Category Archives: Theatre

Egg-spressive Brothers Cook Up “Something Rotten!” for Elizabethan Stage

Review:  Something Rotten!

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By Perry Tannenbaum

The more you know about Shakespeare – and the more you know about Broadway musicals – love ‘em or hate ‘em – the more you’ll laugh out loud at Something Rotten. Conceived by songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick and funnyman Karey Kirkpatrick, who teamed up on the music and lyrics (with a book by Karey K. and John O’Farrell), Rotten smells a lot like The Producers exported to Elizabethan England. Very much like the Mel Brooks classic, two partners hatch an impossibly bad idea for a hit show.

Big difference: the Bottom brothers, Nick and Nigel, aren’t trying to birth the biggest bomb of all time. Fueled by an intense jealousy of William Shakespeare, a bard of rockstar celebrity who shamelessly steals all of Nigel’s best lines, Nick seeks out a soothsayer to help him beat Shakespeare to the next big thing in theatre – and to Shakespeare’s greatest hit.

The soothsayer, Nostradamus, can hardly believe what he sees himself when he peers into the future. That’s because the seer doesn’t exactly see it with 20/20 vision. Through a glass foggily, Nostradamus sees that musicals are the future, isn’t quite sure how and why they work, and his divinations are sprinkled with inklings of Cats, Fiddler, Annie, Phantom, Lion King, tap dance, kick lines, and much more. Using his own imagination, Nick’s “The Black Death” isn’t quite the artistic abortion that “Springtime for Hitler” would be, but the showman realizes he’s in trouble.RottenTour_9089

So he returns to Nostradamus, reasoning that he can produce a musical version of the greatest tragedy Shakespeare hasn’t yet written. Once again, the soothsayer can’t quite read the eye chart. He confidently outlines the scrambled story of “Omelet.” Egg-citedly, Nick launches into an even more misbegotten concept, trying to whip up Nigel’s enthusiasm for “Omelet: The Musical.” You can write some truly rotten stuff when eggs are your inspiration.

That’s where the score manages to shine most brightly – in the Kirkpatricks’ intentionally rotten songs. There’s also a certain mean animus to Nick’s “God, I Hate Shakespeare” that I liked, contrasted with the panache of Shakespeare’s “Will Power” and the pampered idol’s excessive pouting in “Hard to Be the Bard.” But the opening “Welcome to the Renaissance,” severely overmiked on opening night, is gratifyingly transformed into the evening’s prime showstopper, “A Musical.” A bit of self-satire creeps in at the end of the show when the oh-so-familiar tune outwears its freshness with one last permutation.

On the other hand, the clever script provides a bounty of hambone for the cast to sink its teeth into – and a lot for Shakespeare to keep stealing, for besides Bottom, there is a Yorick, a Peter Quince, a Portia, and even a Jewish Shylock roaming the stage. While Adam Pascal offers us a glitzier gloss on Shakespeare than Christian Borle’s on Broadway, it plays well, and Blake Hammond’s Nostradamus is very much in the gonzo footsteps of Brad Oskar.

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Nick’s sponsorship problems open the door for Jeff Brooks’ comical antics as Shylock, and Nigel’s budding love life meets some funny, latently gay opposition from Scott Cote as Brother Jeremiah, Portia’s puritanical dad. While the female roles aren’t much to feast on, both Autumn Hurlbert as Portia and Maggie Lakis as Nick’s wife Bea show signs of modernity and liberation. Admiring Nigel’s talent, Portia proves to be familiar with contemporary Elizabethan poets, and worried that their future dreams might be hobbled by Nick’s financial woes, Bea goes out and gets a job.

A shitty job, but it’s a job.

The Kirkpatricks manage to conceive a satisfying pair of brothers with different outlooks and solid loyalties – a mundane verisimilitude that allows the more outré supporting cast members to repeatedly steal the show from them. Josh Grisetti as Nigel charms us with his purity and his shyness while Rob McClure as Nick brims with all the right energy you need to hawk the rotten ideas that drive Something Rotten. Ah, but when it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll never be as funny as the Nick Bottom that Shakespeare created, a certain amount of flop sweat comes with the gig.

 

 

 

 

Time’s Up for Heavy Drama in “The Mermaid Hour,” but the Lyricism Lingers On

Review: The Mermaid Hour

By Perry Tannenbaum

Two years ago, when The Mermaid Hour first came to town as a reading stage production at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, the David Valdes Greenwood script seemed fresh, urgent, and dramatic. In the binary world of 2016, the 12-year-old child at the heart of this story, Vi, née Victor, was pressuring her parents to let her start taking hormone blockers, the first step in transitioning to womanhood. Coping with a transgender child felt like heavy stuff for Vi’s parents, Bird and Pilar, working-class Bostonians. Freaking out seemed a reasonable reaction when your child, dressed as a mermaid, launches a YouTube video that gets 20,000 views.

Today, it’s a world where binary and non-binary gender concepts coexist, and while there’s a good chance that you haven’t quite gotten the new terminologies down, you’ve probably gotten a helpful memo or two – and very likely gotten the drift. Sexual freedom doesn’t merely imply a wider latitude of accepted actions, it also signifies identifying as each of us sees fit.

So in a beautifully designed full production by Actor’s Theatre of Greenwood’s drama, it’s not surprising to discover that the 9th grader playing Vi, Toni Reali, is a non-binary actor who prefers they as their pronoun of choice. That will be a lot for many who are seeing The Mermaid Hour for the first time to wrap their heads around. But for those like me who have already accomplished that, I’m not sure that the expiration dates for the story’s peak freshness, urgency, and drama haven’t already passed.

It’s fortunate, then, that the Actor’s Theatre reprise directed by Laley Lippard layers on so much visual lyricism, a magical mix of set and sound design by Chip Decker, costumes by Carrie Cranford, and lighting by Hallie Gray. Adults and even Vi’s best friend Jacob look comparatively humdrum, and so do their surroundings. But when we ascend to Vi’s bedroom, the aqua colors glow and the mermaid couture glitters – worn by both Vi and her hermaphroditic online inspiration, Merperson/Crux.

