Tag Archives: Jake Yara

Weepy and Upbeat Church Singing at The Great Aunt Stella Center

Review: Theatre Charlotte’s Smoke on the Mountain

By Perry Tannenbaum

February 24, 2022, Charlotte, NC – There’s a bit of a Tar Heel tug-of-war going on between two small towns east of Charlotte, Mount Pleasant and Mount Olive, for the honor of having the best claim on being the site of Smoke on the Mountain, a homegrown musical that has maintained its popularity since 1988. Geographically, Mount Pleasant has the far stronger claim, due to its closer proximity to Charlotte, which is explicitly mentioned numerous times in the script, and because the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church is officially ordained as our setting in Connie Ray’s book.

Yet in terms of flavor, smell, and story in Alan Bailey’s original concept, Mount Olive and its famed pickle factory cannot be dismissed, for there are twin accidents near the pickle works that figure prominently in the opening scenario. Gawking at the gherkin spillage from the plant, the Sanders Family has tipped over its van and is therefore late in arriving to the church, where they are scheduled to lead a sing-along before a music-and-dance-averse congregation. Original musical arrangements were by Mark Craver, longtime member of the Red Clay Ramblers, and Mark Hardwick. Since both Craver and Ray hail from North Carolina, those roots run deep in the story and in the music.

Pastor Mervin Oglethorpe has invited the Sanders Family to sing at the Church in June 1938, part of his stealth campaign to lighten up – and modernize – his congregation, and the songs were chosen to evoke that era. “No Tears in Heaven” by Robert S. Arnold, for example, was written in 1935, and Albert E. Brumley’s “I’ll Fly Away” was penned in 1929. When Theatre Charlotte last presented this musical in 2010, they were able to build better scenery at their Queens Road than I had seen three years earlier at a Pineville Dinner Theater production. A fire at that barn in December 2020, however, has turned Theatre Charlotte’s 94^th season into an extended road trip, stopping at various locations around the city.

If the company’s mid-December production of A Christmas Carol seemed more than a little dwarfed by Halton Theater on the campus of Central Piedmont Community College, the current location at The Great Aunt Stella Center could hardly be more ideal. With a full set of organ pipes upstage to frame the Sanderses and Pastor Oglethorpe, and with cushioned pews for the audience to sit in, The Great Aunt Stella hardly needs to pretend at all to be accepted as a church. In fact, we’re entitled to think that Auntie Stella determined the choice of Smoke on the Mountain rather than the other way around.

As stage director and music director, Kristin Graf Sakamoto has done a fine job in taking advantage of the venue – and of the cast, since she reports prevailing on members to pick up instruments they had never seen before. That certainly tamps down the bustle onstage I’ve seen in previous productions that were burdened with a house band and adds to the homespun authenticity of this Mountain. We may be a little confused and disoriented when the Sanders Family hurriedly makes their belated arrival, for all of their instruments are already onstage – guitars, bass, mandolin, and assorted percussion instruments.

June Sanders is the first to arrive as Pastor Oglethorpe stalls for time. Emily Nageotte does a fine job in giving us the comical pickle catastrophe backstory, explaining her parents’ and siblings’ delay while portraying herself as the odd duck in the family. Instead of singing with them, she will sign for the deaf – whether or not there are hearing-impaired people in the audience. Eventually, June will sometimes make more noise than other members of the family as, one by one, she removes a wacky assortment of percussion instruments – including washboard, spoons, and cowbells – from their hiding places during the course of the concert.

We’re in a church, so the evening’s program turns out to be a mix of homespun musicmaking and spontaneous testifying. As you might suspect, the Sanderses are a rusticated bunch, so a backwoods Mayberry shyness befits them all – with the exception of Liz Waller as Vera, the mama, affecting something close to a Minnie Pearl effervescence. Now there was also a proud and ornery side to Vera when her views didn’t coincide with Pastor Oglethorpe’s. Instead of coming to blows, they hurled Bible quotes at each other, citing chapter and verse for extra emphasis. Fretting with all kinds of picayune worries, Stuart Spencer as Oglethorpe keeps a perpetual crackle of tension in the air, heightened when his scriptural erudition is disputed, released only when he yields to the music. At first, he merely sings along at the top of his lungs, but when the spirit truly hits, he runs back to a cloakroom and fetches a harmonica.

The friction between the pastor and the Sanders Family (his singing contributions aren’t received enthusiastically), especially Vera, make for a needed dramatic undercurrent to spice up the singing and testifying until the hubbub that brings on our intermission. Burl, the genial patriarch of the family, seemed to be the peacemaker in Mike Cheek’s papa-bear portrayal, loyal to his wife Vera and all their cubs. It’s his brother Stanley, the black sheep of the family, who stomps out of the hall in a huff, and it’s Burl who must coax him to return.

After this kerfuffle, while Pastor O is having a couple of words with the Sanders girls, the stage is set for the most dramatic testimony of the night, when the wayward Stanley returns. Apparently the only Sanders to have tasted the fermented fruit of the vine or the distillery, Jake Yara is wonderfully quiet and penitent in Stanley’s testimony, humbled yet not shamed. His earnest confessional seemed to spur Molly Neal as Denise, the younger Sanders twin, to unburden her heart and reveal that she had once run away from home – to Charlotte! – in a poignant tale of teen heartbreak. Neal upstaged her younger twin with her abortive foray into showbiz, but Gray Ryan as Dennis had a simpler, more comical testimony, aspiring to fulfill the calling of a preacher despite his terror of public speaking.

