And the Dora Goes to...
The Toronto Theatre Alliance bestows its annual awards. "Blackbirds" fly again, around Virginia. And summer settles in, cross-country.
Toronto
A surreal take on the Wild West and a piece about the transformative power of theatre, set in rural Ontario, were popular winners at the 20th annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards-named for a theatre pioneer who devoted nearly half a decade to Canadian drama, beginning in the 1930s. The Doras were presented by the Toronto Theatre Alliance, June 21, at the Bluma Appel Theatre.
Newcomer Anton Piatigorsky's Easy Lenny Lazmon and The Great Western Ascension, presented by Moriah Productions in association with Go Chicken Go, took four awards in the independent-theatre division, devoted to companies with annual budgets under $150,000. The show-tinged with Jewish mysticism and echoes of Waiting for Godot-won outstanding new play, production, direction (Chris Abraham), and lighting (Steve Lucas and Sandra Marcroft).
Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy, produced by Theatre Passe Muraille, scooped up a quartet of prizes in the general-theatre division (companies with budgets over $150,000): outstanding new play, production, principal male performer (David Fox), and direction (Miles Potter, an award shared with Soheil Parsa, director of Modern Times Stage Company's Aurash, a co-production with Passe Muraille).
The third big winner was the Canadian Opera Company, which garnered five awards for four different productions: Il Trovatore, Norma, The Golden Ass, and Xerxes. The Tony-winning Fosse, premiered in Toronto by Livent last August, picked up a single Dora, for Fosse and Ann Reinking's choreography.
While Doras are often given to shows which have already closed, two of the winners-The Drawer Boy and the theatre for young audiences recipient, Roseneath Theatre's Dib and Dob and the Journey Home-are set for remounts next season.
A new stage company, Theatre Voce, made an impressive debut with the North American premiere of British playwright Julian Garner's The Awakening (closed June 27) at the Tarragon Theatre. Set in Norway, the work centers on the blossoming relationship between Johannes (Joris Jarsky) and Unn (Anne Page); he is a convicted child murderer released from prison to work on her farm. Under Sue Miner's sensitive direction, the pair conveys the growing warmth and ultimate tragedy of a couple cut off by fate from any chance of happiness.
Jon Kaplan
Virginia
A unique production of Blackbirds of Broadway recently began its tour across Virginia. The show is the kind of cooperative venture that more and more regional theatres are exploring to reduce the sometimes-prohibitive cost of lavish productions. Three Virginia theatre companies, along with three companies in other states, joined forces with New York producers Marion J. Caffey and David Coffman to develop a flight plan for Blackbirds. The show re-creates the song-and-dance revues that were cornerstones of the Harlem Renaissance in the '20s and '30s. Seminal black entertainers like Lena Horne and Josephine Baker found fame in the original Blackbirds revues.
The current production highlights the transcendent dancing talents of James Doberman and the prodigious vocal skills of Kathi "Katura" Walker. Five additional performers collaborate to make the shows a head-bobbing, hand-clapping good time.
Blackbirds opened at Theatre IV in Richmond (birthplace of one of the original "Blackbirds," Bill "Bojangles" Robinson) on June 25, where it will play until July 25. Future stops on its tour will include the Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke (July 27-Aug. 22) and the Barter Theatre in Abingdon (Aug. 24-Oct. 3).
Another play getting a lot of stage time in Virginia is Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Two theatres on opposite ends of the state have launched productions of the offbeat comedy written by Steve Martin that contemplates an imaginary dialogue between Picasso and Einstein in 1904. A well-received Picasso closed at the Generic Theater in Norfolk (May 28-June 27), while the Barter Theatre's staging continues (June 3-Aug. 22).
June in Richmond saw the opening of two Virginia premieres that were different in every way, except that both were excellent. The slamming-door farce Michael Cooney's Cash on Delivery (June 12-Aug. 7) continues to generate boatloads of laughs at Swift Creek Mill Playhouse. Director Tom Width beautifully orchestrates an accelerating series of pratfalls and misunderstandings that gain a thrilling and hilarious comic momentum. A new work called N.O.W.: No One's Winning (June 16-June 26), by Richmond playwright May Adrales, took its first bows under the Richmond Performing Arts Collective banner. While this look at women's issues in our post-feminist society was occasionally superficial, the play signals the arrival of a talented new dramatic voice in Virginia theatre.
D. L. Hintz
Philadelphia
Area theatres closed their seasons on a high note, nicely coinciding with the American Theatre Critics Association's annual convention, June 2-6.
Guest director Tazewell Thomp-son delivered an extravagantly silly A Flea in Her Ear (closed June 27), at People's Light & Theatre Company-featuring David Ingram in the dual roles of Victor Chandebise and his look-alike, the porter Dodo, plus Paul Meshejian, Kathryn Petersen, and guests Mark Lazar, Ian Merrill Peakes, and Jackson Gay.
As sprawling and overblown as Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending (closed June 13) feels today, Wilma Theater Artistic Director Blanka Zizka's production succeeded with a genuineness that didn't allow Williams' poetic lushness to overwhelm the play's tragic story. Janis Dardaris, James Farmer, Kate Skinner, and David Howey played key roles.
