Louisville/Indianapolis/Cincinnati
As winter turns to spring in the Ohio Valley, it's theatre festival time. Best known is the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, back for its 26th year. New works in rotating repertory through April 13 included six full-length plays (by Anne Bogart, Jerome Hairston, Tina Howe, Charles L. Mee, Marlane Meyer, and Adam Rapp) and three 10-minute works (by Julia Jordan, Sheri Wilner and Caleen Sinnette Jennings).
And that's not the end of the festivities in Louisville, where April and May will see a comedy festival featuring Yasmina Reza's Art (April 16-June 2); a series of 10-minute comedies, Drop Your Shorts; three late nights of improv comedy; and Michael Hollinger's full-length mystery spoof, Red Herring (May 7-June 1).
Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, The Phoenix Theatre staged its 18th annual Basile Festival of Emerging American Theatre (March 14-April 21). Four plays earned their first professional productions: Wendy Belden's True to Scale; savant by Tony MacDonald; Born to Goof, written and performed by comic Kevin Burke; and Goats, written and performed by Alan Berks.
The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park has closed something old—a smart-looking if lethargic production of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (closed April 5)—but continues with something quite new, the regional premiere of a new musical by playwright-actress Lori Fischer. She plays all the visitors to Barbara's Blue Kitchen, a diner in Watertown, Tenn. (through April 28).
Ed Stern, the Cincinnati Playhouse's producing artistic director, recently announced the 2002-2003 season. The Marx Stage will offer Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!, Georges Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, David Auburn's Proof, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Pacific Overtures, and Michele Lowe's The Smell of the Kill. On the more intimate Shelterhouse Stage, the Playhouse will present Eduardo Machado's Havana Is Waiting (premiered as When the Sea Drowns in Sand at the 2001 Humana Festival), The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) by the team behind Complete Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged), David Schulner's An Infinite Ache, Pamela Gien's The Syringa Tree, and the winner of the 2003 Rosenthal New Play Prize, not yet announced.
Rick Pender
Upstate New York
Hamlet is getting worked over in Hudson these days. The good folks at Time & Space Limited have decided that the Bard's most famous figure needs yet another postmodern deconstruction, so they've forged ahead with their own, There But Not There, which runs through mid-May at the TSL Warehouse.
There, like most TSL productions, is a collaboration between writer-director Linda Mussman and actress Claudia Bruce. They are joined for this piece by Gerald Stoddard, who, like Bruce, plays multiple roles in the eccentric, challenging show.
"It's a wild and windy ride," Mussman says—a ride that embraces plenty of hanging cotton sheets, video projections, musical interludes, and even a little vaudeville soft-shoe. Despite all that, Mussman says it's her most linear, least abstract work in years. Mussman and Bruce plan to take the piece to Manhattan in the winter, with hopes of placing it at their old haunt, La MaMa e.t.c.
The New York State Theatre Institute is busy making another musical. Unlike past efforts (including A Tale of Cinderella and The Snow Queen), Magna Carta is not an adaptation, but an original work from the ground up.
If you think a tuneful romp about an historic document seems a bit odd, don't tell the folks in Troy—especially veteran director Ed. Lange, who wrote the book for the show. The Institute has put together a crack team to make Lange's words and Will Severin and George David Weiss' songs come to life. The production staff includes Broadway veterans Larry Moore (orchestrations), Dennis Buck (dance arrangements), and Steven Tyler (vocal arrangements).
In downtown Albany, Capital Repertory Theatre had a special treat during their run of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. The show's original producer, Philip Rose, visited on opening night and stuck around for a few special events, including an April appearance with actor John Fiedler, who created the role of Mr. Linder on Broadway.
Rose was hawking his new book, You Can't Do That On Broadway, and the production proved to be the perfect vehicle for a little self-promotion.
Michael Eck
Oregon
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland opened the West Coast premiere of Robert Schenkkan's Handler on April 6 as the fifth of 11 plays in the 2002 season, which opened March 1 and continues through Nov. 3. Handler, which had its world premiere at Actors Express in Atlanta in January 2000, continues through June 30 and is the second production in the festival's New Theatre, joining Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Handler tells the story of a young couple (Robynn Rodriguez and Jonathan Haugen) who attend the Holiness Way Church of the Living God, which practices snake-handling. The couple's marriage is shattered by a terrible tragedy. Then a series of startling and miraculous events leads the couple into an exploration of their world, their faith, and their relationship.