The acoustics at Great Aunt Stella are better for music than theatre, so it’s fortunate that Sakamoto placed such a high premium on the voices in her cast delivering the two dozen songs we hear. Backup vocals are as meticulously rehearsed as harmonies, and the instrumental performances are quite serviceable. Some might prefer the weepy and morbid repertoire like “Meet Mother in the Skies,” “Everyone Home but Me,” and “Whispering Hope.” Among these Christian hits, I’ll take the quirky and the upbeat any day. Give me more like “Christian Cowboy,” “I Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now,” “Angel Band,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and “I’m Using My Bible for a Roadmap.”

Upsizing “Little Shop” at CP

Review: Little Shop of Horrors

By Perry Tannenbaum

What seemed so axiomatic when Little Shop of Horrors opened Off-Broadway in 1982 – that it was a little musical – was shunted aside when the smash hit was finally revived on Broadway in 2003. Bringing the show to Broadway seemed against the grain to Howard Ashman after he had directed his own original adaptation of Roger Corman’s 1960 sci-fi comedy. His misgivings were borne out by the lukewarm reviews from the New York critics and the equally tepid box office.

Big productions of Little Shop, like the touring version that hit Ovens Auditorium in 2005, have been aberrations. Around the country, the welcome mat for Ashman’s artful adaptation, with a rockin’ doo-wop score by Alan Menken, is customarily rolled out by smaller regional companies and community theatres.

A little surprising, then, to see Central Piedmont Theatre bringing Audrey, Seymour, and Audrey II to Halton Theater, which is only marginally smaller than the Virginia Theatre (now the August Wilson), where it ran on Broadway. But guess what? Charlotte isn’t receiving Little Shop as if it were a niche musical for guerilla companies and intimate venues. A robust crowd turned out for this past Sunday’s matinee, with armloads of tickets sold up in the oft-empty Halton balcony.

Little Shop of Horrors Final Dress Rehearsal; October 24th, 2019

Nor is director Ron Chisholm and his CP team shying away from the challenge of making Little Shop big. James Duke’s set design fills the stage from wing to wing, and Chisholm pours a larger cast around Audrey and Seymour than the one that populated Mushnik’s Flower Shop and Skid Row in the Broadway revival. I should also say that Chisholm pours a larger cast into Audrey II, but I won’t spoil how that plays out.

My wife Sue didn’t recognize any of the names on the CP cast list, which ultimately demonstrated just how deep Charlotte’s talent pool is these days. The name I recognized from her starring role over the summer in CP’s Beehive, Iris DeWitt, was not to be recognized here at Mushnik’s. With body mics liberally distributed among the Skid Row citizenry, it’s safest to say that DeWitt represented onstage by the latter Audrey II puppets. That’s when the alien plant lets loose with her infamous “Feed Me,” displaying its vocal gifts upon growing to maturity.

While you need a full-throated – even intimidating – voice that DeWitt brings to an invader that metastasizes into a global threat, we need to get more ambivalent impressions of Seymour, Mushnik, and the human Audrey. We empathize with the orphaned Seymour, who is bossed by Mushnik, bullied by Mushnik, terrified by Audrey’s dentist boyfriend, and ignored by Audrey.

Until Seymour becomes homicidal.

Then we see him feeding body parts to Audrey 2 and covering up his guilt by luring Mushnik into the same maw. He’s reluctant to do 2’s bidding and become a bloodthirsty killer, but it’s bringing him fortune, fame, and – in his mind – the Audrey who has hitherto shunned him. Ultimately, he pushes back, ready to face what his recovered integrity brings him. It’s a fairly daunting role for Matthew Howie in his Charlotte debut, and the dude must also prove he can sing – both as a downtrodden clod and, in “Suddenly, Seymour,” as a newly-minted romantic hero. Howie knows how, and Chisholm gives him a comical Clark Kent moment to punctuate his transformation.

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Nearly 60 years after she first appeared onscreen, we look more askance at Audrey for absorbing and covering up the abuse she takes from Orin, her dentist boyfriend, than we do for her presumed promiscuity. She encourages Seymour to stand up to Mushnik, and when he suddenly achieves celebrity, declares she isn’t good enough for him. Anna Farish proved to be sensational in her own way as Seymour’s ideal, belting “Suddenly Seymour” opposite Howie with equal gusto in their duet and tapping into Audrey’s humdrum sweetness in the gooey “Somewhere That’s Green.”

I quite envy anyone who hears the reprise of that bucolic ballad for the first time. The sick comedy of it comes through in Farish’s last gasps, but that was one of multiple moments when I wished I were seeing Little Shop in a more intimate venue. Because a huge set piece by Duke was spun around when we went from the outdoor squalor of Skid Row to the inside of the flower shop, scenes at the shop played too far away upstage for maximum enjoyment.

Little Shop of Horrors Final Dress Rehearsal; October 24th, 2019

On the other hand, there were plenty of outsized performances besides DeWitt’s to help bridge the distance. Most outré was Victor Tran as the sadistic, laughing-gas fueled Orin, who gets to shine late in Act 1 singing “Dentist” with a backup trio, somewhat denuded of its usual 50’s trimmings. Clad in leather when he calls on Audrey, Tran also gets to handle two of the most interesting props in this production, an emasculated motorcycle and the wondrous dentist’s chair he mounts in order to terrorize Seymour – extracting only a single tooth, alas.

Jake Yara has that slight avuncular quality – and the hearty voice – you want to see in Mushnik and plenty of the selfish greed you want to see offsetting it. Mushnik is a bit of a Jewish stereotype, more comical than offensive. But when Yara sings “Mushnik and Son” with Howie, as Mushnik offers to make the suddenly promising Seymour his partner, there’s a pinch of warm regard mixed into his cunning pragmatism. On the street, where the alleys and trashcan evoke the seedy ‘hood, Katie Marcelino, Logan Cosper, and Taylor Goodwin do more than just sing backup.

They keep it real. So does the ensemble actor who plays the neighborhood drunk, rousing from his stupor only long enough to sing the low notes.