Power Play

Review of The Conduct of Life, Yale Summer Cabaret

Dysfunction reigns in María Irene Fornés’ The Conduct of Life, continuing at the Yale Summer Cabaret tonight through Saturday, directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez. Fornés’ plays have a mysterious quality and a fascinating rhythm that works best in intimate settings, which makes the Cabaret a good place to see this provocative play.

Orlando (John Evans Reese) carrying Nena (Amandla Jahava) in the Yale Summer Cabaret’s production of María Irene Fornés’ The Conduct of Life (Photos courtesy of Yale Summer Cabaret)

The dysfunction is political, not only the naked bid for power in an unnamed country ruled by a military dictatorship, but, more directly, domestic, in the sexual politics of the household where a lieutenant named Orlando (John Evans Reese) lords it over his well-intentioned wife Leticia (Juliana Martinez). They have a friend in fellow officer Alejo (Devin White) who tends to laugh appropriately at Orlando’s sallies, while retaining, perhaps, more soul than Orlando. And Leticia is attended by a maid, Olympia (Nefesh Cordero Pino), who seems to stand as an emblem of the simple folk and is both an accomplice of Orlando and a confidante to Leticia.

Olympia (Nefesh Cordero Pino), Leticia (Juliana Martinez)

At first, the play might seem to offer a Chekhovian exploration of boredom, ambition and humiliation, but, importantly, there’s also Nena (Amandla Jahava), a young girl kidnapped by Orlando and held prisoner in a warehouse and later in the couple’s basement. The glimpses of rape and torture we get through Christopher Evans’ projections are harrowing, as if we were watching arty surveillance footage, but nothing we see quite equals in discomfort the sound of Jahava’s distraught whimpers and sobs. It’s unnerving.

Orlando, who opens the play doing calisthenics and giving himself motivational advice on how to climb higher among the brass, becomes an interrogator. In an early dialogue with Alejo, about a prisoner who died under questioning, Orlando prides himself on his brutal lack of sympathy. He seems the perfect man for the job, except perhaps too indifferent to outcomes. In other words, there are standards, even in dehumanizing tactics, and Orlando may be his own worst enemy. We get a fuller sense of his view of himself when we see him interact with poor, frightened Nena, a girl he picked up and forced himself on. It’s his need for her that drives Orlando, a passion for dominance that also dominates him.

Orlando (John Evans Reese), Alejo (Devin White)

The triangle between Orlando, Leticia and Nena is where Fornés’ interests lie, to let us see glimpses of darkly sadistic realizations of a family dynamic and to show us the powers that be and the powerless. In the latter view, Leticia is of interest as not quite either. She’s not the equal of Orlando, either politically or in terms of physical strength or cunning, nor is she as powerless as Nena is. An amazing scene late in the play comes when Nena and Olympia, who takes pity on the prisoner as well as showing a vicarious interest in her odd life, are at the table and are joined by Leticia, who asks “what are we talking about?” There sits wife, prisoner, and maid, and Fornés implies they might all easily be figures for the role of Woman in patriarchal society.

Leticia (Juliana Martinez)

And yet, in director’s Ybañez hands, the play never veers into outright allegory or satire. The sure-handed naturalism of the approach is greatly abetted by the way these actors—all current students at the Yale School of Drama but for Jahava, a recent graduate—inhabit their roles.

As Orlando, John Evans Reese brings a boyishness to the role that completely suits the small-time tyrant. He’s impetuous, sensitive of his dignity, needy, and erratic. As Alejo, Devin White has a cheery cynicism but late in the play shows more character. Juliana Martinez’s Leticia is a minor dame who might like to be a grande dame, helping the poor and trying to avoid the implications of her lifestyle. She might be seen as vapid, but Martinez brings a sullen gravitas to Leticia that makes her intriguing. Nefesh Cordero Pino plays Olympia with the knowing earthiness of those who have no illusions about what is necessary to get along in the world of their social superiors. And Amandla Jahava’s Nena is the heart of the play: the child as Christ, a girl who has introjected the selflessness of the sacrificial victim willing to suffer for others. Her views come out, in Jahava’s wonderfully fresh performance, as not at all deluded or debased.

Nena (Amandla Jahava), Olympia (Nefesh Cordero Pino)

The stage is a long marble-looking plinth stretching into a space near the Exit door that acts as the basement, foregrounding the couple’s house with a table and chairs and a phone-stand as minimal furnishings. The warehouse space is provided by videos so that we’re unaware of Nena’s predicament when they’re turned off, unlike other productions where the prisoner is visible throughout.

Told in short vignettes with blackouts, Fornés play maintains a somewhat arch tone toward the lives it asks us to contemplate. We don’t really settle in as we would with a more continuous structure, and that’s deliberate—to keep us guessing. The force of the situations propels the drama to its violent conclusion in this gripping play, but one senses that Fornés’ script would reward a slightly more quizzical rendering.

The Conduct of Life
By María Irene Fornés
Directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez

Scenic Designer: Stephanie Cohen; Costume Designer: Alicia J. Austin; Lighting Designer: Daphne Agosin Orellana; Sound Designer: Bailey Trierweiler; Projections Designer: Christopher Evans; Dramaturg: Sophie Greenspan; Stage Manager: Amanda Luke; Intimacy Consultant: Sam Tirrell

Ensemble: Nefesh Cordero Pino, Amandla Jahava, Juliana Martinez, John Evans Reese, Devin White

Yale Summer Cabaret
June 21-29, 2019

About Last Night . . .

Review of Actually, TheaterWorks 

The dramatic situation in Anna Ziegler’s Actually, which closes this weekend at TheaterWorks, directed by Taneisha Duggan, could happen, more or less, to any couple. When sex goes bad, it’s usually only a matter for the persons involved. But when the couple in question are freshmen at a major university—in this case Princeton—the fall-out about what did or didn’t happen becomes a matter for administration. And that way much frustration lies—on all sides.

Amber (Arielle Siegel), Tom (Ronald Emile) in TheaterWorks’ production of Actually (Photos courtesy of TheaterWorks)

Ziegler’s script—which is a two-person play in which some other key figures are spoken of but never appear—opens with the kegger where Tom (Ronald Emile) and Amber (Arielle Siegel) meet-up and then, fueled by alcohol and more-than-fleeting attraction, proceed to hook-up. They’ve been aware of each other with almost uncanny frequency in that first week of classes and get-acquainted activities and rushes and the like. Now they come face to face and—after Tom with urgent exasperation tells Amber to stop talking—kiss.

We get to see that much. All else is hearsay by the participants; though both are pretty sure what happened, their views of the events diverge on key points. On the way to the hearing—where a committee of faculty will decide if Tom’s actions will merit disciplinary action—we learn about these two teens in their own words, addressed to us, the audience, in a hopscotch of statements and realizations. The tone of what each has to say veers in interesting ways, part confession, part self-analysis, part defense, and part confusion. That last part is a major factor and derives mostly from not really understanding their own motivations or the position they allowed their vulnerability to their own desires and the desires of another to put them in.

What’s more than a little overbearing about Ziegler’s play is that everything we learn about these characters is tainted by the big event that is coloring their current discomfort. So Tom is at pains to establish that he’s not the kind of guy that would intentionally rape anyone, and Amber mostly aims to convince us that she had no bad motives and that her story is true. Both characters are shown to be truly affectionate toward each other, which is why the emphasis of the play’s inconclusive conclusion seems to fall so heavily on what the act of seeking some kind of intervention has brought about. Because these two never got together and discussed their night of “yes” or “no” or “maybe so” (or “actually,” which Amber seemed to want to use as a safe-word), they instead plead before a committee they both mostly distrust and deride.

Amber (Arielle Siegel), Tom (Ronald Emile)

In speaking of themselves, the students are personable, though with very different approaches. Ronald Emile gets across Tom’s sense of himself as a successful charmer, a ladies’ man who doesn’t take any particular woman too seriously. His account of some trouble in high school, due to his response to advances by a teacher, set him up—in his own view—as someone who has to beat ‘em off. So, of course, when he gets alone with Amber she’ll be eager for the treat of Tom. For all his obtuseness, Tom is too earnest to be disbelieved. The problem is that he really doesn’t remember too well what occurred in his dorm room with Amber.

Amber—in Arielle Siegel’s delivery—is apt to say things that feel like special pleading, then look askance as if thinking “did I really say that?” She’s a study in nervous tics and a self-consciousness that you’ll either find charming or tedious. (For me, it was the latter.) She’s apt to make assumptions such as Tom’s being black had the same weight on his application that playing squash did on hers, and to say that, as an African American and Jewish American, respectively, Tom and she grew up with the sense that they might be rounded up at some point.

Amber (Arielle Siegel), Tom (Ronald Emile)

The staging by director Duggan helps mightily, as the actors move about in nicely choreographed vignettes, and the support of incidental music helps create moods that the matter-of-fact chat language of the characters doesn’t do much to articulate. Occasionally there’s some fun with words or a quirky verbal expression gets toyed with, the way people do who are learning how someone from somewhere else talks. There’s also a keen sense of how easy it is to get carried away with talking, saying what you didn’t quite mean or meaning something you didn’t quite think.

Even more so than Girlfriend, the previous show at TheaterWorks, Actually is a two-hander that could use some fleshing out. Ziegler has written-in a “hot” Indian friend (who thinks he and Tom are in love) and a bossy sorta mean girl (named Heather, of course) who seems to be the driving force behind Amber wanting to get laid and then going to authorities when she was after she stopped wanting to be. The reliance on these sideline characters, along with a few too many clichéd locutions and asides about teen life, college, and cultural markers of our day, makes Ziegler’s play less than the sharply observed social criticism it seems to want to be.

But then it’s hard to say for certain what it wants to be. Ziegler might just be trying to beguile the time by looking like the time, as Lady Macbeth might say. The play is best at informing Tom and Amber with much plausible feeling, then leaves their story hanging by a feather.

Tom (Ronald Emile) and Amber (Arielle Siegel)

Actually
By Anna Ziegler
Directed by Taneisha Duggan 

Set Design: Jean Kim; Costume Design: Sydney Gallas; Lighting Design: Amith A. Chandrashaker; Sound Design: Julian Evans; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

 Cast: Ronald Emile, Arielle Siegel

 TheaterWorks
(At Wadsworth Athenaeum)
May 22-June 23, 2019

Conducting "The Conduct of Life"

Preview of The Conduct of Life, Yale Summer Cabaret

The second show of the Yale Summer Cabaret’s Verano season opens tonight. The Conduct of Life, written by María Irene Fornés, was first produced in 1985. Fornés, who died last year, was one of the foremost avant-garde U.S. playwrights of her time. Jecamiah M. Ybañez, a Co-Artistic Director of this year’s Summer Cabaret and a 2019 MFA of the Yale School of Drama, directs. For Ybañez, who admits being drawn to “gritty material,” one of the attractions of doing the play at this time comes from its poetic handling of political questions. 

As Ybañez sees it, we, as a culture, are “more educated, knowledgeable, and aware” than ever before. We have so much information easily available, but “the question becomes: how do we behave? How do we move forward—do we act on what we know or ignore it? How do we respond to the inequalities in our society?” Fornés play, as the title suggests, is about how we conduct our lives—whether we “blatantly or subversively” take action.

Like Martin Zimmerman’s Seven Spots on the Sun, which was Ybañez’s thesis show at YSD last winter, The Conduct of Life takes place in a “nondescript Latin American country under a military dictator.” At the time the play was written, the events of the play could be in “almost any of a number of Latin American countries,” Ybañez said. Indeed, Fornés’ play, in focusing on the domestic life of a couple whose husband, a military officer, is attempting to rise in political power, recalls a couple in Seven Spots where the brutality of military service during a civil war impacts a soldier’s relation to his wife. Fornés’ play more directly confronts “the obsession with power” on the part of a military man in a corrupt system, Ybañez said. Conduct depicts acts of violence “in a specific context,” where scenes of “child abduction, sexual assault, and interrogation” show the impact of abusive power on “othered bodies.” Ybañez mentioned the audience advisory on the Summer Cab’s website: “This production contains depictions of sexual violence, disturbing and explicit images and audio, coarse language, and simulated gunshots.”

For Ybañez, the attractions of the play are twofold. He sees the play as “a thriller” where “information is withheld.” The audience has to react to the imperfect evidence Fornés provides within a context of political unrest and violence. The typical element of the thriller—that secrets will come to light—is complicated by Fornés’ method. Fornés’ earliest influence as a dramatist was a production of Beckett’s En attendant Godot she saw in Paris. At the time she was a painter who had studied with the abstract theorist and artist Hans Hoffmann. In Conduct, Fornés uses an avant-garde form of nineteen vignettes, some too short to be considered individual scenes, where the narrative connections are not always clear, so that viewers must infer the particular connotations of what they see.

Jecamiah M. Ybañez

The play has a cast of five, all of whom have done memorable work at the term-time Cabaret. Orlando (John Evans Reese) is a ruthless man married to Letitia (Juliana Aiden Martínez), who speaks with some social conscience. Orlando’s friend, Alejo, is played by Devin White and Letitia’s maid, Olimpia, by Nefesh Cordero Pino (the only cast member also seen in Bakkhai, the season opener). Amandla Jahava, who graduated from YSD in May and worked on several projects at the Cabaret last season, returns to play Nena, a child Orlando has kidnapped. Outside the house in which the action takes place, Ybañez said, the government is trying to obtain absolute power over its people.

In working with his cast, Ybañez has been concentrating on the rhythm and the tempo of the vignettes. Each has “a time signature,” he said, and it is necessary to “feel the shift” in a scene. Fornés eschews naturalistic dialogue, preferring to let characters speak in ways that suggest unspoken thoughts. Her theatrical palette includes Theater of the Absurd and the Brechtian effort to alienate audiences from naturalistic comforts for the sake of political effect. Her style and intentions are mercurial and make for challenging theater.

