Tag Archives: Dominic Weaver

BNS Conquers Adversity in Opening of Speakeasy, Shining at the New Parr Center

Review: Speakeasy by Rory D. Sheriff

 By Perry Tannenbaum

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February 17, 2023, Charlotte, NC – Quick adaptation and a be-ready-for-anything state of mind are key survival tools for any performer who ventures into the minefield of live performance. But as opening night for BNS Productions’ Speakeasy inched closer, booked for this weekend at the new Parr Center – where no local theatre company has performed before – Charlotte’s preeminent black repertory company stepped on an explosive they couldn’t avoid. Just before the three-day run was scheduled to begin, one of their lead players came down with COVID.

Rory D. Sheriff, the author of the new script and founding artistic director of BNS, was forced to shuffle his cast, elevating Marcus Looney from a minor role to leading man while stepping into the vacated role himself. Both of these actors appeared on opening night, turning what would ordinarily be termed a workshop production into a rather fancy reading stage effort, enhanced by the scenery and lighting (also by Sheriff) we would expect in a full production, with six of the eight cast members off-book.

A couple of the main themes in Sheriff’s new work, starting over and working together to save the day, mesh well with the behind-the-scenes tumult. After leaving her abusive husband, Virginia is hoping to make a new life for herself – without a man, for a change – back at her dead parents’ home in 1978 Reading, Pennsylvania. Doing this her way is hindered by her wanton sister Marge, who is tirelessly “pimping” the newly-available Virginia around town, and the inevitable pursuit of men who have heard about the breakup.

The most aggressive of these is Percy, the horny neighborhood cable guy. On top of that, while leering at Marge, the mailman delivers an alarming formal letter informing Virginia that her parents left their property taxes unpaid for over 10 years. She must quickly come up with over $1000 or get out. Older brother Roosevelt, a starchy preacher man, would much rather sell the place than provide her sister with the balance.

Well, if you already have a cable guy and a mailman knocking at your door and salivating, Marge proposes that Virginia do the next best thing to prostituting herself: jointly turning the family homestead into a speakeasy, where local men can pay out to enjoy the sisters’ company in exchange for alcoholic beverage, assorted snacks, and free cable TV, courtesy of Percy. Prohibition hasn’t returned to Pennsylvania, but the sisters can’t legally peddle booze without a state license.2023~Speakeasy-09

A volatile triangle develops before intermission as Percy feels entitled to take further advantage of Virginia, spending the night and tiptoeing out the back door with the speakeasy’s take. Hard to report a crime like that to police. Virginia might have a white knight willing to champion her cause, a Winston-Salem refugee named Horse who has fallen hard for her, but she keeps pushing him away even after he wins Marge’s sincere endorsement. Cecilia McNeill has taken on a very conflicted role in Virginia, earning our empathy with her troubles while drawing our impatience – and occasionally our annoyance – with her negativity and her deafness to what Marge, Horse, and her own heart are telling her about her new beau.

McNeill carried it all off rather brilliantly in her auspicious debut if you consider how little time she had been given to acclimate to Looney as her co-star and how often her true love had to gaze downwards at his script. It was hugely helpful that Looney was off-book when he made his first entrances through the back door to the sisters’ speakeasy, and that after intermission, when he always had his script with him, he prioritized memorizing those lines where Horse should be gazing most intently at Virginia instead of the script. Otherwise, the role never appeared to be beyond Looney’s depth. A lingering photo at the BNS website of Jonathan Caldwell, originally cast as Horse, made me think that Virginia’s worries about him tossing her over would be more credible if he were there. If it were Caldwell standing up to Tim Bradley as Percy when the action peaked, I also suspect that it would have looked more like an equal match and not as brave or quixotic.2023~Speakeasy-12

Such alterations are always the byproduct of casting different actors in the same role. Sheriff can make peace with them or he could possibly like them better, but I’m sure that he would hate to discard Bradley with his imposing presence and his boisterous vulgarity. Horse the outsider and Percy the loose cannon are the two men that remind me most readily of the American Century drama cycle by August Wilson, an inspiration that Sheriff candidly acknowledges. Having appeared in three different BNS productions of Wilson’s dramas – and importing an extra roar from the title role in Sheriff’s Be a Lion – Bradley straddles those two realms magnificently, a lowlife rascal who can be quite formidable and menacing.

