names of Hollywood stars, compared to the relatively garbled names of the films they were linked to when showing off his cinema geekiness.

Otherwise a bit shy and withdrawn, Avery boasts that he can connect any two Hollywood stars you name in six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style. For all of Sam’s repeated efforts, Avery always makes good on his boasts. While it is likely that Sam begrudges Avery his more substantial education and his more promising future, that’s not where the friction between them peaks.

Enter Destiney Wolfe as Rose: younger, savvier, and sexier than any of her co-workers. So sexy that Sam tells Avery that she’s a lesbian – to clear his lane to Rose. If he ever summons up sufficient courage to make a move. Wolfe isn’t full of herself as Rose, but she’s coolly self-assured. After getting passed over while Rose snagged the promotion to projectionist, Sam may rightly believe that this talented young lady is out of his league.

To look at Coughlin, you would not instantly agree. While not as erudite as Avery – or as snobbish – Sam can propose numerous worthy candidates when the college guy boldly declares that Pulp Fiction (1994) was the last great American film.

Among those candidates, Avatar (2009) draws the most scorn from Avery and is one of Felipe’s best moments before intermission. Thematically, the comparison between classic noir celluloid and digital fantasy gets us to the heart of Baker’s yarn. The Flick, doubling as the name of Baker’s movie house, is an endangered species, treasured by Avery as an analog monument, one of the last-standing rear guards against the onrush of digitality that isn’t film at all.

Surrendering, we shall see, without a fight.

The location of this landmark is in Worcester County, Mass., allowing Coughlan to add on another layer of excellence, intermittently capturing the Southie brand of a Boston accent. As the scholar in the group, Felipe is hardly obligated to attempt the working-class accent, but Wolfe doesn’t even try.

At least, I don’t think she does. Hearing anything she says without her calling across the theater was a pretty rare experience. What really crash-burned Britt’s concept, beyond the usual acoustic difficulties we’re familiar with at the Old Barn, were the problematic sightlines of the temp seating onstage. Further back than a couple of rows, there was no way to hear or see all the action. The lip of the Theatre Charlotte stage got in the way when the actors moved all the way up front because of the problematic sightlines.

Since so much was so hard to take in before the lights came up for intermission, I felt obligated to issue a spoiler to my companions, telling them there was drama on the near horizon. Shit will begin to hit the fan – not at a blinding velocity – when Sam returns from attending his brother’s wedding and discovers that Rose has taught Avery how to work the projector, a favor (not the only one) that Sam has been denied.

Other members of the opening night audience simply defected.

Now the show, fully chastened, continues its run at the Independent Picture House this weekend. Prospects are better at Raleigh Street for fuller enjoyment. None of the movie theaters there has more than 12 rows, almost all are considerably narrower, and none are saddled by an overhanging stage compromising an audience’s sightlines.

One of these houses even allows actors to slickly enter the space behind the fourth row of seats. The express route!

“Over the River” Has Fresh Relevance at the Old Barn

Review: Over the River and Through the Woods at Theatre Charlotte

By Perry Tannenbaum

Back in the days of Woodstock and hippies, my generation spoke solemnly, defiantly, or even sarcastically about the Generation Gap. For a long time, it was sincerely believed to be the most telling division in our country. With the return of Joe DiPietro’s Over the River and Through the Woods to Theatre Charlotte after previous runs in 2002 with Rock Hill Community Theatre, 2004 with Charlotte Rep, 2013 at Fort Mill Community, 2014 with CPCC Summer Theatre, and 2016 with Davidson Community, it’s rather shocking to realize how recently that belief has become so quaint and outdated.

Good thing, then, that Over the Woods is mostly a comedy that doesn’t take itself seriously – for the gap is huge. Our floundering Nick Cristano, career success and social schlub, is two generations younger than his Hoboken elders. The gap is further multiplied by the aggregation of both sets of grandparents, Nunzio and Emma Cristano coming over for Sunday dinner every week chez Frank and Aida Gianelli.

For added zest, the gulf between the grands and the hopelessly outnumbered Nick is more than a little exaggerated. A game of Trivial Pursuit plays a little like an Abbott & Costello shtick, capped by an epic global route to Nunzio’s single correct answer.

In fact, the two scenes we see before intermission at the Queens Road Barn would not feel out-of-place if we encountered them as sketches on classic TV variety shows, ranging from Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows to Saturday Night Live. The first is Nick’s hilariously arduous attempt to break some big news to the grandfolk.

