Three Stages of a Grim Life

September 24, 2015Theatreperryt77

Albee’s Three Tall Women, So Well-Served by Charlotte Rep in ’95, Gets Another Fine Production from Innate Productions

Three Tall Women Poster

By Perry Tannenbaum

It’s a pity that Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women is presented so rarely in the Queen City, for we’ve gotten very lucky both times. When Charlotte Rep premiered the play at Booth Playhouse in 1995, less than a year after I’d seen the original off-Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize winner, director Steve Umberger plucked the star I had seen up in New York – Lucille Patton, who spelled Myra Carter for Wednesday matinees – and drew a better performance from her. The local actresses who surrounded Patton as women B and C, Mary Lucy Bivins and Paige Johnston, were at least as satisfying as their Big Apple counterparts.

Now at UpStage in NoDa, Innate Productions is overachieving with the same script, as Paula Baldwin stars as 92-year-old A, ably backed by Shawna Pledger as 52-year-old B and Rachel Bammel as 26-year-old C. Directed by Debora Stanton, the work sometimes feels cerebral and brittle – as it often did in New York – but the performances of Baldwin and Pledger quicken the pace and the pulse, adding a numinous layer of urgency. Farrell Paules is bolder in her costume and makeup designs than the piously drab New York production, and Sean Kimbro makes sure Albee’s gravity is maintained in his lighting design.

It would be fascinating to look over the playwright’s shoulder to watch how this work developed, for Acts 1 and 2 almost seem to be separate stabs at the same subject – A, Albee’s estranged foster mother, who was unsympathetic to his homosexuality. With a few minor adjustments, the order of the two acts could be flipped. Act 1 shows us the externals of the 92-year-old’s character as she interacts with an indulgent, empathetic caretaker (B) and an officious legal aide (C) who is nearly as irritated by the inaccuracies and inconsistencies of A’s anecdotes as she is by A’s string of ethnic and racial slurs.

As a lifelike bust of A slips discreetly under the bedcovers – sleeping, comatose, or dead – the same three women materialize after intermission. But now they are all the same tall woman at different stages of her life, and Albee explores how C evolved into A. There’s always a wicked edge to Albee, and it manifests itself here in the need for B to mediate between the idealistic C and the fully evolved, totally disgusted, and absolutely uninhibited A.

In the opening act, A is no more able to control her bodily functions than the hateful words that spew from her, so there’s a physical dimension that buttresses B’s pleas for indulgence and compassion. Here we find Pledger noticeably stressed and straining to be cheery, knowing deep down that there is no excuse for A’s intolerance and paranoia. Inside A’s skin in Act 2, a good deal of ethical and idealistic decay has already happened, so Pledger is a different kind of mediator as B: experienced, wised-up, cynical, and – joining with A against C – contemptuous of the 26-year-old’s innocence.

Pledger’s concept of B is the most satisfying that I’ve seen, and Baldwin’s work here ranks with the best we’ve had from her, placing meticulous emphasis on A’s age as she rules the stage. Albee didn’t have to be kind to a parent he hated and fled, didn’t have to concede that she was once likable, so the naïve and judgmental C is as irritating as anyone else we encounter. Bammel makes her stiffer and taller than the others, as inflexible in her ideals as C is in her settled fears and prejudices, horrified by her elders’ infallible sketches of her devolution. There isn’t as much dimension to her, but that’s part of the point, right?

Seeing Three Tall Women on Sunday night, less than 24 hours after Clyde Edgerton’s Lunch at the Piccadilly at Booth Playhouse, made for an often grim old folks’ weekend. Albee is no doubt the more sardonic of the two writers, but his view of aging becomes most horrific when perceived as a new vista opened up to young adults still radiant in their optimism. From this standpoint, C is a stand-in for us, and Bammel subtly convinces us that her generation is Albee’s target audience – or younger, purer versions of ourselves that we’ve conveniently buried.

“Wonder of the World”: A Downsized, Goofball Chase

By Perry Tannenbaum

September 12, 2015, Cornelius, NC – Tarnished by his complicity in the scripts of two lackluster musicals, Shrek and High Fidelity, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s reputation still gleams through the zaniness of two early comedies, Fuddy Mears and Wonder of the World, and his two subsequent dramas, Rabbit Hole and Good People. Twenty miles north of uptown Charlotte, the Warehouse Performing Arts Center is clearly more attracted to Lindsay-Abaire’s comical works, never mind their age. After bringing Fuddy Meers to their Cornelius storefront last September, 15 years after its Manhattan Theatre Club premiere, Warehouse has turned to Wonder of the World, Lindsay-Abaire’s 2001 MTC hit, with Marla Brown directing once again.