Alana Jones, Bradley’s slinky consort in Lion, is a bit over-directed and overly frisky here as Marge, her broad comedy projecting far beyond the stage and hall to faraway Gaston County. But the audience adored her, so Jones will likely continue mincing around her speakeasy like a cartoon cat. The contrast is certainly effective when she becomes candid and caring with Virginia. A bit of a clothes horse, Jones is my prime suspect for slowing down scene changes, for costume designer Dee Abdullah’s ample wardrobe has her feverishly changing costumes whenever she’s not sashaying onstage. I’d be surprised if she wears less than five get-ups, but the guys also have multiple outfits.

All the guys are nicely seasoned and excellent, providing additional Wilson flavoring. Dominic Weaver as Roosevelt puts a nice soft spot for Virginia in the middle of his sanctimonious hauteur that we can see from the beginning, when the upright minister is difficult, obstinate, and stingy. In his BNS debut, Andrew C. Roberts gives us some meaty civil-rights-movement context in a powerfully delivered monologue, although it seems to come from nowhere. James Lee Walker, II, has done so many uniquely stylish roles for BNS and other companies around town that I was not at all surprised to see him shine – in one scene literally shine in a glittery shirt.

A bit of the stilted dialogue we heard an opening night will likely vanish as Sheriff refines his script, and more variety in how extended monologues are staged and lit will likely materialize in the hands of a defter director. For starters, the guys might explicitly confirm what card game they’re playing at the speakeasy and which Ali fight they’re watching on TV. Feedback that Sheriff receives from this workshop edition will likely help him to sharpen his characters’ sparring and deepen their drama. He and BNS are off to a great start at their new venue.

Newborn Charlotte Conservatory Conjures Theatre Magic – and Memories of Charlotte Rep – with “Witch”

Review: Witch from Charlotte Conservatory Theatre

By Perry Tannenbaum

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August 11, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Last April, when theatre was just beginning to emerge from its pandemic hibernation, would have the perfect moment for Charlotte Conservatory Theatre to spring to life with its first production, Jen Silverman’s Witch, now at Booth Playhouse. For the 2018 tragicomedy was based on The Witch of Edmonton, a lurid script written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford. All of that original play – all five acts, mostly in iambic pentameter – was written and readied for performance within the space of four months. That’s how long it had been since the true-life “witch” the play was based upon, Elizabeth Sawyer, was hanged for witchcraft on April 19, 1621. A year and four months after the quadricentennial of that execution, when our fears have shifted from death by COVID to inflation and monkeypox, the sardonic tear-it-all-down thrust of Silverman’s play may have blunted a little, but its fierce feminism remains intact.

Make no mistake, most of the gripping power of this evening at the Booth emanates from the white-hot Charlotte debut of Audrey Deitz as the lonely, defiant, and principled Elizabeth. But then there’s also the Charlotte debut of Stephen Kaliski as Scratch to bring out all of Dietz’s bewitching charisma, for his portrayal of the Devil has plenty of charisma to vie with Elizabeth’s. Kaliski was guileful, quick-witted, disarmingly frank, and surprisingly vulnerable on opening night. Here the Devil had met his match and more.

Such stunning simultaneous debuts of two experienced out-of-town actors with a local theatre company at Booth Playhouse are phenomena we haven’t enjoyed since the demise of Charlotte Repertory Theatre in early 2005. The regional professional aroma of that long-gone LORT company was sustained by the polish of the design team, led by scenic designer Tom Burch, whose previous local gigs I’ve praised at UNC Charlotte and Children’s Theatre. With their brushwork, scenic artist Lane Morris and portrait artist Eva Crawford clash a bit with Burch’s 17th century furnishings, echoing how Silverman pulls against the bygone era with her idiomatic dialogue. But Kellee Stall’s costume designs settle the matter, sort of. “Then-ish. But equally of our moment,” is Silverman’s dictate on the era of her work.