Whether it’s a glib interruption, a conversational detour, a remembered anecdote, a temporary defection to another room, or Aida’s never-ending blandishments of irresistible Italian home cooking, one obstacle after another keeps Nick’s news on perpetual back order until we’ve had to question if it will ever make it off the runway.

Hitting Broadway a year before The Sopranos cemented the connection between Italians and New Jersey, Over the River overflows with ethnicity, thanks to director Elizabeth Sickerman and dialect coach Marilyn Carter. Nor is this pure and delicate spring water. It’s an aromatic sludge with the consistency of Grandma’s legendary marinara. Two dominant flavors: Italiano and Joisey.

More cringeworthy is the folk medicine cure that the elders concoct in the wake of Nicky’s stunning disclosures. Enter Caitlin O’Hare, a nice local Irish girl unafflicted by any ethnic accent and hopefully alluring enough to keep Nick from straying too far from Hoboken. It’s a brash set-up that catches poor Nick unawares, an impromptu first date with unabashed interruptions, interrogations, and interferences from the well-intentioned seniors.

So here is where everything becomes so quaint, halcyon, and naïve. Both of the Gianellis that Caitlin finds so adorable are Italian immigrants. We find ourselves reacting in the same way to both of the elder couples, no matter how far Emma overreaches with her matchmaking and her prying or how much excessive food Aida lavishes upon her young guests, including veal for a vegetarian.

They are truly personable. Speaking directly to the audience before anybody picks up a dinner napkin, Frank genially tells us that he arrived in America with just 200 lira in his pocket (about $10.50 US back in 1930), along with the Hoboken address of a cousin who had already moved to “a faraway land called Brooklyn.” And 65 years or so after reaching our shores, reminiscing about living under a Hudson River pier for six weeks, he’s still speaking with an accent!

“Tengo famiglia!” he and his grandson declaim, the taste of their Italian roots still sweet to their lips.

Before even saying grace, Frank has already checked three of the immigrant boxes that 47 would label as garbage. Yet there’s more ICE bait: Emma remains as proud of her husband as she is of the family she raised here, proud to describe him as a laborer. After all, he built this house with his bare hands!

Ironically, when DePietro was prefacing his 1998 comedy with Frank’s migrant memories, he probably wasn’t trying to score a political point. “What point?” he might have asked. On the day after our Republic’s 288th birthday, when I last saw Over the River at Pease Auditorium, my reaction was likely aligned with the playwright’s.

My 2014 review, “Matchmaking With Veal and Provolone”? Not a single mention of politics or immigration.

That was the first time we encountered Gerald Colbert’s portrayal of Nunzio, the weightiest counterbalance to DiPietro’s comedy. As a second-generation American, Colbert’s Nunzio, with his gray hair slicked down traditionally, tracked extremely close to my dad, who had passed away less than two years earlier, and my Uncle Abe – often mistaken for Dad’s identical twin – who had died just five days earlier.

Looking so much like them that day added to the weight of the mortality that Nunzio was staring in the face, in the grips of terminal cancer and grappling with the question of whether he should weaponize his condition to keep Nicky in Hoboken. Both of my elder Tannenbaums reached their nineties, so there’s plenty of gap left for Colbert to navigate, but his affinity with and empathy toward Nunzio have noticeably deepened.

Nunzio’s climactic valedictory dialogue with Nicky was especially heartbreaking for me, but it also offers new dimensions of topicality for all.

As the lovingly coddled and embattled Nicky, Timothy Hager is almost too perfectly cast. A walking bundle of ambivalence and insecurity, Hager is also sufficiently tall, stooped, and slender to be viewed as crying out to Aida to feed and overfeed him again and again so dear Nicky can finally take shape. He does make an awful impression on Caitlin with his defensiveness, but his awkwardness – and gawkiness – keep him a bit lovable in his discomfiture.

He’s aware that he’s a mess: a work-in-progress.

Quaint and manipulative as these harpies are in their quest to tie Nicky down in Hoboken, they need to be ambivalent because they honestly love him – and because they have previously allowed their sons and daughters to fly the coop. Paula Baldwin isn’t taking on the toughest challenge of her career with Aida, the Einstein of pasta, but she handles the matriarch’s ignorance with a zest that brings fresh life to the g-mama stereotype.