“There’s no neat tie-up,” Ybañez said of the play’s conclusion, but he stressed how the play suggests that even the powerless “have a certain agency,” and that even victims of unjust systems, Fornés indicates through Nena, must decide how “to live each day the best way possible.” The notion that even those who perpetrate criminal violence may be in pain is one that Fornés is able to bring to light through the tensions between her characters. In a time when we find polarized accusations of evil on each side of our political divides, Fornés’ play may have a resonance relevant to how we might conduct ourselves differently.

The Conduct of Life
By María Irene Fornés
Directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez

Yale Summer Cabaret Verano
June 21-29, 2019

For tickets and information regarding showtimes and dining, go here.

Sport for the Gods

Review of Bakkhai, Yale Summer Cabaret

The first show of Yale Summer Cabaret’s Verano season has come and gone. The Summer Cab’s Co-Artistic Director Danilo Gambini, with a cast of six female actors, delivered a sexy and scary and funny and unsettling version of Euripides’ ancient Greek tragedy Bakkhai as translated by preeminent poet Anne Carson. As a kickoff to the Summer Cab season one might say the play puts us on alert that theater’s seductions come at a peril. 

Dionysos (Sarah Lyddan) and the Bakkhai (top to bottom: Zoe Mann, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Anula Navlekar) (Photos courtesy of Danilo Gambini)

The play has the temerity to put the god—or is that pseudo-god?—Dionysos (Sarah Lyddan) onstage and lets him get quizzed and dismissed by Thebes’ king Pentheus (Eli Pauley, in the getup of a military dictator) with the kind of disdain a police chief might aim at a local troublemaker. And Dionysus does make trouble. The women of Thebes—Malia West, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Anula Navlekar and Zoe Mann as an aroused chorus in negligees—are only too ready to worship him and are clearly doing so in a tranced and decadent way. What’s a ruler burdened with maintaining order to do?

Pentheus (Eli Pauley), front; background: Teiresias (Anula Navlekar), Kadmos (Zoe Mann)

We might feel we are watching a comedy in which each side—law and order vs. libidinous license—is going to get a big comeuppance, especially when we see two old-timers, Kadmos (Mann) and Teiresias (Navlekar) jumping on the bandwagon, off to take part in the Bacchic rites in clownish drag. Kadmos is Dionysus’ grandfather. The story is that Semele, Kadmos’ daughter by the goddess Harmonia, was impregnated by Zeus in the form of a lightning bolt—which incinerated Semele, so that Zeus had to rescue the unborn child, sewing him into his own immortal thigh from which Dionysos was born. Born of Zeus via a female half-mortal and half-immortal, Dionysos has no doubts that he’s a true god. And yet. Carson’s translation maintains use of the term daimon or daemon (from which we get “demon”) for what Dionysos claims to be, and that invites all sorts of colorations—especially in our Christianized world—about half-man/half-god hybrids who shake up the status quo with secret rites.

Dionysos (Sarah Lyddan) with Bakkhai (Malia West, left; Eli Pauley, right)

In any case, demonic is exactly how Lyddan plays Dionysos, an androgynous figure with the eyes, ringed in black, of one who regularly imbibes hallucinogens and a voice of clearest diction that runs from guttural to angelic to searing. Her Dionysos is a trip and a treat and not to be trusted. And that’s where the tragic dimension comes in, in the midst of all the seductive humor and high spirits. Lyddan keeps so resolutely her eyes on the prize, so to speak, to let us know that Dionysos sees all our human hubbub as barely worth his notice. Love him, hate him—in any case, woe unto you. He’s malevolent to anyone who crosses him—which Pentheus’ mother, Agave (Semele’s older sister), did when she dismissed the claim that Zeus was her sister’s lover. So Pentheus has to follow suit—only to be beguiled by the idea of spying on those secret rites . . .

The songs the chorus sings—developed by the ensemble and sound designer/composer Liam Bellman-Sharpe—are ably abetted by the voices of Malia West, who also spellbinds as a Herdsman, and Zoe Mann. The set—by Lily Guerin—occupies a diagonal corner of the space, with grand pillars and black tiles and a section lit bloodred (Riva Fairhall, lighting) when Agave (a fierce Cordero Pino) arrives with her son’s head, which she herself tore from his body, thinking him—thanks to Dionysos—a lion-cub.

Agave (Nefesh Cordero Pino) with the head of Pentheus

As with many Greek tragedies, there’s a somber “joke’s on you” quality to where we end up, if only because these plays were meant to demonstrate to the populace that the gods toy with us for their sport, so don’t get your hopes up about life ending well. A lesson that somewhere—in all the humanizing centuries since—we seem to have lost a clear sense of. Bakkhai is meant to put the fear back into theater.

And, ultimately, it does. Though I would’ve preferred a bit more breathless shock and awe in the Servant (Navlekar)’s delivery of what befell the hapless Pentheus, the image that stays with me is of Mann as grandfather Kadmos, bowed, rotund, particolored, with powdered face, tears streaming as he awakes from a dream, in which gods and mortals can be held to the same account, to the nightmare—called reality—in which only mortals suffer. Eventually, the ages would supply us with a god who suffers and dies for us . . . but that’s another story.

Bakkhai (Anula Navlekar, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Malia West)

Bakkhai
By Euripides
A new translation by Anne Carson
Directed by Danilo Gambini

Scenic Designer: Lily Guerin; Costume Designer: Alicia J. Austin; Lighting Designer: Riva Fairhall; Sound Designer & Composer: Liam Bellman-Sharpe; Projections Designer: Christopher Evans; Dramaturg: Emily Sorensen; Stage Manager: Alexus Cone 

Ensemble: Nefesh Cordero Pino, Sarah Lyddan, Zoe Mann, Anula Navlekar, Eli Pauley, Malia West

Yale Summer Cabaret
June 6-15, 2019

The opening of the Yale Summer Cabaret’s next show, María Irene Fornés’ The Conduct of Life, directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez, has been postponed from tonight, June 20, to tomorrow night, June 21. Shows at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Everyday Heroes

Review of Skeleton Crew, Westport Country Playhouse

Skeleton Crew is the third play from Dominique Morisseau’s The Detroit Project to be staged in Connecticut this season; it’s also the most recently written and the best of the three. Like Paradise Blue (at Long Wharf in the fall), and Detroit ’67 (at Hartford Stage in the winter), this four-person play is set in a very particular place—Detroit, of course—and time: in this case, the years of the Great Recession of the twenty-first century. That was the “too big to fail” era when the big automakers in Detroit declared bankruptcy, followed by the city itself shortly after.

Set entirely in an automotive plant’s very realistic breakroom (by Caite Hevner), Skeleton Crew lets us into the situation with a fly-on-the-wall access. We see how those who turn up for work each day have their frictions, their flirtations, their agreements and disagreements. And bit by bit we gain insight into what’s at stake in these lives, even as the characters themselves begin to realize how tied they are to a certain way of life, now under threat, and to each other.

Shanita (Toni Martin), Dez (Leland Fowler), Faye (Perri Gaffney) in Westport Country Playhouse’s production of Skeleton Crew (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Faye (Perri Gaffney) is the wise elder who has put in twenty-nine years on the factory floor—but not thirty. The remaining year is necessary for full benefits at retirement. She’s canny, at times jokey towards the others, and opens the play lighting up a cigarette in front of a No Smoking sign. The sign is an indication of how things are changing: more and more effort is being made to make workers behave by the rules, so that those with infractions—for smoking on site, lateness, gambling—can be dismissed. Faye knows times are tough—soon we learn just how tough—and is barely hanging on. Gaffney plays Faye without overt sentimentality, letting us admire her and her philosophic grasp of realities.

The most likely candidate for downsizing is Dez (Leland Fowler) who is too young to kowtow easily to authority and who has dreams of starting his own business—he needs to hang on until he’s got the start-up money. Shanita (Toni Martin), the star of the assembly line, is pregnant, very particular about her salad dressing, and apt to blame her mood swings on her hormones. She fields what might be pro forma come-ons from Dez with grudging patience. The arc of these two actually taking an interest in each other is developed slowly and without coy pretense. The two actors’ command of Morisseau’s language, which captures very subtle registers of emotion with skill, is fully engaging. A joy of the show is how naturally the dialogue flows, letting talk be the medium by which the characters move from rote reactions to something deeper.

Shanita (Toni Martin), Dez (Leland Fowler) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Finally, there’s Reggie, the middle-management guy in a tie who has to figure out how to remain loyal to his workers without ruffling his bosses. Faye is a friend of his late mother’s who got him a job at the plant in the first place and she’s also the shop’s union representative. The tensions that come with being friends—almost family—and co-workers at different paygrades play out as the play goes on. Sean Nelson’s performance is pitch perfect, particularly when he must confess to Faye an angry misstep that may have dire consequences. Nelson lets us see the fire that Reggie represses to walk the line he does.

Reggie (Sean Nelson), Faye (Perri Gaffney) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Skeleton Crew isn’t a gimmicky play; there are a few key props that add extra drama, but the story is conveyed entirely by the interactions of these four vivid characters. In LA Williams’ tight direction, the pacing and transitions are deliberately naturalistic—most scenes open with the workers arriving for their shift, though a few scenes also take place at the end of breaks or, in one key instance, after working hours. Particular problems may differentiate these characters, but we’re always aware that they’re experiencing—to alter the old adage—“same shit, different person.” Each has their individual griefs, but the threat of a shutdown impacts them all.

The crap that’s coming down on this particular outmoded form of capitalist excess is apt to bury them, but Morisseau has the instincts of a popular writer and that keeps the mood from becoming too grim. There are moments of real human caring and sharing and that’s what keeps the drama buoyant. As a slice-of-life play, Skeleton Crew might feel as outdated as the way of life that Motor City once sustained. And that’s part of the play’s charm, letting us settle in to an American story of work that will be familiar to many, and then unsettling us with the fears besetting those with no safety nets as the public good becomes a casualty of private interests.

Reggie (Sean Nelson), Faye (Perri Gaffney), Shanita (Toni Martin), Dez (Leland Fowler) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Unlike the other two entries in Morisseau’s trilogy, Skeleton Crew doesn’t need to work through historical references to expand the story’s dimensions. The reality of big business in flight from the U.S. has been with us since the 1970s and, though specific here to Detroit, is common enough throughout the northeast where this play should resonate with audiences who’d like to meet everyday heroes.

Skeleton Crew
By Dominique Morisseau
Directed by LA Williams

Scenic Design: Caite Hevner; Costume Design: Asa Benally; Lighting Design: Xavier Pierce; Sound Design: Chris Lane; Dramaturg: Sandra Daley; Props Supervisor: Samantha Shoffner; Dialect Coach: Ron Carlos; Production Stage Manager: Bryan Bauer; Original Music by James Keys

Cast: Leland Fowler, Perri Gaffney, Toni Martin, Sean Nelson

Westport Country Playhouse
June 4-22, 2019

The Theater God is Present

Preview of Bakkhai, Yale Summer Cabaret

Last summer, Danilo Gambini, the Co-Artistic Director of this year’s Yale Summer Cabaret, took a trip to Greece, a longstanding goal from the time of his study of mythology in college and his reading of all the Greek tragedies in 2009. As he sat in the theater of Dionysus in Athens, he began “crying compulsively.” He also had a nosebleed, which may have had to do with the atmosphere and the physical exertion of hiking. In any case, the event was for Gambini an epiphany, which might be an actual manifestation of the god, Dionysus, the guiding spirit of ancient Greek drama, there “where the craft and art” Gambini practices “was born.” Gambini says he “made a pact with Dionysus” that day, a “renewal of vows” as a theater director, that “at the next opportunity I would do a Greek tragedy.”

That opportunity is the opening show of the Yale Summer Cabaret’s Verano season. Euripides’ Bakkhai, in Anne Carson’s recent translation, opens June 6 and plays for sixteen performances through June 15.

His choice of Bakkhai, Gambini said, comes from the fact that Euripides’ audacious play puts Dionysus himself on stage. The play has been getting a variety of revivals of late, including at Brooklyn Academy of Music last season, and Girls, a modern adaptation by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, will open the Yale Repertory Theatre’s next season. Gambini discussed the play’s message for our times with his cast and said the consensus was that “it was clear that the play is about women and female power and the suppressed voice of women finding a release.” He added that Pentheus, the king of Thebes in the play, says things that are “too familiar from Trump.” So, in a way we might say that the current attention to the play is the theatrical equivalent of the 2017 Women’s March in protest over Trump’s election. Gambini quoted a line in the play that describes the women “overjoyed by the sheer absence of men.” Gambini’s six-person cast is comprised of female actors.

For Gambini there’s a deliberate camp element in that choice, which he defines as “having fun with theater.” Pentheus and Dionysus, in Gambini’s staging, are played as “drag kings” by Eli Pauley and Sarah Lyddan respectively, a distancing effect that Gambini spoke of as a deliberate element of current theater’s approach to gender politics. The choice of gender in casting roles, he said, “explores how to tell the story from one side, or extreme, or the other.” He lets his actors have a lot of agency in how they choose to tell the story, including the music of the chorus which was worked out by the actors in ensemble with sound designer and composer Liam Bellman-Sharpe.

There is humor in the play and Gambini finds that Anne Carson’s contemporary language helps the comedy land. Gambini described Carson’s writing as “visual,” a form of “concrete poetry that talks to me and inspires me in seeing the play’s spatial construction.” She writes, he said, “the way I stage.” For Gambini, an attraction of the Cabaret is that its intimate setting, without the usual separation of actors from audience, allows him to explore the kind of theater that is most meaningful to him. In his view, “text is a pretext to create an event” and the “audience is always seeing what they are seeing.” Which means that the idea of theater as an illusion of action happening elsewhere is dropped in favor of treating theater as an event at which both the cast and the audience are concurrently present.

Gambini sees Bakkhai as a play that questions a society’s beliefs, which includes religious faith and the status of the occult. The play was first produced late in Euripides’ career, and is “fully mature,” Gambini says. But with that maturity comes a definite interest in “how to transgress” further. Putting the god on the stage and having him argue for the vanities of the gods indicates, for some, Euripides’ cynicism toward religion, but also shows him addressing the very powerful social force of religious belief.