We see the “Then” most vividly in Stall’s costumes when we shuttle to Silverman’s other plotline at Sir Arthur Banks’s castle, which occupies most of the stage. After Elizabeth’s opening burn-it-all-down aria, delivered under a sharply brilliant spotlight, the other actors parade onstage, following the lead of Cuddy Banks, Sir Arthur’s foppish/effeminate son, who may be morris-dancing around Dad’s imposing dinner table. Anyway, he will soon tell Scratch that he performs in a morris-dancing troupe. What Silverman and Elizabeth seem to enjoy most about Scratch is that he’s selective.

So what Cuddy likes about Scratch, when he comes offering temptations in exchange for his soul, is that he’s coming to him before approaching either Elizabeth or the up-and-coming Frank Thorney. You see, Dad has taken Frank into his household and is now thinking about adopting the upstart, because Frank is clearly more likely to produce an heir. Robert Lutfy, who has been off our radar as a director for over a decade, makes an interesting alteration in how he sees Cuddy, pointing up his sexuality and discarding his shyness, handing a plum comical role to Jeremy DeCarlos, who feasts on it. What was easy to forget on opening night, amid DeCarlos’s prancing and his Percy Blakeney fopperies, was that Cuddy first considered asking for Winnifred, Dad’s servant, in exchange for his soul. Scratch short-circuits that request by pointing out that Winnifred is secretly married to Frank – a revelation that is doubly devastating to Cuddy. Even as he switches the bargain, exchanging his soul for Frank’s life, he is wildly in love with his manly, dashing nemesis.

If you’re scratching your head a little over Scratch’s objection to Winnifred, you will learn more intriguing details about Silverman’s concept of the tempter. He is not all to be confused with Satan or Lucifer – or with their supernatural omniscience. Instead, he’s like a traveling salesman, assigned to a specific territory, not exactly a rookie but lacking in past prestigious catches to boast of. Watching Witch at the Booth, I had the feeling that, after bagging Cuddy, Scratch moved on to Elizabeth and Frank because his bargaining with Cuddy yielded those leads. Dominic Weaver plays the confident and ambitious Frank with a hulking, self-assured swagger that contrasts perfectly with DeCarlos’s spindly fidgeting.

When Frank sets his price at becoming Sir Arthur’s heir, in exchange for his soul, Scratch’s answer is exactly the same as when Cuddy asked him to kill Frank: “I think we can make that work.” You might wonder how Satan’s Edmonton rep accommodates both rivals. Without explicitly answering, I’ll surmise that Silverman may have read Macbeth as profitably as she read The Witch of Edmonton. Fulfilling the devil’s work delivers some complications, of course, not the least of them are Winnifred’s flare-ups when she hears that her husband is yielding to Sir Arthur’s efforts to fix Frank up with a nobly-born wife.

It’s not just Elizabeth and Cuddy, then, who get their opportunities to sing their woes. From her multiple cares and troubles, Savannah Deal gets to deliver a fine aria – Silverman’s term for all the soliloquies she doles out to her players – touching us as she transcends her worldly status of peasant wench. Ron McClelland certainly gets multiple chances to humanize Sir Arthur, pouring his heart out to his deceased wife (the woman in the portrait) and agonizing over the future of his family name.

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Your only worry, as Silverman’s separate plotliness develop, is whether she will ever tie them together. It’s not a terrible concern, for Elizabeth’s destiny becomes as fascinating as the love triangle at the castle once Scratch becomes as besotted with Elizabeth as we are. Silverman offers the choice of casting the outcast witch as a woman from her 40s to her 60s, but after seeing the vibrancy of Dietz in the title role, I believed Lutfy made the ideal choice in going for the low end of that scale. Aside from one single bobbled line, the opening night performance was seamless, magical perfection. What an auspicious beginning for Charlotte Conservatory Theatre! May their future runs be longer than four days.