If we hadn’t seen the like with so many stage husbands before, we could say that Baldwin pairs amazingly well with Henk Bouhuys as Frank Gianelli. Can we agree, though, that he delivers the tangiest Italian accent? He must also navigate a preternatural ignorance that matches the blank that Aida draws on vegetarians, for Frank doesn’t know where Seattle is. Notwithstanding Frank’s humble beginnings – and the accent – Bouhuys consistently radiates the well-to-do dignity of an octogenarian enjoying his golden years.

DiPetro’s subtlest move is making sure that Nunzio and Emma Cristano are second-generation Americans with urban accents. This isn’t as crucial for Colbert as Nunzio as it is for Kasey Lathem as Emma. Hers will be the only familiar face that Caitlin expects to see when, politely bearing a bottle of wine, she knocks on the Gianellis’ door.

Lathem must be glib and modernized enough to be a supermarket buddy of Karisa Maxwell McKee as Caitlin O’Hare. Offsetting her laudable sociableness, Emma must also be tactless and tone-deaf enough to introduce this chum to everyone as “the unmarried niece of my canasta partner.” Nunzio and Frank can be counted on to immediately join in with the same high level of unsubtlety.

Sensing the gauntlet that she will have to run, McKee gets to show considerable backbone as Caitlin, though DiPietro would have been more imaginative if he had made her something other than a nurse. Her ultimate effect on Nick, dispensing her objective opinion on his behavior vis-à-vis his grandparents’, is not at all medicinal. She becomes a timely barometer in gauging how much growing Nick still needs to do in his thirties – and paradoxically, how urgent it is for him to strike out on his own.

We’re sort of circling back to Frank getting on that boat with 200 lira, aren’t we? In her digital program intro, Sickerman rightly targets the immigration themes lurking in this script, linking us to a Library of Congress page on “Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History.”

Feeling Like an Outsider at “The Outsiders”… and I Like It

Review: The Outsiders at Blumenthal PAC

By Perry Tannenbaum

Belk Theater will likely still be rockin’ for days after the national tour of THE OUTSIDERS strikes its deceptively simple set and rolls on up to Chicago for a two-week run. If it weren’t Charlotte Symphony already booking the space next weekend, this gritty, steady rocker could have easily played a second week here without losing momentum. And possibly more.

Opening night was an eye-opener for anyone who had never been swept up in the rite-of-passage tidal wave generated by S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation. Traffic to the College Street parking garage was so intense that, when we finally found a place on Level 8 to park, we needed to take a down elevator to exit at the bridge across to the Bank of America tower, where Blumenthal PAC has its performing spaces.

Usually, we hit the up button to go two or three floors up to Level 6.

After pausing to validate my parking stub in the lobby, we found that we were just in time as we saw the usher close the theater door behind us. It was only when we took our seats that we realized that the place wasn’t just packed… it was a sell-out. So an usher confirmed when I ambled up to the front of the house, turned around, and beheld eager theatergoers all the way up to the uppermost rows of the top balcony.

This was near-Hamilton fervor, eclipsing the receptions we’ve recently seen for such recent Tony Award-winners as Kimberly Akimbo, The Band’s Visit, Moulin Rouge, and even Hadestown. While we can all quibble and passionately argue which of these distinguished visitors should win a tournament of champions playoff, the production quality of The Outsiders was definitely top-tier, from Cody Spencer’s tight sound design to Jeremy Chernick and Lillis Meeh’s splashy special effects.

While some of the buzz that I was hearing about this Tulsa tale likened the animosities between the Greasers and the Socialites, or Socs, to the Jets and the Sharks of West Side Story, Ponyboy Curtis and his fellow Greasers are far more déclassé than their Hispanic counterparts, let alone the Montagues of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There are no Greaser girlfriends in this grim picture, an apt barometer of these dudes’ hopelessness.

Nor is Ponyboy actually poaching on one of the Soc girls. After taking a beating for watching a movie on Soc turf, he escorts the Alpha Soc girl, Cherry, to a concession stand at a drive-in movie on neutral ground. They strike up a long conversation, enjoy each other’s company, but there’s no petting or romance.

Even so, this crosses the line for Cherry’s ultra-possessive boyfriend, Bob, and his chums. They gang up on Ponyboy and his bestie, Johnny Cade, not realizing that Dallas Winston – the Greasers’ spiritual leader and an ex-con – had recently gifted Johnny with a switchblade and taught him how to use it. Like Romeo before him, Ponyboy and Johnny Cade must flee town to avoid the law, Dallas acting as their Friar Lawrence.