 

Merperson seems to float in a rainbow ether as they declaim the “Mermaid Hour” podcasts that enflame Vi’s ambitions, taking up the space of what ordinarily would be the child’s window onto the outside world. Of course, Vi’s bedroom is also the studio where she records her YouTube manifesto, her mermaid outfit more basic and makeshift than the splendor that Alex Aguilar gets to model as Merperson.

Part of the impression the podcast star and their prodigy make is a shared aspiration to transcend everyday life. The exotic, the outrageous, the risqué, and the enchanting are in exquisite balance in these scenes, but the consternation caused by the 20,000 views garnered by Vi’s video now strikes us as an overreaction. When YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and crowdfunding sensations regularly make the Nightly News, Vi’s surprise that her video would elicit such a massive response seems just as yesterday as her parents’ shock.

Though Decker could probably pot down his microphone a couple of notches, Aguilar strikes an important balance of his own, clearly connecting with Vi over the web with his urgings and yearnings yet adult and archly artificial in ways she couldn’t understand. Reali heightens this dimension of the mermaids’ chemistry with a wonderful lack of artifice, so spontaneous and unaffected that Crux’s protectiveness toward them late in the show seems perfectly natural, even though the mermaid reemerges on a city street dressed in leather.

Two of my fave Charlotte performers disappointed me a little as Vi’s confounded folks. Adyana de la Torre-Brucker had to shoulder the burden of being the most stubborn obstacle to Vi’s urges, but her take on Pilar’s irritation at discovering that maybe she didn’t quite rock being a mother struck me as too energetic. A little more heart and a little less stressing would work wonders. Meanwhile, Jeremy DeCarlos, who has previously demonstrated the ability to be cast as anything, was flunking working class cluelessness as Bird – sorry, the man radiates too much savvy – until he fairly nailed a lengthy monologue toward the end, earning a respectable grade.

As Jacob’s mom, Mika, Amy Wada had a clearer, more interesting path to credibility. What alarms Mika is that her Asian relatives across the Pacific now know about Vi’s video – and that their grandson is adored by a pink-haired boy who identifies as a mermaid. Laughing off your elders isn’t so easily done in ancient civilizations, and Wada carries off her globalized dilemma well.

With a cast this diverse, I doubt anyone will mind that nobody has a New England accent, despite the fact that Bird’s monologue makes it clear they’ve resided in Beantown for quite a while. At the calm center of all this specious uproar is Alec Celis as Jacob, the gay object of Vi’s adulation. He firmly tells Vi that they can be friends, nothing more, but doesn’t give her grief over the video. The fact that he and Vi have exposed themselves to each other in his bedroom hardly earns a shrug when Mama Mika freaks. What ticks him off – mildly – is when Mika tells him that he and Vi can’t associate.

By default, Jacob may be the best role model we see onstage, because he rolls with the post-binary gender tide rather than pushing either way. Anyone expecting high excitement from The Mermaid Hour might do well to follow his example. Although Greenwood’s script doesn’t sizzle with drama, it provides powerful affirmation for trans and non-binary people in the audience who don’t often see themselves portrayed onstage. It also injects some remedial education into theatergoers who have slept on their trans neighbors’ existence or their worth until now. With some fabulous color and lighting.

 

Comedy and Dread Haunt “The Humans” in Lower Manhattan

Review:  The Humans

By Perry Tannenbaum

Richard Thomas made his first appearance on Broadway in the late ‘50s, when he was still six years old, and he’s still in the biz 60 years later, touring with The Humans. These days, Thomas appears as one of the elders in Stephen Karam’s portrait of the Blake family, nothing at all like the paragon he once was starring as John-Boy Walton back in the ‘70s. Here he is crotchety, embittered, careworn, a bit paunchy, and – as we learn late in this 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner – disgraced.

Joining Erik on a Thanksgiving visit to their daughter Brigid’s Manhattan apartment is his wife Deirdre, his elder daughter Aimee, and his wheelchair-bound mother, “Momo” Blake. All of the visitors have their problems. Nobody in the family seems to like the grumpy, nagging, fanatically religious Deidre. Aimee has lost her girlfriend, formerly bright career prospects have slipped from her grasp, and a digestive infection sends her repeatedly to the toilet. “Momo” is stricken with Alzheimer’s, babbling rather than articulate, with a tendency to throw tantrums or wander off unexpectedly.

“Momo” also supplies us with the best affirmation of religion that we’ll see at this Thanksgiving dinner.

Our hosts, Brigid and her boyfriend Richard, actually seem better adjusted than their guests. She’s struggling as a musician, not earning as much as her lawyer sister, but she and Richard have managed to move into a two-story apartment in Chinatown, and he’s expecting a windfall of trust fund money in two years when he turns 40.

Amid the bickering, the joshing, and Deirdre’s irritating nagging about Brigid’s loss of faith and her apartment’s lack of windows and light, there are undercurrents of comedy and dread that would resonate most keenly with New Yorkers. Typical Pennsylvanians, Erik and Deidre have the aversions to living in Manhattan that have made Broadway theatergoers laugh for over a century.

Yet they manage to hit a couple of sore points. Erik recalls driving Aimee up to New York for a job interview on 9/11 and surviving the attack on the Twin Towers by sheer luck. Deidre’s worries about her daughter’s basement apartment flooding referenced an even more recent trauma, the devastation in Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Under attack by terrorists and climate change, the end-of-days atmosphere at Brigid’s adopted home is augmented by lightbulbs that go out in her new apartment and jarring, unexplained booms from the floors above.

Thomas captures the whistling-in-the-dark fate of the Blakes best, sensing that you need to work harder at projecting to the balcony at the other end of the shoebox-shaped Knight Theater. Only slightly outdone, Pamela Reed is superbly nettlesome as the mom we love to hate, while her daughters, Daisy Eagan as Brigid and Therese Plaehn as Aimee, are more agreeable but less characterful. Luis Vega as Richard was the only member of the cast who seemed to miss the memo that you need to project more forcefully at the Knight.

Each time Momo startles us, it’s important, yet Lauren Klein orchestrates these eruptions beautifully. Momo’s violent outburst had an unexpected effect on how I saw Erik toward the end. Confessing how he had let his family down, Thomas actually succeeded in making me hate him momentarily despite his 60+ years of stage and TV wholesomeness. But when Momo began flailing, Erik became her firm, patient, and dutiful son – and this John-Boy aspect that Thomas still does so well encouraged me to give Erik a second look. The mysterious ending of Karam’s drama calls forth yet another reconsideration.