Warehouse PAC’s “Sweat” Deploys Stellar Cast on Stellar Script

Review: Sweat at Spirit Square

By Perry Tannenbaum

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Not at all liberal or intellectual, nor with aspirations toward witty stylishness or trendiness, Lynn Nottage’s Sweat is a brutal and humbling lesson in empathy. Very humbling for clueless liberals and intellectuals who never got why blue collar and union workers jumped out of the pockets of the Democratic Party at the turn of the 21st century – turning our history and politics into a train wreck.

Premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, before opening at The Public Theatre in November 2016 and transferring to Broadway the following March, Nottage’s working-class drama, which won a second Pulitzer Prize for the playwright in 2017, seemed to break out when it would resonate loudest with 2016 presidential politics and issues. By that time, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), ratified more than two decades earlier in 1993, was swept into a whirlwind of xenophobic issues that included illegal immigrants, Mexican gang rapists, manufacturing jobs shipped overseas, immigration reform, and a border wall.

Nottage mostly takes us back to 2000, when the reality of NAFTA was impacting on steelworkers in Reading, Pennsylvania. The authenticity of her lunch-pail portrayals comes by dint of personal interviews that Nottage conducted in Reading with Kate Whoriskey, who would ultimately direct the Oregon premiere, over a two-year period beginning in 2011. Subjects of these interviews included many factory workers who had been locked out of a steel tubing manufacturing plant for 93 weeks.

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Two such plants figure in Nottage’s portrait of Reading. One of them has previously crushed Brucie and his fellow union members, so he’s already a pitiful druggie when the action begins. Another plant, where his son Chris and his estranged wife Cynthia still work, will soon follow suit, further dividing Brucie’s family and the other regulars who gather at a rundown bar where Stan serves up drinks and downtrodden Oscar mops up.

Directing the Warehouse Performing Arts Center production at Duke Energy Theater in Spirit Square, a month after its debut run in Cornelius, Michael Connor deftly contextualizes the action. Where Nottage’s script calls for “News of the day” sound montages, we’re repeatedly reminded – amid mentions of Allen Iverson, the Philly 76ers, and troublemaking Iraq – that this is the election year of the pivotal Bush-Gore showdown.

Yet Nottage isn’t exclusively focused on the fallout from NAFTA, nor is Brucie the only foreshadowing of how her story will develop. The preamble to the explosive action of 2000 is the opening scene, where Chris and his friend Jason meet separately in 2008 with Evan, their parole officer. As we gradually become aware that the fallout from NAFTA will deal yet another blow to Reading, we also realize that the chums will do something violent to earn their serious prison time.

We also learn in the preamble how different and antagonistic Jason and Chris have become, for Jason sports white supremacist tattoos on his face from his prison years while Chris grasps a bible in his left hand. Jason is the powder keg we keep our eyes on in the unfolding flashback scenes, but it isn’t too long before we realize that his emerging racism is a family hand-me-down from Tracey, his mom.

The rifts between these black and white families develop along separate tracks. When Olstead’s posts a notice that they have an opening for a new supervisor, Tracey’s kneejerk reaction is to spurn the idea of crossing over to management, but Cynthia tells Stan that she intends to apply, feeling that she has earned a promotion by virtue of all the years of hard work she has put on the floor.

Tracey certainly vies with her son Jason as the most toxic person in town. When she loses out to Cynthia on the promotion after she also applies, she attributes her friend’s success to affirmative action and the tax breaks she presumes Olstead’s receives for hiring a minority. She also refuses to help Oscar come on board at the company, viewing him as a foreigner. Of Puerto Rican ancestry but born in Reading, Oscar eventually signs on as a scab when Olstead’s locks Tracey, Jason, Chris, and their union out. They send Cynthia out to post the lockout notice, further roiling tensions around the plant – and at the bar.