The score by Jamestown Revival and Justin Levine is as consistently intense and authentic as Leonard Bernstein’s, but not nearly as varied. Nor with Levine’s arrangement for guitars, keyboard, cello, bass, violin, reeds, and drums, does it aspire to the same amplitude and agony as West Side Story. That’s about right: Amid the gloom and despair of Greaserdom, there’s a glimmer of hope emanating from Ponyboy, who has read Robert Frost and Great Expectations.

After Johnny Cade’s exhortation to “Stay Gold” in the face of Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Ponyboy’s favorite poem, that glimmer is not extinguished.

Unlike the Coppola movie, Nolan White as Ponyboy doesn’t sport the has-it-made Hollywood looks of C. Thomas Howell or the future superstar hunks – Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, and Emilio Estevez, for starters – surrounding him. More like Micky Dolenz of Monkees fame. That gives this stage version, directed by Dayna Taymor, about a million-mile head start on the film.

The other homies are no less homely (except the stunning Corbin Drew Ross as Sodapop Curtis), which is a good thing. Bonale Fambrini as Johnny Cade and Tyler Jordan Wesley as Dallas never look like they’re slumming. They sing and act as if they’re to-the-gutter-born, dressed accordingly by costume designer Sarafina Bush.

We can also gush over the glamor and drama that Emma Hearn and Mark Doyle bring to Cherry and preppy Bob. Or the family struggles, sacrifices, frustrations, and domesticity that Travis Roy Rogers brings to the action as one-time pro football hopeful Darrel, Ponyboy’s eldest brother.

But as good as Adam Rapp’s book is at capturing the striated inertia of Hinton’s Tulsa, the propulsive electricity of The Outsiders comes from its score and the flair of Rick & Jeff Kuperman’s jagged choreography. Even this isn’t enough for Taymor. The hoofers send up bursts of plastic pellets from the floor, and the climactic rumble between the gangs brings down storm showers from above. Once all of these elements began cranking up, the fanaticism of the pre-sold audience was irresistibly contagious. I listened to the acclaimed original cast album when I returned home, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the live

“Wink” Dares Us to Jump out of Our Skins

Review: Wink at Booth Playhouse and Warehouse PAC

By Perry Tannenbaum

If you love cats, you already know the open secret of their appeal: they are all wild thangs. Yes, we can declaw them or inflict various mutilations on their genitalia to superficially tame them. But they will still swat at things floating in the air, still hiss when cornered, still religiously stalk, crouch, bide their time, creep stealthily closer to their prey, and pounce.

And they purr.

In Jen Silverman’s Wink, there is no purring. Now in transit from its opening weekend at Booth Playhouse to the comparably compact Warehouse PAC in Cornelius, Wink may be tough to catch in the wake of its positive word-of-mouth. Reactions at the Booth to the sight gags rank with the loudest, most vociferous, and gob-smacked I’ve heard in the QC.

Spearheading this flawless Charlotte Conservatory Theatre production – at an admirably brisk pace – director Marla Brown has cast real-life husband and wife Steven Levine and Shawnna Pledger as Sofie and Gregor, the caretakers of the title feline. The couple has radically opposing views on Wink. Sofie adores her AWOL pet, while Gregor strives to veil his murderous antagonism.

The unscientific ploy that Sofie uses to partially pierce Gregor’s defenses in this staid opening scene is unmistakably feminine and devastatingly clever. Such fancifulness, heterodoxy, and cleverness suffuse this 75-minute gem.

It’s not glaringly obvious in the sedate, passive-aggressive early moments, but Gregor and Sofie could likely benefit from some top-notch marriage counseling. It’s already too late. Separately, with complete confidentiality, they are seeing the same psychologist, the profoundly lonely and disciplined Dr. Frans, beautifully calibrated by Dan Grogan.

He’s a perfect fit for both Sofie and George. Perhaps too perfect, since the remedy he insists upon for both their ills is the same: tamp down and conquer your outré impulses. Oh, and go on vacation with your spouse as a healthier release of your tensions. It’s a prescription for George and Sofie to go on doing what they’ve done for their entire adult lives.

Played with an edgy insouciance by Nathaniel Gillespie, Wink also goes to see Doc Frans, but not as a patient. Every word from Wink, and every move, indicates that he is – or was – purr-fectly comfortable in his own skin. Out of his skin, Wink remains a hunter, but now, like a snake, he’s a coil of vengeance, poised to lash out.