Danilo Gambini

Gambini says that, originally, tragedy for the ancient Greeks was an “outlet—it enabled them to live what they didn’t want to live.” And he sees the same purpose provided by theater today, as well as TV and film. He stated that the etymology of the word “tragedy” derives from “chant of the goat,” which means that the poetry of tragedy was conceived as the song of the dying animal—a goat—sacrificed in religious ritual. While tragedy, Gambini said, “can be dark and even heartbreaking,” he sees the form as “voluptuous,” celebrating “joy and pleasure” in the physical body.

Greek tragedy, Gambini said, “survived because the plays keep speaking to our times.” The battle between an oppressive government—Pentheus often seems more a bureaucrat than a king—and a wildly inspired populist cult, and the status of faith in capricious gods versus a more reasoned ideal of humanity are themes that, it’s easy to see, have never ceased clashing in human society. At the Yale Summer Cabaret that drama plays out once again—with the added attraction of watching director Danilo Gambini fulfill his pact with Dionysus.

Euripides’ Bakkhai
Translated by Anne Carson
Directed by Danilo Gambini
Yale Summer Cabaret
June 6-15, 2019

For information about the season, season passes, individual tickets, the menu and dining reservations, go here.

The Kid is Alright

Review of The Flamingo Kid, Hartford Stage

Darko Tresnjak, who steps down as Artistic Director with the conclusion of this season, ends his tenure at Hartford Stage on an upbeat note. The Flamingo Kid, a new musical based on the fondly regarded film by Garry and Neal Marshall from 1984, re-teams Tresnjak with Robert L. Freedman, Books and Lyrics, who wrote the Book and co-wrote the lyrics for the Tony-winning A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, one of the director’s prior big successes.

This time the comedy is not quite as wildly inspired, but the show is vastly entertaining, with the kind of witty lyrics—often adding a deliberate flavor of Jewish Brooklyn missing from the film—that musicals about coming of age should have. Scott Frankel, of War Paint and Grey Gardens, wrote the music and there’s a nice range of musical inspirations, all feeling at home in 1963, the year of the action. That’s the summer, of course, between the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. A great time to be young and alive after the U.S. got the U.S.S.R. to backdown and before the country, in the view of many commentators, lost its innocence.

Steve (Ben Fankhauser), Hawk (Alex Wyse), Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer) in Hartford Stage production of The Flamingo Kid (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Flamingo Kid is rich with the kind of associations many of us have with the era, not least in pitting the bedrock values of the working lower middle-class, here instanced by the Winnicks in Brooklyn, with the leisure-time instincts of the upper middle-class out on Long Island. It’s still a time when such might occasionally rub shoulders, and when the so-called American Dream offered the notion that a kid who has to earn his way could still work his way up in pay and respect.

The story, which begins on the Fourth of July weekend and ends on Labor Day weekend, takes the side of the young, ethnic up-and-comer, Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer), over the self-important blowhard Phil Brody (Marc Kudisch), owner of some luxury car showrooms, whose spell the young man falls under, while also falling for Brody’s niece, Karla (Samantha Massell). Freedman’s script takes a few potshots at those who put salesmanship over sincerity and elevate winning by any means over winning fairly. There’s even a little wink in having Karla reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique on the beach, a bit of cultural unrest that finds its answer in the actions of Brody’s wife Phyllis (Lesli Margherita) late in the play.

Phyllis Brody (Lesli Margherita) (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Indeed, one way the musical stretches beyond the movie is in its interest in the older generation. The film is concerned almost wholly with Jeffrey’s effort to prove himself, moving from the plans of his gruff but loving father, a plumber, to the slick and glib mentorship offered by Brody, “the King” of the gin game at the El Flamingo Beach Club. Freedman gives standout numbers to Mr. Winnick (Adam Heller), “A Plumber Knows,” and his wife Ruth (Liz Larsen), “Not For All the Money in the World,” and to Mrs. Brody, whose “The Cookie Crumbles” is a word-to-the-wise aimed at Karla, full of the cynicism of the neglected wife. Meanwhile, Brody gets to make the most of “Sweet Ginger Brown,” his tagline, a song that comes back for a rousing reprise in Act II.

For excitement, there are big dance numbers like “Another Summer Day in Brooklyn,” “Rockaway Rumba,” and even a visit to the track with “In It to Win It.” Gregory Rodriguez adds much pizzazz to Act II as the lead singer of Marvin and The Sand Dunes, singing “Blowin’ Hot and Cold.” Comic highlights are provided by Brody’s card-playing pals who are apt to carp at “The World According to Phil,” and by the MILFs of the day who can’t get enough of Jeffrey as the cutest “Cabana Boy.” The romantic plot is handled by “Never Met a Boy Like You,” wherein Karla is smitten, and it plays out with the sweetness of the sweetest summer romance, featuring a see-saw and a lifeguard stand and a painted moon over a painted sea.

Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer), Karla Samuels (Samantha Massell) (photo by T, Charles Erickson)

Is the show sentimental and nostalgic? You betcha, so much so it feels like a return to an earlier time not only in its setting—which is fetchingly colorful in the set by Alexander Dodge and the costumes by Linda Cho, two longtime exemplars of excellence at Hartford Stage—but in its grasp of how to combine family and fun and romance with the kicks of kids and the fretting of elders. The movie was an Eighties’ nod to the way Fifties Hollywood informed so many of the movers and shakers of the era. As a musical in our day, The Flamingo Kid treats perennials like first love and first major summer job the way the Golden Age of television might and lets us enjoy the ride for all it’s worth.

Phil Brody (Marc Kudisch) and Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer) (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The first Act may run a bit long and, in general, there’s a sense, in each Act, that the search for a close is a problem that derives from the arc of numbers in a musical more than from the story per se. Freedman wants to keep the emphasis on “Fathers and Sons,” a theme that shows up strong at the end with the show’s penultimate number. Which makes it an ideal show running up to Father’s Day on June 16—indeed, the show has been extended from June 9, its original ending date, to June 15. Bring the folks, or the kids, as the case may be.

Jeffrey (Jimmy Brewer) and Arthur (Adam Heller) Winnick (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The show’s secondary theme—what makes for marital happiness in two couples of different socio-economic situations and how the difference affects a young, formative couple negotiating both worlds—plays out as a fond look at how much we owe to where we’re from—and how much we all love summer getaways. As a musical getaway, The Flamingo Kid is hot, and that’s cool.

The Flamingo Kid
Book & Lyrics by Robert L. Freedman
Music by Scott Frankel
Based on the motion picture The Flaming Kid, screenplay by Neal Marshall and Garry Marshall, story by Neal Marshall
Directed by Darko Tresnjak

Choreography: Denis Jones; Scenic Design: Alexander Dodge; Costume Design: Linda Cho; Lighting Design: Philip Rosenberg; Sound Design: Peter Hylenski; Projection Design: Aaron Rhyne; Wig & Hair Design: Charles G. LaPointe; Makeup Design: Joya Giambrone; Dance & Vocal Arrangements: Scott Frankel; Music Director: Thomas Murray; Orchestrator: Bruce Coughlin; Fight Choreographer: Thomas Schall; Dramaturg: Elizabeth Williamson; Production Stage Manager: Linda Marvel

Orchestra: Conductor: Thomas Murray, Keyboard: Paul Staroba; Percussion: Charles DeScarfino; Reed 1: John Mastroianni; Reed 2: Michael Schuster; Trumpet: Seth Bailey, Don Clough; Trombone: Jordan Jacobson; Horn: Jaime Thorne; Violin/Viola: Lu Sun; Guitar: Nick DiFabio; Bass: Roy Wiseman; Keyboard Programmer: Randy Cohen

Cast: Ben Bogen, Jimmy Brewer, Lindsey Brett Carothers, Ben Fankhauser, Michael Hartung, Adam Heller, Jean Kauffman, Ken Krugman, Marc Kudisch, Liz Larsen, Taylor Lloyd, Omar Lopez-Cepero, Lesli Margherita, Samantha Massell, Anna Noble, Erin Leigh Peck, Gregory Rodriguez, Steve Routman, William Squier, Kathy Voytko, Price Waldman, Jayke Workman, Alex Wyse, Kelli Youngman, Stuart Zagnit

Hartford Stage
May 9-June 15, 2019

Recap of Yale Cabaret 51

Yale Cabaret Season 51 is now just a treasured memory, brought to mind again by my yearly recap of some highlights of what went down. All cordial thanks to the departing team of Co-Artistic Directors Molly FitzMaurice and Latiana “LT” Gourzong and Managing Director Armando Huipe for a lively season abetted by their welcoming presences.

Departing team 51: Armando Huipe, Molly FitzMaurice, Latiana “LT” Gourzong

In hitting the highlights, I cite my “top five” in each category in order of appearance—except my favorite, which comes last.

 The pre-existing plays I was most glad to see: (Cab 2) Fade by Tonya Saracho, directed by Kat Yen: a character study in the context of gender inequalities and upward mobility and claiming cultural kinship in the workplace; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands) by Newton Moreno, translated by Elizabeth Jackson, directed by Danilo Gambini: a folkloric story of sexual identity and the true meaning of love and sacrifice; (Cab 10) School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play by Joceyln Bioh, directed by Christopher D. Betts: a lively treatment of the teen rivalry genre with many knowing details; (Cab 11) The Rules by Charles Mee, adapted by Dakota Stipp, Zachry J. Bailey, Alex Vermillion and Evan Hill, directed by Zachry J. Bailey: a quizzical upbraid of cultural and aesthetic norms and the tired conformities we live by; and . . . (Cab 1) The Purple Flower by Marita Bonner, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar: a mythopoetic tale of racism as a curse of biblical proportions, requiring epic heroism.

Plays from Yale School of Drama authors: (Cab 8) Taking Warsan Shire Out of Context on the Eve of the Great Storm by Christopher Gabriel Nuñez, directed by Oliva Plath: a futuristic tale, both ironic and vulnerable, about a coterie of brainiacs in a frozen waste, finding love; (Cab 13) Lenny’s Fast Food Kids Gang by Angie Bridgette Jones, directed by Alex Keegan: a very sharp and entertaining take on how “televised” our lives are, and how that undermines real connections; (Cab 15) Avital by Michael Breslin, with Amandla Jahava and Zoe Mann, directed by Michael Breslin: academic privilege is never usually this funny but it’s also, y’know, sad; (Cab 18) Alma by Benjamin Benne, directed by Cat Rodriguez: a reminder that equality in America is always a work in progress, requiring constant vigilance; and. . . (Cab 14) Novios by Arturo Luis Soria III, directed by Amandla Jahava and Sohina Sidhu: a workplace love story among immigrants from various points of origin, forging an Americas dream.

Scenic Design: (Cab 1) The Purple Flower, Lily Guerin: the detritus of civilization framing two distinct worlds; (Cab 3) The Light Fantastic, Stephanie Bahniuk: a homey space grown creepy with uncanny happenings; (Cab 17) Fireflies, Anna Grigo: a kitchen aching with nostalgia; (Cab 18) Alma, Elsa GibsonBraden: a convincingly homey apartment, with kitchen; and . . . (Cab 14) Novios, Gerardo Díaz Sánchez: a restaurant kitchen as the center of the universe.

Lighting Design: (Cab 3) The Light Fantastic, Emma Deane: effects for the sake of suspense and surprise; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), Nic Vincent: poetic and impressive, suggesting the passing of time; (Cab 14) Novios, Nic Vincent: a range of moods in the same locale; (Cab 15) Avital, Ryan Seffinge: playfully creating a unique performance space; and . . . (Cab 17) Fireflies, Riva Fairhall: the light streaming across the kitchen late in the play nailed it for me.

Projection Design: (Cab 4) Untitled Ke$ha Project, Elena Tilli: fun on all fronts, a multi-media party; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), Yaara Bar: a subtle and transcendent effect; (Cab 11) The Rules, Camilla Tassi & Elena Tilli: scenic, abstract, a visual tapestry; (Cab 15) Avital, Erin Sullivan & Matthias Neckermann: when life becomes a cartoon and a newsfeed; and . . . (Cab 17) Fireflies, Nicole E. Lang: the skyscapes to the side were effective, but when they came into the kitchen…

Sound Design: (Cab 1) The Purple Flower, Liam Bellman-Sharpe, Emily Duncan Wilson: otherworldly and direct, enabling a protracted myth; (Cab 3) The Light Fantastic, Andrew Rovner: uncanny and surprising, enabling suspense; (Cab 4) Untitled Ke$ha Project, Megumi Katayama: propulsive and upbeat, enabling voice and dance; (Cab 17) Fireflies, Kathy Ruvuna: unsettling and dark, inspiring foreboding; and . . . (Cab 11) The Rules, Dakota Stipp: inventive, interactive, creating an inspired environment.

Use of Music: (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), directed by Danilo Gambini: when Ilia Isorelýs Paulino sang “Eye on the Sparrow”; (Cab 7) It’s Not About My Mother, directed by Sam Tirrell: Stevie Nicks incarnate! and I was never much of a fan; (Cab 14) Novios, directed by Amandla Jahava and Sohina Sidhu: kitchen percussion, among other dance measures; (Cab 15) Avital, directed by Michael Breslin: from ABBA to Barbra and on; and . . . (Cab 4) Untitled Ke$ha Project, directed by Latiana “LT” Gourzong: I don’t know this music, gotta admit, but “Hymn” and “Tik Tok” worked, and I’d rather watch a dance-off than a karaoke contest…

Original Music: (Cab 8) Taking Warsan Shire Out of Context on the Eve of the Great Storm, Aaron Levin, Composer: my favorite aspect of this oddly challenging play; (Cab 16) Exit Interview, Christopher Gabriel Núñez aka Anonymous (And.On.I.Must), Beats by The Brainius: a surprising range of moods, from aggressive to vulnerable to uplifting; (Cab 16) Untitled semi-improvised dance/music piece, Sarah Xiao and Liam Bellman-Sharpe: no, I don’t really know what it was aiming for, but I was fascinated the entire time; (Cab 16) UNAMUSED: a feminist musical fantasia…, Book, Music & Lyrics by Sam Linden: a cute feminist musical fantasia; and . . . (Cab 9) The Whale in the Hudson, Liam Bellman-Sharpe, Music Director; Brad McKnight, Music: an utterly charming use of music and song, in an epic kids’ mystery based on real life.