Schenkkan lectured in Ashland on the afternoon of the play's opening. The playwright was drawn into the world of sign-following and snake-handling while doing background research for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Kentucky Cycle. He later spent time in a Holiness community, attending services and staying with the minister of the church.
Bill Rauch, artistic director and co-founder of Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles, directs the production. Scenic design is by OSF Principal Scenic and Theatre Designer Richard L. Hay and uses the "avenue" configuration of the adaptable New Theatre, in which the audience sits on two sides of the playing area. Michael "Hawkeye" Herman composed the music for the production and performs on stage with Mike Fitch and Bruce McKern.
This West Coast premiere joins four other productions in rotating repertory. Along with Macbeth in the New Theatre are three productions in the Angus Bowmer Theatre: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Robert E. Sherwood's Idiot's Delight, and Michael Frayn's Noises Off. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will open in the Bowmer Theatre on April 27.
Alvin Reiss
Utah
The Pioneer Theatre Company celebrated its newly renovated space with a production of the Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston Phantom (closed April 6) large enough to stretch the expansion to its limits. The Opera House façade covered the back wall, using the stage's full 60-foot depth. Designer George Maxwell's Paris streets, opulent grand hall, and catacombs did this romantic story justice. No chandelier though. K. L. Alberts' period costumes were lovely, especially the Degas-like ballerinas.
Kopit and Yeston may have started their musical years before Andrew Lloyd Webber, but they lost the race to stage the Gaston Leroux novel. Their Phantom may win in the long run though, with a lyrical version more story than spectacle. Director Gary Gisselman brought out the emotional quality, with Ron Bohmer as the Phantom and Sandra Joseph as Christine leading a strong cast of 30. Nothing was missing in this grand erotic tale of obsession, with trap doors, a Gothic pipe organ, and even a gondola on the subterranean lake.
Desert Star Playhouse in Murray is right on track with its latest revue, The Phantom of the Opera, or the Good, the Bad and the Chandelier (through May 11)—not in response to the PTC, apparently, just one of those happy accidents. Besides, this parody is based on Lloyd Webber, not Kopit-Yeston.
Salt Lake City could not seem to get enough of The Vagina Monologues (closed March 31). Eve Ensler's play was back for the second time in nine months, this time for a two-week run at the Rose Wagner Perform-ing Arts Center. Loretta Swit headlined the first week, along with Geneva Garr and Lisa Tharps. The second week, Utah radio personality Gina Barberi joined Garr and Tharps. Even men seem to be taking in stride these hilarious, bittersweet, and shocking stories. After the nonstop fun during the surprisingly open Olympics and Paralympics, Utah seems bent on overturning all the stereotypes.
Claudia Harris
Minneapolis/St. Paul
From the menu of a busy theatre month in the Twin Cities: Michael Brindisi directs a sprightly The Music Man at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, with Janet Hayes Trow a luminous Marian, and Keith Rice's animated Harold Hill leaning a little hard into the character's smart-aleck side. Jay Albright and Mary Gant are particularly comic in support, there's a fine barbershop quartet, and Nayna Ramey's toy-theatre sets are a visual delight.
Although the Guthrie Lab gives Lee Blessing's complexly constructed Thief River a sensitive staging by Ethan McSweeny, the play's intelligent examination of gay lovers frustrated by their historical era maintains a distance from its emotional core. Bard Goodrich, James Shanklin, and Richard Ooms are especially communicative as one half of the couple at different ages, with Alex Podulke, Bernie Sheredy, and William Whitehead not far behind.
Julie Marie Myatt's Cowbird, a new play at Eye of the Storm Theatre, starts with the intriguing notion of a woman who has left a trail of children all over the country, but too quickly devolves into a didactic treatise on teen angst and parental responsibility. Sally Wingert and Casey Greig head a fine cast, Casey Stangl directs with dry-eyed skill, and audiences, it must be said, are responding strongly to the message-burdened text.
Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt's 2 Pianos, 4 Hands at the Ordway McKnight, a slight but engaging autobiographical peek at how piano lessons can affect your life, has been enjoying substantial international success. The performers need to be equally adept at sketch comedy and classical piano technique, and Richard Todd Adams and Tom Frey, under Dykstra's direction, fill the bill admirably.