But what is Wink at this point? Answers at this point will vary among audience members, who may see him as a projection of Gregor’s guilt, a Doc Frans nightmare, a monstrous cat succubus, or a surreal Saturday morning cartoon. Maybe a Saturday night cartoon, since Silverman is delivering a dark comedy and Gillespie can never be mistaken for a comedian.

If I haven’t pussyfooted sufficiently around Silverman’s plot, my apologies for the spoilers. At about this point, I looked at reviews of previous productions and discovered they disclose less, zeroing in on each of the humans’ problems, and not always troubling to include Wink as a character or how he’s portrayed. That’s pretty much how Charlotte Conservatory’s press release handled it, so I was expecting a breezy little comedy, maybe a Sylvia Redux with breeds and genders switched on the title pets.

It would be interesting to hear Silverman’s advice on how much to divulge. In her playscript, she lets the cat out of the bag in her character descriptions, before the action even begins. There’s plenty more electricity to come.

The script is not bossy, very spare in its stage directions, so the shtick we encounter in the opening scene is Brown’s. One thing you’d only detect in the script is its layout, occasionally abandoning its prosaic paragraphs and laying out like poetry – but only after Wink makes his first sinewy and sensational entrance.

How much of the Booth Playhouse audience expected to see Wink? If you caught Gillespie’s photo on Facebook, on a lobby poster, or downloaded the playbill from the posted QR code soon enough, you would know. For those savvy few, the costume design by Allison Collins (and “Group Effort”) provides the needed extra jolt when the spotlight hits him.

The hits keep coming as Sofia and Gregor transform in sudden lurches, arriving at a kind of Peanuts absurdity. With wine. Set design by Chris Tyer, with the unblissful couple’s house at stage left and the doc’s office at stage right, should compress neatly enough at the renovated Warehouse PAC, but somebody will need to confirm for me whether the gratuitous use of the Booth flyloft will be replicated up in Lake Norman. Modifications could also dawn on David M Fillmore, Jr.’s shrewd lighting design.

At its essence, Wink explores what can happen when we rashly, spontaneously, and completely yield to our impulses. It wouldn’t be so frightening – or so much hilarious fun – if we didn’t have a conscience about it all, if we didn’t recoil from our own audacity. On balance, Gregor’s and Sofie’s cover-ups are funnier than their crimes, and both Levine and Pledger play it that way. Silverman layers on additional new obsessions for Gregor and new deceits for Sofia that ironically show us how similar they are as they drift apart.

Are they losing their minds or becoming more self-aware? Silverman has provided a double edge here.

The evolution between Wink and Doc Frans is vastly quieter and quirkier, though there are playful moments. Gillespie and Grogan can play at teaching and learning from each other. Since there’s always a couch to our right, Brown yields briefly, unbidden by the script, to the temptation of redefining their doctor-patient relationship – with Frans reclining on the sofa.

With all the hairpin twists, sudden surprises, and belly laughs, you can reach the end of this whirlwind evening asking yourself, “What did I just see?”: a rare and thrilling experience at the theater. There’s so much wrong with Doc Frans’ preachings of discipline and such excesses in Sofia’s and Gregor’s escalating impulses that we can easily imagine that Silverman wants us to be dizzily ambivalent.

She probably does. It’s the kind of “You just gotta see this” reaction a playwright lives for.

Take a few extra moments, then, to consider Wink as a role model. His hunting routine, repeated more than once, is a blend of discipline and savagery, keen calculation and patience before taking your shot.

Expect that of a dog? Their lack of self-control and stealth is why they hunt in packs. You can train a dog to stop on a dime when it gets a first sniff of its prey, but then it just dopily points its nose in the air towards your quarry. Still imprecisely.

There may be nothing happier than a contented dog; that’s true. Give the enlightened Wink a bottle of wine, and he’s still cool. Cheers!

Photo by Perry Tannenbaum

Shepherd Shakespeare Stays Up Late With “The Winter’s Tale”

Review: The Winter’s Tale at Armour Street Theatre

By Perry Tannenbaum

Yes, Davidson Community Players’ executive director Steve Kaliski certainly had a point this past weekend when he declared, “My kingdom for The Autumn’s Tale!” DCP had invited Shepherd Shakespeare Company, which normally performs outdoors at The Barn on Monroe Road, to perform THE WINTER’S TALE indoors at the Armour Street Theatre, out of the cold winter.