Costumes: (Cab 1) The Purple Flower, Mika H. Eubanks: sometimes a character is in a hat, but it’s got to be the right hat; (Cab 4) Untitled Ke$ha Project, Yunzhu Zeng: fanciful, fun, and the robe “LT” wore was worthy a prize-fighter; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), April M. Hickman: restrained, austere, and evocative of a range of places; (Cab 11) The Rules, April Hickman & Yunzhu Zeng: the transformation of Arthur was simply stunning; and . . . (Cab 17) Fireflies, Mika H. Eubanks, with hair by Earon Nealey: it’s rare to have costume changes like this in a Cab show, and all so appropriate.

Acting Ensemble: (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), Abubakr Mohamed Ali, Rachel Kenney, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino: incredibly effective round-robin sequences and intense character studies; (Cab 10) School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play, Moses Ingram, Wilhemina Koomson, Kineta Kunutu, Gloria Majule, Alexandra Maurice, Vimbai Ushe, Adrienne Wells, Malia West: some are actors, some aren’t but this cast created a vivid dynamic, funny and mean and lovable; (Cab 13) Lenny’s Fast Food Kids Gang, Holiday, Daniel Liu, Bre Northrup, Julian Sanchez, Madeline Seidman, Malia West: a range of actors trying to figure out who they really are and were; (Cab 14) Novios, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Raul Díaz, Christopher Gabriel Nuñez, John Evans Reese, Gregory Saint Georges, Devin White, Jecamiah M. Ybañez: bilingual, multiracial, with a striking group energy and individual interactions; and . . . (Cab 3) The Light Fantastic: Stephen Cefalu, Jr., Noah Diaz, Gregory Saint Georges, Moses Ingram, Doireann Mac Mahon, Anula Navlekar, Adrienne Wells; a dream cast in a somewhat unmanageable tale of fate and second chances (kudos to director Molly FitzMaurice for bringing this to the Cab).

Actors: (Cab 2) Fade, Dario Ladani Sánchez: a reserved working guy with something to hide and something to lose; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), Abubakr Mohamed Ali: an elusive, mysterious figure, full of quiet charisma, and a priest out of his depth; (Cab 14) Novios, Jecamiah M. Ybañez: the loose cannon, a man of passion and talent making a big discovery; (Cab 17) Fireflies, Manu Kumasi: the nuances of a man of faith and progress who can still be a bully at home; and . . . (Cab 15) Avital, Michael Breslin: performance as provocation and seduction delivered with fragile irony, and funny as hell.

Michael Breslin in Avital, Yale Cabaret

Actresses: (Cab 2) Fade, Juliana Aiden Martínez: a mercurial woman on the way up, and, in general, writers are not to be trusted; (Cab 7) It’s Not About My Mother, Amandla Jahava: holy fuck, whatever she’s got—figure out how to bottle and sell it! (Cab 10) School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play, Moses Ingram: you aren’t supposed to like her, but then you do; a performance that stayed with me; (Cab 18) Alma, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino: a powerful showcase as all the mothers everywhere, just trying to stay here; and . . . (Cab 1) The Purple Flower  and Fireflies (Cab 17), Ciara Monique McMillian: in the first, she was all the men; in the second, she was all woman, in both cases, memorable.

Ciara Monique McMillian in Fireflies, Yale Cabaret

Directing: (Cab 1) The Purple Flower, Aneesha Kudtarkar: a varied cast played essentially by two actors in an amazing concert of types and archetypes; (Cab 5) Agreste (Drylands), Danilo Gambini: a bracingly rhythmic approach, full of portent; (Cab 10) School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play, Christopher D. Betts: a play about intergenerational group dynamics brought off with great ensemble work; (Cab 11) The Rules, Zachry J. Bailey: an offbeat highpoint of the season in its amorphous approach to theater; and . . . (Cab 14) Novios, Amandla Jahava & Sohina Sodhu: two third-year actors direct with great feeling a large cast at work, at love, and in strife with their place in life.

For overall Productions:

Cab 1: A thoughtful and poetic play, unproduced and mostly forgotten, delivered with consummate skill as a challenging opening to Cabaret 51: The Purple Flower by Marita Bonner; conceived by Mika H. Eubanks and Aneesha Kudtarkar; directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar; Producer: Caitlin Crombleholme; Co-Dramaturgs: Christopher Audley Puglisi, Sophie Siegel-Warren; Stage Manager: Olivia Plath; Scenic Designer: Lily Guerin; Lighting Designer: Nicole E. Lang; Sound Designer: Liam Bellman-Sharpe, Emily Duncan Wilson; Costume Designer: Mika H. Eubanks; Movement Director: Leandro Zaneti; Technical Director: Alex McNamara;; Cast: Ciara Monique McMillian, Adrienne Wells, Devin White, Patrick Young

Cab 11: What do you do when the avant-garde becomes “classic” and then declassé: make new rules? An exhilarating production, “old school” Cab: The Rules by Charles Mee; adapted by Dakota Stipp, Zachry J. Bailey, Alex Vermillion, Evan Hill; directed by Zachry J. Bailey; Producers: Caitlin Crombleholme & Eliza Orleans; Dramaturgs: Evan Hill & Alex Vermillion; Stage Manager: Sam Tirrell; Scenic Designer: Sarah Karl; Lighting Designer: Evan Christian Anderson; Sound Designer & Composer: Dakota Stipp; Costume Designers: April Hickman & Yunzhu Zeng; Projection Designers: Camilla Tassi & Elena Tilli;; Technical Director: Mike VanAartsen; Cast: Robert Hart, David Mitsch, Adrienne Wells

Cab 14: Poetic, mysterious, and as vivid as real life, full of fun, tension, and passion—and it was only the first half!: Novios by Arturo Luis Soria III; directed by Amandla Jahava & Sohina Sidhu; Producer: Estefani Castro; Dramaturg: Nahuel Telleria; Stage Manager: Fabiola Feliciano-Batista; Choreographer & Intimacy Coach: Jake Ryan Lozano; Scenic Designer: Gerardo Díaz Sánchez; Costume Designer: Matthew Malone; Lighting Designer: Nic Vincent: Projection Designer: Sean Preston; Sound Designer: Andrew Rovner; Technical Director: Martin Montaner V.; Cast: Nefesh Cordero Pino, Raul Díaz, Christopher Gabriel Nuñez, John Evans Reese, Gregory Saint Georges, Devin White, Jecamiah M. Ybañez

Cab 17: The play itself is a bit overwrought in its dramatic arc—but the cast and crew upped the ante for Cab shows: Fireflies by Donja Love; directed by Christopher D. Betts; Producer: Dani Barlow; Dramaturg: Sophie Greenspan; Stage Manager: Zachry J. Bailey; Scenic Designer: Anna Grigo; Costume Designer: Mika H. Eubanks; Projection Designer: Nicole E. Lang; Sound Designer: Kathy Ruvuna; Lighting Designer: Riva Fairhall; Technical Directors: Chimmy Anne Gunn & Francesca DeCicco; Fight Choreographer: Michael Rossmy; Hair: Earon Nealey; Cast: Manu Kumasi, Ciara Monique McMillian

And…

Cab 5: Part folktale, part mystery play; a magisterially achieved story of transformation and the miracle of love—regardless of what kind of body it wears: Agreste (Drylands) by Newton Moreno, translated by Elizabeth Jackson; directed by Danilo Gambini; Producer: Jaime F. Totti; Dramaturg: Maria Inês Marques; Stage Manager: Cate Worthington; Set Designers: Alexander McCargar and Sarah Karl; Costume Designer: April M. Hickman; Lighting Designer: Nic Vincent; Sound Designer: Emily Duncan Wilson; Projections Designer: Yaara Bar; Technical Director: Martin Montaner V.; Cast: Abubakr Mohamed Ali, Rachel Kenney, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino

Special honorary citations: Cabaret Heroes: working on three shows in a season at the Cab is not uncommon, so most of these have surpassed that number, and/or worked in varied positions: Ciara Monique McMillian appeared in three shows in lead roles; Amandla Jahava appeared in two shows, contributed content to one, and co-directed a third; Kat Yen directed two shows, providing sound design for one, and wrote and performed a third; Stephanie Bahniuk worked as a set designer for two shows, costume designer on a third, and co-conceived a fourth; April Hickman designed costumes for three shows and co-conceived a fourth she appeared in; Olivia Plath worked as stage manager on three shows and directed a fourth; Zachry J. Bailey worked as stage manager on three shows and directed and co-adapted a fourth; Liam Bellman-Sharpe was sound designer on two shows, music conductor on a third, and was co-conceiver, composer, and performer in a fourth; Adrienne Wells acted in four shows and provided a voice-over for a fifth; Mika H. Eubanks was costume designer on four shows and co-conceived two others, appearing in one.

The Yale Cabaret has entered its sixth decade, going strong! Great thanks and grateful acknowledgment to all who took part and who came out for the shows.

Next year’s team, for Yale Cabaret 52, are Co-Artistic Directors Zachry J. Bailey, Brendan Burton, Alex Vermillion, and Managing Director Jaime F. Totti; they’ll take over after the long-awaited return of the Yale Summer Cabaret, or “Verano,” with Co-Artistic Directors Danilo Gambini and Jecamiah M. Ybañez and Managing Director Estefani Castro, which will feature: Euripides’ Bakkhai, in Anne Carson’s translation, directed by Danilo Gambini, June 6-15; The Conduct of Life by María Irene Fornés, directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez, June 20-29; The Swallow and the Tomcat by Jorge Amado, adapted and directed by Danilo Gambini, July 18-27; and Latinos Who Look Like Ricky Martin by Emilio Rodriguez, directed by Jecamiah M. Ybañez, August 8-17.

Yale Cabaret
September 2018-April 2019

A Well-Mannered Music Man

Review of The Music Man, The Goodspeed

Watching The Music Man, now in a colorful revival at The Goodspeed, directed by Jenn Thompson, is to be transported to a quintessential American myth: the insular small-town invaded by invidious forces from without. It’s the story of a town—against modernization, against outsiders, against any defiance of the status quo—that says a lot about the ethos of the heartland. It’s played for laughs, sure, and in this version of the venerable musical, the town has been integrated—a nod to the progressive aspects of Iowa. Still, “Stubborn, Iowa” expresses the attitude of the place. It’s not about to change, much—and neither has this time-honored musical.

Harold Hill (Edward Watts), center, and the cast of The Goodspeed’s production of The Music Man, directed by Jenn Thompson (photo by Diane Sobolewski)

Into River City comes “Professor” Harold Hill (Edward Watts). He takes up the challenge of hoodwinking the locals with his particular brand of chicanery after hearing Iowa described as nearly impregnable. That’s in the opening scene, the song “Rock Island” an acapella wonder that gets us off to a rousing start, as a group of salesmen bemoan their lot in life, with Hill mentioned as the scoundrel who gives them all a bad name.

Olin Hill (Kent Overshown), Ewart Dunlop (Jeff Gurner), Oliver Hix (C. Mingo Long), Jacey Squires (Branch Woodman) (photo by Diane Sobolewski)

It’s not long before we’re running through all the well-known chestnuts from this packed score—“Ya Got Trouble,” “76 Trombones,” “’Til There Was You,” “Gary, Indiana,” and, particularly enjoyable here, the barbershop quartet numbers featuring Branch Woodman, C. Mingo Long, Jeff Gurner, and Kent Overshown. Mostly everyone is equal to their tasks, making these wonderful tunes captivate, but the story never quite seems to catch fire. In part that’s because Watts’ Hill, good-looking to a fault, seems like a less than confident confidence man. He’s merely competent rather than compelling. He should own this thing because, after all, it’s Hill’s change in attitude that drives the whole locomotive here. We expect him to be cavalier only to become complicit in his own undoing—which might be the making of him. Here he’s too well-mannered so that we never really question his motives.

Marion (Ellie Fishman), Harold Hill (Edward Watts) (photo by Diane Sobolewski)

As Marion “the librarian” Paroo, the love interest who takes a shine to Hill (though she early discovers his lack of bona fides), Ellie Fishman is winsome, delivering her songs, like “My White Knight,” with all the sweetness required and playing hard-to-get with aplomb, though you might find yourself wishing she had a few more solos. She acts more blithely indifferent than alienated by the gossip going the rounds.

Marion (Elliie Fishman), Mrs. Paroo (Amelia White), Winthrop Paroo (Alexander O’Brien)

As the lisping Winthrop Paroo, Alexander O’Brien is engaging and the other children handle themselves well, including Katie Wylie as Amaryllis. There’s some wonderful support by Stephanie Pope as Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn, the mayor’s wife and the local grande dame, by Amelia White as Mrs. Paroo, and by the ladies who gossip, doing their “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little” number full justice.

Maud Dunlop (Kelly Berman), Mrs. Squires (Victoria Huston-Elem), Marion (Ellie Fishman), Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn (Stephanie Pope), Ethel Toffelmier (Cicily Daniels) (photo by Diane Sobolewski)

In fact, it’s the group numbers that are best here—the quartet, the ladies (and both groups move down the aisles to let us sample their dulcet tones up close)—and also the worked up dance numbers, especially Juson Williams, as Hill’s crony Marcellus, leading the teens in “Shipoopi” with rakish charm.

Marcellus Washburn (Juson Williams) and the cast of The Music Man (photo by Diane Sobolewski)

The scenery by Paul Tate DePoo III is lively and the costumes by David Toser are jaunty. The staging and choreography, by Patricia Wilcox, can feel a little crowded at times, and the whole production feels more respectful than revivified. The stubbornness of Iowa might have infected the whole, or it might be that the very reason to revive this show—to wink at middle-America’s long-established and greatly to be mourned love affair with con artists—requires a bit more bite and less reverence. Like the man said, ‘you gotta know the territory!’

Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn (Stephanie Pope, standing second from left) and the cast of The Music Man

 The Music Man

Book, Music, and Lyrics by Meredith Willson
Story by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey
Directed by Jenn Thompson
Music Direction by Michael O’Flaherty
Choreography by Patricia Wilson

Scene Design: Paul Tate dePoo III; Costume Design: David Toser; Lighitng Design: Paul Miller; Sound Design: Jay Hilton; Wig & Hair Design: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Assistant Music Director: F. Wade Russo; Orchestrations: Dan DeLange; Production Manager: Erica Gilroy; Production Stage Manager: Bradley G. Spachman; Producer: Donna Lynn Cooper Hilton

Cast: D. C. Anderson, Iman Barnes, Kelly Berman, Elizabeth Brady, Cicily Daniels, Shawn Alynda Fisher, Ellie Fishman, Damien Galvez, Jeff Gurner, Maddiekay Harris, Victoria Huston-Elem, Elise Kowalick, Ryan Lambert, Danny Lindgren, C. Mingo Long, Matthew B. Moore, Alexander O’Brien, Kent Overshown, Stephanie Pope, Raynor Rubel, William Daniel Russell, Benjamin Sears, Edward Watts, Amelia White, Corben Williams, Juson Williams, Branch Woodman, Katie Wylie

The Goodspeed
April 12-June 20, 2019

Be the Change

Review of Cadillac Crew, Yale Repertory Theatre

The links between the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter movement begun in the 2010s are dramatized in Toni Sampson’s intensely questioning play, Cadillac Crew, now in its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre, directed by Sampson and Jesse Rasmussen. An early staged reading of the play, directed by Rasmussen, took place at the Yale Summer Cabaret when Sampson and Rasmussen were rising third-years at the Yale School of Drama in 2016.

In the play’s first part, four women tease and taunt each other while working together in a civil rights office in Virginia in the early 1960s. Rachel (Chalia La Tour) is the dedicated leader, bossy, prim, always with her eye on the prize; Dee (Ashley Bryant) is the eldest, a mother and a wife, and more phlegmatic than the rest; Sarah (Brontë England-Nelson) is the white girl, descendant of a suffragette, but with a backstory only Rachel knows; and Abby (Dria Brown) is the youngest, her sensibility closer to our times than the times she’s living in. Which means she has most of the funny lines.

Sarah (Brontë England-Nelson), Dee (Ashley Bryant), Abby (Dria Brown), Rachel (Chalia La Tour) in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Cadillac Crew, directed by Jesse Rasmussen and Tori Sampson (photo by Joan Marcus)

While establishing the where, when, and what of these women’s lives, Sampson engages with issues and draws out character. Asides, such as the fact that Rosa Parks became a figurehead for the civil rights movement because of her looks and because an earlier activist who made the same protest was unmarried and pregnant, rub against bits of personality, such as Rachel’s efforts to write speeches; Abby’s crush on James Dean and her assumption that Rachel is a lesbian; Dee’s decision to give her twelve-year-old daughter a penknife when the girl has to attend a mostly white school (as a weak local effort to comply with desegregation); and Sarah’s way of worming the truth out of Abby while hinting at a truth of her own.

Throughout the play, La Tour’s Rachel provides important moments of emotional focus with impressive presence, while Brown’s Abby keeps up a welcome buoyancy, as when she steps up to mimic a lead singer, telling Dee she’s too old and Sarah she’s too white to sing lead. As Act 1 closes, a shocking atrocity against a “Cadillac crew” (a desegregated carload of women on the road to register voters) galvanizes the women as Rachel, with keen defiance, resolves to form another crew and take to the road.

Dee (Ashley Bryant), Abby (Dria Brown), Sarah (Brontë England-Nelson) (photo by Joan Marcus)

After intermission, Jessie Chen’s realistic office set becomes a more schematic space representing a road and the front end of a car, framed by areas for Rasean Davonte Johnson’s gloomy projections of roads, woods, and weeds illuminated by car lights. Dialogue comes to a standstill as the women offer pages from their journals, then, under the threat of prowling white men, the crew gets stuck when the car breaks down. Some new elements come to light but a significant testing of the women’s resolutions and solidarity (that seemed likely at the end of Act 1, arguably) never materializes.

After a projection-collage of timely items, we find ourselves in the era in which Sampson wrote the play, in response to events that gave rise to Black Lives Matter in 2013, with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, and the 2014 protests in Ferguson, MO after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer. We watch a broadcast where three women who are major figures in Black Lives Matter—Opal Tometi (Brown), Patrisse Cullors (Bryant), and Alicia Garza (La Tour)—speak out to a journalist (England-Nelson). Accompanied by a pyrotechnic display of thunder and lighting, the three guests read a utopian text that makes a request to dream a sacred America, “an America where you are not better than but equal to”—words penned by Rachel in 1974, now held up as inspiration going into election 2016. And, by extension, the next one.

Dee (Ashley Bryant), Rachel (Chalia La Tour), Abby (Dria Brown) (photo by Joan Marcus)

The challenge of societal injustice confronts all the characters in Cadillac Crew at every turn, even as they all work to offset its worse effects, work the play joins as though an exemplary fulfillment of Rachel’s hopes. One of Sampson’s key points is that women like those we meet in Act 1 have been erased from history, but the play erases these women in turn, as the effort to delineate personal histories, as in the play’s plot-heavy 1960s, is jettisoned for the public voices and hashtag slogans of the current friending and sharing climate. In its conclusion, the play offers theater that, like Karen Hartman’s Good Faith staged at Yale Rep earlier this year, takes on our times with as little filter as possible. The effect is a bit like being accosted to sign a petition or make a donation, or, indeed, to vote—or take to the streets.

As Rachel says early on, criticizing high-minded rhetoric that lacks practical application: “Without demands or a plan to infiltrate, it’s merely a performance. I can go to the theater for all that.” It’s at least an irony—whether deliberate or not—that Rachel’s own words, late in the play, become the basis for just such a theatrical performance by rights activists. When demands occur within theater, it is up to the individual viewer to determine the force of the interpellation, and how effective a performance is as a means to command change.

With its unflinching effort to incorporate the long history of racial injustice since its alleged end with the phasing out of Jim Crow laws, Cadillac Crew aims to be a telling provocation, but its discursive quality makes for a labored transition from page to stage.

Cadillac Crew
By Tori Sampson
Directed by Jesse Rasmussen and Tori Sampson

Scenic Designer: Jessie Chen; Costume Designer: Matthew R. Malone; Lighting Designer: Kathy A. Perkins; Sound Designer: Andrew Rovner; Projection Designer: Rasean Davonte Johnson; Production Dramaturgs: Amy Boratko, Sophie Siegel-Warren; Technical Director: Alexandra McNamara; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Ron Carlos; Stage Manager: Olivia Louise Tree Plath

Cast: Dria Brown, Ashley Bryant, Bronté England-Nelson, Chalia La Tour

Yale Repertory Theatre
April 26-May 18, 2019

A Beautiful Day in the Barrio

Review of In the Heights, Westport Country Playhouse

Westport Country Playhouse opens its 2019 season with a crowd-pleaser. In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, directed and choreographed by Marcos Santana, is a lively look back at a certain time and place, full of the kind of evocative nostalgia that becomes the stuff of myth—or of musicals.

We may be forgiven for looking back at the 1990s as a more innocent time. Set in July 1999, when an eighteen-hour blackout hit Washington Heights, where the action takes place, the musical evokes the summer heat and the way a neighborhood meets its daily challenges. There are many subplots—some are romantic, some economic, but most have to do with proving oneself and with learning to meet new challenges.

Nina (Didi Romero), Benny (Gerald Caesar), Graffitti Pete (Edward Cuellar), Usnavi (Rodolfo Soto), Piragua Guy (Paul Aguirre), Sonny (Ezequiel Pujols), Ensemble (Randy Castillo), Vanessa (Nina Victoria Negron), and Ensemble (Sarita Colon) in Westport Country Playhouse’s production of In the Heights (photo by Carol Rosegg)

At the center of it all is Usnavi, an outgoing bodega owner, played with eager energy by Rodolfo Soto. His rapping intro to the barrio in the show’s title song is matched by many moving bodies, becomingly clad in Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s eye-catching costumes, and parading in Santana’s dance moves across the atmospheric set by Adam Koch. We’re off to a vivid start.

Carla (Amanda Robles), Daniela (Sandra Marante), Nina (Didi Romero), and Vanessa (Nina Victoria Negron) (photo by Carol Rosegg)

At the heart of the story is Nina, played with delicate grace by Didi Romero; she’s the girl who made good by earning a scholarship to Stanford, now she’s back with a secret and finds a budding romance with Benny (Gerald Caesar), a worker at her father’s cabstand. Romero brings a lyrical sweetness to her numbers, “Breathe” and “Everything I Know,” and to her duets with Benny that book-end Act 2, “Sunrise” and “When the Sun Goes Down.” Nina’s parents, Kevin (Tony Chiroldes) and Camila (Doreen Montalvo), each get a standout number in Act 1 and Act 2, respectively. For Chiroldes, it’s Kevin’s melancholy “Inútil (Useless),” a theme song for fathers everywhere, and for Montalvo it’s “Enough,” Camila’s theme song for mothers tired of family bickering.

Miranda has a knack for putting the stuff of everyday life into pithy song, and he makes sure there’s a place in the show for all aspects of the neighborhood he’s at pains to depict. “Pacienca y Fe (Patience and Faith),” sung by the neighborhood’s “abuela” Claudia (Blanca Camacho, perfectly cast) is in many ways the theme song for the neighborhood’s mix of immigrants and their descendants from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba and elsewhere. One of the most touching moments comes early in Act 2 when Usnavi and Claudia join in acknowledging the “Hundreds of Stories” in the barrio.

Usnavi (Rodolfo Soto), Abuela Claudia (Blanca Camacho) (photo: Carol Rosegg)

There’s also a big club number, which lets the kids dress up, to close out Act 1, followed by some violence and chaos during the blackout, and even a willful celebration of Carnaval, led by Daniela (Sandra Marante), who also encapsulates gossip as a lingua franca at her hair salon, with “No Me Diga.” The dances are led by Alison Solomon and make the most of Westport’s wide, deep stage. Domonic Sack’s soundstage, however, seems not quite up to the challenge of Westport’s barnlike space as some of the voices don’t come across with the requisite precision in the mix.

Santana, who choreographed Westport’s Man of La Mancha last season, here gets to take on a more upbeat musical. In the Heights lacks any darker dramatic tension, comprised of the kind of everyday challenges that only glance at issues of racism and the need for political action. Miranda and Alegría Hudes prefer to make the show a love letter to the barrio with the kind of united front common to sit-coms and Disney musicals. Usnavi, as the role Miranda originated, keeps a positive focus and Soto imbues him with a wide-eyed hope that makes him decide that his ticket out can just as easily be a reason to stay.

In the Heights is nothing if not celebratory, giving to an area previously depicted primarily in terms of gangs, crime and drugs a feel for its joy and strong ties—encapsulated by the moving “Everything I Know,” where moving on and taking the past along is key to the immigrants’ experience, handed down as legacy for the young and beautiful inhabitants in the heights.

Nina (Didi Romero), Benny (Gerald Caesar) (photo: Carol Rosegg)

In the Heights
Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Book by Quiara Alegría Hudes
Directed and choreographed by Marcos Santana

Scenic Design: Adam Koch; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: María-Cristina Fusté; Sound Design: Domonic Sack; Music Director: Daniel Green; Associate Choreographer: Alison Solomon; Props Master: Alison Mantilla; Production Stage Manager: Jason Brouillard

Musicians: Aron Caceres, bass; Ernie Fortunato, guitar; Alex Giosa, drums; Daniel Green, keyboard; Christopher Gurr, keyboard II; Simon Hutchings, reeds; Chris Rinaman, trombone; Les Rogers, trumpet; Arei Sekiguchi, percussion

Cast: Paul Aguirre, Gerald Caesar, Blanca Camacho, Randy Castillo, Tony Chiroldes, Sarita Colon, Edward Cuellar, Jonté Jaurel Culpeppr, Melissa Denise Lopez, Sandra Marante, Doreen Montalvo, Nina Victoria Negron, Ezequiel Pujols, Amanda Robles, Didi Romero, Marco Antonio Santiago, Alison Solomon, Rodolfo Soto

Westport Country Playhouse
April 23-May 19, 2019

Amazing Journey

Review of Tommy, Seven Angels Theatre

This year marks fifty years since The Who released their “rock opera” Tommy. Composed primarily by Pete Townshend, the band’s lead guitarist, the album told a story in song over two LPs. The story could feel a bit sketchy at times, but the main gist was that a young boy—Tommy—witnesses an act of violence and suffers a traumatic reaction: he goes deaf, dumb, and blind in defense. But that defense makes him highly vulnerable to certain unsavory characters around him, such as “wicked Uncle Ernie” and cousin Kevin, a bully. As Tommy becomes a teen he astounds the locals with his incredible skill at playing pinball. The eventual realization that his affliction is psychosomatic leads to a “miracle cure,” and he becomes “a sensation” as the spokesman for the value of an inner life cut off from the outer world. He founds a “holiday camp” where kids can experience sensory deprivation and learn to play pinball—until his followers become a mob in revolt and destroy the place, leaving Tommy to sing beseechingly to his own higher self, or to God, or to a guru (Townshend at the time was a follower of Meher Baba, an Avatar of God).

That, more or less, is the story that was translated into a film by Ken Russell in 1975. Then, in the early 1990s, Townshend with Des McAnuff, wrote the Book for a Broadway version. Called The Who’s Tommy, the show won five Tony awards and was nominated for an additional six. In this version, Tommy suffers the same affliction but the ending is much different. Instead it’s as if, at the end of Jesus Christ Superstar, the crowd calling for Christ’s crucifixion said “to hell with it” and left, and Pilate, relieved, sent Jesus home to his family and friends. In other words, Jesus Christ Superstar—the other great rock opera of the period—has to stick to the Gospel. The Who’s album isn’t gospel, and this “kinder, gentler” Tommy seems born of the 1990s’ need to remake the forces of the Sixties in its own image. Tommy doesn’t even get to try acid in this version!

Well, that’s all water under the bridge, or show-biz, we might say. Though a reminder of what was may be worthwhile since many more people—who might be vague about who The Who were—are likely to have seen the Townshend/McAnuff version of Tommy, which is now playing at Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, directed by Janine Molinari, through May 19.

