“Visiting Mr Green”– Village Theatre Guild – 5/31/09

Hooray! Something to take away the taste of Wild Goat!

Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron premiered in 1996 in Stockbridge, MA, moving to off-Broadway in 1997, where it ran for a year. It has since been translated into twenty-two languages and been performed in thirty-seven countries.

It would seem to be somewhat popular.

It is the story of an elderly Jewish widower visited by a young American Express executive named Ross. Ross almost hit Mr. Green with his car when Mr. Green walked into the street without looking both ways and now must visit Mr. Green weekly as part of his community service sentence. Mr. Green doesn’t want visits. He wants to be left alone in his cluttered, food-challenged apartment to stare bitterly at the walls. Can two sociologically diverse Jewish men stay together for two hours of stage time without driving each other crazy?

This is your standard “opposites clash” comedy/drama. There is very little in the plot that isn’t telegraphed from a mile away – so if you have standard construction on your house, the interior decoration had better be pretty fuckin’ good. It is. Baron’s plot construction is ordinary but his story-telling is excellent. He really does well by his characters. It bothered me for a little while that Ross was continually surprised and disturbed by Green’s reactions to various situations. You want to smack him a couple of times and say, “He’s an eighty-six year old conservative Jew – what did you think his reaction would be to something like that?” But every day there are people so blinded by what they are going through that the concept of other people having their own, divergent line of reasoning is a foreign one. So that’s okay.

Maureen Komperda’s set design is perfect (helped in no small way by the intimacy of VTG’s space. The hallway to Green’s bedroom is an actual hallway in the building, so that works out nicely.) Jim Van De Velde’s lights are great. I’m not used to VTG having an effect where somebody opens an imaginary fourth wall curtain and sunlight comes through the imaginary window. Nice work.

Sue Keenan’s direction was polished and nearly invisible – which is a good thing, not a bad one. A play about two guys talking in an apartment could be the dullest thing on two feet. Or off two feet, if the director plunks them down on a couch and has them just talk. Keenan’s work was just right for this show.

Chris Richardson as Ross gave a fine, nuanced performance. Ross is an abnormally friendly and cheerful young man, not easily distressed by the surliness of his assignee. Richardson avoided being a Pollyanna, making Ross a warm, believable human being. His distress over his personal issues and his zeal to help Green correct the mistakes he has made in life are very well done. Creating a real person in a standard issue (if very well written) sitcom is not easy. Try it sometime. In most shows, Richardson's would be the best performance of the evening.

But.

Roger Westman (as Green) is a man I would judge to be in his mid-fifties and he is supposed to be playing an eighty-six year old man. Time for a lot of bending and creaking and phony hand tremors, right? Wrong. If you’ve ever spent time around an elderly person, you’re going to know if there is so much as one phony move in a performance like this. You’ll see it. Right away. Anything phony. Except that you won’t see it here. Westman does not play an eighty-six year old man. Westman is an eighty-six year old man. This is one of the strongest performances I have ever seen. He doesn’t move like an eighty-six year old man. He doesn’t listen like an eighty-six year old man. He doesn’t think like an eighty-six year old man. He is an eighty-six year old man. A cantankerous, wounded soul whose wounds aren’t less painful for being mainly self-inflicted. This is one of those performances I get to tell you about once every two or three blue moons: go see Visiting Mr. Green if you love theatre, because it doesn’t get better than this.

It is not belittling Richardson’s performance to praise Westman so much. But Westman had the harder job. Westman & Richardson play beautifully off of each other and make a terrific team.

Final word for Visiting Mr. Green: very good script, terrific performances. Go see it. “Thumbs Up”, “Four Stars”, “It Didn’t Suck” and all that rot.

Information here: www.villagetheatreguild.org

“Wild Goat”– Steel Beam Theatre – 5/17/09

Oh, good God. Or Gods, given the subject matter. What a dirty trick to play on the actors.

Dyskolos (The Grouch) by Menander dates from 316 A.D, when it won first prize at the Lenaian Festival (sort of an ancient Greek fringe festival). It is a reasonably straightforward (and short) farce in which a noble youth is stricken by Pan with love for the daughter of the title character, a misanthropic farmer who verbally and physically attacks anyone who speaks to him. The youth needs to get past the father to the girl. Hilarity ensues, but is kept relatively down-to-earth, grounded in realistic human reactions. No characters turn into something weird that might cause an audience member sitting near me to disdainfully mutter “Jesus Christ!”

Book by Jack Helbig, music & lyrics by Mark Hollmann (Urinetown), Wild Goat is “inspired” by Dyskolos. Meaning that some of the characters and an incident or two are retained and the rest is invented by the show’s creators. Similarly, they seem to have done away with the first “n” in Menander’s name, figuring that it wasn’t all that necessary and that a play could get along just as well with Meander. And meander they do.

Let me do the cast first (in a polite way), because the cast was magnificent. Highly talented and working their asses off.

Amy Steele as the daughter (here named Myrrhinne, pronounced Maureen by one of the narrators) is a stage-lighter. The stage lit up when she was on it. Steele has a lovely sense of stage movement. When most of the characters are pulling on a large rope, she was the one throwing her whole body into the motions.
Nancy Kolton as Xanthippe (a bossy widow) has the belting dowager thing down pat. Powerful voice and perfect casting. She really knows her way around a character.

Stephanie Herman plays a bratty sister, an airheaded Aphrodite and a goat. She makes a terrific, funny goat, which is one of the few times I’ll be using “funny” in connection with this show. Herman got every nuance possible out of every character she played.

Michael Buonincontro as the noble youth is a fine singer, strong actor and excellent dancer.

Tony Calzaretta started out making me think of Ed O’Neill on Married with Children, which was very disconcerting but I got over it. He has an extremely strong voice and does everything that could be done with the part.

Terry A. Christianson and Michael J. Henry as the Narrators (and others) are highly entertaining.

There is some gorgeous choral work, courtesy of Musical Director Jeremy Ramey. Director Donna Steele and choreographer Cynthia Hall get everything they could possibly ask for from this cast. So let’s get on with discussing what this terrific cast is asked to do.

The audience laughed exactly three times during the whole show. Several musical numbers were enthusiastically applauded; most were applauded dutifully because of the little “ding” button cuing that the song had ended.

Composer Hollmann made his bones with Urinetown, with its central story of a twenty-year long drought and water-profiteering. What is the story grafted onto Dyskolos? The ancient Greeks are suffering from a twenty-year long drought. I’m not kidding. The Grouch has the only water and sells it at exorbitant prices. When someone complains, they are told, “You’re lucky he isn’t charging you to pee.” This is the kind of self-adoring crap that killed Mel Brooks’ later movies, throwing in “It’s good to be the king” whether it belonged or not. The onstage water drought isn’t as damning as the backstage imagination drought.

The music is disappointing. And this is from someone who loves Urinetown with an obscene passion. The first several songs just lay there. They’re well sung; they’re tuneful; but the lyrics are mediocre. Two songs in a row finish with a kick line. The Grouch’s ballad of parental justification, “Someday You’ll Understand” comes close to being good. The melody is lovely and it’s well-sung by Calzaretta. But the lyrics are “meh”. “Grounded” is the first song to approach the liveliness of Urinetown’s score, mainly because it’s a first cousin to the “First Act Finale” of Urinetown, using the same rhythmic device. The “Wild Goat” number with Herman in a goat costume was cute.

The second act opener, “Drip Drop” is Wild Goat’s variation (ripoff) of “This Plum is Too Ripe” from The Fantasticks – very jazz-bluesy and entertaining, even if moving the story along musically is a forlorn expectation.

“Easy”, for the quartet of Greek Gods who are flung willy nilly into the action for no other reason than to stretch Act Two to half an hour, is the last good song of the show, albeit not the last song. The problem is that the script can’t decide if it wants to be a farce or have deeper meaning – so the songs try to walk on both sides and end up going nowhere. Good music comes when the script has a strong point of view that the composer can build on.
Most of the score is neither fish nor fowl. Let’s get to the script. The script is not fish.

Jack Helbig is the playwright. The word means a “wright” (builder) of plays. Jack Helbig constructed this play. The building materials (a classical comedy by Menander; a Tony winning collaborator like Mark Hollmann) are top drawer, but Helbig’s tools are deficient and his workmanship is shoddy. He literally has no clue about play construction. Menander’s original goes off on tangents (a fussy cook trying to borrow a pot from the Grouch), but Wild Goat is all over the map.