“On Golden Pond” Is Still Sugary at CP, but Never Cloying

Review:  On Golden Pond

By Perry Tannenbaum

Although I had not seen the original 1979 Broadway production – and had staunchly avoided playwright Ernest Thompson’s 1981 Hollywood adaptation – I thought I knew all I cared to know about On Golden Pond when it finally caught up with me at Theatre Charlotte in 2006. Through unsolicited excerpts flashed at me on TV, I had become all-too-familiar with Henry Fonda’s crustiness as Norman Thayer Jr., Katharine Hepburn’s gritty steadfastness as his wife Ethel, the whininess of Jane Fonda as their daughter Chelsea, and the gooey honey that bound them all together.

Were there other characters in the script? That was one of the unexpected delights I discovered as my first full encounter with On Golden Pond, like so many others with The Sound of Music, turned out to be better than I feared. Yet as I also find with that Rodgers and Hammerstein evergreen, there’s a recoil effect that comes with intervening years, and I was dreading On Golden Pond once again as it opened at Central Piedmont Community College.

Directed by Marilyn Carter, the stage version proved to be somewhat sweeter than the film; largely because Elyse Williams gives a sunnier, more domesticated rendering of Ethel; dispelling the hardy Yankee, outdoorsy Hepburn effect. Williams and Tom Scott are less iconic and godly as the elder Thayers than Hepburn and Henry, so Amy Pearre Dunn as Chelsea seemed far more sensible and far less petulant than Jane. Toss in the other people who enter the Thayers’ summer home in Maine, and the story seems less about age-old family animosities and far more mundane.

After many years of estrangement, Chelsea, with her dentist fiancé and his son, arrive to celebrate the dour Norman’s 80th birthday. The betrothed couple presumes to impose twice upon their hosts’ hospitality, sleeping together in the same bed and then – with Norman’s grumbling permission – dropping off Billy Jr. for a month while they fly off to Europe. The Billy invasion has unexpected results, shifting the story away from centering exclusively on the Thayers and their parenting. Ultimately, it also takes in the tribulations of Norman’s aging, his surprising capacity for growth, Ethel’s sweet forbearance, and the realities of a successful marriage.

This is the penultimate show at Pease Auditorium, which will be demolished after Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap plays there this summer. It’s hard to think of any script that has ever fit Pease’s squat stage better than Thompson’s rustic yarn, for James Duke’s set design takes fine advantage of Pease’s panoramic width, and the dwarfish staircase up to the Thayers’ bedrooms hardly seems to matter. I can’t remember if there ever was a curtain drawn across this epic stage, but a curtain would have been largely redundant when the elderly couple arrived, for all the furnishings were covered in drop cloths until, one by one, the Thayers lifted and folded them. Thompson showed a fondness for such elaborate episodes of stage business to kick off his scenes, but it grew less effective in subsequent scenes, where the scurrying business veered toward farce.

The sweeter Ethel in the CPCC Theatre production allows Scott, as a retired Penn professor, to venture close to maximum orneriness – because he’s the one formidable figure onstage. His words stung when Norman and Chelsea had their long-delayed showdown, but part of their impact came from Dunn’s stunned reaction, so I could believe that Norman was being almost casually honest rather than intentionally hurtful. Spoken by Scott instead of a cinematic icon, Norman’s inbred racism also counted for more.

The big dramatic moments of On Golden Pond, as well as most of comedic moments, come because Norman is such a thorny force to be reckoned with – and so insistently morbid. In his confrontations with Chelsea, her fiancé, and Billy, Scott not only wore Norman’s armor well but also showed that it could be pierced. With Ethel, he could be more vulnerable and yielding, which made the climax of the final scene very moving.

Williams was more than sufficiently cheery as Ethel for Norman to spout all his morbid thoughts in self-defense. Sugary, yes, but never cloying. What surprised me most about Williams’ performance opposite Scott was her consistent strength paired with one of the most robust acting voices in town. She was not only as audible as Scott in combat with Pease’s wayward acoustics, she was more consistently intelligible, for Scott occasionally softened his projection or toyed with a regional accent. There was easily enough force from Williams for us to grasp that Ethel was the decider of where things belonged in the house, yet the nuances of her deference toward Norman and its impact upon her relationship with Chelsea were also preserved.

I didn’t get the impression that Dunn was in her early forties, so I missed the overlay Chelsea’s missing her child-bearing years in her bitterness. Unresolved issues with her parents seemed nettlesome rather than crippling, with Scott taking on more of the animosity between father and daughter. Chelsea’s grudges against Mom and Dad were more evenly split here. At her point of aging, Dunn didn’t seem as desperately in need of healing as Norman did, facing the deterioration of his memory. Paul Gibson as Bill really did seem to be the adult upgrade Chelsea needed for her second marriage, showing his mettle when Norman tested it, tellingly enriching our portrait of his perspective father-in-law.

We would hardly miss mailman Charley Martin if Thompson had surgically removed him from his scenario, but Todd Magnusson makes him winsome enough, a garrulous exemplar of local color and a longtime admirer of Chelsea, though he could have been a tad surer in picking up and remembering his lines. Stepp Nadelman has more onerous difficulties to overcome in his first big Charlotte outing as Billy, and the youngster made himself better heard than many older actors have at Pease Auditorium, especially when it counted. Nadelson is no longer at an age where merely standing there and smiling would make him appealing, yet Thompson lavishes a considerable amount of texture upon Billy, commensurate with his ultimate importance to Norman. Although there were occasional drop-offs in his projection, Nadelson’s acting never flagged.

Spanish Gold in a Rat Pack Update

Preview: Life Is a Dream

By Perry Tannenbaum

With a king who tries futilely to outwit fate and a wrongfully imprisoned prince who has time – and fate – on his side, Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream hearkens back to a couple of revered Greek tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Prometheus Bound. First produced in 1636, the script also bears earmarks of Shakespeare’s most mature dramas, works like The Tempest and King Lear, where the Bard ponders questions about nature vs. nurture and “elemental man.”