Tommy (Garrison Carpenter) (photo by Paul Roth)

Even without the “flying by Foy” and the razzle-dazzle set constructions of McAnuff’s staging, Tommy at Seven Angels is still “a sensation.” The roles of Tommy as a 4 year old and a 10 year old are handled by RJ Vercellone and Brendan Reilly, respectively, and they are perfectly cast. Tommy as, at first, a vision seen by young Tommy, and then as the grown-up version, is energetically enacted by Garrison Carpenter, who has the looks and the voice to put across Tommy’s pop godhood. He hangs from scenery and struts and beseeches and takes us on “the amazing journey” with a cockiness that never flags.

Janine Molinari’s choreography is crisp and tight and matches well the propulsive rhythms of Townshend’s score. The songs are some of the songwriter’s best in their deliberate recall of show tunes mixed with the grandeur of hymns. “Pinball Wizard,” the first act closer—and the LP’s hit—is a big rave-up as Tommy seems to have found his calling, his skill praised by others in John-the-Baptist-like terms.

clockwise from top: Tommy (Garrison Carpenter), Mrs. Walker (Jillian Jarrett), 4-year-old Tommy (RJ Vercellone), Captain Walker (Ryan Bauer-Walsh) (photo by Paul Roth)

As Tommy’s mother, Mrs. Walker, Jillian Jarrett is plaintive when need be but also handles the lyrical “I Believe My Own Eyes,” in duet with Ryan Bauer-Walsh as Captain Walker, her husband, and mounts well the tension of “Smash the Mirror.” Bauer-Walsh has several fine moments where the father’s concern for his estranged son are quite tangible. Adam Ross Glickman brings such vocal skill and character-actor panache to Uncle Ernie it’s a shame there aren’t more songs for him. Likewise Keisha Gilles’ show-stopping Acid Queen: she’s such a presence we might find ourselves hoping she’ll break into character again when she’s onstage briefly as a nurse. As the Specialist, Will Carey has a certain wild-eyed charm singing “Go to the Mirror, Boy,” (one of my favorite tunes in the show).

Speaking of favorite tunes, I’ll never be able to acclimatize myself to what becomes of “Sally Simpson”—originally a wonderfully witty set-piece narrative of a fan’s ill-fated effort to get close to her idol, it becomes a weak gesture at a romantic interest, though Rachel Oremland does Sally full justice. Likewise, in terms of bowdlerization, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” barely recalls the nastiness of the original which makes the show’s conclusion—if you’re paying attention to the words—lacking in drama. That said, the song is a Townshend tour de force and, as it segues seamlessly into “See Me Feel Me”’s kick-out-the-jams climax, the audience—to vary the song’s lyrics—will show excitement on their feet.

And how about that band?  Guitar (Jamie Sherwood), bass (Dan Kraszewski) and drums (Mark Ryan) are the heart-and-soul of The Who’s sound, here fleshed out by conductor Brent C. Mauldin on keyboard 1 and Mark Ceppetelli, associate conductor on keyboard 2, and by Renee Redman on French horn. The voices of the singers—including Jackson Mattek (Cousin Kevin) and many in the ensemble—are all plenty strong enough not to get lost in the rock, and Matt Martin’s sound design is a delight. As are Ethan Henry’s costumes of those bygone years of the post-war look morphing into teddyboys and mods. Daniel Husvar’s scenery comes and goes quickly, making the most of risers and fast changes that make the action move quick and slick.

Colorful, passionate, and still full of the weirdness of an inspired rock savant of the late Sixties, The Who’s Tommy lets Pete Townshend turn the spotlight from the stage to his fans, celebrating “you” (i.e., us) for making his career—and his greatest creation, Tommy—a success. See it, and take a bow.

The Who’s Tommy
Music and lyrics by Pete Townshend
Additional music and lyrics by John Entwhistle and Keith Moon
Book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff
Directed by Janine Molinari

Choreographer: Janine Molinari; Assistant Director: James Donohue; Music Director: Brent Crawford Mauldin; Assistant Choreographer: Boe Wank; Lighting Design: Doug Harry; Scenic Design: Daniel Husvar; Sound Design: Matt Martin; Costume Design: Ethan Henry; Stage Manager: T. Rick Jones

Cast: Richie Barella, Ryan Bauer-Walsh, Will Carey, Garrison Carpenter, Keisha Gilles, Adam Rose Glickman, Jillian Jarrett, Jackson Mattek, Rachel Oremland, Brendan Reilly, RJ Vercellone

Ensemble: Ryan Borgo, Eileen Cannon, Dean Cesari, Bobby Henry, Tony LaLonde, Peter Lambert, Diane Magas, Robert Melendez, Brittany Mulcahy, Patti Paganucci, Kevin L. Scarlett, Madeleine Tommins, Justin Torres

Orchestra: Brent C. Mauldin, conductor/keyboard 1; Mark Ceppetelli, associate conductor/keyboard 2; Dan Pardo and TJ Thompson, associate conductors; Marissa Levy, sub: keyboard 2; Renee Redman, French horn; Cody Halquist, sub; Jamie Sherwood, guitar; Dan Krazewski, bass; Mark Ryan, drums; Kurt Berglund, sub

Seven Angels Theatre
April 25-May 19, 2019

Struggles of a Son and Artist

Review of My Name is Asher Lev, Playhouse on Park

The clash of cultures is central to the drama of My Name is Asher Lev, adapted by Aaron Posner from the novel by Chaim Potok. Now playing at Playhouse on Park, directed by Joseph Discher, the story shows how a driven painter, Asher Lev, raised by orthodox Jewish parents, struggles to be understood by his people while becoming an artist in “the goyische style.” He paints nudes and crucifixions, subjects which are seen as a betrayal if not outright blasphemy.

Told by Asher himself in direct address to the audience, the story is fraught with disappointments and hopes, success and failure. Much of the early going has Asher recreating his viewpoint as a child, not really understanding why what he’s doing should be a cause for conflict. The play opens with the elder Lev appalled by his son’s drawings of “naked women” and blaming his wife for taking the boy to the art museum. We see how his mother and father are confused by Asher’s talent, recognizing his gift as a child but seeing little purpose for it. As Asher grows older, his father becomes even more dismissive, seeing drawing as a distraction from the important matters of life. The elder Lev serves the Jewish community’s leader, or Rebbe, and in the orthodox view only what the Rebbe approves can be meaningful.

Rivkeh Lev (Stefanie Londino), Asher Lev (Jordan Sobel), Aryeh Lev (Dan Shor) in the Playhouse on Park production of My Name is Asher Lev, directed by Jospeh Discher (photos by Meredith Longo)

At last, in preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, Asher has a meeting with the Rebbe himself who is more benign than might be expected (especially since Asher, as a child, drew a rather unflattering caricature of him). The Rebbe assigns the teenaged Asher to Jacob Kahn, a successful Jewish painter who becomes Asher’s mentor. The most lively aspects of the story are found in Asher’s apprenticeship to Kahn, whom he gradually comes to surpass as an artist. As Kahn says, he doesn’t take on a pupil unless he can “make a David,” referencing Michelangelo’s famous masterpiece. Asher lives up to that challenge, it seems, but manages to create a serious affront to his parents’ sensibilities.

A difficulty in Playhouse on Park’s production is Jordan Sobel’s performance as Asher. He seems too likeable and guileless, so forthright and naïve, that one is hard-pressed to see him as the major artist he becomes. He seems to remain the wide-eyed child amazed by his own gift and barely able to consider how he should regard the feelings of others or his larger obligations. We might see him as a willful child or as the possessor of a talent so large it can’t be suppressed, but all the darker elements of the story—having to do with Asher’s sense of his mother’s afflictions—are rarely given sufficient dramatic weight. The notion that Asher’s art is an invocation of Sitra Achra, or the evil side of human nature, is mentioned as if a school lesson outgrown.

Of the three actors—Sobel plays Asher, all other male roles are played by Dan Shor—Stefanie Londino fares best in making Asher’s mother, Rivkeh, take on dimensions that exist beyond Asher’s view. Otherwise, the characters all seem to be painted entirely in the colors he sees them in: the Rebbe is kindly and stern; Asher’s father is at times a caricature of bullying indifference or of mystified concern; Shor is best as Kahn if only because the artist is mercurial in his approach to his pupil, at times challenging and harsh, at other times fond and encouraging. We sense that Asher never quite grasps the full weight of Kahn’s relation to art.

The tone of the whole is of a sentimental recollection in which the parents seem touchingly or comically out of date; the difficulties between the parents, having to do in part with Rivkeh’s will to continue her deceased brother’s work, come across as a minor subplot. The gravitas that Potok employs as the tone proper to the weighty struggle of religion and art finds, in this adaptation, a much more genial portrayal.

Asher Lev (Jordan Sobel) and model (Stefanie Landino)

Discher’s vision of the play is not aided by David Lewis’ scenic design in the Playhouse thrust space. Much of the action would benefit from more freedom of movement, but in the early going many scenes occur around a table toward the back of the stage. Some of the seats in the wings are forced to regard these scenes through easels set on either side of the stage. The later scenes gain from taking place outside the Lev home, though, for a play that moves around in time and place, dictated by Asher’s memories, the action has a static quality.

In the end, the story of Asher Lev is of an artist trying to see the truth about himself. Since we can’t see his work, we can only view him in terms of his interactions with others. Though he seems satisfied with the story he tells, his audience may find themselves less so.  

My Name is Asher Lev
By Aaron Posner
Adapted from the novel by Chaim Potok
Directed by Joseph Discher

Scenic Designer: David Lewis; Costume Designer: Lisa Steier; Sound Designer: Rider Q. Stanton; Lighting Designer: Joseph Beumer; Associate Lighting Designer: Justin Dudzik; Stage Manager: Mollie Cook; Props Master/Set Dresser: Pamela Lang

Cast: Stefanie Londino, Dan Shor, Jordan Sobel

Playhouse on Park
April 24-May 12, 2019

Home of the Brave

Review of Alma, Yale Cabaret

The final show of Yale Cabaret 51, Alma, by first-year playwright Benjamin Benne, directed by Cat Rodriguez, intervenes subtly into the national discourse about immigration. On the surface, it’s about a mother and daughter experiencing crossed purposes and escalating anxieties about the daughter, Angel (Ciara Monique McMillian), scoring high enough on her SATs to get into USC, but that’s not the whole story. It’s also about Alma (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) worrying about whether or not she will be deported when her daughter turns 21. The context of these concerns—as we are alerted by what seems a haunted TV demonically tuned to FOX and a certain blustering, bigoted presidential candidate—is the U.S. government’s efforts to deport the undocumented.

Benne’s play—a bit like Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls earlier this season—takes what might simply be a charming genre piece about teen life and layers it with the meanings that political reality imposes on normal lives. Every teen, we might say, has enough to worry about when trying to get into college, but here a “catch-22” situation ratchets up the tension: when she turns 21, Angel will be old enough to sponsor Alma, but when Angel turns 21 she will no longer need a parent or guardian, by the rationale of the courts.

The way these issues come to light is handled subtly, and often comically, as the fractiousness of the two women is placed front and center. In a small, homey apartment that graces the Cab stage, Alma treats her daughter both solicitously and domineeringly. She arrives while Angel is out and there’s a dodging of certain issues—where has Angel been, and has she been studying or drinking?—and even an outburst in which Alma wields a flipflop the way some parents wield belts. Paulino, who can be very imposing with a voice that commands attention, delivers as well Paulino’s fragile side, and, notably, her willingness to manipulate her daughter through every emotion possible. She’s a livewire, at times incandescent.

Angel, for her part, gives as good as she gets. She has not been eating well or wisely and at one point barely makes it to the bathroom before she begins puking. She’s then willing to work the pathetic sickie for all its worth, sucking on a frozen pop. Later, after incurring sufficient wrath for the dreaded la chancla, she brings out a plush elephant to curry favor. McMillian has been the angel of the Cab this year with three remarkable performances, beginning with The Purple Flower at the start of the season and concluding with back-to-back shows in weeks seventeen and eighteen.

The play’s dramatic peak arrives with a sudden spike in alarm. While Trump blusters in increasing volume, Alma wails with a power some might reserve for watching an execution. The lights go out and a knock comes upon the door that feels like it has the full force of the most malevolent of ICE agents behind it. To live in fear of that knock is never to experience the “land of the free.” But watching Alma and Angel we are certainly in the home of the brave.

Benne knows how to serve up the sweet, the savory and the bitter, blending the flavors of real family life well to give us a full meal, depicting the bond of love under duress.

Director Rodríguez, who has been a vocal supporter of the anti-deportation defense of Nelson Pinos—living in sanctuary at New Haven’s First and Summerfield Methodist Church since November 2017—hopes the play can be restaged after Nelson’s day in court in Minneapolis in May. For information about Pinos, go here, and for helping with his legal defense costs, go here.

With this production, its eighteenth, Yale Cabaret 51 ends, concluding a season of engaged theater—“cultivating surprise, embracing divergence, and practicing compassion.” Congratulations to Co-Artistic Directors Molly FitzMaurice and Latiana “LT” Gourzong and Managing Director Armando Huipe for an inspiring season well done. The team for Yale Cabaret 52 was announced at the shows last week and will consist of Co-Artistic Directors Zachry J. Bailey, Brandon Burton, and Alex Vermillion, with Managing Director Jaime Totti.

Alma
By Benjamin Benne
Directed by Catherine María Rodríguez

Producer: Eliza Orleans; Scenic Designer: Elsa GibsonBraden; Costume Designer: Phuong Nguyen; Lighting & Projection Designer: Samuel Kwan Chi Chan; Sound Designer: Marisa Areliano; Technical Director: Jenna Hoo; Stage Manager: Zachry J. Bailey

Cast: Ciara Monique McMillian, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino

Yale Cabaret
April 25-27, 2019

New Haven Theater Company Goes Cuckoo

Preview, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, New Haven Theater Company

If you’re a regular at New Haven Theater Company shows, you might remember the time the company built what looked to be a functional luncheonette in their theater space in the back of English Building Markets. That was George Kulp’s set for William Inge’s Bus Stop, which he directed. Last year, there was the set for Neil Simon’s Rumors that turned the space into a two-story living room with numerous doors to slam. That was Kulp’s too.