The Well Incident, which wraps up Menander’s show, here is the Act One climax – which means we have a long way to go with little material available. Menander’s Well scene is, in script construction terms, “Act III” – where incidents take a crucial turn that shoot toward the climax. In a musical the “Act III” point should happen midway through Act Two. “Luck Be a Lady” in Guys & Dolls is where Sky changes the direction of the plot by winning souls in a crap game. It’s the “Act II” climax that spins into “Act III”. If Helbig applied his Wild Goat construction to Guys & Dolls, Sky would sing “Luck Be a Lady” ten minutes before the end of Act One. Hence the bickering Married with Deities who are tossed into the Act Two mix just to fill up time that was wastefully spent in Act One. The construction is inept.

Punchlines are identifiable as such only because the rhythm of setup-build-punch is so familiar to theatregoers, not because anything funny is ever said. The use of narrators is structurally klutzy here; narrating to set up the play is fine (but lazy). Using Reader’s Theatre to tell the entire story means you’re incapable of doing so through dialogue and stagecraft.

Anachronistic jokes are occasionally thrown in with no setup and no payoff. “Men are like busses!” the Grouch says. “If you miss one, another’ll be along in a minute.” “What’s a bus?” asks the daughter. “I’ll tell you later,” the Grouch snarls wittily, to the absolute indifference of the audience. Avoiding a punchline is not a punchline in and of itself. Helbig thinks that repeated mentions of the phrase “dramatic irony” are funny.

Helbig can’t build a story, can’t tell a joke and can’t fashion an intelligible musical basis out of a farce for the composer to work from. The dearth of anything remotely humorous was breathtaking. Wild Goat is like the perfect script – in the Bizarro World.

Am I being hard on Helbig & Hollmann? You bet. When the lights came up, I was furious on behalf of the actors – so proud to be in a World Premiere by a Tony Winner, throwing their hearts, souls and considerable talents into the plan, but being given nothing to work with. It was like watching a World Series championship baseball team showing up for the game and being given a softball, a two-by-four for a bat, some sandbags for bases and told to go play ball. It was a rotten thing to do to them. The actors, production staff & musicians were top-notch. They deserved better than this.

The show (originally titled Complaining Well) has been bouncing around in staged readings since the late 1980s, until Hollmann hit it big with Urinetown and acquired coattails for Helbig to ride upon. According to a feature article in the Daily Herald, “Helbig got permission to totally reconceive Complaining Well, while Hollmann offered to write a new score for the show if he liked the new treatment.

“‘It was delightful to go through the script and put big Xs through the scenes that were awful,’ Helbig said. ‘There was a real sense of liberation to cutting away anything that I did not like.’”

Would that I could have borrowed his pen and script for half an hour.

Information here: http://www.steelbeamtheatre.com

“Sunday in the Park with George”– Big Noise Theatre Company – 5/9/09

Confound it. What’s a critic to do? I’ve been thinking about this since I saw the show a week ago and there’s no way out of it. I find myself in the position of having to give a good review to a show I don’t like. Not a good review – a rave review.

Critical complaints customarily settle upon injustices perpetrated upon a brilliant play by a clueless theatre group. This is a case of a magnificent, transcendent production of an indifferent work. It’s like using your best china and finest chef to prepare a twinkie – if you want to go to all that effort and expense for a twinkie, great – but it had better be the best chef and the goddamnedest china in town or it’s still just a twinkie. Big Noise’s production transcends twinkie.

Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine is playing through tomorrow at Big Noise Theatre Company in Des Plaines. It concerns the painting of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat in 1884. Synopsis here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George.

Despite its innovation, Sunday in the Park with George is an overwrought soap opera about a Disconnected, Tortured Artist and the Woman Who Loves Him. Intricate, pointilized music about the artistic process alternates with passionate, sweeping arias about how tough it is to be an artist and have to deal with people, dagnab it. And the more passionate the music became, the less I cared about the people singing it. “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” is a magnificent work. You look at the dots and marvel what effort and ingenuity it must have taken. But you don’t want to spend the afternoon hearing about it. It’s not interesting. “But,” you say, “Sunday in the Park with George won the Pulitzer Prize!” So did Seascape, Edward Albee’s piece of shit about talking lizards. Sometimes you get a consolation Pulitzer for crap when you deserved it for an earlier work.

But the production. Oh my God. Get out there tonight or tomorrow and see this show. The backgrounds and settings are computer animated. Techwise, this is one of the greatest productions you will ever see anywhere, amateur or professional. Seurat’s painting comes to life on the stage and in it, seasons change. Boats pass. The friggin’ daylight changes with the time of day. There are not many people in local theatre about whom I will use the term “genius”. Rick Frendt, the director and computer animator, is a fucking genius. If you despair about what is possible in community theatre, this production won’t just cheer you up, it will leave you enraptured.

The music is gorgeous and beautifully rendered by Musical Director Ryan Brewster’s ensemble. Jonathon Lynch’s choral work is strong and breathtaking. The singers are rarely overpowered by the musicians because, for once, the singers are stronger.

Scott Sumerak is brilliant as Georges and George. His fine acting and stellar singing go a long way toward making the characters nearly likable. Correction – I don’t think the characters are meant to be sympathetic. We can empathize with them, but we certainly don’t sympathize. I don’t, anyway. So Sumerak really is on the mark, with no quibbles.

Jeny Wasilewski (Dot and Marie) is luminous. A perfect match for Sumerak, she lights up the stage whenever she is on it. My surprise is that I liked her even better as Marie than I did as Dot.

The rest of the cast works as a powerful ensemble. Mark Anderson, Sarah Jane Blevins, Emilie Frake, Ron Goldstein, David Laub, Julia Macholl, Steve Malone, Ashley Stricker, Ann Stuart, Mia Vaananen, Mike Weaver and David Whitlock each seem capable of carrying a show on their own, which is exactly the way a good ensemble should work. They work as a well-oiled machine, which in the case of this script is particularly important.

At the climaxes of both acts, I had tears in my eyes. Let me repeat that because it doesn’t happen often: the sheer stagecraft of Big Noise’s efforts was work of a transcendent theatricality that put tears in my eyes – twice – for a show I don’t like.

Normally, with a very difficult show, the script and score will overpower the theatre company. In this case, the theatre company very handily whips an intricate but “eh” show into shape and triumphs. Taking a servicable piece of work and turning it into a piece of essential viewing is something Big Noise can be very proud of. And if, unlike me, you're very fond of Sunday in the Park with George, this is your dream production. Repeat: essential viewing. See it quick.

Information here: http://www.bignoise.org

The Best Man - Geneva Underground Playhouse - 5/15/09

The Best Man by Gore Vidal, the first production for the new Geneva Underground Playhouse, is like a good term paper written the night before it’s due. Rushed and sloppy, but surprisingly watchable for being done in haste. First, a synopsis, lazily culled from Wikipedia but with the Geneva cast’s names inserted:

“William Russell (Steve Lord) and Joe Cantwell (Thom Holtquist) are the two leading candidates for the presidential nomination of an unspecified political party. Both have potentially fatal vulnerabilities. Russell is a principled intellectual. A sexual indiscretion has alienated his wife Alice (Cindy Pierce). In addition, he has a past nervous breakdown to live down. Cantwell portrays himself as a populist ‘man of the people’, but is a ruthless opportunist, willing to go to any lengths to get the nomination. Neither man can stand the other; neither believes his rival qualified to be President.

“They clash at the nominating convention and lobby for the crucial support of dying former President Art Hockstader (Eric Schwartz). The pragmatic Hockstader prefers Russell, but worries about his indecisiveness and overdedication to principle; he despises Cantwell, but appreciates his toughness and willingness to do what it takes. In his opening-night speech, he endorses neither.

“One of Russell's aides digs up Sheldon Marcus (Dean Sasman). He served in the military with Cantwell, and is willing to link him to homosexual activity while stationed in Alaska during World War II. Hockstader and Russell's closest advisors press Russell to grab the opportunity, but he resists.” And here we’ll end the quoting, to preserve the Mystery.

Hands down, the best performance belonged to Schwartz as the feisty ex-President. Part of this lies in the fact that Vidal sketches the character in all shades of gray, whereas Russell and Cantwell, while not cartoony, each hang out in the white & black lobbies, respectively. The other part lies in Schwartz’s assurance. He creates a friendly but no-nonsense man who wants what’s best for the country and isn’t overly enthused about the choices he sees before him. Hockstader has a lot of funny lines and Schwartz snaps them out expertly. It is a fine job.

Sasman was very funny as a mouthy, nervous dweeb who holds the most powerful men in the country in check. A prospective President and an ex-President are in the room with him because they need his information and these titans cannot shut the man up.

Holtquist tended to play Cantwell as Evil rather than as just a mean bastard who shouldn’t be president. I would have liked to have seen more shading in the role, but for the choices he and the director made, he was extremely good. Or, rather, extremely bad; villainous.