Mixing in a faceoff between free will and predestination, Life Is a Dream stands as one of the two most-anthologized plays from Spain’s Golden Age. Anthologists casually refer to the piece as a drama, but the more thoughtfully considered entry in the Reader’s Encyclopedia of World Drama describes Calderón’s masterwork as “a metaphysical problem play.”

Screw that, says Shakespeare Carolina director S. Wilson Lee. He will tell you – and remind his cast of actors emphatically – that Life Is a Dream is a COMEDY.

Scorning complexity, Lee explains: “My theatre education regarding classic drama planted this nugget into my brain: Drama is divided into two categories, TRAGEDY and COMEDY. The difference? In TRAGEDY, central characters end the show dead; in COMEDY, central characters end the show married! Life Is a Dream ends with marriage.”

If that ending is real.

At a key turning point in this “comedy,” King Basilio of Poland allows his son Prince Segismundo, imprisoned since birth, to come to the royal court. It’s a test of an astrologer’s prediction that Segismundo, if allowed to live and reign, would be the ruin of the kingdom. Brought up as an isolated savage, perpetually in chains and dressed in animal pelts, Segismundo is a fairly sure bet to fail any test of readiness to rule.

Basilio has planned well what he would do if his son misuses the reins of power. He’ll see to it that Segismundo is drugged, transported back to his mountainside dungeon, and assured that his royal misadventures were nothing more than a dream. Whether that’s cruelty or comedy, this whole truth-or-illusion strand that runs through Calderón’s script is very modern.

Lee is taking it further. The “dream-state” aspects of Segismundo’s journey will serve to heighten the comedy. “Living the Dream or Dreaming the Life …whatever” will be more than a mantra for ShakesCar’s production when it opens at Spirit Square on April 19 – it will rule Lee’s design concept. King Basilio will be living the life with a modern flair, crowned with the Rat Pack aura minted a generation ago by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.

“The look of the piece,” Lee says, “is a kind of ‘Wild Ones Meet the Rat Pack.’ Most of the locale of the production takes place in Basilio’s Place… a happenin’ lounge in Poland, Nevada. Also, the strangers, Rosaura and Clarin, come from Moscow, Pennsylvania. King Basilio is in the process of handing over his rule to the next ‘head of the Family.’ Remember, though, this could all be Segismundo’s dream!”

Lee intends to bring the audience into the dreamy action at Duke Energy Theatre. Cast members will address the audience during the show, and special seating will be available onstage at four lounge tables that will put eight of ShakesCar’s guests – two per table – in the middle of the action.

In this royal tale of turmoil, father and son are both attention-grabbers. Though brought up in a cave with the humblest clothing, Segismundo isn’t exactly a clone of Shakespeare’s Caliban. He has a caretaker, Clotando, who tutors him a bit, and it’s Segismundo’s natural depth and probity that sets him heroically apart. In the first speech he utters, he tells us that mankind’s greatest sin is being born, a line that endeared Calderón to no less of an absurdist playwright than Samuel Beckett himself.

Veering from savagery to such sublime speculation – the prince soon questions whether he was born – Segismundo spans an astonishing range of moods.

“This was easily the hardest role I have ever prepared for,” says David Hayes, a ShakesCar mainstay since 1998. “Segismundo is dancing back and forth across a very fine line between madness and sanity – to the point where my own perception got a little skewed during this process. Stan [the director] has been a key component to reining me in or removing my ‘chains.’”

To a certain extent, Hayes must not only take ownership over the full range of Segismundo, the dreamer, but our experience as well.

“Isn’t that what a dream really is?” Hayes hints. “A chaotic onslaught that blurs the lines of reality. That’s what this is.”

Counterbalancing this Marlon Brando biker persona is King Basilio as Vegas slickster. The closest role Russell Rowe has done with ShakesCar to this cruel Basilio was King Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, who renounces his wife and daughter, but Lee is telling him to think Frank Sinatra here.

Enjoying life at the top and thinking he has outwitted fate, Basilio isn’t ready to let go. Rowe doesn’t see much of a character arc in this swinging king.

“It is more of a slope,” he says, “a descent from an exalted state to a more humbled one. This downfall encompasses both roles as king and father, since the threat to his kingship is coming from his own son. After the descent, of course, there is the brief but powerful upturn at the end, as Basilio learns the difficult lesson that he can only get what he wants by giving up trying to get it.”

Of course, Segismundo doesn’t really know what he wants when we first meet him, because he has no idea yet who he is. The action is kickstarted with the arrival of Rosaura at his secluded prison, a woman who very much knows what she wants – disguised as a man. She is fiercely in pursuit of the man who jilted her, but we soon realize her similarity to Segismundo. Rosaura has also lived a long time without being aware of her true identity.

It’s a twisty plot when we arrive at Basilio’s lounge, with l-o-o-o-n-n-g speeches every step of the way. Lee is confident that the new translation eases the complexity and floweriness of Calderón’s text, helping to pave the path toward his intent of imposing a comedic style on the action. The transgendered translator, Jo Clifford (nee John Clifford), was presumably most enamored with Rosaura, who openly speaks of herself as a man and as a woman in the same speech during the Act 3 climax.

In her disguise, Teresa Abernethy gets to be one of the boys from the outset. But she doesn’t have to arrive on horseback. Nor is her opening line “Dash off, wild hippogriff!” as it was in an older translation.

“I’m still bursting out calling my horse – ride, bike, Hog – a Hippogriff!” Abernethy reveals. “Damn thing gave false promises of forever through rough terrain!”

The roughest ride for Rowe and Abernethy has been reining in the tempestuous temperaments of their characters.

“Rosaura is fueled by passion,” says Abernethy, “which propels her inner conflict. Emotion is a beast that can drag us to all sorts of domains, but for Rosaura, she is ALL IN – willing to die for her honor. My own conflict is not floating away to Rosaura’s coursing elements of shame and still participate in this play that is a comedy.”

Lee is pulling hard to keep it that way. The director wants this Shakespeare Carolina production to engage us in the bigger questions that Calderón plays with – without bogging us down in them.

“I do want the audience to think about long term abandonment and the toll it takes upon one’s psyche and cognitive process. I want the audience to relate to Rosaura’s sense of loss and dishonor. I also want the audience to ponder Basilio’s reasons and explanations regarding his treatment of Segismundo. By all means, do that. However, none of those questions will be pondered if the audience has not had a good time exploring along with the characters. Have fun!!”