Beginning this Thursday and running for the next three weekends, the space will be the dayroom at a mental hospital where a host of inmates live placid lives under the purview of a controlling nurse as Kulp directs NHTC’s next offering, Dale Wasserman’s stage adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kulp, who says this is “the most ambitious and challenging” play he’s directed yet, seems to like plays with a lot of characters and a very focused set.

If you were around in the 1970s, you no doubt remember the film version of the novel, directed by Milos Forman, which won Oscars for picture, director, actress (Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched), and actor (Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy), and adapted screenplay. Indeed, the role of McMurphy was easily the most famous of Nicholson’s impressive career—until he took an ax to a bathroom door in The Shining.

McMurphy is a boisterous ne’er-do-well who considers a stint in a mental hospital preferable to prison. His fellow inmates are an odd assortments of “lifers” who prefer the hospital to trying to get along in the outside world. And Nurse Ratched is there to make sure everything runs the way she likes. The confrontations between McMurphy and the nurse become a battleground over the quality of life. In the film, you just have to root for McMurphy as Fletcher’s version of the nurse is so inhumanly impersonal.

Kulp is wary of expectations derived from the film. First of all, the film was adapted from the novel, not from Wasserman’s play. And, while the drama’s trajectory runs much the same, the filmed versions of certain characters sometimes aimed for comic caricature. Kulp stresses that his cast is “very careful” to avoid that pitfall, and that means creating useful backstories for the characters to give them fuller dimension. Which might be a way of saying that Kulp is urging them to put some method in the madness.

McMurphy will be played by Trevor Williams who directed NHTC’s previous offering, Marjorie Prime. Williams acted under Kulp’s direction as the naive cowboy, Bo Decker, in Bus Stop and was one of the two hitman in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter last season, directed by John Watson. McMurphy’s nemesis, the maternal Nurse Ratched, will be played by Suzanne Powers, who worked with Kulp in Rumors.

Other NHTC members on hand include John Watson as Dr. Spivey, who tends to back the authoritarian nurse; Erich Greene, the other hitman in Dumb Waiter, as Cheswick, an anxious patient; and J. Kevin Smith, the obstreperous neighbor in Rumors and the boozing professor in Bus Stop, as Harding, the patient with the most self-control.

That leaves many parts featuring actors who will be appearing in a NHTC production for the first time, though, in most cases, Kulp has worked with each before. They include: Al Bhatt, Tristan Bird, Ralph Buonocore (who appeared in NHTC’s Urinetown), Robert Halliwell, Ash Lago, Empress Makeda, Joseph Mallon, Jodi Rabinowitz, John Strano, and Aaron Volain.

For Kulp, much of the challenge, with so many characters “and so much going on”—including a basketball game—is to keep the play “moving at the right pace.” His approach, he said, is to tell his actors “to go for the moon and then pull back.” The casting is key and his previous experiences with the cast make for a lot of trust.

The play was chosen in part because of its name recognition, its diverse cast, and because, Kulp said, it’s “an entertaining and timely story to tell.” He suggested that the issue of how our society treats mental illness and the play’s convincing sense of “the misuse of authority” are meaningful in our time, as they were when the novel was published in 1963 and when the film version was released in 1975, both key works of the Vietnam era of American culture.

Is it “cuckoo” to place such a largescale play in the New Haven Theater Company’s intimate space? Get your tickets and find out (the play is running for three weekends rather than two because seating is limited).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
By Dale Wasserman, from the novel by Ken Kesey
Directed by George Kulp
New Haven Theater Company
April 25-27, May 2-4, May 9-11

For tickets and info, go here

See my review here

Incendiary Situations

Review of Fireflies, Yale Cabaret

“Behind every great man,” the saying goes, “there is a woman.” Donja R. Love’s Fireflies—at Yale Cabaret, directed by Christopher D. Betts, for two more shows tonight—might be said to alter that adage: “in front of every great woman is a man.” Love shows us a couple where the man, Charles (Manu Kumasi in a Cabaret debut), is an analog for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the woman, Olivia (Ciara Monique McMillian), his long-suffering wife.

Olivia cooks her husband’s food and waits patiently—or not so patiently—at home while he, “the face of the [Civil Rights] movement,” is on the road preaching and uplifting spirits. She’s also carrying his child, and, in fulsome reminiscence, he says he knew she would bear his child from way back when they were children themselves working in tobacco fields. When did she know? When she realized she was pregnant. Olivia rarely plays into her husband’s efforts to script her responses.

In the not-so-distant background of the difficulties faced by Olivia and Charles is the bombing of a church in Alabama that took innocent lives. Charles has been called upon to deliver a eulogy. Olivia is plagued by the sound of bombs—a premonition of some disaster still to come?

On his return home, Charles is flirty and horny, using techniques that likely work with other women; he is met by a range of emotions from Olivia who, though not playing hard to get, is hard for her husband to understand. Ciara Monique McMillian’s Olivia is a delight, even in the portrayal’s darker moods and rousing speeches. McMillian gets out all the nuance there is in this strong role. Charles is far from one note as well, and Kumasi lets us see many sides of the man, not least as a minor tyrant trying to dictate how his wife should feel and the kind of life they should lead. Love writes their interactions well and Betts gets fully engaged performances from his actors.

Eventually we learn that Olivia not only writes the speeches that have earned Charles such a following, she also coaches his delivery of her words. And that’s not all. Olivia, we discover through letters she wrote and never sent, has a sweetheart: a woman named Ruby. This emerges after the FBI thoughtfully sends Olivia a package containing a tape recording, complete with tape player, of Charles getting it on with one of his women of the road. Charles, whom Olivia accuses of always playing tit for tat, uses the letters as a way of worming out of guilt about his infidelities. The story of her attachment to Ruby, plaintive as it may be, gives Olivia the backbone to assert her decision to leave Charles. The upshot is that Olivia—who resented being pregnant—is now determined to terminate the pregnancy.

As Claudius might say, “when sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.” Love’s technique is to pile on racial injustice, spousal mistreatment, a sleazy doctor, dramatic foreboding, and not one but two speeches addressed to God as, seemingly, the author of the couple’s plight. There are also snatches of Charles’ way with Olivia’s speeches, and, in the end, a moving sermon by Olivia that brings into play the notion of fireflies as the spirits of the slain finding their way to heaven. The play could be said to pack a few too many complications into its 90 minute running time, so that the ultimate fate of Charles seems yet another dramatic shift.

At the Cabaret, the set by Anna Grigo packs verisimilitude aplenty, from the GE icebox to the Formica table to the range and sink, a true “kitchen-sink” style presentation. Mika H. Eubanks’ costumes—as ever—strike becoming and appropriate notes, greatly aided by Earon Nealey’s hair. Both actors look so much their parts we feel transported to another era at once. The straight-forward set is magically enhanced by Nicole E. Lang’s projection design, which combines the smoke of explosions with fleecy clouds in a blue sky and fire-streaked clouds that creep at times across the entire set. Riva Fairhall’s lighting helps cue us to the play’s many mood changes, not least the fireflies effect at the end, and the sound design by Kathy Ruvuna makes Olivia’s imaginary bombs viscerally real.

With Yale students and residents taking to the streets this past week to protest police shooting at two local African Americans charged with no crime, the lines in Fireflies that speak to the social straight-jacket imposed on nonwhite lives in America resonate, as intended, from the Jim Crow era of the play, set in 1963, to today. The conviction of the Yale Cabaret production is formidable and its skilled presentation convincingly apropos.

Fireflies
By Donja R. Love
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Dramaturg: Sophie Greenspan; Producer: Dani Barlow; Scenic Designer: Anna Grigo; Costume Designer: Mika H. Eubanks; Projection Designer: Nicole E. Lang; Sound Designer: Kathy Ruvuna; Lighting Designer: Riva Fairhall; Technical Directors: Chimmy Anne Gunn & Frnacesca DeCicco; Stage Manager: Zachry J. Bailey; Fight Choreographer: Michael Rossmy; Hair: Earon Nealey

Cast: Manu Kumasi, Ciara Monique McMillian

Yale Cabaret
April 18-20, 2019

The Book of Mormon is Back

Review of The Book of Mormon, The Palace Theater, Waterbury

Seeing The Book of Mormon, the irreverent and gleefully foul-mouthed Tony-winning musical by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone in a touring production now at the Palace Theater in Waterbury through April 14, is like going to a party—either a party where you know everyone and have fun, or a party where you don’t, and don’t.

Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone’s much-praised The Book of Mormon, at the Palace Theater in Waterbury through April 14

If you do have fun, it’s as at the expense of goofy Mormons and their made-in-the-U.S.A. myth; cartoonish Ugandans, suffering from poverty, AIDS, and a warlord who wants to circumcise all women; a range of references to Disney and Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings; a big seduction moment that features a baptism; a big production number set in a “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” that includes simulated sex with heinous inmates like Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer; and a lengthy fantasia of a foundation myth in which fucking a frog—as a cure for AIDS—is preferable to fucking a baby. The laughs depend on how much of a kick you get from things like the surprise of hearing a glowing Jesus, complete with blonde hair, call the main protagonist “a dick,” or watching a village of Lion King-like Africans sing “Hasa Diga Eebowai” (translated as “Fuck You, God”) instead of “Hakuna Matata,” or seeing the same villagers sport incredibly long black phalloi.

Fans of the show—which has been around since 2011 and has passed through Connecticut before—will find the show given an appropriately discordant setting at the Palace. Looking like a temple of theater, the venue features the kinds of high-tone trappings that help this brash brat of a musical score its points. Those points, while allegedly aimed to outrage the sensitivities of the venerable theater-goer, actually play into all the old familiar territory—the schlemihl proves himself, the bad guys are routed, and the powers that be see that all is not lost. It’s not so much a spoof of Broadway musicals as simply the kind of musical most suitable to the 21st century’s loss of all proprieties.

While some of the bigger numbers can feel a bit perfunctory, there are some musical standouts here, including the aforementioned “Hasa Diga Eebowai,” as well as “Turn It Off,” the Mormons’ paean to keeping unwanted feelings at bay, and the numbers featuring Kayla Pecchioni as Nabulungi, “Sal Tlay Ka Siti,” and “Baptize Me.” The latter also features Jordan Matthew Brown, as Elder Cunningham, the role played originally by Josh Gad, and Brown does well at being goofishly, nerdishly endearing. He becomes the hero due to his talent for “Making Things Up Again,” despite the efforts by his much better-prepared partner—Elder Price (Luke Monday, standing in for Liam Tobin)—to make it all about himself in “You and Me (But Mostly Me).”

The stage is big and often filled with a lot of actors, and the backdrops, costume and props help to keep the show busy. The religious segments—which might put some in mind of the diorama display in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America—are given the kind of gloss Hollywood tends to give to biblical epics, and the stories of Mormon (Tyler Leahy), Joseph Smith (Ron Bohmer), and the angel Moroni (Andy Huntington Jones) might be diverting enough even without the pop epics Elder Cunningham brings into play. Andy Huntington Jones does good work as Elder McKinley, as does Jacques C. Smith as Mafala and Corey Jones as the General.

To not have fun is to find this all more sophomoric than Parker and Stone’s famed adult cartoon South Park. The latter aims to offend and does so with absurdist brio, but what makes it work—when it does—is that the main characters are children, and the mishmash they make of the adult world, together with their joy in whatever is obscene or dirty, pays off. With The Book of Mormon, it helps to maintain the attitude toward religion, sex, bodily functions, and dirty words you might’ve had when you were about eight. In any case, this Broadway smash from the era of adult-sounding President Obama strikes the ear a bit differently in the era of trash-talking President Trump.

The Book of Mormon
Book, Music and Lyrics by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone
Directed by Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker
Choreographed by Casey Nicholaw
Music Supervision and Vocal Arrangements by Stephen Oremus

Scenic Design: Scott Pask; Costume Design: Ann Roth; Lighting Design: Brian MacDevitt; Sound Design: Brian Ronan; Hair Design: Josh Marquette; Orchestrations: Larry Hochman & Stephen Oremus

Cast: Jaron Barney, Ron Bohmer, Isaiah Tyrelle Boyd, Jordan Matthew Brown, Andy Huntington Jones, Corey Jones, Tyler Leahy, Will Lee-Williams, Luke Monday, Monica L. Patton, Kayla Pecchioni, Jacques C. Smith, Teddy Trice

Ensemble: Jaron Barney, Isaiah Tyrelle Boyd, Zach Erhardt, Kenny Francoeur, Jeremy Gaston, Eric Geil, Patrick Graver, Kristen Jeter, Tyler Leahy, Will Lee-Williams, Josh Marin, Stoney B. Mootoo, Monica L. Patton, J Nycole Ralph, Connor Russell, Teddy Trice

The Palace Theater
Waterbury, CT
April 9-14, 2019

Short and Sweet

Review of Girlfriend, TheaterWorks

At 80some minutes, Girlfriend, the newish musical at TheaterWorks, directed by Rob Ruggiero, is short, and, with the music from Nebraska-born musical artist Matthew Sweet featured, it is certainly Sweet. The play, by Todd Almond, is indeed sweet as its boy meets boy story set in Alliance, Nebraska, 1993—while it has drama—is mostly easygoing. The two characters are Will (David Merino), a gay senior in high school, and Mike (CJ Pawlilowski), a still closeted senior. Mike’s opening overture to Will is the gesture of giving him a tape of Matthew Sweet’s LP, Girlfriend (released 1991). The duo’s story is set to Sweet songs mostly from that album.

If this sounds to you like a rather thin Book—take a bunch of songs and construct a story to accompany them—then you and I agree. Unlike some instances of rock we might imagine, Sweet’s songs have the strength of being unprovocative. They can be somewhat propulsive, like the title song, and somewhat lyrical, like “Your Sweet Voice,” and one or two—“Winona,” “Evangeline”—have interesting lyrics. The live band playing them at the back of the stage—Evan Zavada, conductor, keys, vocals; Billy Bivona, guitar 1; Julia Packer, guitar 2, vocals; Adam Clark, bass, vocals; Elliot Wallace, drums—can be as fun to watch as the play’s action.