Finally, two first-rate touring productions dropped in: David Auburn's Proof, at the Historic State Theatre, featured a searing central performance by Chelsea Altman and fine ensemble support from Robert Foxworth, Stephen Kunken, and Tasha Lawrence, with Daniel Sullivan deftly recreating his Broadway staging; and the Susan Stroman-John Weidman Contact, at the Ordway, was brilliantly danced throughout, notably by Meg Howrey in "Did You Move?," and came to vivid life in its second half, with the emotional dynamics of Daniel McDonald and the knockout "girl in the yellow dress" of Holly Cruikshank.
Michael Sander
Cleveland
Two vastly different Eugene O'Neill dramas at Cleveland venues prove the enormous range of America's greatest playwright.
The Hairy Ape, the last of O'Neill's early expressionistic works, was at Cleveland Public Theatre through April 7. The 1921 polemical piece pitting man against the machine age was directed by New York director David Herskovits, founder and artistic director of the award-winning Target Margin Theater. The highly stylized production featured Jimmie D. Woody as the brutish stoker, Yank, trying to find his place in the world.
The Hairy Ape signaled O'Neill's movement away from the sociological and political towards the psychological, including his last play, the autobiographical A Moon for the Misbegotten, recently at The Great Lakes Theater Festival (closed March 30). The last production directed by GLTF artistic director James Bundy, who becomes dean of the Yale School of Drama on June 1, starred former GLTF artistic director Vincent Dowling as a cantankerous pig farmer, Derdriu Ring as his feisty daughter, and Sean Haberle as the tormented alcoholic, James Tyrone, Jr.
Alzheimer's disease and the ravages of senescence are at the core of Kenneth Lonergan's bittersweet play, The Waverly Gallery, recently at The Cleveland Play House (closed April 7). The 2001 runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for drama is a thinly disguised elegy to the playwright's own grandmother, and starred the indomitable Ann Guilbert as the garrulous, forgetful, and ultimately tragic octogenarian. The ideal cast included Darrie Lawrence, Mike Hartman, Gregory Northrop, and Andrew Katz in Artistic Director Peter Hackett's flawless production, which also showcased the twin magic of Felix E. Cochren's sensational set and Richard Winkler's transcendent lighting.
Cleveland director Fred Sternfeld delivered a solid production of Saturday Night, Stephen Sondheim's first work intended for the Broadway stage, at Beck Center for the Arts (closed April 14). Pearls among the large ensemble included Craig Recko as a Brooklyn boy with a fantasy life, Jenn Goodson as the "girl next door," and R. Scott Posey and Terry Sandler as two of their stalwart Brooklyn buddies. Written in 1954, it would be another 46 years before this earliest hint of the "Sondheim style" would find its way to Off-Broadway in 2000 for a limited run.
Fran Heller
North Carolina
Theatre Previews at Duke concluded a very successful run of Paper Doll by Mark Hampton and Barbara J. Zitwer. Scheduled to open in New York in the fall, this lightweight story of novelist Jacqueline Susann and her agent-publicist husband, Irving Mansfield, fares well in the hands of director Leonard Foglia and his two stars, Marlo Thomas and F. Murray Abraham. These two manage to transform a couple of sleazy characters into people whose obvious love for each other almost makes up for their innate shallowness. Abraham in particular gives a flawless performance as a man whose love can only be expressed by clinging to the hype and promotion of his wife, even as she faces death.
In Sanford, Temple Theatre presented another in the seemingly endless supply of fluffy British sex comedies. Run for Your Wife by Ray Cooney was deftly staged by Martin Thompson and nicely performed by Mark Filiaci as the poor bloke with two wives, played by Lynda Clark and Georgia Rogers. As is often the case, it would be interesting to see this considerable array of talent working in a more substantial play.
In Chapel Hill, Playmakers Repertory Company observed the St. Patrick season with a nice ensemble production of John M. Synge's Irish folk play, The Playboy of the Western World. Although it is difficult to discern why this piece has achieved any significant status, director John Dillon gave it a skillful staging with an excellent cast headed by Cody Nickell as Christopher Mahon and Katherine Heasley as Pegeen. As the Widow Quinn, Johanna Melamed was particularly effective.