 

Much of the Ambiance Is Trimmed from “A Time to Kill,” but the Mississippi Murder Trial Still Sizzles

Review:  A Time to Kill

By Perry Tannenbaum

Rupert Holmes has built a distinguished theatre career – and carved out his own special niche – by crafting mysteries for the Broadway stage. His Accomplice won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America when it played on Broadway in 1990, and after his Thumbs premiered successfully in Charlotte, it seemed Broadway-bound in 2001. Holmes’ most unique accomplishments are his two mystery musicals, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, adapted from Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel, and Curtains, a Holmes original. So it’s not at all surprising that Holmes would be the first playwright to adapt a John Grisham bestseller for the stage when he brought A Time to Kill to the Great White Way in 2013. As the current Theatre Charlotte production demonstrates, adapting Grisham’s first novel for the stage was a tall order.

Admitting that film would be a more comfortable medium for this story, director Dave Blamy conspires with set and lighting designer Chis Timmons to wedge in some clips, prefacing the action with evocations of a horrific rape of a 10-year-old girl and, deep in the story, flashing the handiwork of the Ku Klux Klan on the darkened upstage wall. From the outset, you can presume that Timmons’ design for Judge Edwin Noose’s Mississippi courtroom isn’t going anywhere. It is so sturdy and stately that you may be tempted to rise when the judge enters to launch Act 1. But Timmons manages to swivel the entire courtroom 90° during intermission, adding a sidecar to the judge’s bench that serves – somewhat shakily – as a witness box. When we adjourned to the judge’s chamber, other parts of the courthouse, or defense attorney Jake Brigance’s home, there were discreet furniture shifts while the lights were dimmed. They worked well enough.

Unfortunately, Grisham’s canvas is larger. Though we watch Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard confess to the rape and attempted murder of little Tonya in vivid Mississippi detail, we never see her father, Carl Lee Hailey, taking vengeance upon these perverts. Thanks to Christy Edney Lancaster’s sound design, we can hear the chants of protesters outside the courthouse when Carl Lee goes on trial for murder, but we cannot see the mob’s fury. When hostilities break out between black supporters of the defendant and KKK racists, we’re shielded from the riot, and when the National Guard moved in… I wasn’t sure that was even mentioned in the script.

Clocking in at a hefty 2:17, plus a 20-minute intermission, the production won’t seem skimpy at all. Instead of any prolonged attention to the KKK, Holmes takes us more intently into Jake’s defense efforts behind the scenes, bringing extra emphasis to whip-smart legal assistant Ellen Roark, disbarred attorney Lucien Wilbanks, and the pillar of the defense’s case, Dr. W.T. Bass. The psychiatrist is recruited for the purpose of confirming that Carl Lee committed the double murder while suffering from temporary insanity, but it quickly became apparent that Wilbanks had made Bass’s acquaintance in a barroom during one of his frequent sprees. For better and worse, suspense and thrills now rest on the outcome of the trial, not on the survival of Carl and Jake in the face of KKK mob mentality. We’re also called upon to hate district attorney Rufus Buckley a little bit more, for his smarmy courtroom confidence and his undisguised political ambitions.

A slick, relatively bloodless package like this would have worked better if it were performed more slickly. Blamy pushes in that direction, but Grisham’s main characters are defined by their back-stories, and their development is further hampered by the formality that legal proceedings – arraignments, pleadings, motions, and trials – impose on dialogue. All combined, the length, formality, and pervasive legalese of A Time to Kill may account for the fact that actors were stumbling over their lines more frequently on this opening night than at any show I can remember at Theatre Charlotte.

Best at handling it was Jim Greenwood, who managed to add a bumbling element to Judge Noose’s crusty old persona. The opposing attorneys, both superbly cast, didn’t break character when struggling for their next phrases, but I could detect definite cracks. Tasked with sustaining a villainous patina, Conrad Harvey was more afflicted by these lapses as the DA, but all was well when he hopped back onto the rails and he flashed his Trumpian smile to the jury. Wonderfully loathsome. Costume designer Chelsea Retalic probably had Atticus Finch in mind when she drew up Jake’s courtroom attire for Tim Hager and the analogy was often apt when Hager grew simply eloquent. But he’d be better off drawing upon Jake’s fallibility when he falters.

Hager was at his best when Jake in maneuvering behind the scenes. Wheeling and dealing are not his style. Steadfast in his beliefs, Hager seemed to get that Jake wasn’t as comfortable in his skin as those surrounding him. As the brainy, beautiful, and ambitious Roark, Jennifer Barnette knew exactly what the legal assistant wants from her gig with Jake and why she finds him attractive. Both Tom Schrachta as Lucien and Rick Taylor as Dr. Bass projected their dissoluteness without too much exaggeration – but more than enough to merit Jake’s alarm – and both of them get tasty opportunities to sober up. Neither of them missed the comical lagniappe that came with their changes.

With so much of the Mississippi ambiance trimmed away like so much gristle, it was a godsend that the black players were all so right. Ronald Jenkins registered Sheriff Ozzie Walls’ conflicted loyalties beautifully, as committed to protecting Carl Lee and seeing that justice is done as he was to keeping his prisoner in custody. As a vengeful father, thoughtless husband, and a somewhat immature man, Jonathan Caldwell had a lot of different feelings to navigate as Carl Lee, from savage rage to sheepish regret, but he wisely stayed steadfast in his belief that murdering those two bragging racists was the right thing. Yet there was deep understanding in Tracie Frank’s portrayal of Gwen Hailey, Carl’s wife. Carl defies her when he chooses Jake to defend him instead of the NAACP, who are willing to come in and do it without a fee. Frank was out there alone to give Carl Lee’s defiance substantial weight. Without Frank’s steely strength, Jake’s victory – and Carl Lee’s vindication for choosing him – wouldn’t have been as sweet. Her quiet acknowledgement seals the verdict.