Steve Lord as Russell was problematic. The forcefulness of his convictions was hobbled by the fact that his grasp of his lines was not tight. They sat in his hands like a cat that just heard a can opener in the kitchen. This was sad because Lord obviously had the talent to do the role. Maybe a couple more weeks of rehearsal would have helped, because at times he was assured and then he was very good indeed. More on this in the Director Section coming up.

Rick Pierce as Russell’s campaign manager often had a deer in the headlights look that shouted loud as can be to God and all his angels, “I have no idea what I’m supposed to say next! I will sacrifice a virgin to you if you give me my line.” He occasionally called someone by the wrong character name. Given the dearth of male actors in the area, I can understand the need to put him onstage, but in a major role in a witty, erudite play?

Dana Knudson (Cantwell’s campaign manager) and Jerome Urbik (a senator) were both very good actors, but the play is set in 1960. Goatees and masses of curly hair did not exist on politicians in 1960, except maybe in Cuba.

Millie Collins Schwartz was a stitch as a political big wig representing the Woman’s Viewpoint – meaning staying at home and cooking your husband a fine meal while bringing him his slippers and pipe (possibly between your teeth). The joke is that she is anything but that type of woman, wielding enormous clout and getting her own way at every possible turn.

For the most part, Carol Bair Calzaretta’s direction was clean and to the point. She did the best she could with a tiny tiny stage and an enormous couch. Scene changes were handled relatively well. There were little issues, like having an antsy Russell proclaiming, “I can’t sit still!” just as he plants himself on a couch and sits still. The major thing needed was an adjustment due to the line situation, since they evidently did not have a sufficient rehearsal period. The major confrontation between Russell and Cantwell consisted of Lord and Holtquist standing at opposite ends of the couch and battling from there, never breaking the pose. And I know why – to increase the tension by emphasizing words over movement. Problem: Lord knew the words well enough to say them, but not well enough to put the tension behind them. This rendered the planted feet ineffective; they needed to circle each other like wolves.

At this point, you have one performance left to see. I think you should go. The Best Man is an excellent, witty, intelligent script and needs to be seen. Its strength was demonstrated by the fact that the faults I’ve listed did not render the show unenjoyable. You should go check out this new theater company and give them a break, because things will pick up as they find their footing. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it is possible they had an off night. If the lines and resulting confidence of performance are there, you’re going to see a good production of a rarely done, terrific script

Information here: http://www.genevaundergroundplayhouse.com/

A Year with Frog and Toad - 11/23/08

At last – a family-friendly musical for the holidays (scenes near the end of the show take place at Christmas time) that doesn’t shout “God bless us, every one!” in your face every three and a half minutes. ATTENTION, PARENTS: if you want to

A. Encourage your children to see/love/get involved with live theatre,

B. Encourage them to read,

C. Have an entertaining evening for kids that doesn’t leave the adults regretting that they brought their eyeballs with them to the theatre,

hustle them over to Wheaton Drama to see A Year with Frog and Toad. Like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, this is a deceptively simple musical with incredibly complex, jazzy harmonies.

Based on Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books, a staple of many grade-school reading curricula, this charming show (book & lyrics by Willie Reale, music by Robert Reale) is an episodic journey of friendship where the title characters deal with everyday occurrences that assume epic importance – much like childhood does.

Carla Mutone’s direction is brisk, sure and hits all the sentimental moments without lingering on them until insulin is required. Tracy Adams’ choreography is ebullient and breezy. The musical direction of Ginger Stephens Terlep guides the actors through some of the toughest harmonies this side of Sondheim.

Steve Schroeder as the gentle, serene Frog and Chris Bruzzini as the dour, worry-wart Toad make a terrific team, complementing each other completely. Schroeder’s warm, assured voice blends nicely with Bruzzini’s comedically emphasized warbling. The nearly non-stop giggling of the children in the audience said that both men hit their targets.

The remaining six cast members all play multiple animals. Lori Skubich stands out as both the Snail (belting the 11:00 number, I’m Coming Out of My Shell) who literally carries snail mail and as the Young Frog in Frog’s scary Halloween story. Stuart Vance, Amy Royle, Geri Larson, Margo Raube and Carrie Pyykkonen all do stellar work in their many roles as birds, mice, squirrels and moles. There is some very fine ensemble work going on here.

Standout songs include the aforementioned Shell number, He’ll Never Know (a soft shoe routine for raking leaves), Shivers (an operatic Halloween story), Merry Almost Christmas (a carol with beautiful harmonies) and the wonderful Getta Loada Toad (a Dixieland ode to both making a mountain out of your own molehill and the wonders of childhood cruelty).

The set design is beautifully done and the set crew does a great job with the numerous scene changes.

The only real complaint would be the recorded music score, on two counts. First, it’s obviously hard for the singers to keep up with some of the tempos and there is no way for the conductor to adjust to the singers – because there is no conductor. Second, don’t charge me a higher admission fee for a musical than for a straight show and then skimp on the live musicians. That’s just rude. And cheap.

Lastly, given the state of the economy, Wheaton Drama might think about cutting back on the rather high ticket prices. There were enough empty seats for a great family-friendly show to say loudly and clearly that it costs too much to come in.

However, if you think the price is doable and you’d like to take your family to a great seasonal show that you haven’t already seen in seventeen different variations, you couldn’t do better than to see A Year with Frog and Toad at Wheaton Drama. It’s a wonderful family show and it’s done very well by Bruzzini, Schroeder and company.

A Year with Frog and Toad continues at Wheaton Drama, 111 N. Hale Street, Wheaton through December 14. Fridays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 3:00 & 7:00 p.m., Sundays at 3:00 p.m. (No Thursday performances for this production.) For reservations and information, call (630) 260-1820 or order online at http://www.wheatondrama.org/.

The Producers – 9/13/08

Thank god for the female chorus. And Ulla.

Your honor, in the case of the People vs. LZP Productions, Ken Priess and Morra Miller-Priess have been charged with murder in the first degree for their killing by ennui of the Mel Brooks/Thomas Meehan musical, The Producers. The crime occurred between the hours of 8:00 and eternity on the evening of September 13, 2008 at Cutting Hall in Palatine, Illinois.

The big question for anyone playing parts in The Producers is this: Is he/she funny? The most frequent answer in this case is “no.” A lot of the songs are well done, so if you’re seeing The Producers for the music instead of the comedy, you’ll have a good time.

LZP does not hold auditions. The director and the leading man are married. And they produced the show. So it is not unfair or inaccurate to say that Ken Priess was awarded the part of Max Bialystock by way of the casting couch and because he paid for the privilege. I hope their fucking was more pleasurable than the one the audience received. Talent was not involved in the equation. Max is a part requiring an actor of enormous star power, talent and likability. In this sense, Priess is a three-time loser. He doesn’t just lack these qualities – he is a star power/talent/likability vacuum, who sucks the qualities from all those luckless enough to share the stage with him. This Max appeared to be far more interested in Leo than in Ulla. It may be a “choice”, but it’s the wrong choice for the show. I have gay friends who have no problem playing straight; Priess is a straight actor who can’t play straight. Priess has no clue how to deliver any of his lines. He’s learned them (most of them, anyway), but he has no discernable human qualities behind the words. It's performance by rote. He doesn’t have the power to put over the song Betrayed. Singing: he can hit the notes. He can’t Sing, in the sense of creating a character through song. He can go through the motions (except for the lyrics he flubs), but is he funny? Ken Priess is not funny. Not even the littlest, tiniest bit. Ken Priess can sing. He can’t act, he can’t dance and Ken Priess is not funny.

As Leo Bloom, Steven A. Peter sings far better than Matthew Broderick in the original production – which isn’t saying much, but Peter really has a fine voice. He also has a sense of character. Had he been lucky enough to work with a competent stage partner, I’m pretty sure he would have been terrific. Is he funny? Steven A. Peter is marginally funny, but we need to give him props because of the Priess handicap.

Ashley Stricker-Peter as Ulla. Stricker-Peter delivered a star performance that finally woke the show up. Had the rest of the show been up to Stricker-Peter’s level, it would have been worth seeing. Only problems: bad Swedish accent, but I’ll give her a pass on that because I have yet to hear any Ulla do a good Swedish accent. And when it came to “now Ulla belt!”, the band decided, “Oh, she’s belting! We can play as loud as we want!”, totally killing the idea that Ulla can drown out the band. They drowned her out. But she delivered the only performance that transcended the production. Terrific work. Is she funny? Ashley Stricker-Peter is very funny.

Roger deBris is a part requiring an actor larger than life, flamboyant beyond the dreams of Dame Edna. I didn’t believe Frank Roberts as a flaming gay man. Deep Tom Jones voice, mild gestures. He didn’t have the oomph for the part. And in Springtime for Hitler, he was Competent in a song requiring Uproarious. Can he sing? Yes. Is he funny? The only person in the room thinking Frank Roberts is funny was Frank Roberts. Frank Roberts is not funny.