So the ills of Reading aren’t confined to corporate greed. Xenophobia and racism are also on the scene, bringing latent Trumpism into bloom. The balance of Nottage’s analysis extends to the depth and pluminess of the parts she doles out. Warehouse artistic director Marla Brown only slightly dilutes Tracey’s toxicity, leaving room for a hint of mid-America wholesomeness and nicely gauging Nottage’s rounded assessment. For the arc of her disintegration starts at a merry, drunken celebration of her 45th birthday in the first flashback scene.

Tanya McClellan, off my radar for far too long, shows everyone what she can do with the opportunity to branch out from comedy roles into drama, for she does more than her share to flavor the friendship – and later, the complex antagonism – between Cynthia and Tracey. Before serving as a barometer for Tracey’s disintegration, there’s a marital confrontation with Brucie where Cynthia fills out our picture of how far he has fallen. McClellan’s mix of vulnerability and dignity is just right in both situations.

Never on an even keel like the other characters here, Brucie is as challenging as Tracey, for he’d flatten to two dimensions in the hands of an actor who couldn’t deliver several levels of desperation. In his scattered scenes, including one with a majestic monologue and another where he proves not to be the sponge we thought he was, Dominic Weaver is so very real and unforgettable.

Matt Webster as Stan and Justin Thomas as Oscar seem equally detached from the main plotlines – until they aren’t. While still on the periphery, both have eloquent moments. Webster excels when Stan describes life in a company as successive generations of the same family toiling at the same plant for successive lifetimes, with no solid hopes of advancement, no real appreciation from management, and instantly disposable. After about an hourlong immersion in that dreary reality, Thomas gets to shock us a little by telling us what it’s like as a Hispanic to live a lifetime as the hydrant of all these self-pitying underdogs, even if you’re born in the US like Oscar.

If you’ve already gathered that there are no weak links in this Warehouse production, you won’t be surprised to learn that I was impressed by both our protagonists, Maxwell Greger as Jason and Drue Allen as Chris, though Nottage shunts her leads to the wings for long stretches while plant politics take center stage. From the black eye we see on Greger in the preamble, augmenting the three tats on the other side of his face, we know quickly that that Jason is always coiled for action. Even when those markers disappear in the flashback scenes, Greger has a chiseled James Dean intentness in the set of his jaw, an unfocused discontent that portends trouble.

Allen, in his portrayal of Chris, underscores what irks Jason and his mom most deeply: like Cynthia, who craves a promotion, Chris wants to better himself by going to college. There’s a relatively calm purposefulness to his demeanor, firm but without rigid righteousness, as he deals with his broken dad and his beggary. And we come to see through Allen’s eyes that when a broken justice system unjustly incarcerates you because of your color, taking up the bible isn’t the worst way to cope.

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As Evan, Ron McClelland has that seen-it-all confidence of a parole officer who knows the ploys and dodges of hardened criminals, yet beneath his tough exterior, this copper seems earnestly engaged with even Jason’s rehabilitation. Becca Worthington rounds out the cast as Jessie, a third musketeer with Cynthia and Tracey at the outset when they’re still chums. Arguably, she serves as a white counterpart to Brucie: no matter how sloshed she gets hanging out at the bar until last call, she cleans up and punctually punches in at the plant at 6:00 or 7:00 the next morning.

The presence of McClelland and Worthington in such minor roles is just another earmark of this high-quality Warehouse PAC production. It also testifies to the attractions of working with such a stellar cast on such a stellar and timely script.

BNS Productions’ “Two Trains Running” Runs at Full Steam With a Deep Cast

Review: Two Trains Running

By Perry Tannenbaum

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Like all of the other plays I’ve seen in August Wilson’s epic Pittsburgh Cycle ­ and I’ve now seen nine of the 10 – Two Trains Running is about community struggle and personal redemption. Each of the dramas digs into one of decades of the 20th century, and after Brand New Sheriff began its Wilson explorations with Jitney and the 1950s, their sophomore effort at Spirit Square takes us into the turbulent 1960s.