In Israel Horovitz' Lebensraum (closed June 20), directed at InterAct by its artistic director, Seth Rozin, Scott Greer, Harry Philibosian, and Catharine K. Slusar, played more than 50 roles in this darkly comic tale of a near-future Germany's invitation to six million Jews to "come home."
Director Maria Mileaf returned to Philadelphia Theatre Company after her successful season opener, How I Learned to Drive, to stage a gripping production of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane (closed June 27), with Alma Cuervo and Isa Thomas as daughter and mother, plus Liam Craig and Boris McGiver.
The nearby suburbs stayed busy too. The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival opened with Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (closed July 3). Director Aaron Posner brought a terrific Philadelphia cast, including Greg Wood as Charles, Megan Bellwoar and Grace Gonglewski as his two wives, and Sally Mercer's delightfully eccentric (but not caricatured) Madame Arcati.
At the Hedgerow Theatre, Artistic Director Penelope Reed took the stage opposite guest Hazel Bowers in Peter Shaffer's comedy Lettice & Lovage (closed June 26), led by guest director Rob Lanchester and featuring a nice supporting ensemble.
Steve Blumenthal founded The Act II Playhouse in the small town of Ambler, opening with three plays including director Deborah Block's exquisite production of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst (closed June 27), with Ceal Phelan as Emily Dickinson.
Back in Center City, the Brick Playhouse presented The Best of Independent Theatre, a roundup of original one-acts from the season's five bills of new work, included solos by John Lumia and plays by Dan West, Cat Hasson-West, Linda Lough, and Michael Cheiken (closed June 27).
Mark Cofta
Seattle
The first day of summer marks the official slow, and silly, season for Seattle theatre. Many of the smaller fringe venues, not blessed by air conditioning units, close their doors or take to the parks for an occasional foray into Shakespeare or the classics. (This summer, Greenstage, Theatre Schmeater, and Wooden O are among the groups offering free park shows.) The Empty Space, the city's main mid-sized professional theatre, has already announced plans to extend its messy but amiable summer show The Complete History of America, Abridged into August, and its compatriot in the Greenwood area, Taproot Theatre, is getting ready to open the popular spoof of Boy's Own Adventure serials, Bullshot Crummond (opens July 9).
Even the two large theatres in town, Intiman and A Contemporary Theatre, are featuring comedy to entice indoors parties of potential picnickers. Intiman is featuring a lightweight production of Alfred Uhry's sentimental comedy/drama about Jewish life in pre-War Atlanta, The Last Night of Ballyhoo (playing "til July 10), which at least features the powerhouse trio of Barbara Dirickson, Laurence Ballard, and Jeanne Paulsen, who provide a sort of "reprise lite" of their much more meaty roles in last year's The Little Foxes. Over at ACT, the theatre's gearing up for the gleefully un-p.c. production of Jonathan Reynolds's Stonewall Jackson's House, directed by ACT's former artistic director Jeff Steitzer (opening July 15).
The only serious good news on the Seattle scene is that, contrary to a lot of expectations and all received history, Artistic Director Mark Murphy has been re-hired by On the Boards, after the disastrous attempt by the company's board of directors to fire him, back on April 26. It undoubtedly took a lot for the 22 board members to reverse their decision, and undoubtedly some fallout is still to be reckoned with (Murphy's taken a six-month sabbatical from the organization and there are rumors of upcoming board resignations), but there's a general feeling of euphoria among local artists that, for once, their collective voice has been heard loud and clear on a subject that they care about.
John Longenbaugh
The Berkshires
Theatre buffs in Upstate New York-as well as in the neighboring Berkshires-are discovering a treasure of potentially exciting performances awaiting them this year, as more and more companies begin their summer seasons.
First to open was Adirondack Theatre Festival, a successful experimental project for founders David Turner, a longtime theatrical agent, and producer-director Martha Banta, who is assistant director of Broadway's Rent. In five seasons, Turner and Banta have created a smart performance space in a former Woolworth's store, providing the Upstate cities of Glens Falls and Lake George with an Equity house and some of the most exhilarating theatre that this part of the country has seen in a long time. 1999 shows so far have consisted of the tender The Times of War and the startling WWI story Punch Me in the Stomach, a solo performance by actress Deb Filler (closed June 26).
The Berkshires' Williamstown Theatre Festival got a jump start in its small Nikos Theatre with Frank McGuinness' humorous, yet pathos-filled The Factory Girls-a touching story of strong Irish women eking out a living by sewing men's shirts in a failing clothing factory. The standout cast included Broadway's Celia Weston, Rebecca Schull, Bernadette Quigley, and WTF veterans Kate Burton and Gretchen Cleevely (closed July 4).
Among WTF's five Main Stage productions is an example of blockbuster scheduling. Camino Real, Taming of the Shrew, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Price are all taking a back seat to Shakespeare's As You Like It, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, riding high from her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. It was already sold out before the season even opened.
Love's Fire opened the season at Berkshire Theatre Festival, in Stockbridge, Mass. The group of plays, inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets, was directed by Jonathan Rosenberg, and written by a bevy of distinguished artists, including Marsha Norman, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, John Guare, and Ntozake Shange. However, critical opinion was that the resulting skits (for that is what they became) were neither sufficiently instructive, diverting, nor sensitive enough to make a strong impact. Though well performed by an energetic troupe of talented young actors, the scenes lacked variety and most were too long.
Eleanor Koblenz