The actor playing Carmen Giya just graduated from high school. I kept rereading that “graduated” because (A) he looks fifteen, which puts a very weird tone on his relationship with the much older Roberts; (B) he yells everything; (C) he throws in all kinds of extraneous gestures – it was a high school performance. BUT – he had great energy and enthusiasm. Had the director been interested in reigning him in, his performance could have been controlled but funny. Is he funny? In this? No.

Franz Liebkind – Peter Buckley was the best of the lead men. He had power, energy and timing. He kicked the shit out of Haben Sie Gehert. Is he funny? Peter Buckley is funny.

Mary Campbell had the Utility Woman parts – Hold Me Touch Me, Shirley Markowitz, etc – which she did an excellent job with. Is she funny? Mary Campbell is funny.

Choreography – It was announced in the papers that LZP paid Susan Stroman for use of her choreographic notes. These notes are based on the idea of getting Broadway quality dancers and the same sized space as the original show. When choreographing for community theatre, you tailor it for the talents of your cast and the size of the space. Springtime for Hitler, instead of bringing down the house, got reasonably solid applause because the production was more concerned with doing Stroman’s choreography than it was with making it outrageous.

The female half (or four-fifths, rather, since that’s how far they outnumbered the men) of the chorus saves every scene they are in. They have the energy, they’re working their titties off and they can dance. They sparkle. They are bright spots in a murky sea. Out of the four men the non-auditioning LZP was able to dig up, two couldn’t sing – including the lead singer of Springtime for Hitler. I can feel for the chorus after sweating through Springtime for Hitler and giving it their all, only to get respectful applause rather than cheers. “What do you people want?” they had to be thinking. I wanted the spirit of Mel Brooks in the number, not just competent dancing.

Directing: there is the usual issue of gags being added because the director thinks she can be as funny as Mel Brooks. She can’t.

This isn’t even a disaster that would be fun to see and tell the grandkids about – it’s just a vanity production that isn’t worth the money they are charging for it, except for Ashley Stricker-Peter and the chorus girls. This production will stand as the benchmark for the most mediocre show I have ever seen.

Information here: (The publicity-savvy LZP does not have a website. This is probably for the best.)

It Had To Be You – 8/11/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Finally.

Since I began posting these reviews last month, I’ve seen some really good things, some really bad things and some mediocre things. I’ve never had the occasion to give a full out rave. Until now:

Carla Mutone and Jack Smith are comedic gods and if you don’t order tickets for It Had To Be You at the Village Theater Guild in Glen Ellyn right now, you’re a masochistic theatrical fool who would rather see thirty people do a big name musical passibly than watch two people in a little name show blow the roof off the joint.

Let’s get this out of the way: Directing, lights, sound, set design & decoration, costumes (love the psychedelic boots) and all other backstage aspects are top notch and provide a terrific framework for the acting. Now:

It Had to Be You by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna concerns Theda Blau, an actress/writer wannabe who traps TV commercial producer/director Vito Pignoli in her apartment on Christmas Eve and attempts to seduce him in every conceivable way known to mankind, if a hurricane can be called seductive.

That’s it. That’s the plot. So as opposed to something like Noises Off, which depends mainly on physical math and geometry, It Had to Be You lives or dies on the character work.

Jack Smith is the perfect straight man for this type of show. He’s warm, personable and funny. Completely believable as a fairly laid-back commercial success who likes everybody but himself. Vito comes across as really decent guy who wouldn’t hurt anybody – even a borderline-psychotic screwball who effectively kidnaps him. Smith’s timing is impeccable and his acting in the more serious moments is right on target.

Carla Mutone’s voice has the slight rasp of the mid 1960s Lucille Ball – and that’s not the only comparison (assuming Lucy wanted to fuck Mr. Mooney). She is a fireball of energy, clearly understands every last itsy bitsy nuance of the part, has a radiant lovability that keeps you from wanting to smack Theda and delivers one of the greatest comic performances you are ever going to see. Mutone completely sells the idea that the wackiness isn’t just sitcom zaniness, but is backed by desperation and misery.

However, it takes two to tango. The work of Mutone and Smith is more than the sum of its parts. One of my prime complaints, as you may have surmised last week, is when actors don’t connect with each other onstage. There is never a moment when Mutone or Smith is in a private little world, showing us How Well They Emote. They are completely in sync at all times and operate like a well-oiled machine (although considering some Theda’s persuasive methods, “well-oiled” is not the most delicate phrasing.) This is teamwork of the highest caliber. Community theatre hasn’t been awful lately, so it isn’t as if this is a diamond in a shit pile. But It Had to Be You is a diamond just laying there waiting to be picked up. The ticket price is only $10. Pick up the goddamned diamond.

Guys and Dolls – 8/6/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: at the conclusion of Guys and Dolls last weekend, there was much audiencal (new word; deal with it) whooping and hollering. Many of them proved they could clap and stand at the same time. A great time was had by most.

Good stuff: Things are really perking up in the musical community as far as orchestras go. This is the third in a row top notch pit that I’ve heard. And this was the area I was dreading: several years ago, a Summer Place production which shall remain nameless attempted one of the most beautiful, gentle scores in Broadway history. And it was completely murdered by the orchestra, which should have been tried for terrorism.

Guys and Dolls features the best pit to play there in ten years. They are:
Jim Molina (conductor) – fabulous job.
Justin Kono (associate conductor/drums & percussion)
Suzanne Gillen (flute, piccolo, clarinet, alto sax)
Joe Sanchez (clarinet, alto sax)
Will Brocker (clarinet, tenor sax)
Katie Legel (tenor sax)
Julie Fischer (bass clarinet, bari sax)
Jeff Schweitzer (trumpet 1)
Jeff Kienstra (trumpet 2)
Allison Kane (keyboard 1)
Kelly Hutchins (keyboard 2 – strings)
Kymber Gillen (violin)
Sarah Zilonis (cello)

And Ted Waltmire did a terrific job as vocal director. The choral stuff was sharp and on target.

The godawful stairs from Arsenic and Old Lace were still there, but at least here they served a purpose conducive to the show. The show was briskly paced, the scene changes seemed to go quite smoothly and there was never any point when I was moved to look at my watch, which sometimes happens at community productions of older, longer musicals. It really moved nicely, nicely. Kudos to the director (Timothy Mullen) and to the tech crews.

Singing: The leads all did quite well by Mr. Loesser’s music, and the chorus was extremely strong. Standouts were Christina Romano (Sarah Brown), whose voice was gorgeous, Laurie Kometz Edwalds (Adelaide) who had a belt that could sandblast buildings (note: this is a good thing) and Rick Kominski & Luke Donia as Nicely and Benny. Gerry Riva as Arvide made More I Cannot Wish You not only bearable but moving, which is an amazing feat.

Musically and pace-wise, the show sparkled and is highly recommended. Comedically, not so much. There was, as stated above, much applause. But hardly any laughs. Now, we can do the lazy-ass theatre excuse of, “What do you expect with all those corny old jokes?” Except that the corny old jokes work if you play them right. Example:

I have seen Steve Zeidler before. He is a terrific performer. A very talented man. Nathan Detroit (Kelly Markwell) is introduced to Big Jule (Zeidler), who has several punchlines before they move on to other business. Before each punchline, Zeidler thinnnnnks about it, puffing on his cigar, so the beat is:
Straight line.
Puff.
Puff.
Puff.
Punchline.
Straight line.
Puff.
Puff.
Puff.
Punchline.
…until you’re ready to take the cigar and do rude things with it.
Hey, you know what happens when you take a straight line and a punchline and put in a pause you could drive a truck through? Right! No laughs! They’re called punchlines because you have to punch them. And it’s not Zeidler’s fault – in Act Two, he hits his lines on the head and he’s very good. So the cigar crap was a choice. And a bad one.

And before moving on to the main complaint, let’s take four little ones:

1. There is a bit added with Joey Biltmore which is one of the most stupid and obnoxious things ever stuck in a musical. Not funny. No laughs.

2. “From the moment we kissed tonight, that’s the way I’ve just got to behave!” Interesting, since they haven’t kissed since scene two – and back then she slapped him.

3. If you’re singing one of the most famous scores in history, paraphrasing is probably a bad idea, Sky, Nicely and Adelaide. Or Ted Waltmire, the vocal director. When I want you to correct Frank Loesser, I’ll ask you. You’ve had eight to ten weeks to learn the words.

4. Musicals occasionally have little 16 bar encores on hit songs that function as a segue into the next part of the scene. Here, dumb little encores have been put in, even if the audience hasn’t even thought of calling for any. They just repeat the last 16 bars verbatim, as if your DVD has skipped.