Will (David Merino), Mike (CJ Pawlikowski) and the band in Girlfriends, directed by Rob Ruggiero, at TheaterWorks, photos courtesy of TheaterWorks

The story is comprised of very static scenes: Will in his bedroom with his boombox; Mike in his with his more imposing all-in-one stereo; the friends sitting in Mike’s car at a drive-in, watching the same film—about a superhero alien whose alter-ego is a nun named Evangeline—night after night. Eventually (spoiler alert!) they do get to Mike’s bedroom while his somewhat domineering father is away (we never meet him, but he seems to be pressuring Mike into maintaining relations with his girlfriend, whom we also never see).

The play insists on being a two-hander so any schoolmates who might sneer at this budding romance never show up. Any threat to the status quo that this same-sex couple poses must be imagined (mostly rude stares from the other guys on the baseball team Mike plays on). All of which is deliberate. This romance isn’t about overcoming parental disapproval (which certainly factors in for all sorts of couples for all sorts of reasons) or about overcoming peer pressure (ditto), but about whether or not Mike really loves Will.

Will (David Merino)

Will, who is played with disarming, outgoing cheer and charm by Merino, is clearly the girl in this relationship. He sits at home waiting to be asked out; when he is, he always goes. His passivity might be seen as comic, or pathetic. Here, it just is. The implication is that, as a gay boy in a predominantly hetero culture, he has to take what he can get. What he gets is Mike’s vacillations. Is giving music to someone a sexual overture? Depends. Is going to the drive-in together an invitation to make-out? Depends. What the play mostly explores is the gray area of that “depends.” Will lets us know he’s up for it but not enough to make a first move. As Mike, Pawlikowski plays obtuse well. The guy acts like leading Will on is the last thing on his mind, though of course it’s the first thing on Will’s. Whether or not Mike can admit that or not is really the only question here.

It’s all coy and almost-not-quite closeted. We’re waiting for a big breakup or big breakthrough. Things don’t get nasty, but they do get a little more complicated: Mike is off to college; Will, apparently, can’t think of anything better to do than stay in this Nebraskan town some 300 miles from the university in Lincoln. Was this all just an experiment for Mike before moving on?

Mike (CJ Pawlikowski)

Almond’s approach to dialogue is to stick with the demotic. These guys need those songs because they have nothing much to say. The best dialogue is Will trying gently to suggest that the movie isn’t all that good. Indeed, we might easily believe Mike is actually straight since he has so little of interest to say. Will, whatever he may feel for Mike, is clearly slumming.

The opening weekend matinee I saw featured an audience comprised mostly of people who might well have grandchildren the ages of these characters. They seemed warmly touched by the romance. The play might strike with a bit more force played for an audience closer to the boys’ ages. In fact, that would be the perfect audience for this play—and, I suppose, fans of Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend. The band do the songs justice, Merino and Pawlikowski have suitable singing voices, and the sound design, by Joshua D. Reid, is perfectly adapted to the Wadsworth’s auditorium.

Will (David Merino), MIke (CJ Pawlikowski) and the band

Girlfriend
Book by Todd Almond
Music & Lyrics by Matthew Sweet
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Music Direction by Evan Zavada

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Blair Gulledge; Lighting Design: Rob Denton; Sound Design: Joshua D. Reid; Hair: John McGarvey; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: David Merino; CJ Pawlikowski

Band: Evan Zavada, conductor, keys, vocals; Billy Bivona, guitar 1; Julia Packer, guitar 2, vocals; Adam Clark, bass, vocals; Elliot Wallace, drums

TheaterWorks
At the Wadsworth
March 22 to April 28, 2019

Inane Antics of the Idle Rich

Review of Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, Hartford Stage

P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet Jeeves are beloved figures of British fiction. Brought to BBC television, they inspired a popular show in the 1990s that brought them to life via actors Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. I must confess I had never sought out these incarnations.

Onstage at Hartford Stage in the Goodale Brothers’ adaptation, Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, directed, as it was in London, by Sean Foley, the duo are indelibly enacted by Arnie Burton and Chandler Williams, respectively. And wonderful they are in the roles.

Jeeves (Arnie Burton), Wooster (Chandler Williams) in Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, at Hartford Stage, directed by Sean Foley

The conceit of the Goodale Brothers’ stage show is that Bertie has decided to make a play of the tangled story of the cow-creamer—as a one-man show. He soon realizes he’s helpless to tell the story much less dramatize it without Jeeves, who abruptly turns up and also enlists fellow servant Seppings (Eddie Korbich) to flesh out the cast. This means that all the subsidiary roles are played by Burton and Korbich, and that the staging of the varied elements of the story—involving several locations—involves a comic and inventive handling of the illusions of theater. And that means much credit is due Alice Power who handles both Scenic Design and Costume Design (indeed, they are inextricably entwined).

A fireplace is wheeled into place to indicate Wooster’s digs, then, when it becomes a room at the club, a different painting is cranked into place. The entrances and exits are as amusing as anything, involving every possible variety, from graceful to rushed to incorrectly costumed. A recurring gag is that the villain of the piece, a fascist named Strode (patterned on Oswald Mosley, Britain’s leader of the blackshirts--here, blackshorts, a boy’s club) increases in height each time he appears. Played by Korbich as a pint-size dictator, Strode becomes more preposterous with each new appearance—until he is both set and costume. Other characters, such as the newt-enthusiast Gussie Fink-Nottle (Burton), are memorably enacted as well, and there’s much fun with coming in and out of a bedroom by door and window, and, my favorite, a scene in an old roadster with Korbich enacting a man observed in passing. The gags are nonstop.

Wooster (Chandler Williams), Jeeves (Arnie Burton)

Unfortunately, there is also plot aplenty as the play combines elements from two separate tales in The Code of the Woosters, the one involving a cow-creamer, which Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia (Korbich) wants Bertie to “sneer at” to bring down the price, that then falls into the hands of Sir Watkyn Bassett (Burton), a rival collector, and must be pinched, and the other involving a dinner party and Fink-Nottle’s book of notes on Strode and Watkyn-Bassett. The plotting, ingenious as it may be, would seem much ado about little were it not for the diverting techniques of impromptu staging at which the cast is amazingly and breathlessly adroit. If you do want to settle in to follow the path of such MacGuffins as the cow-creamer, the notebook, and a policeman’s helmet you will find yourself checked at every turn by the outrageous and highly professional mocking of amateur theatricals.

When all’s said, I have to say that what I liked best was Chandler’s forthrightly clueless and feckless Bertie Wooster. His appeals to the audience have the brash charm of someone who knows you can’t possibly think too ill of him—privilege, m’boy. Wooster opens Act 2 sitting in a bubble bath and Chandler renders charmingly the sangfroid of someone able to field the impertinence of several hundred prying eyes suddenly present in his bathroom. His Wooster is always the life of the party and very much the guiding spirit of his “one-man show.”

Bertie Wooster (Chandler Williams)

The other great asset is Burton’s Jeeves. No doubt we’ve all seen some version of the stiff-upper-lip of the indefatigable English valet, but Jeeves is more—he’s apt to be psychic about what’s to come, encyclopedic about what has occurred, and never the least bit ruffled even when having to climb in or out windows. It’s all part of serving perfectly, with only the differing amounts of dryness in his tone to let us know his view of the situation.

That said, I wish there were more of the two titular characters interacting, which is really the heart of the thing. I am aware of how readily the Brits must guffaw at males in female wigs and feminine trappings affecting a falsetto—Monty Python did it, Benny Hill did it, and no doubt countless others—but such humor strikes me as a sepia-toned invocation of those glory days when theater was a boys only affair, letting us smirk at the drollery of the masquerade. Granted, a joke isn’t dated if it still makes an audience laugh, and Kobich’s fun with Aunt Dahlia, and Burton’s with Madeline Bassett, an ingenue of the old school, add their charms to the proceedings as well.

Steppings as Aunt Dahlia (Eddie Korbich), Bertie (Chandler Williams)

Still, I was most amused at Bertie’s efforts to convey the intricacies of this perfect nonsense from his point of view, because ultimately, his is the view that matters—everything is on the verge of becoming a disastrous embarrassment that will never happen so long as Jeeves is on the job. With its penultimate show of the season, Hartford Stage offers perfectly silly escapist entertainment—but, as the saying goes, nothing’s perfect. You might find yourself wondering why a giggle at 1930s Britain, complete with fascists on the rise and a baffled upper-crust, should be such a timely target for spoofing.

Steppings (Eddie Korbich), Bertie Wooster (Chandler Williams), Jeeves (Arnie Burton)

Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense
A new play from the works of P.G. Wodehouse
By the Goodale Brothers
Directed by Sean Foley

Scenic Design: Alice Power; Costume Design: Alice Power; Lighting Design: Philip Rosenberg; Sound Design & Original Music: John Gromada; Choreographer: Adam Cates; Dialect Coach: Ben Furey; Production Stage Manager: Lori Lundquist; Assistant Stage Manager: Hope Rose Kelly; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe

Cast: Arnie Burton, Eddie Korbich, Chandler Williams

Hartford Stage
March 21-April 20, 2019

A Dark Cabaret in Norwalk

Review of Cabaret, Music Theatre of Connecticut

As a musical, Cabaret has much to recommend it. The songs by John Kander (music) and Fred Ebb (lyrics) are catchy and full of the charm of the demimonde. Joe Masteroff’s book manages to provide romance while capturing the risks of bohemia and the shock of the rise of Nazism. The story unfolds as a bitter lesson on several fronts, and yet, like its showman of an emcee, it manages to be engaging until all is lost. Played again—in MTC’s second staging of Cabaret—by Eric Scott Kincaid, The Emcee seems less a Mephistophelean overseer of the fortunes of the other characters and more like the portrait of Dorian Gray, suffering more the uglier the situation in Berlin grows. Kincaid’s Emcee looks tortured and tired from the start, an emblem of the Kit Kat Klub’s seediness and its losing effort to deny its days are numbered.

The Emcee (Eric Scott Kincaid) in Music Theatre of Connecticut’s Cabaret, directed by Kevin Connors

The show has a small cast, so there aren’t quite the big dance numbers we might expect, which also gives a realness to a Kit Kat Klub that lacks the glitz and sparkle of Broadway versions. The opening “Willkommen” has plenty of energy, and the dancers are close enough to flirt with audience members or to upbraid them for not flirting enough. Two male dancers, Tony Conaty and Alex Drost, provide the requisite Fossean physicality, and Hillary Ekwall, who plays Fräulein Kost, does a mean split.

Fräulein Kost (Hillary Ekwall), The Emcee (Eric Scott Kincaid), Man 2 (Tony Conaty)

The droll numbers—like “Two Ladies”—have a tawdriness that showcases the unreality of the romance between pining British showgirl Sally Bowles (Desirée Davar) and straitlaced American writer Cliff Bradshaw (Nicolas Dromard). The romance between timid Jewish fruiterer Herr Schultz (Jim Schilling) and pragmatic German landlady Fräulein Schneider (Anne Kanengeiser) has perhaps a better chance of enduring, but that’s where the menace of the rising Nazis becomes most keenly felt. As Ernst Ludwig, Cliff’s student of English lessons, Andrew Foote is disarmingly friendly, even after everyone notices his armband, but as the edicts against Jews escalate, we know there will be violence.

Sally Bowles (Desirée Davar)

As the irrepressible Sally Bowles, Desirée Davar sounds remarkably like Liza Minelli, the most famous Sally, in the big numbers “Maybe This Time” and “Cabaret.” Davar is better in Act II, when emotions begin to take their toll, than she is as the bubbly, flirtatious Sally of Act I. As Cliff, Dromard is also best in Act II, when he begins to see what’s at stake. To Fräulein Schneider falls such great numbers as “So What?” in Act I and “What Would You Do?” in Act II, both trenchant expressions of a life with no illusions and not many choices, but their fatalism exposes the quietism that let the Nazis have their way. Kanengeiser plays the part perfectly, giving the aging fräulein a weary wit. Jim Schilling’s Herr Schultz is a nice match for her. He’s touching in his wooing, and their duet, “Married,” is a fragile, lyrical moment. His insistence that Nazism will pass because “I know the Germans and, after all, what am I? A German” acts as a sad reminder of how deluded even a Jewish merchant could be.

Fräulein Schneider (Anne Kanengeiser), Herr Schultz (Jim Schilling)

Some of the popular songs featured in the film and in other iterations—such as “Money” and “Mein Herr”—are not here, as they weren’t in the initial version of the musical. Instead, “Sitting Pretty” and “Don’t Tell Mama,” both less jaunty, fill those spaces. This is a more chastened Cabaret, and its powerful ending stabs not only with the sorrow that no one gets what they want but with how horribly correct the Nazis were in singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” (here greatly helped by the singing voice of Andrew Foote, who played Jekyll/Hyde with such power earlier this season). Against the Nazis brutal will to power, the call to “come to the Cabaret” is desperate, and Sally’s insistence that she’s “going out like Elsie,” her roommate who ended her life rather than live in an uncaring world, is apropos to the fates we see visited upon Herr Schultz and The Emcee.

The Emcee (Eric Scott Kincaid)

Somber in mood, Kevin Connors’ production of Cabaret is all-too appropriate to times when denial and dancing away a sense of doom are endemic. In that sense, one hopes life isn’t a Cabaret.

Cabaret
Book by Joe Masteroff
Based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood
Music by John Kander, Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Directed by Kevin Connors

Musical Direction: Thomas Conroy; Scenic Design: Kelly Burr Nelson; Lighting Design: RJ Romeo; Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Sound Design: Will Atkin; Prop Design: Merrie Deitch; Choreography: Simone DePaolo; Fight Staging: Dan O’Driscoll; Stage Manager: Gary Betsworth

Cast: Tony Conaty, Desirée Davar, Nicolas Dromard, Alex Drost, Hillary Ekwall, Andrew Foote, Anne Kanengeiser, Eric Scott Kincaid, Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
March 29-April 14, 2019