Actor’s Theatre Brings The Mountaintop Down to Earth – So It Can Soar

Review:  The Mountaintop

By Perry Tannenbaum

Barely a minute before the end of his final speech at the Masonic Temple in Memphis, supporting striking sanitation workers and hurling defiance at injunctions against their protest marches, Rev. Martin Luther King grew famously prophetic. He told his people, hours before he would be assassinated that, like Moses, he had climbed to “the mountaintop” where he could see the Promised Land, and – like Moses – he might not get there with them when they arrived.

In her 2009 drama, , playwright Katori Hall follows King beyond that pinnacle to Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel where the civil rights champion spent his final night on April 3, 1968. She goes to great lengths to show the iconic Nobel Prize winner as a mundane human being. He’s not above fretting about the size of his audience, frolicking in a pillow fight, bumming smokes from a hotel maid and flirting with her, lying to his wife, and failing to wash his hands after he pees. His socks need darning, and his feet are smelly.

There are things to be admired about this approach when you watch the current Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte production directed by April Jones at Hadley Theater on the Queens College campus. Unlike the Blumenthal Performing Arts production at Booth Playhouse in 2014, which pushed back a little against the notion that King was humdrum, Gerard Hazelton is more comfortable with Hall’s irreverence toward the Reverend, letting us see that King had some personal charm and self-awareness to go along with his oratorical magnificence.

Hazelton’s charm combats the threat of King being upstaged by the housemaid. Certainly an attention grabber, Camae is energetic, nervous, somewhat alluring, and very much in the mold of Clarence in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life: sent – and incentivized – from above. Hall is no less irreverent toward divinity and Christianity than she is toward MLK, allowing the Almighty to take a break from Her busy day to take a phone call from Room 306.

Perhaps afflicted with some real nerves on opening night, Erica Truesdale unintentionally shielded Hazelton further from being upstaged when she first entered, rushing her lines past the point of intelligibility. If you clock the show, you might be shocked to see that runtime is 85 minutes instead of the 105 minutes promised in the playbill, but that is only a minute or two quicker than timings clocked at Booth Playhouse and the 2011 Broadway production. So the big problem isn’t pacing, although repeated rehearsals could have convinced Jones that her players needed to make a beeline through the mundane section of the script to reach the divine and visionary sections as quickly as possible.

You’ll find that set designer Chip Decker and lighting designer Hallie Gray might also be chafing against the drabness of an entire show set in a motel room devoid of luxury. Decker adds a cheesy marquee to simulate a chunk of the motel’s exterior, and Gray brings up the lights way beyond what we’d expect from a couple of lamps, adding some cheer. Toward the end, Decker dons his video designer hat and, working with Andrew Sargent, explodes the action in a manner that still reminds me of Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

By that time, Truesdale had settled in and had long since been operating near the top of her game. We only find out what that is when Hall’s script belatedly reaches lift-off. At that point, it’s quite exciting to see Hazelton and Truesdale hitting on all cylinders. The teamwork pays off from the moment that Martin sees through Camae’s disguise, a moment that came through more clearly for me than it had at Booth Playhouse four years ago.

Hall never plumbs the true depths of King’s character. Nor – as August Wilson might have done – does she contemplate his significance within the totality of the African American diaspora. Yet despite her apparent irreverence toward MLK and accepted gospel, Hall winds up mythologizing her protagonist in very apt fashion.

Everybody doesn’t get an envoy to prepare him or her for the afterlife. King draws a rookie, so the initiation becomes a little slipshod – until the end, when we can see a biblical design. Like Moses, MLK is granted a vision of his people’s progress that his final speech affirmed so confidently and defiantly. He beholds it with us from a vantage point that confirms that he belongs on mountaintops. Like, say, Rushmore.

“Waitress” Frequently Betrays Its Southern Heart With Loudness and Silliness

Review:  Waitress

Waitress the Musical

By Perry Tannenbaum

Like the gentle raindrop patter of its opening song, “Sugar… butter…water,” the musical adaptation of Waitress promises a delicious, delicate, and transient chemistry that sensitively parallels the formation and breakup of romantic relationships. As the motif repeats in the music and lyrics of Sara Bareilles’s score, we get some extras from its troubled protagonist. Jenna not only waits tables at Joe’s Pie Shop, she also bakes the pies. And she not only falls in and out of love, she also experiences personal growth through the alchemy of motherhood.

Unfortunately, delicacy and sensitivity pretty much run dry in Jessie Nelson’s adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s screenplay after they’ve been lavishly applied to Jenna. Earl, Jenna’s husband, is about as toxic a redneck as you could imagine, a brutal grungy sponge who gets one song to match his one dimension. Jenna’s two waitress cronies are sunnier, to be sure, but hardly more rounded: Dawn is kooky, mousy, and shy, contrasting with the swaggering and smart-ass Becky.

Waitress the Musical

All three waitresses have man problems, and all three will wind up with new men. Along the way, Jenna and Becky can commiserate on the folly of having sex with your husband while Dawn is hooking up with Ogie, who is even weirder than she is, presumably because she has cured his shyness in five minutes or less. As Ogie, Jeremy Morse draws the liveliest song of the evening, “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me.” But as if to punish Morse for this goofball showstopper, Bareilles later saddles him with “I Love You Like a Table,” which is every bit as silly as its title.

The folly of having sex with her husband sends a ready-to-puke Jenny to the ladies’ room, where she and her co-workers await the results of a store-bought pregnancy test. Gloomy with the news that she’s having Earl’s child, Jenna soon appears at her gynecologist’s office bearing one of her most special pies as a gift – only to learn that the woman has retired, replaced by Dr. Pomatter, an agreeably awkward new man in town. We know what will happen between the two of them before they do, and Maiesha McQueen, in a comical cameo as his Nurse Norma, gets to swipe a couple of Jenna’s subsequent gift pies.

Waitress the Musical

Although Earl berates her pie-making, Jenna schemes to escape him and his bullying, tucking away some of her tip money so she can take the train to a statewide baking contest where her pies could win her a $20,000 prize and a new life. Dr. P and Nurse Norma seem to be the biggest fans of Jenna’s daily specials, yet she also gets encouragement from her best customer back at the shop, Joe himself. But the backbone she needs to finally stand up to Earl must come from within.