ACTING.

ARRGGHH!!!! I know that mounting a show like this is a huge undertaking, but Jesus Christ, pay a little attention to the characters, their personalities and motivations.

Nathan is being cleaned out by Big Jule in the sewer scene and making wisecracks as his money disappears. Markwell kind of breezily spits out the punchlines, with no emotional impact. Nathan is tense, exhausted, put-upon and those aren’t wisecracks – it’s Nathan expressing growing anger in a way that won’t get him shot. It has to build to the point where he stands up to Big Jule. Here they were just thrown away. The fact that it’s a comedy doesn’t mean that the characters aren’t serious about what they want. Otherwise, it’s just a cartoon.

Markwell and Romano both do the most selfish thing an actor can possibly do in a two person scene – they refuse to look the other person in the eyes. Mullen gives to Romano. Edwalds plays off of Markwell. Neither of them gives anything back. There’s no give and take. Once Adelaide tells Nathan about her lies to her mother, he has to zero in on her and keep hounding her – it’s what helps to drive the scene. Nothing. He’s looking at his shoes.

Sarah is not afraid of Sky. She’s aggressive, not passive. Look – the Havana scene is completely unbelievable if there isn’t a spark there from the beginning that they are both trying to resist. It’s never about two people finally falling in love, it’s about two people finally admitting it. That’s where the tension is. And this is a director thing. Romano and Markwell both seemed like extremely good actors; Romano in particular had a lot of zing in her. But they needed a director to say, “Get your eyes off the table.” Both these actors are fully capable of playing with other people instead of playing with themselves. And that’s not an accidental joke. Being involved with your note cards or your tie is not as interesting as being involved with the person across the stage from you.

Lastly, going on from this point, is the Bullshit Musical Blocking. “Say, why don’t you tell me how you feel, Big Strong Leading Man?” “Say, don’t mind if I do!” Song starts, leading man goes ten feet away and faces out to the audience. ARRGGHHH. My Time of Day. Sky is singing to Sarah! He’s letting her into his life. Look her in the goddamned eyes. “I’ve never been in love before, but you’re two miles away, could you please semaphore?”

I’ll Know – Sky and Sarah are singing about how they could never go for each other, yet they’re getting closer and closer and it culminates in a kiss – which she slaps him for afterwards but doesn’t try to break while it’s happening. He doesn’t just charge her like a friggin’ bull and plant one on (as he does in this production) – it’s tension that builds throughout the song. This director has no concept of or interest in things like that. He is far more adept at moving the crowds and the scenery than in moving any emotions, either from the audience or the cast.

So anyway – if you’d like to hear the songs done quite well and with gusto, head on out to the Summer Place. For once I was disappointed that Sarah and Adelaide only had one number together.

This is not a horrible production. It’s 65% wonderful. Let me mention the chorus again – very good and strong. The leads have great voices. And you might not be as picky as I am. But I saw a lot of acting potential there that wasn’t delivered, so it was disappointing. So go for the music. The voices are terrific and the band is even better.

We Need to Talk… a Night of One-Acts – 7/28/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Most of you are going to think I’ve become a gushing prissypussy after you read this, so let’s get my trademarked crabbiness out of the way: I saw We Need to Talk at Players, Please Theatre in Lombard. They started the show eight minutes late. And I hate it when theatre companies can’t spell the name of the show they’re doing. It’s right there on the script cover! Don’t be a lazy ass! (Yes, you, Riverfront Playhouse – “Grill”, indeed.)

In this night of one-acts, the opener by Mark McDonnell is called Marred Bliss – misspelled on the cover and in the program as Married Bliss. The actors’ bios spell it correctly. Now, since the whole play is about malapropisms and Freudian slips, the title is kind of important. Marred Bliss (directed by Patrick Newson) is also the weakest offering of the evening, but in ways that are correctable. The premise is that Jane (Jenny Kovich) and Dink (Matt Teichler) are “encaged” (engaged). They’ll be marred in just a few short whores. Jane is visited by Jeery (Kevin Atkinson) and Dink by Alas (Sarah Iazzetto), both former suitors, if not lovers. It’s a typical sitcom situation and potential David Ives ripoff, saved by the premise that their scrambled language reveals their real feelings and attitudes. And here’s where it goes wrong: directorially, it’s rushed. They’re zipping through right from the get-go, and it’s like Shakespeare: the audience needs a couple of minutes to become attuned to where the language is going. You need to ease into it until the audience is up to speed, then you can go as fast as you want when the lovers enter. There’s also a lot of movement just for the sake of movement, which becomes tiresome. I was thinking, “I’m in for a very long night here,” but none of the other shows made that mistake; in those, generally, movement had a reason. But the actors are all very good, and if the director would have a little more faith in the material (there’s a lot of punching and poking and prodding and picking), he could keep the pace but lose the franticness. It’s not a slapstick piece. The name of the evening is We Need to Talk – don’t be afraid to rely on the words.

The second play, The Problem by A.R. Gurney (directed brilliantly by Lisa Dawn Foertsch), is the high point of the evening. It concerns a married couple whose sex life is not what it seems to be. Ever. Especially when you think you’ve finally got a handle on it. Q. Alexander Bayola and Amanda Fisher really spark as the Husband and Wife. They’re both hysterically funny and intensely believable – and with this kind of comedy, it’s crucial that the actors involved take their game playing seriously. Bayola and Fisher are both playing to win and they make terrific opponents. Fisher has the comedic diffidence of Louise Lasser in early Woody Allen movies – the feeling that she wants to ask you if you’ve put it in her yet, but doesn’t know how to phrase it delicately. The most important quality that both actors have is that you look in their eyes and there is somebody home. If for no other reason, see the show for this play. The only gripe I have is that Gurney evidently spent some time in England: the premise is a variation of Harold Pinter’s The Lover and the ending is stolen nearly verbatim from a 1963 sketch by Eleanor Bron and John Bird, which is available on You Tube, done in the mid seventies by Bron and Peter Cook. But don’t look it up until after you’ve seen the show.

I’m in a quandary about intermission.Normally, the first act of a show is longer than the second. The first act of this show is thirty-five minutes. The second act is about forty-five to fifty. The show is about an hour forty (with intermission), which seems kind of short for a fifteen dollar ticket. Adding one more play to the first act wouldn’t have hurt. On the other hand, there was no air conditioning, so the length is probably fine. Don’t mind me… I go off on indecisive tangents like this. It will pass...

Night Visits by Simon Fill (directed by Lisa Dawn Foertsch) is next up. A nurse (Carla Marchese), a doctor (Conor Burke) and a mysterious, silent car accident victim (Jessica Morrison) confront the patient’s quiet refusal to leave the hospital – or is it to confront the doctor’s misery on the first anniversary of his wife’s death? It’s a thought-provoking piece, not really my cup of tea (for I have no thoughts to provoke). It’s quite well done, actually, but it ends up in a place that I’m personally not sympathetic with, being a cynical, crotchety bitch. I bite orphans and kick dogs. Morrison and Marchese have it nailed. Burke is a very good actor, but he doesn’t seem to have the life experience yet to reveal the ocean of pain behind the doctor’s sea wall of goofiness. I’m not slamming Burke, so no nasty letters, please. On a personal level, it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t yet have that kind of experience to delve into just for a part on stage; that will come in time.

4 AM (Open All Night) by Bob Krakower (directed by Patrick Newson) follows. In a seedy all night diner, the proprietor Jim (Q. Alexander Bayola) and very, very strange customer Doc (Kevin Atkinson) try with all of their might and wit to get the Guy (Ryan Williams) to say “Hello” to the Girl (Lindsey O’Neill) and start a relationship. It’s funny, moves quickly (but not frantically) and has a great deal to say about the fear and insecurity that prevents lonely people from taking a chance on a relationship. Everybody in this one was spot on and the directing was smooth. Nice work.

Finally, there is Finger Food by Nina Shengold (well directed by A. Monnie Aleahmad). This was basically a Second City sketch to round off the evening with a bang. Denny (Eric Blomquist), a photographer for a wine ad, awaits the arrival of his hand model Carla. Instead, he gets Mona (Becky Crawford), whose pride in the beauty of her fingers is exceeded only by her knowledge of how men lust for her digits. It’s a standard issue comedy-reversal sketch where people find everything erotic except what are normally considered Targets of Mass Erection. But it’s very funny. Blomquist is very good as the jittery but aroused photographer and Crawford seizes the stage and doesn’t let go. She slams home a hurricane comedy performance in a one-act that calls for exactly that style of humor. Subtlety, go home!