The cramped venue proves more ideal this time around, even if the denouement does involve two ditzy dames heading downstream in a barrel toward Niagara Falls. One of them, Cass, drives the story after ditching her husband Kip way back in the opening scene. What passes for Cass’s motivation doesn’t emerge until after she’s long gone, but Kip’s perversion will likely change how you think about Barbie dolls for the next couple of years. Nor is Kip in hopeless despair after Cass leaves him. While Cass is dedicating herself to preventing suicidal alcoholic Lois from ending it all with a barrel ride over the falls, Kip has dispatched a pair of novice detectives, Karla and Glen, hoping to track his wife down, spy on her, determine whether there’s another man, and beg for a reconciliation once he catches up with her.

So like Fuddy Meers – and about a thousand Hollywood comedies before and after the advent of talkies – Wonder of the World becomes a goofball chase. Normality is chiefly anchored in Captain Mike, the tour boat pilot that Cass seduces by dint of her sheer candor and vitality. There’s a uniquely American quality to Cass that’s summed up in the to-do list she carries around with her, so lengthy that she needs to frequently unravel it just to remind herself what’s on it. Precisely because she has absolutely no clue about what she wants or how to live, Cass wants to do it all. Cass’s bucket list is a treat in itself.

When Wonder of the World first came to Charlotte in 2004, it was by far the best locally-produced comedy that year, so credit goes to Brown and her cast for repolishing and refreshing this gem. Paralleling the downsizing of the venue, the Warehouse has taken this movie-like comedy and discarded its scenic and personal glamor. Wonder of wonders, Lindsay-Abaire’s romp plays rather handsomely when it’s about frumpy, ordinary people. What’s chiefly attractive about Zendyn Duellman as the wildly irrational Cass is the bright optimistic zest of her willfulness. Yet she’s a fairy princess compared to Anne Lambert as the world-weary Lois, who dully deadpans some the most devastating lines in the show.

With a juicy contrast like this, you wouldn’t expect to need much in the way of comic relief, but there’s plenty. Lesi Jonap and Brian Rassler are endearingly humdrum as the bumbling, dysfunctional detective duo, with Karla clearly being the brains of the outfit. Della Freedman gets to romp around in a cluster of cameos, including a helicopter pilot, waitresses at three diverse restaurants simultaneously serving the rest of the cast, and – most colossal of all – a paroled family therapist in a clown suit who fulfills Cass’s fantasy of appearing on an episode of The Dating Game.

Cass’s hapless liaisons are both adorable. With his strange Barbie fetish, Kip is clearly the more outré of the two, which adds to the strangeness of Cass melting into the arms of Captain Mike, the most wholesome person we see, then shying away when he suggests they do something wildly adventurous together. Amos McCandless makes Kip so weak and whiny in his adoring servility that you feel sympathy for him immediately while recognizing that the boy needs serious psychological help. Like Lambert as Lois, Roger Watson adds some edginess to the comedy as Captain Mike that wasn’t there in the 2004 edition at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Watson isn’t the young, fresh, wholesome dreamboat Michael Nester was, simply because a couple more decades have weathered his tall, winsome frame. There’s just a little more poignancy to his romance with Cass, more of a belated midlife rebirth, and the ending of the show felt just a little more right because Watson was our Captain.

Three One-Acts That Didn’t Quite Click

November 3, 2013Theatreperryt77

Theatre reviews: A Guide to the Newly Dead, Hansel & Gretel, and The Amish Project

by Perry Tannenbaum (posted on Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 4:30 PM)

No fewer than three companies were offering quickie plays last weekend, all clocking in at 55-67 minutes and richly deserving praise – though some also merited a modicum of caution. The most eagerly awaited was the return of Machine Theatre to Duke Energy Theater with Matt Cosper’s newest foray into the comically surreal, A Guide to the Newly Dead. Rarely have I seen the slick and the shambling so perfectly wed.

I’ll need to defer judgment on Cosper’s marriage of outlandish absurdism and genuine intimate confessions. That’s because Newly Dead is Episode 2 of a three-part narrative, Bohemian Grove, which began unfolding this past spring at UpStage in a co-production with PaperHouse Theatre. In the hurly-burly of Passover, I missed Who Shot Carmella? so I can’t tell you how well – or if – Newly Dead connects with the previous episode. We get Episode 3: Tuba next March and, in May, The Box Set, “a long form performance created from all three episodes.”

“…we’re in a weird Mayberry-Meets-the-Wolfman world…”

That’s a fairly broad hint from Cosper that all three parts of Bohemian Grove are likely to evolve further before they’re Machine-packaged. Cosper credits himself with conceiving and directing the show, it should be noted, while “The Machinists” are designated as the creators and performers. Group improvisation plays a role in Machine’s developing script, yet there’s one little oasis where the actors sit down for an underworld group therapy session, and all four characters shed their theatre masks, each taking on the performer’s true name as he or she offers up a personal reflection. Continue reading Three One-Acts That Didn’t Quite Click →