With so much memorable social and civil rights upheaval in that decade, not to mention the horrifying Birmingham church bombing and the assassinations of Medgar Evers and MLK, it’s no surprise that community struggles are more at the forefront of this Wilson work than the others. As it was in the ‘50s, when we looked on the city through Jitney, Pittsburgh is continuing its predatory campaign to demolish the predominantly black Hill District in the name of urban renewal. After Becker’s gypsy cab depot in Jitney, the city is moving in on Memphis Lee’s Restaurant.

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Another young man is returning from incarceration and trying start a new life – but not quietly this time. Sterling is handing out leaflets for an upcoming Black Power rally and befriending Hambone, a mentally handicapped person who was cheated years ago by the white grocer across the street. At the same time, Sterling is seeking out a job or at least a lead from everyone else he speaks to at the restaurant. Standing up for other black people cheated by a white system – and for himself – Sterling is clearly a powder keg that will soon go off.

Memphis estimates that he’ll be back in prison in three weeks. As the days pass and he sees more of Sterling, who grabs whatever he can, Memphis will revise that estimate downwards.

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Sterling teaches Hambone a Black Power slogan, but Memphis isn’t so easily swayed. It’s the central issue for black people of that time, especially here in 1969 after the MLK murder. Do they wait patiently and peacefully for what is rightfully theirs, marching and petitioning to make their wishes known – or do they resort to the same kind of violence that kept their people down? Memphis insists on doing things the right way, holding out for a fair price from the city for his property, firing the craven lawyer who advises him to cave.

Looking at Memphis’s regular customers, you’ll find additional evidence that MLK’s ideas didn’t die with him. Nobody intends to join the rally. A more popular road to self-fulfillment is winning the daily numbers game at odds of 600-1, and it’s Wolf who haunts the place, taking all bets, often through unauthorized use of the restaurant’s phone. The sagely and cynical Holloway will play a number as readily as Memphis or Sterling, but to change your life, Holloway recommends a visit to Aunt Ester, the 322-year-old soothsayer who lurks behind a faithfully guarded red door in an alley down the block.

Risa, the troubled waitress who has scarred herself, disparages the men who throw their money away on the numbers. To her mind, they’d get a better return from their quarters if they just dropped them in the jukebox. Until recently, she’s been a follower of the Prophet Samuel, but currently her rock and redeemer is lying in state across the street at West’s Funeral Home. She has no desire to see the man in a casket, but Sterling goes through the long lines waiting to see the Prophet and snatches flowers from the site and presents them to Risa, whose head he’s trying to turn.

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It’s another illustrative instance of Sterling flouting decorum and convention. Why should her qualms get in the way of enjoying a few beautiful flowers that would die and be trashed in the next couple of days if she weren’t caring for them? West certainly doesn’t notice or mind, Sterling maintains. It’s true. When West comes by every day, he’s looking for Risa to serve him another cup of coffee and Memphis to accept his latest lowball offer for the restaurant.

The parallel rituals are significant, two of the sparkplugs that keep Wilson’s drama humming. The grocer fends off Hambone’s daily demand for the ham that was promised to him, and Memphis refuses to allow West to steal his property away for a bargain price.

BNS and director Corlis Hayes, in their second Wilson outing at Duke Energy Theater, are getting really good at this. Although smaller than the design the playwright describes, James Duke’s set captures the spirit of the time beautifully, perfectly calibrating the restaurant’s waning appeal so that we see it as a warm, welcoming place. Or at least we can imagine it that way, for Tim Bradley as Memphis is not at all the deferential restauranteur, arguing with customers, barking at Wolf for running numbers on his phone, bragging about duping West, bossing Risa unnecessarily, and expressing general disdain for his lazy people.