This is a relatively new troupe (they must be – I haven’t seen them before; that proves it) and you need to give them a look. Players, Please Theatre put together an extremely funny, impressive show with far more meager resources than most theatres in the area possess. The directing was sharp, clear and the scene changes didn’t take longer than they needed to. All of the acting was at minimum engaging and at maximum brilliant (Fisher, Bayola, Crawford).

And I just went through a whole review without ripping anyone a new asshole – I need to lay down for a while.

Romeo and Juliet - 7/28/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Normally, I won’t review a show in its final weekend, but I was invited by the theatre to do so, so there you are. With the Albright production of Romeo and Juliet, I fully expect cries of “What do you want from us?!” to reverberate, because director Jeni Dees took care of a major problem with doing Shakespeare, but in doing so a whole other problem cropped up.

If they do this again next year, Albright needs to consider body mikes. While driving up the energy, relying solely on lungpower hurt a couple of the performances beyond repair. I know, I know… damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Overall, it was an extremely impressive production. Scene changes flowed, the Director’s Concept of setting the show in New Orleans worked pretty well and, as stated, the actors had energy in spades. And thank you, Albright, for not making a sex and violence show into family friendly mush just because it was outside. Romeo and Juliet had sex! Huzzah!

Scott Miller as Romeo was quite good. He understood the language (well, they all did), communicated it well and had all the requisite passion and humanity that the role demands.

Holly Robison as Juliet was the main victim of the lung-power issue. I could see that she was an extremely good actress – she was into it physically, she nailed it emotionally… and most of her lines sounded like she was reading them, not living them. Why? Because most of her energy was being channeled into simply being heard in an outdoor setting. She didn’t have enough left over to bring any nuance to the lines. And that’s not her fault. She was confronted with a situation beyond her control as an actress. So while I understand that the body mike decision was deliberate because it was considered a distraction, that distraction is preferable to losing the nuances of the play. Friar Laurence (Ish Rios) was another victim of this issue; he sounded belligerent most of the time. If you can find a way to use the body mikes while retaining the energy level you achieved here, you’re home free.

Enan Heneghan was dynamic as Mercutio. And casting Benvolio as a woman (Benvolia) changed the Mercutio/Benvolio relationship in a way that was interesting. Veronica Krystal made a terrific Benvolia; she and Heneghan made a great team. Krystal also handled the excellent fight choreography. Marea Berkley Clement shined as the Nurse. Loving, compassionate and bigger than life – exactly what the Nurse needs to be.

Jim Oberg & Sarah Odenback were very good as Lord & Lady Capulet. My only problem was that Odenback and Dees had Lady Capulet making dismayed faces when Lord C. arranges Juliet’s marriage to Paris and sympathetic faces when breaking the news to Juliet, just before saying lines that are harder than any father’s could be. That doesn’t work. “Humanizing” villains does not mean making them sympathetic – I’ve met very unsympathetic people who are arguably human. Lady Capulet backs up her husband unquestioningly – it’s the rigid, imperious parental facism that sets up the tragedy – the disinclination to show any sympathy until it’s way too late. Humanize them in their scene with Paris: the Capulets are known throughout Verona (all right, New Orleans) as irascible bastards that start gang-fights with their neighbors in the street. If you cross them, you die. Who the hell would willingly marry into a pack of rabid weasels like that? There’s no chance that anyone sane would take their daughter, no matter how beautiful. But they actually manage to land a sucker (with a title and money) – and the daughter says “no”. That fuels their hard-heartedness in a human way. Analogy: they saved up their money and underwent hardship to give their daughter a pony for her birthday. She glances at it and says, “Wrong color.”

While I’m on things I didn’t like – “zounds” rhymes with “mooned”, not “hound”; it’s a contraction of the oath “God’s wounds” – Romeo and Juliet are getting dressed, post-sex. The Nurse comes in. Says, “Hey, your Mom’s coming up the stairs – shake a leg.” And the pace doesn’t change. At all. Romeo should be throwing on his clothes saying, “Shit, I gotta get out of here” while Juliet is clinging onto him, simultaneously pushing him out the door. The only reason the Nurse comes in is to kick up the energy and get Romeo the hell out of there.

But overall, it was an extremely good show. You bought that Romeo and Juliet were in love, the New Orleans setting worked well, the fight choreography crackled, as did the balcony scene. Albright did a very nice job with the show. If they’re out there next summer and give in on the body mike issue, go see them. Or see some of their indoor stuff this year.

Twelfth Night - 7/18/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

To those of you who think that all Shakespeare’s comedies are masterpieces just because he wrote them, I wish you a happy life seeing nothing but All’s Well That Ends Well, Love’s Labours Lost and Troilus and Cressida.

Twelfth Night, however, is one of Shakespeare’s comic masterpieces. The girl-disguised-as-a-boy routine comes into full flowering (or deflowering, as the case may be) here. Viola is shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria. Her twin brother Sebastian has supposedly drowned and Viola, living by her wits, disguises herself as a boy and goes to work for Orsino, a nobleman in love with the Countess Olivia, who disdains him. Viola falls in love with Orsino, who is in love with Olivia, who is in love with Cesario, who is Viola in disguise. Hilarity ensues. The subplot involves the gulling of pompous ass Malvolio by Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Maria and Feste the Fool.

Let me state at the outset that as far as the audience reaction at the end was concerned, Midsummer Theatre Troupe’s Twelfth Night (directed by Toni Hix) was the cat’s pajamas. And the audience was huge. Apparently, there is an audience out there so starved for Shakespeare that they go nuts over imperfect productions. Play reading committees take note.

Probably the best thing I can say about this production is that I liked it better than Arsenic and Old Lace. There were a lot of good people in this. A lot. And 90% of the time: they knew what they were saying. They communicated the meaning to the audience. But they weren’t funny. The audience, while applauding heartily at the finish, did not laugh very much. The problem is one of direction. There wasn't any. It appeared to be a traffic cop situation. People were told how to get on and off stage. Once up there, whatever they did was up to them. I’ve rarely seen as much meandering back and forth in a comedy.

I’m not going to comment on the acting, except to say that I’ve seen most of these people before in better performances; and the people who were new to me seemed to have great potential. Standouts were Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, Viola and the Fool. Malvolio was a good actor, but miscast. He was too young and (at least from the back of the crowd) better looking than Orsino or Viola – there was no reason for Olivia NOT to fall for him.

It is not what the actors are providing, but what the director does with it that creates the three major problems.

Anachronism: Orsino sings a couple of songs: All By Myself and I’m a Believer. But the show is done in period costume and there are no other updates of any kind. It’s just jarring and unfunny.

Consistency: There is pronunciation issue. “Maria” in the show is pronounced MaRIa. The other possible interpretation is MaREEa. Everyone in the show calls her MaREEa except Malvolio, who calls her MaRIa. When this same company did “Taming of the Shrew”, half the company said PetROOCHeeo and the other half said PetROOKeeo. Is the director just plain not listening? Either one is fine, just make a goddamn decision.

Similarly, Feste (a man) in this production becomes Festa (a woman). Fine. Great. That absolutely works. Now make sure that ALL the cast changes lines with “he” and “him” to “she” and “her”. Some people did, some people didn’t. It’s not that hard to do. Directing, like the devil, is in the details.

Humor: There isn’t much. Focus was on clearly spitting out the lines, which is very important, but getting laughs would help. There was no physical comedy at all. One of the funniest moments I’ve seen was when the luminous Kyra Sedgwick (Olivia) seized Helen Hunt (Viola) and gave her a kiss hot enough to melt steel. “But that’s professional theatre!” I hear you cry.

All right – one of the other funniest things I’ve ever seen was in the first community production of Twelfth Night I attended. On Malvolio’s line, “I will smile!” there was a full thirty second break while the actor playing Malvolio gradually broke down his facial muscles into a smile, since it was something he had never done before. It was like watching Hercules trying to lift a boulder, which he finally thrusts triumphantly above his head.

The comedic possibilities are a deep forest which went unexplored by a company sticking cautiously to the main road.

However, there are some really good actors in here and most of the venues are free. Go take a look and let me know how strongly you disagree with me.

Arsenic and Old Lace – 7/17/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

As I left the performance of Arsenic and Old Lace at Naperville Central High School, one very elderly lady said to her companion, “Weren’t the performances superb?” And I wanted to bang my head on the wall. An Arsenic and Old Lace where the sharpest comic timing onstage belongs to the ingénue is a troubled production.

Arsenic and Old Lace concerns two elderly women who poison lonely old men and bury them in the cellar. Their nephew Mortimer, a drama critic, finds out about their hobby and desperately tries to (A) put a stop to it and (B) protect them while keeping his fiancée Elaine from finding out what’s going on. Complicating things are his brothers: Teddy, who firmly believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt and Jonathan, a homicidal maniac who looks like Boris Karloff, thanks to his inebriated plastic surgeon/sidekick Dr. Einstein.