Currently, the company is reviving Thornton Wilder's classic, Our Town (through April 28). David Hammond directs, and Kenneth P. Strong takes the role of the Stage Manager.
Burning Coal Theatre Company of Raleigh presented Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca (closed April 21). Jerome Davis directed, and the cast featured David Dossey and Elissa Olin.
In Durham, Manbites Dog—in a co-production with The Atticus Group, a New York company—just finished staging the world premiere workshop production of Plays Well with Others, adapted from the Allan Gurganus novel by Jeff Storer and Coats Guiles (closed April 14).
William Hardy
Boston
The 2001 IRNE Awards (given annually by the Independent Reviewers of New England), recognizing outstanding achievements at both large and small theatres, were handed out at Boston's Lenox Hotel on March 25. Acting kudos went to: Simon Russell Beale, Bill Mootos, and Jason Schuchman (Actor); Andrea Martin, Michelle Aguillon, and Maryann Zschau (Actress); John O'Creagh, Michael Emerson, and Billy Meleady (Supporting Actor); Karen McDonald and Bobbie Steinbach (Supporting Actress); Barry Humphries, Julie Harris, and Lucille Patton (Solo Performance); and the casts of Gumboots and The Weir (Ensemble). Chuck Smith and Spiro Veloudos won Best Director awards, Kate Robin's Swimming in March was chosen as Best New Play, Best Musical awards went to Sunday in the Park with George (Lyric Stage) and the touring production of Contact, and Best Production nods went to Hamlet (Wilbur Theatre) and The Weir (Orpheum Foxborough and New Repertory Theatre).
Another list: The first annual Boston Cabaret Festival happened at Scullers Jazz Club on April 7 and featured the area's most prominent cabaret artists: Brian De Lorenzo, Belle Linda Halpern, Carol O'Shaughnessy, Erica Leopold, John O'Neil, Jan Peters, Ida Zecco, Will McMillan, Ben Sears, Brad Conner, Doug Hammer, Tom LaMark, and Ron Roy. The whole thing was the brainchild of Sophia Bilides, who acted as M.C. and also performed.
One more list: On April 14, the fourth annual Boston Theatre Marathon, presented as always at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre the day before that other Boston Marathon, included 50 new 10-minute plays performed back-to-back in 10 hours on two stages. Playwrights, all of them local, included Robert Brustein, Leslie Epstein, Todd Hearon, Israel Horovitz, John Kuntz, Jerry Bisantz, Janet Kenney, Jack Neary, Theresa Rebeck, and Deborah Lake Fortson—51 in all.
ART isn't easy. The American Repertory Theatre's final production of the season was supposed to have starred former ART member Cherry Jones in a new musical comedy version of Lysistrata by Larry Gelbart (book), Alan Menken (music), and David Zippel (lyrics). It turns out that Jones and Artistic Director Robert Brustein found the new version both too raunchy and too commercial (Commercial? From the authors of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, City of Angels, and Beauty and the Beast?) and are opting for a new adaptation by Brustein himself, with music by Galt MacDermott and lyrics by Matty Selman.
David Frieze
Canada
Theatre Direct Canada understands what makes theatre for young audiences work—don't preach, don't teach, don't offer students the latest curriculum fad. Buncha' Young Artists…Festival (closed March 23) offered a quartet of works that covered such topics as alienation, empowerment, and schoolyard violence. Much of the material wasn't pretty, but it was real for its chosen audience and presented by characters who spoke and frequently behaved like that audience.
The strongest of the shows were Kate Rigg's The Phoenix Rides a Skateboard and award-winning playwright Sean Reycraft's Roundabout. In the first, Kim, an adopted Asian teen, finds personal strength through skateboarding and the Internet. The wonderful Marjorie Chan not only played Kim, but also her peers and elders in a riveting one-hour show that touched on racism and played with hip-hop verse. Reycraft has a particularly keen ear for teen dialogue and, in a nuanced tale of a boy's suicide and the resulting guilt that plagues his sister, the playwright created an alternately funny and poignant story, highlighted by the work of Michelle Polak as the distraught sister and Chan as a figure-skating flirt.