Unfortunately, winter weather pursued the troubadours, who also bring a variety of repertoire to local elementary and high schools, up the highway to Davidson, forcing the postponement of performances scheduled for the second weekend of Winter’s Tale at Armour. Ill-starred as the engagement may have proven, it enabled me to see SSCO in action for the first time, outside of their customary morning-and-afternoon cocoon in prime evening hours.

Katy and Chester Shepherd, co-founders of the touring company, are often at the forefront of their productions. But here, they are behind-the-scenes – and they have, artistically, split up. Chester is handling the stage direction and scenic design, while Katy has designed and constructed the costumes. Another blissfully theatrical couple, Brandon and Rachel Dawson, portray the jealousy-crossed leads, Leontes and Hermione, the King and Queen of Sicilia.

Brandon, as Leontes, falls prey like Othello to the green-toothed monster, but he’s also haunted by his own inner Iago, needing no outside help to compromise and convict his innocent Queen of shameful adultery. What happens in the tragic first scene is nearly as simple and grand as Lear. The visiting King Polixenes of Bohemia, after sojourning in Sicilia for nine months, announces that he will leave on the morrow.

The Sicilia monarch tries to persuade Polixenes to lengthen his visit but cannot shake his boyhood friend’s resolve. Rachel, as Hermione remains silent – until Brandon, as her King, asks her to assist. Hermione’s attempts are wittier, more lighthearted, more charming, more insistent, and more sustained. There are no stage directions in the text during Hermione’s pleadings that indicate any physical contact with the esteemed visitor, but in Shepherd’s direction, that is not a prohibition.

Chester and Rachel have reached a key accord, without Shakespeare’s expressed consent, when Hermione playfully suggests taking the Bohemian monarch as her prisoner. Yet when Polixenes is won over, fulfilling Leontes’ wishes, and Hermione has gained her husband’s admiration, Shakespeare does add a stage direction that decrees physical contact right after she declares Bohemia to be her newly-earned friend: “Gives her hand to Polixenes.”

This is enough to spark Leontes’ jealousy and fan it into flames. Everything dearest to Leontes must be destroyed: wife, son, newborn daughter, and Polixenes, who learns the perils of a nine-month visit through grim experience. The damage that Leontes capriciously wreaks on his kingdom will take 20 years to repair, and the repair will not be complete.

Hermione’s imagined betrayal in the presence of the king’s son, Mamillius, his most trusted confidante, Lord Camillo, and numerous attendants at his Sicilia palace, so an eerie formality hovers over the DCP production’s opening scene (an introductory scene elsewhere in the palace is cut) until the king explodes. First to be targeted by Leontes’ wrath is Polixenes, genially portrayed by Jeremy Cartee, with a touch of mischief that he keeps on back order until he returns home.

Torn between loyalty and common humanity, Savannah Deal as Camillo decides not to slay Polixenes but to advise him to flee. Understanding that disloyalty to the deranged Leontes could spell death for Camillo, Polixenes rewards his honesty by bringing Camillo into his service before they depart.

We won’t hear any more of them for 20 years. Meanwhile, Act 2 applies a fairytale patina to the action as Leontes, dissuaded from burning his newborn daughter by Lord Antigonus, dispatches milord to abandon the babe in a faraway place to the mercy of the elements. We last see Andre Braza as Antigonus at the end of Act 3, sent offstage with Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

Not to worry, Braza resurfaces in Scene 3 of Act 4 as the roguish Autolycus. The remaining members of the core troupe, mostly with prior SSCO experience, also shuffle multiple roles and costumes backstage – with a couple of players besides Deal flipping genders. Most prominently, these include Iesha Nyree morphing from one of Hermione’s ladies to the Old Shepherd who parents Perdita, the sequestered newborn, and Emma Brand, becoming the grown-up foundling after a stint as Lord Cleomenes.

Really, the only faux pas in this production is the casting of Mamillius, the king’s blameless heir. No matter how cute, we need to hear the lad. Best of the rest is Joanna Gerdy, who likely knows Shakespeare’s plays nearly as well as the Bard himself, having acted in and directed so many. Here, as Paulina, Gerdy gets to fearlessly scold Leontes, engineer Hermione’s escape, and emcee the queen’s long-deserved restoration. It’s a powerful, authoritative performance that almost rivals the Dawsons’ majesties. Note: In lieu of the cancelled performances on 1/31 and 2/1, a make-up show has been added for Wednesday, 2/4, at 7:30pm. Stay tuned for other possible added s