That’s all very much on the page, so Bradley finds ways to keep us empathizing with Memphis. Hayes and LeShea Stukes have far more latitude with Risa as we watch the waitress going about her job and reacting to various advances. Stukes plays her as sullen and cynical, allowing Risa’s resentment of her boss’s scolding tone to occasionally surface. Seeing her smile late in Act 2 is like seeing the sun come out after fives days of stormy weather. By the time that happens, we may suspect that the jukebox being out of order is troubling Risa as much as Prophet Samuel’s death and her boss’s bossiness.

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Devin Clark struts around as Wolf like an arrogant sleazeball, but there are more depths, contours, and vulnerabilities to him than the iconic Sportin’ Life as he talks about himself and strikes out with Risa. Ramsey Lyric’s costume designs certainly help Clark strut his stuff, but they also help us to chart Jonavan Adams’s progress in his portrayal of Sterling, fresh out of prison. Hayes and Adams have worked together before on Wilson’s plays, so they both know the strength, the brashness, and the seething frustrations of these strapping young men. Trust me, Adams’ work as Sterling is even more powerful and nuanced than his 2017 outing as Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

BNS continues to have admirable depth in their Wilson lineups. You can understand why Jermaine A. Gamble would gravitate to a role as salty as Holloway, whose sharp observations are mixed with a strong belief in the supernatural, expressed in an unwavering advocacy of Aunt Ester’s powers. Gamble makes Holloway a reasonable man, good reason for having this kind of restaurant around. He’s the neighborhood. But the disruptive Hambone, restricted to little more than one repeated line, wouldn’t jump out at you as a plum role to audition for. Dominic Weaver makes it one in a performance of astonishing intensity and authenticity.

It was probably a group effort to make Weaver look so frightfully grubby as Hambone, but Lyric and Hayes draw my kudos for the sensation West makes each time he enters. Wilson prescribes that the undertaker is always dressed in an all-black outfit, including black gloves that he wears indoors, but designers only add a black hat in about half the productions I’ve tracked on YouTube – and none of them are as imposing as the formal chapeau Lyric chooses for Sultan Omar El-Amin. Hayes layers onto this formality, decreeing that El-Amin must meticulously spread a napkin across his lap at each sitting.

With such outré ammo, El-Amin steals each of his scenes without raising his voice to a level that might lead you to seriously suspect that he doubts his own power. By the manner he holds his cup and saucer, you’d think he was at high tea! From a man who has specialized in portrayals of angry, resentful, and mixed-up young men, El-Amin’s confidently restrained performance as an established 60-year-old widower is a stunner.

Two Trains Running at Spirit Square is a good place to climb aboard the complete Pittsburgh Cycle that BNS is planning to present in coming seasons. You won’t miss a thing because BNS is planning to reprise its previous production of Jitney in May. Then they plan to present Radio Golf, the final drama in the Cycle – and Wilson’s last completed play – next season. Two Trains is not the last stop, but you’ll need to catch it this week before it closes.

 

“Sex With Strangers” Is a Steamy, Brainy Brew

Review:  Sex With Strangers

By Perry Tannenbaum

I can’t tell you exactly how many scenes in Sex With Strangers end with heavy petting and preludes to lovemaking, but the number seemed to me sufficient to ensure that playwright Laura Eason wasn’t misleading or overpromising in her title. In case you thought otherwise when you saw this Warehouse Theatre production at Spirit Square, Eason had a hedge.

The title turns out to be the brainchild of one of her characters, author-entrepreneur Ethan Kane, who has parleyed a series of blog posts into a bestselling book and an upcoming movie version that he’s hurrying to complete a screenplay for. Sealing the slick commerciality of his burgeoning franchise, Kane has written them all under the penname of Ethan Strange.

Kane’s serial posts stem from an idea that likely struck him at a bar: to have sex with 50 strange women over the course of a year – and write up each of his conquests in vivid, imaginative detail. Naturally, all of these escapades began, approximately weekly, at a bar. This wheeling-and-dealing serial seducer shows up in a Northern Michigan cabin, ostensibly seeking the peace and quiet needed to finish his screenplay but actually stalking Olivia Lago, who is already occupying this Airbnb retreat in the middle of a fierce winter blizzard.