Desi Oakley manages to keep Waitress grounded even when Bareilles’s songs and Nelson’s outré characters take us away from the story’s countrified Southern heart. After extended absences, an irresistible country twang enriches Oakley’s voice and we’re back home. Maybe she’s a tad too beautiful for this pie-making savant, but when Oakley sings “She Used to Be Mine” deep in Act 2, Jenna’s journey is laid bare and she sounds genuinely fed up with her recurring mistakes.

Among the other characters, only Joe sounds capable of comparable introspection, and Larry Marshall makes the pie fancier’s “Take It from an Old Man” another highlight. Dr. Pomatter reaches maximum depth when he urges Jenna to teach him the rudiments of making pies. More often, Bryan Fenkart is called upon to emphasize the furtive and fun-filled regions of romance, light on the comedy because he’s a physician and light on the intimacy because he’s married.

Bryan Fenkart and Desi Oakley in the National Tour of WAITRESS 1 Credit Joan Marcus 0054r.jpg

The first of Fenkart’s three duets with Oakley, “It Only Takes a Taste,” is undoubtedly the best, but none of them match the country flavor of the three waitresses when they harmonize. “Opening Up” is the yummiest of these trios, but Lenne Klingaman as Dawn and Charity Angel Dawson as Becky each gets a chance to shine alone. Nervous before first date – in approximately forever – Klingaman has a better vehicle in Dawn’s “When He Sees Me” than Dawson’s defiant “I Didn’t Plan It” when she slips into an extramarital romance.

Of the two brutes in the story, Ryan G. Dunkin was by far the most benign as Cal, the pie shop manager. After fuming about his crew’s tardiness and threatening to fire Becky, the biker beast turns out to have a soft side. Though Earl begs Jenna not to leave him at one point, it’s an inexplicable lapse in his customary physical intimidation and verbal abuse, so I quickly found myself dreading every scene where Nick Bailey showed up as Jenna’s noxious husband.

The heavy-handedness of this touring production doesn’t altogether vanish when Bailey exits, for the soundbooth, more often not, overmikes the singers onstage, especially the women. When there was actual exposition involved, as when Jenna reminisced about her upbringing in “What Baking Can Do,” I couldn’t get the gist live and needed to catch up at home with Spotify. On the other hand, the six-piece band led onstage by John Miller was very tight, and while the lighting by Ken Billington could have benefitted from more variety, set designs by Scott Pask whisked us smartly from one smalltown location to another.

Before curtain-rise, a huge cherry pie with crisscrossed dough on top filled the stage at Belk Theater all the way up to the proscenium, and the near-capacity crowd on opening night was inclined to eat it all up. Waitress will hit your tastebuds with down-home delight if you downsize your expectations.

Lucia Stetson Brings a Regal, Enigmatic “Evita” to CP

Review: Evita

By Perry Tannenbaum

There isn’t a superabundance of melody in Evita, but when composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s supply begins to run low, he deftly puts his few song lines, riffs, and strands of recitative into a spin cycle, zigzagging through Spanish, Latin, and jazz idioms. Or he might shift tempos for a reprise, shift the context for a song’s reprise that gives it new meaning, or simply drop in a replay.

More conspicuous is the lack of action complementing Tim Rice’s lyrics for a musical purporting to bring us the life and legend of Eva Perón, Argentina’s first lady during the presidency of Juan Perón. Much of this story is told through the cynical-yet-captivated eyes of fellow Argentinian Ché Guevara, beginning his narrative at Evita’s phenomenal state funeral. What Ché attempts to explain is how an obscure commoner from the boonies could become so beloved and venerated in the space of 33 years.

Less dramatic muscle, bone, and spectacle were baked into this 1976 opus than the sturdier Phantom of the Opera, which would be minted 10 years later. In previous Charlotte productions by Queen City Theatre Company (2010) and Theatre Charlotte (2003), small-scale design concepts reminded us that Evita is closer in Sir Andrew’s chronological development to the episodic Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat than his signature guignol. After all, only four major characters create the whole Argentine tapestry.

CPCC Theatre shoves Evita toward grandiosity at spacious Halton Theater, largely through the design wizardry of Robert Croghan. There is classic splendor to the iconic balcony scene at the Casa Rosada, and when Peronistas demonstrate in the streets for a “New Argentina,” Croghan drapes his set design with massive flags and banners scribbled with slogans that drop down from the Halton’s high flyloft.

Plenty of Croghan’s costume designs are of the peasant variety, but when it comes time for Evita to be dressed to the nines – or for the strongman Perón to luxuriate in the opulence of his bedroom – we can see what South American excess and corruption look like. Actors and audiences love this musical beyond its deserts, so director Tom Hollis could be expected to find a fine Evita to glitter in this excellent Halton setting. In Lucia Stetson, he has struck gold.

Or should we say silver, since that’s what Argentina is known and named for?

Along with her wardrobe, Stetson becomes more and more refined as she exploits one man after another in her climb to the top. The sassy arriviste of “Buenos Aires – Big Apple” turns imperious as Evita supplants Perón’s previous mistress, but we don’t see the first rays of sublimity until after intermission when she appears on the balcony of the presidential palace – aglow in Jeff Child’ lighting design – and sings the iconic “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” Stetson does majestic even better than she does sass.

From that moment on, it’s up for grabs whether Evita is a saintly benefactor of the poor, Argentina’s beauteous ambassador to the world, or a corrupt, self-indulgent template for Imelda Marcos. Not only is there a tension between Che’s cynical jabs and the Peróns’ official line, there’s also an inscrutable quality to Stetson’s performance that blossoms naturally out of her majesty. Crowning that regality is Stetson’s star-quality singing, which makes everything believable – Evita’s vanity, her savvy, her belief in her own beneficence, and her physical frailty.

Sadly, Stetson was the only singer onstage at the Halton last Saturday night who was consistently intelligible. Whether it was their diction, their mics, or settings at the Halton’s notorious soundboard, Ron T. Diaz as Che and Robert Nipper as Perón struggled to be understood. Diaz started off well enough in the opening funeral scene, but when the orchestra grew loud behind him, the words and the narrative thread got lost, though Diaz’s voice and Che’s gadfly intensity still pierced through. He restores the rock intonations that Ricky Martin rejected in the most recent Broadway revival of 2012, and I recognized them like an old frenemy in all their original gusto.