There was also power in Adam Pettle's Misha, based on the true story—still in the local courts—of a teen's senseless murder by schoolmates. Pettle focused not on murderer or victim, but rather on the friend left behind. The play takes place in the mind of that friend as he recalls his relationship with the dead boy and endlessly replays the violent scene on his internal VCR. There was a machine-gun quality to the comedy of the early scenes, but the actors didn't suggest the conflicted emotions beneath the surface of the characters.
The weakest of the quartet of plays was Nathalie Boisvert's Martian Summer, in which two outsiders, the angry Kiko and the shy Peanut, hope that space aliens will provide them with the acceptance and comfort they don't have at home. The pair is sharply delineated in the piece's first five minutes, but Boisvert doesn't develop them beyond that initial exposition. Polak nicely suggest the fear and powerlessness lurking beneath Kiko's tough, control-freak exterior.
Jon Kaplan
Arizona
March saw the two largest theatre companies in Arizona coming up with hit productions of little-known comedies. Actors Theatre of Phoenix took audiences on a tour of the dark world of Richard Dresser in Something in the Air, while Arizona Theatre Company cast local favorite Bob Sorenson in the hilarious one-person show, Fully Committed.
Dresser is an impressive satirist who spears all things "good" and loves to show the foibles of humanity in an uproariously funny light. This is the kind of work perfect for Actors Theatre of Phoenix, and at which director Matthew Wiener is adept. Pacing is everything in this piece, and Wiener and his ensemble were in control. The show sailed along. The actors swept from place to place, a beehive of activity occurring as the story tumbled forward. The scenes were snappily presented, and the humor milked without being forced. The ensemble was perfectly cast by very talented locals who shined in their odd roles. For a satire, there were plenty of belly laughs to go around.
Through Fully Committed's intermissionless 90-minute ride through 40 characters, veteran Valley funnyman Sorenson used his quick mind, limber body, and distinctive voice to become the staff, patrons, and wannabes of a flavor-of-the-moment Manhattan restaurant. From the time that Sorenson entered down the spiral staircase into the basement that would be his main character's personal inferno, he was in control of the stage. Director David Ira Goldstein wisely tapped Sorenson, knowing that his comedic gifts were well suited for this type of breakneck pacing, having proven himself time and again locally. Together, they amalgamated a fast-paced comic piece that contained its share of surprises and earnest moments. Sorenson's acting calisthenics and Goldstein's accurate pacing and blocking were highlights of a very enjoyable show.
Mark S.P. Turvin
Virginia
You can't argue with a dynamic script and a powerful cast. Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, played to sold-out audiences at Richmond's Firehouse Theater. The cutthroat business of Florida land sales is the perfect setting for Mamet's exploration of moral character. It is fascinating to see how greed and indifference surface so easily in the plight of desperate men.
Under the direction of Morrie Piersol, the all-male cast—like the silver-tongued, slick-haired salesmen they masterfully portrayed—hooked the audience and reeled 'em in.
It was a tough draw between Justin Dray and d.l. Hopkins for best slimeball performance. Rick Warner moved to the top of the board for his excellent portrayal of the washed-up salesman. His amusing step-by-step exposé of closing a deal was the highlight of the play.
It's about time both Harry Kollatz and Bo Wilson have come out of "retirement." They nailed their roles. Kollatz, the unsuspecting buyer who can't get a word in edgewise, proved a gesture speaks a thousand words.
Playing the most complex character, Wilson was up to the task of eliciting disdain as well as admiration from the audience. What a shame this show had to close (March 17) just as these guys were on a real hot streak.
Anna Tulou, a recent Virginia Commonwealth University grad, was so taken with the role of April in the mystery April Morning by Linda Nell Cooper, she decided to produce the show at the Theatre IV's Theatre Gym and play the lead (closed March 9). Set in the mountains of Virginia during the early 1900s, April's former sweetheart returns from medical school to find her married and in a precarious state of mind. Rob Rainbolt (Doc) and Daniel Currie (Jake), senior theatre students at VCU, joined Tulou to make up the turbulent love triangle.
Visiting director Kelly Morgan shared his expertise in choreographing authentic fight scenes and in bringing to life the emotional impact of a vulnerable young woman caught in a dangerous tug-of-war. Tulou, Rainbolt, and Currie carried a heavy load in a suspenseful but disjointed script. The scenes bounced from flashback to present so often that the audience became confused. The young cast, however, remained consistent in character and dialogue, and delivered an all-out passionate performance.
Wendy Mathis Parker