I have seen Lisa Barber (Elaine) in a couple of shows. The state of women’s roles in community theatre being what it is, she is continually being wasted in ingénue roles when she should be getting Carol Burnett parts. The woman is funny and when it comes to timing, she has a clue. Will somebody please hand her Noises Off and get it over with? Put her in a farce part with some teeth in it – she’ll tear the place apart. She has the best comic timing in this production.

The aunts are played by Deanna Norman (Aunt Abby) and Marianne Bowles (Aunt Martha). They take some getting used to because they have been told to speak in annoying “old lady voices”. But both women are very talented and, especially when playing off of each other, they’re pretty funny. They have a good chemistry together. Bowles in particular gets a wonderful gleam in her eye at the thought of poisoning a guest.

Officer O’Hara (George McArdle) is funny and very energetic. He should have had a larger role. As one of the nephews.

Jonathan (James Turano) is problematic. Jonathan’s menace is quiet and extremely scary. He dominates by force of personality – he doesn’t get physical. It is (duh) a Boris Karloff part, not Edward G. Robinson. Turano, who gave a brilliant performance as Salieri in Amadeus a couple of years ago, plays the part like a pitbull locked in a pantry. Wearing a distracting fake limp and some of the worst makeup in theatrical history, he puts his friendly arms around the aunts, crunching them a bit, then knocks Aunt Abby out of his way when breaking the pose. Sorry, but that sucks. It’s too much. He’s a big guy – he doesn’t have to get physical with people. We know he’s dangerous.

Larry Lipskie as Dr. Einstein is pretty good. The actor playing Teddy is not. Teddy is written to be played over the top. This Teddy looks at the floor a lot.

Mortimer. Sigh. Mortimer is the engine that drives the play; and it’s a thankless job. He has to race through the show at top energy, hit every gag on the head and set up shots for the other team members. This Mortimer is (to put it delicately) delicate. He has no force of personality and no clue on how to deliver jokes. His comedic engine won’t go over 30 mph. Basic projection is a problem.

Bradley Bankemper, playing Lieutenant Rooney, is a pretty good actor, but nobody told him that he’s supposed to be an older cop in the early 1940s. The fringy red beard he wears (A) was not seen in that period except on Egyptian spies in Peter Lorre movies and (B) made him look like a hairy twelve year old.

Pet peeve: mispronounced slang. From one of the cops: “Look at that pus. He looks like Boris Karloff!” Not “pus.” “Puss.” Meaning “face”, not “thick bodily fluid”.

And we’re getting to the two most unfortunate aspects of the production. Scott Bishop’s direction showed no sense of pace whatsoever. His idea of pace is to have actors step on laughs to keep things moving. When saying exit lines, instead of being at the door and exiting as the line ends, actors are ten feet away, say the line, then the next actor has to wait while the first actor crosses and exits. Lines that are meant to be slam-dunked with window seat slams are completely mistimed.

• Bishop blocks people to stand or sit directly behind the person they are talking to, although they have miles of room onstage.
• The bit with Mr. Spinalzo’s shoe is dropped.
• When Teddy blows the bugle, Einstein and Jonathan don’t spill their drinks – so there’s no reason for them not to drink them later.
• Jonathan opens Einstein’s medical bag to show Mortimer how he’s going to be tortured. First thing out of the bag? A cat o’nine tails whip – the latest in medical equipment. Then a turkey baster; my, how horrifying. You’re supposed to be setting up real suspense at that point. Get a clue.
• This is typical pacing in this production:

JONATHAN: That’s easily taken care of. All I need is one more. Just one more.

(Door opens.)

(Mortimer saunters in.)

(Shuts door.)

(Slowly turns to the others.)

MORTIMER: Well, here I am!

(Lights out)

“Here I am” indeed. Jesus Christ. It’s the scene closer – get the timing right:

JONATHAN: (as Mortimer enters) Just one more.

MORTIMER: Well, here I am!

(Door shuts during the laugh. Lights out)

Last but least: the set designer is uncredited in the program, which was a smart move. Many theatres cannot afford elaborate sets and so you give them a break for ingenuity. Or a show doesn’t require a realistic set, so imagination is employed. Arsenic and Old Lace requires a dead-real Victorian house. And Summer Place can afford that. Instead, they built the ugliest, cheapest and all around worst set for a comedy I have seen in my three centuries of playgoing. The doors aren’t strong enough to slam or even knock on solidly. There is a railing leading up to the landing, but no railing around it. There are giant picture frames hanging all over the place with nothing in them. It doesn’t look expressionistic – it looks retarded. They are hanging by wires in the air, so every time a door closes, the frames are gone with the wind.

But worst of all are the stairs: giant stairs bisect the main playing area into two levels – always a wonderful idea when most of the show consists of people having to dash across the room, right? Or when two of the leads are older women in long dresses and heels? The stairs chop any cross-stage dashes in two. It is the dumbest fucking idea for a comedy since Rob Schneider was put on a payroll. Normally I try to give community theatres a break – but there are theatre companies that would give their corporate eye-teeth for the kind of facilities Summer Place has access to. Wasting them in this manner is criminal.

If you have to see this, see it for Lisa Barber, Marianne Bowles, Deanna Norman and George McArdle. If you have to.

Creating ARThur – 7/16/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

Not many theatres around here have the balls to premiere a new script. A show that hasn’t already gone through a dozen previews and a New York run, so that the more basic imperfections are already ironed out? Heavens. Wheaton Drama has enough self confidence to try it and apparently their audience is buying into it, at least judging by the size of the house I saw last weekend. Good for them.

Creating ARThur is a comedy by Bill Ball (and “associate writers” Wendy Ball and Jodie Klassen, as designated in the bios. If they wrote part of the show, their names should be in the byline. Fair’s fair.) The plot concerns middle-aged brothers Alex and Andy Burns, whose older brother Arthur has just died. Alex, a schemer whose success rate makes Ralph Kramden look like Donald Trump, talks Andy into a hare-brained plan to have one of Arthur’s paintings hung in a museum. This involves scamming art auctioneers and museum owners into recognizing the late, great “De La Byrnes”. A phony biography is cooked up, deceptions are perpetrated, the brothers’ wives become suspicious and all we need is a belligerent cop snapping, “Why, I oughta…!”

Anyhoo – hilarity ensues. For the most part.

Annie Walker-Bright’s direction is focused and farcical. And, combined with set designer Don Dumper’s work, she does something innovative and brilliant – the opening scene switches between the brothers talking in one room and their wives talking in another. Instead of going the normal route and placing them at opposite ends of the stage, with lights going up and down as the occasion demands, there is a huge, blank painter’s canvas at centerstage. It’s on a pivot and is used as a revolving door. Husbands are talking, scene’s over, they pivot the canvas to reveal the wives while the husbands disappear. It makes for instant scene changes. Really nice work. Walker-Bright is also adept at moving a large amount of people (for a non-musical) in the background without having them be either distracting or static.

Dennis Brown (as Alex) and Chris Williams (Andy) work their asses off to put the material over. Both men are very funny and, when the material is up to their level, as in a mini “Who’s on First” about which phony name Andy is to use that day, they nail it. They have nice chemistry together.

Susan Carr (Alex’s wife Lorraine) and Dawn Herbst (Andy’s wife Esther) have similar chemistry and talent. They are enormously likable and funny; the script needed to give them more than exposition and suspicion.

One problem with the script is that this is a situation comedy that wants to be a farce. I mention this now because there are only two truly farcical characters in the show, which points up the sitcomicality (Hooray! New word!) of the rest of the show. Angelicque Cate as a raucous, chatty, anyhooing waitress who turns up EVERYWHERE, steals Act One. Act Two is stolen by Steven Merkel as a screaming queen (Hooray! Non-PC comedy!) art salesman. My biggest suggestion for the script is to have them come through the last scene as a couple. Both performances were broad and bigger than life – thank god.

The rest of the ensemble was extremely good – valid characters when necessary and unobtrusive in the background for crowd scenes.

On the whole, a funny show, due at this point more to the cast and direction than to the script. Let’s talk about that for a minute. Since, as screenwriter William Goldman says, everybody thinks they can improve scripts, there’s no reason for me to be any different. So; to the playwright(s):

The script could lose twenty minutes without any perceptible damage. It is one-third action and two-thirds talking about what they’re going to do. The chatter goes on FOREVER. A scene between the wives goes on and on and on making the same point – their husbands are acting weird. Instead of being straight-women – long-suffering sitcom wives – it would have been far more interesting to see them with actual personalities & quirks of their own. They are standard-issue “What are those goofballs up to?” characters whose dialogue is there just to give them equal stage time rather than something interesting to do with it. Carr and Herbst were obviously capable of much more than they were given.

