“Lunch at the Piccadilly”: For Old-Timers’ Sake

By Perry Tannenbaum

Clyde Edgerton, Mike Craver, and Steve Umberger are all involved in the musical adaptation of Edgerton’s 2003 novel, Lunch at the Piccadilly. Umberger, the founder of Charlotte Repertory Theatre in 1976, is back as the producer/director of The Playworks Group, lovingly developing the piece, but there are a few other people onstage and behind the scenes whose names are in the marrow of the Queen City’s theatre heritage.

Besides Rebecca Koon, our leading senior lady at the Rosehaven old age home, we have Bob Croghan designing scenery and costumes, Linda Booth choreographing, Fred Story contributing sound design, John Coffey directing the music, and Eric Winkenwerder tweaking the lights. With Craver and two other cast members reprising roles from an earlier version of the show that I saw in Winston-Salem over four years ago, the musical continues to be a work-in-development. I’d like to say work-in-progress, but I’d be lying.

Lil Olive is a widowed homemaker who has fallen twice in recent months, stubbornly refusing to let go of her car keys and grab onto her walker. It’s her devoted nephew, Carl Turnage, who must tear Lil away from her beloved Kirby vacuum cleaner and check her into Rosehaven. Surprising even herself, she quickly takes a liking to the place, finding friendship and, soon afterwards, purpose and renewed value on the sunny front porch among the residents in their rocking chairs.

What Lil doesn’t find at Rosehaven is very much pushback against her initiatives and radical ideas. Carl is the only relative who visits, so there’s no great family disapproval. Anna Rhodes is the only caretaker we see, the daughter of Rosehaven’s benevolent founder, and she’s quickly won over by Lil – quickly won over by Carl when it comes to it. But he’s shy.

The only person we’re intended to take seriously as an antagonist is Dr. Ted Sears, the chancellor of a nearby Christian college who hopes to commandeer Rosehaven and repurpose it as a Christian geriatric department. Still considering whether she wishes to sell to Sears, but not seeing any better prospects for the future – and financially strapped right now – Anna harbors definite misgivings about the changes he has already decreed. But Sears isn’t there very much, and when he is, Edgerton takes more care to portray him as conceited and lecherous, less interested in Rosehaven than in getting under the skirt of a board member he’s wooing on his cell phone. He’s softer, more innocuous now than he was four years ago.

Edgerton is too intent on not doing stuff: not offending old age homes – excuse me, retirement and care facilities – not offending Christian colleges, not displaying intense emotions, and not having too many people scurrying around onstage. There’s nothing inherently wrong with conflating multiple characters in a novel into fewer stage actors or in the concept of a chamber musical. But at some point, artful economy can strangle the spirit of your novel and make a production stingy instead of simple.

On the occasions that Lil hosts her open-mic presentations, there’s no microphone, real or fake. Similarly, when she appears at a news conference that will be broadcast on local TV, nobody materializes to represent the media or tote a TV camera. At least two stagehands efficiently slide the screens on the set to transition us from one scene to the next, so there are bodies available for such duty, and there are also two musicians behind the set who might occasionally serve as extras.

There was already an iPod in the 2011 version, triggering the best comedy segment of Piccadilly, when the oldsters embrace hip-hop. The new version updates that to an iPhone, part of a technology update that strengthens the arc of the story a little. But what I said four years ago applies more than ever: Piccadilly isn’t intent on taking us far and is in no particular hurry to get there. The current version clocks in with ten minutes of additional running time, and though a song has been cut from the opening act, getting Lil to the home seemed longer to me the second time around.

Once we do get the gang together (after four songs now instead of six), Koon and the rest of Rosehaven’s quartet of “Porchers” succeed in charming us even when the meager plot isn’t exactly barreling forward. On “How Does a Glass Eye Work,” Koon teams up comically with Patricia L. Cucco, reprising her role as former librarian Clara Cochran. Nearly as funny is “The Safety Patrol,” a high school reminiscence done in low-key hootenanny style by Craver and Trip Plymale, returning to his role as the wheelchair-bound Rev. L. Ray Flowers.

Fancying herself a poet, Clara has her eccentricities for Cucco to feast on, but L. Ray and Lil are the true Rosehaven radicals. She’s the spark of the new thinking, founder of the open mic and the First Breakfast Club. Lil also puts forth the revolutionary idea of creating a co-op between their nursing home and the mostly vacant church building at the other end of the parking lot. L. Ray supplies the fire with his sermonizing oratory, hoping to spread the new concept of “nurches” (the church-nursing home combo) across America.

L. Ray seems mellower than he was in 2011, so there’s nothing toxic in the chemistry between Koon and Plymale as Lil and Rev Flowers inspire each other, but few people at Booth Playhouse wouldn’t be more comfy if Plymale were allowed to toss his horrid wig to the wings. Cosmetic enhancements also run counter to the attention Edgerton gives to the Rev’s decrepitude. He’s getting therapy for his leg, but once he’s done, he’s in jeopardy of losing his medical benefits and getting shipped down to the dreaded Shady Dell home down the road.

Edgerton puts a lot of senior issues on his plate, but the complexities and absurdities of Medicaid are probably what he handles best. Wisely, he’s moved L. Ray’s dark “Tunnel Song” deep into Act 2, adding some much-needed gravitas. We must also navigate the slow-blooming romance between Anna and Carl while she’s preoccupied with the fate of Rosehaven and he’s worried about settling his aunt into her new life and taking away her car keys. Common cause eventually unites them.

We might get a more forceful satire if these young people complicated their elders’ lives a little more, but Edgerton doesn’t go so far in sketching their benevolence that they ever upstage the old folks. Mary Mossberg and Greg King are asked to be wholesome, and they are, with beautiful voices well-suited for their empathetic, innocuous ballads. Beau Stroupe gets decent comedy mileage crooning about Dr. Sears’ longed-for “Geraldine,” but his dramatic impact has been reduced to a couple of pouts.

If the darker aspects of growing old at Rosehaven don’t depress you, the light-hearted charms of these elders will win you over. With so many Charlotte theatre greats involved, I can certainly recommend Piccadilly to longtime theatergoers for old times’ sake. But Edgerton and Umberger will need to work harder at resuscitating the heart and point of their story before I can fully recommended it for old-timers’ sake.

Postscript: After reading the original novel, I have to admit that my presumptions about Edgerton’s stage adaptation of Lunch at the Piccadilly were completely wrong. Far from strangling the spirit of the novel, the musical infuses fresh life and spirit into both the characters and the moribund plot of the book. Just not enough.

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 →