Thuggish, conceited, and physically imposing, Nipper helps the “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You” duet to sizzle with restrained sensuality and menace, as good a Perón as I’ve ever seen, with a robusto voice. If they’d fix the audio, his performance would likely join Stetson’s in the not-to-be-missed stratosphere.

Joel King as the crooner Magaldi, Evita’s small-town ticket to Buenos Aires, and Leana Guzman as Perón’s Mistress both satisfy in their respectively comical and pathetic cameos, and music director Drina Keen leads a fine 13-piece band in the pit. We don’t quite hear the volcanic eruption at the end of the symphonic “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” that would give us the lift of a true coronation, but the ensemble is sleek in the Latin-flavored sections of the score, and drummer Kyle Merck makes the military interludes a delight.

At the café where Evita enchants Magaldi and when Evita begins to move to the same music with Perón, choreographer Ron Chisholm makes the company and his principals look good. When the choruses of aristocrats and army soldiers join in berating “Perón’s Latest Flame,” one of numerous spots where we might perceive a disconnect between the music and the intended mood, Chisholm goes with the comical flow. So Argentina’s military struts like a regimented bunch of banana republic bumpkins.

Hardly a minute later, Perón considers running away from these buffoons to Paraguay. Guess he didn’t see them the same way. In that crucial moment, Evita becomes Lady Macbeth to keep him on track.

Landing the Next LeBron Is Just Step One in “King Liz”

Review: King Liz

By Perry Tannenbaum

Wheeling and dealing, trading on her feminine wiles, sports agent Liz Rico is a dynamic dynamo in Fernanda Coppel’s King Liz. To keep her edge, Liz has to lie and cheat, sweet-talk and scold, soothing some mighty male egos while knowing her shit better than any of them. She must fight tooth-and-claw for every client and every dollar while keeping her calculating cool.

In the heat of an NBA draft session, Liz hopes to land her hotshot high school point guard, Freddie Luna, with the New York Knicks. Playing all the contingencies, Liz makes promises to the New York Nets that she doesn’t intend keep, works the phone further to keep the Knicks interested, and fervently prays that some other team doesn’t mess up her schemes by snatching up her player – and ruining her cred with everybody she’s been dealing with.

Including her boss, Mr. Candy, who has been dangling the prospect of letting Liz take over the company when he retires.

After the draft, Liz’s trials have barely begun. Coach Jones isn’t on the same page as the Knicks’ GM on Freddie’s readiness for the NBA, so the rookie’s place in the starting lineup and his actual playing time are both unknowns. Further threatening Freddie’s marketability are the kid’s impoverished, violent past, his hair-trigger temper, his déclassé friends, and his inexperience in the media spotlight.

The current Three Bone Theatre production at Spirit Square has a couple of extra déclassé elements that don’t chime well with Coppel’s script. The first is Three Bone’s budget, which doesn’t allow set designer Ryan Maloney to come anywhere close to simulating the office at a high-powered sports agency that boasts such big-name clients as James Harden, Kevin Love, and Carmelo Anthony.

Though she undoubtedly has the power and charisma for the full range of King Liz, I sometimes felt that Shar Marlin needed to be more of a smooth operator to completely define her. Having directed Marlin’s stunning performance last year in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, director Corlis Hayes had to be supremely confident that this force of nature was equal to tackling Liz. But Hayes doesn’t altogether curb Marlin’s inclination to carry elements of the blues divas she has played – Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey – over to a more modern powerhouse who has the finesse to wow a boardroom.

I’m not sure that a big wheel like Liz needs to do quite so much yelling working the phones and bossing her assistant. Less would have counted more.

Granted, the streets and the projects loom large in Liz’s background, allowing her to empathize with Freddie, but if Marlin were finding them in Liz rather than Rainey, her manner would be more consistently elegant. Yet we need to acknowledge that Marlin nearly makes Liz a cohesive person despite the fact that Coppel makes her excessively chameleonic. Coppel does have that tendency. If you think Liz flits from persona to persona in the blink of an eye, wait to till you hear about her board of directors’ flipflops in the final scenes.

The script only takes us back to 2015, when Phil Jackson was GM at the Knicks, but Hayes manages to accent the #MeToo elements of the story, encouraging Tim Huffman to remain a blowhard as Mr. Candy while adding a sprinkling of Harvey Weinstein sleaziness. Costume designer Ramsey Lyric puts an exclamation point on Mariana Bracciale’s transformation as Gabby Fuentes, Liz’s ambitious assistant, making sure we see how much more willing she is to play ball with Candy.

Marlin fares better outside the office, strategically captivating Coach Jones without giving in or quashing his desires. Hooking Freddie and keeping him in line requires even more virtuosic hairpin turns from Liz, so Marlin gets to show the agent’s wiliness until Freddie breaks loose from her control, exposing her doubts and insecurities. He can’t control himself, so how can she?

Although Sultan Omar El-Amin doesn’t boast the physicality of a point guard sporting the stats of a latter-day LeBron James, he has proven himself to be a master of youthful roles that require resentfulness and volatility. Once we get past his lack of size, muscles, and tattoos, El-Amin grows on us, sparking empathy and frustration with equal force. Jermaine A. Gamble has played his share of brooding youths recently, so it’s gratifying to see how convincingly he ages here as Coach Jones, adding a hint of a limp to give his mellow pursuit of Liz extra poignancy. His put-downs of Freddie hardly qualify as tough love – kindness is an unaffordable luxury when your job with a perennial losing team is on the line.

The wildcard in Coppel’s scenario is Barbara Flowers, a TV host that Liz is counting on to help her repair Freddie’s damaged image after he goes off the rails at a postgame interview. Disdaining the obvious prompt to do a Barbara Walters imitation, Susan Ballard initially does give us the impression that Flowers will toss Freddie one softball question after another on her show as Liz and Coach Jones sit beside him, holding his hand. But when Flowers discards Liz’s playbook and goes rogue, Ballard makes her a hard-nosed journalist asking tough hardball questions, way beyond Walters cordiality and a fair distance beyond civility.

It’s in these interview scenes that Coppel’s penchant for abrupt surprises works best. Freddie has definite rough edges, but the media can grow cruel fangs when they smell blood. In a stressful stew of crisis and tantalizing ambitions, Liz must reassess the consequences of her goals and who she wants to be.