While the blizzard makes it more difficult for Olivia to turn Ethan away, plowing ahead through it is the first tip-off we get about Ethan’s powerful persistence. Through a mutual friend, he has heard about Olivia’s work as an author and sincerely admires the single book she has published – enough to think that posting her unpublished work on his new website could be a pathway to redeeming himself from his smutty, unsavory past.

Olivia is not nearly as complex. Or adventurous. After her first novel received mixed reviews, she became pathologically discouraged, retreating into teaching and thinking of her more recent writing as a hobby. She balks at the idea of Ethan even seeing her new work, let alone exposing it to the scrutiny of the worldwide web. Ah, but you don’t serially seduce 50 women without possessing charms and attractions, right? And Ethan can also offer literary and Hollywood connections.

Louise Robertson last directed for the Warehouse in 2010, when their production of The Road to Mecca capped the company’s first season at their Cornelius storefront and put them firmly on the Charlotte theatre map. She casts and directs no less adroitly here, calling forth layered performances from Cynthia Farbman Harris and Dominic Weaver. There are numerous types of contrasts and conflicts to mull over in Eason’s script, but perhaps the most precisely nuanced clash is the generation gap. Olivia is older than Ethan, not at all savvy about eBooks and uploading files to Amazon, yet she isn’t so much older that a sexual spark between them cannot quickly ignite.

There are other frictions roiling in their relationship. Ethan’s excess of sexual experience – some of it made up for his posts, some of it callous – and his penchant for publicizing his intimacies make Olivia suspicious. On the other hand, Ethan suspects that Olivia has a condescending attitude toward his writing talents, yielding to him physically only because of what he is giving her professionally. There’s enough manipulation and betrayal on both sides to keep us guessing – and ambivalent about rooting for them as a couple.

Harris isn’t exactly delicate or fragile, so her vulnerability as Olivia isn’t instantly obvious when she lets Ethan enter out of the cold. There is also considerable depth to her artistic discouragement, mixed with a lingering sense of embittering self-worth, that makes her more accessible to Ethan’s physical advances than to his professional outreach. It’s quite a study as Harris more gradually allows Weaver to awaken Olivia’s self-esteem and daring.

Weaver shows us an Ethan who can be viewed as the polar opposite of Olivia: cocky, confident, and articulate on the surface; bitter, brooding, and self-doubting at his core. The best of Weaver emerges when Ethan discovers just how high he has enabled Olivia to fly. But then, I’m a guy. For the women at Duke Energy Theatre, the best of Weaver may well have come across when he ripped off his shirt. Happened more than once.

For the second week of their run, Warehouse returns to their storefront home in Cornelius, where Sex With Strangers might nestle a little more comfortably. At their final Spirit Square performance last Saturday, they ran out of playbills, evidently unprepared for the heavier turnout at the larger venue. Dealing with the larger stage also seemed slightly problematical, with scene changes eating up more clock than I’m accustomed to. Ben Pierce’s lighting design traveled well, but I was less satisfied with his sets. A glance at the playbill was necessary to inform me that, during intermission, we had moved from that Michigan cabin to Olivia’s Chicago apartment. Although the painting we saw in Act 1 had changed, it was hanging in the exact same spot.

Overall, I found it a pleasant surprise to encounter as much brains as body heat in Sex With Strangers. The shoptalk won’t be above the heads of theatergoers decently schooled in lit and mildly attuned to contemporary authors. Those who don’t know that FSG stands for Farrar, Straus and Giroux will at least get that Olivia and Ethan are talking about a prestigious publisher that prints honest-to-goodness hardbound books.

It’s refreshing to see protagonists onstage who still care about such things – to see writers shown as emotional, impulsive, and even hormone-driven. We often are.