As for Andy and Alex – both characters are too frantic. For me, it would have been more of a contrast to have Alex be insanely, groundlessly confident. The best scheming teams (Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder in The Producers, Peter Falk & Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, Bing Crosby & Bob Hope in the Road movies) have a friendly, confident sheepdog leading a terrified sheep into a saloon full of wolves. Having both characters sputter doesn’t work.

Start ruthlessly attacking your own logic, or wait for reviewers to do so. Banks do NOT take as long to process checks as they did twenty years ago. Why are NONE of the art dealers wondering why there is no mention of the famous De La Byrnes anywhere on the internet? I could Google information like that in two minutes – why wouldn’t they? Why don’t the gallery salespeople fight like hell when a sale is threatened in that very, very, very long scene in Act Two? Until the art dealers and wives show up, there’s no comedic escalation.

Lastly, you need to think visually. For a show about painting, 70% of this is a radio show. Place scenes in locations where the characters have to DO something while they talk. The director did a fabulous job fleshing it out; give her some help.

But away from the playwright and back to the casual review reader: is it worth it to buy a ticket? Yes. The cast is fabulous, some of the performances are gems and there are enough laughs. If you’re tired of sitting through Godspell (not that I ever would) and Steel Magnolias, get out and support the idea of trying new shows. Hooray, Wheaton Drama! Anyhoo...

Oklahoma! – 7/15/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

I am always wary of “reinventions”. If you don’t like a show enough to do it straight, don’t do it. So dark clouds of critical foreboding drifted overhead while waiting for Theatre-on-the-Hill’s Oklahoma! to begin. I love older musicals. And TOTH (Theatre-on-the-Hill) was fucking with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s music. It’s heresy. It’s bullshit.

And it worked like a charm. So I was wrong. Sue me.

Instead of a bulky orchestra of local high school students, there are five pros:
John Summers on acoustic bass
Katarina Schmitt on fiddle
Gary Patterson on banjo and guitar
Sharon Hand vocal and percussion (washboard)
Michael A. Fudala on guitar.

Along with the pit for Wheaton Drama’s Little Shop of Horrors, this is the best community theatre band I’ve heard in years.

Lorrisa Julianus’ direction is clear, concise and occasionally daring. People forget that Oklahoma! is hardly a “sweetness and light” show. Here, Ado Annie straddles Will Parker – and bounces. The Act Two Laurey/Jud scene is truly harrowing. Nice work.

Kate McCombs is a terrifically frisky Ado Annie. She doesn’t need to nod and shake her head quite so much, but too much energy in Annie is better than not enough. It’s a huge stage and McCombs fills it with energy. And she can play the laughs.

Susan O’Byrne as Laurey has solid acting chops and a clear, strong, beautiful voice. Even in the unfortunate overalls somebody plopped her into (weird choice and not in a good way), she lights up the stage. She is really effective in the role, especially considering that in most scenes she is working alone. More on that later.

Ken Schaefer is the best Jud I’ve seen. Picture Bob Hoskins in the part and you have a good image. Schaefer is menacing, pathetic and real. My only quarrel with Julianus’ direction involved the complete murder of Pore Jud is Daid – bad, horrible, wrong and unfunny. The number depends on Jud getting completely wrapped up in the sorrow of his own funeral. Here, they apparently said, “It’s a comedy song! Let’s throw in the kitchen sink!” Bad, bad, wrong and bad.

Ali Hakim is annoying, but I blame the writing more than Michael Stassus, who gives it his all. It’s a pretty impossible part to pull off – great jokes with a stupid accent sewn onto them. The actor playing Will Parker might be good, but I’ll never know. His diction is so non-existent that I couldn’t understand a word he said. And that’s a director issue. The director is the surrogate audience and needs to say, “Hey, marblemouth. Work on the diction.” If you don’t say it to the actor in rehearsal, a bitch like me says it in print. Dave Lichty is funny as Carnes (Ado Annie’s father).

The last time I saw Oklahoma! the chorus sang and danced as if they were in a hostage situation – begrudgingly and without any life. The TOTH chorus is exuberant, sunny and fully committed to what they are doing. That is so crucial in a large cast musical and it’s usually the most ignored aspect.

The one major fly in the ointment is Charles Jonathan Kay as Curly. There is zero emotional commitment from the actor. Laurey has better chemistry with Jud. At the end of the song Oklahoma, when the principals and chorus all have their fists punching the sky on the final “Yow!”, Kay’s fist is tapping a very low ceiling. This typifies his lack of commitment throughout the song (and show). Curly should be leading everybody in exuberance, not outshined by them. His comic ability is nil. Hammerstein wrote the show in dialect, which Kay disdains to use. He “corrects” the pronunciations. One doesn't wish to sound uncouth when assaying the role of a cowboy, does one?

Kay’s voice is slightly nasal and seemingly allergic to anything longer than a quarter note: “I’ve got a beautiful feeling” – “feel--” has three different quarter notes instead of one dotted half note. His vibrato reminds one of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz: “Ev’rything’s goin’ my way-ay-ay-ay-ay… put ‘em up, put ‘em uhhhhhp!”

Fortunately, Curly is not the whole show. Overall, TOTH does a terrific job with Oklahoma! Is it of professional caliber? With the exception of the band, of course not. But it is very entertaining community theatre. Go for the band, the exuberant chorus, Laurey, Ado Annie and Jud. Ignore the fact that Curly doesn’t love Laurey as much as he loves Curly.

Superior Donuts - 7/14/08

For box office information, click on the title of this review.

In order for me to compare Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts unfavorably to his Pulitzer Prize winner, I would have to have seen or read August: Osage County. Since I haven’t done that, I have to take Superior Donuts on its own merits. Oh well.

Steppenwolf’s Superior Donuts takes place in a small, old mom-and-pop donut shop in Uptown. Since the place was opened in 1950, the neighborhood has changed and there’s now a Starbuck’s across the street. The owner is Arthur Przybyszewski (Michael McKean) – a lost, aging hippie who inherited the shop from his parents. As the play opens, his shop has been vandalized and the word “pussy” spray-painted on the wall. It could be neighborhood kids or it could be a disgruntled ex-employee. Arthur doesn’t much care. He avoids conflict. He avoids any emotional involvement with other people. It just causes trouble.

Arthur isn’t outraged at the vandalism, as is his neighbor Max Tarasov (Yasen Payenkov) – a hilariously volatile, non-PC Russian electronics store owner who wants to buy the donut shop to enlarge his own store. Arthur doesn’t pick up on the hints that one of the beat cops, Randy (Kate Buddeke), would like a more intimate relationship with him. And Arthur doesn’t know what he’s in for when he hires a hyper-literate black kid named Franco Wicks (Jon Michael Hill) to work for him.

I won’t go further into the plot, which some critics have sneeringly compared with Chico and the Man. It isn’t Norman Lear. What it reminded me of more than anything was the type of Chicago plays produced in the seventies at the then storefront mom-and-pop theatres like the St. Nicholas, Victory Gardens, Steppenwolf and Organic. It’s a successor to Bleacher Bums, E.R., American Buffalo – plays with a Chicago sensibility about believable people and how they cope with their lives. Arthur has monologues describing his childhood in Chicago, when families would spend hot nights sleeping outdoors in the park and how, when you were in the family car driving down the expressway and you saw the giant neon Magikist lips, you knew you were home. (This is the first time I have ever heard an audience go “Mmmmm” in agreement. Loudly.)

Michael McKean is terrific as Arthur. His weary resignation and fatalistic sense of humor are sharply defined. Jon Michael Hill is explosive as a ghetto kid whose burning intelligence and literacy is in contrast to character flaws which have a dire consequence for him. He has an extremely Chris Rock delivery of punchlines, but it works for him. Yasen Payenkov, Kate Buddeke, James Vincent Meredith (as Randy’s partner – a devout Trekkie), Robert Maffia (a local bookie with ulcers) and the rest of the cast are all spot-on.It addition to getting huge laughs, the play in its more serious moments gets audience reactions I have rarely heard – sharp gasps of horror and short moans of commiseration. This also has one of the most brutal and certainly the longest fistfight scene between two men you will ever see on stage. Tina Landau’s direction is never less than clear, sharp and in the service of the script.

This is one of those plays that will definitely go to New York, become a hit and in five years all the community theatres in this area will be producing it. So instead of standing there with a finger up your nose saying, “What’s that? I never heard of THAT!” when your play reading committee recommends Superior Donuts four years from now – why don’t you just go see it now and find out what it is?

It’s funny, it’s heart-breaking and it’s all Chicago.