Wonderful Life

This show rehearsed locally and closes locally, but in between has toured all over the state. I thought this would be a great opportunity to compare reviewers (both professional and APAR-based) from around the region. I'll just post a sampling here, starting with this from The Charlotte Observer; I'm sure NCSC and itp will post the rest on their websites. Hope you enjoy.
BG--

From The Charlotte Observer, Sunday 2nd December 2007

Classic tale, fresh approach
Radio-style staging, sound effects add charm to `Wonderful Life'
by JULIE YORK COPPENS

"You've been given a great gift, Charlotte: a chance to see what the world would be like if you'd never lost your professional regional theater."

At least I think that's what the angel said ...

Could the fine production of "It's a Wonderful Life" now at Spirit Square be a divine visitation meant to keep Charlotte's most depressed theater fans from jumping off a bridge? I know I felt better Saturday, after the first of four performances this weekend by N.C. Stage, a professional company on loan from Asheville. The traveling show, a co-production with Asheville-based immediate theatre project, must lift spirits wherever it plays -- but especially here.

In this 1940s-style, "live radio" stage adaptation by Joe Landry, five gifted and engaging actors in vintage costumes voice the many familiar characters from Frank Capra's Christmas classic: George Bailey, a small-town banker blind to his own worth. His devoted wife, Mary, and their four adorable kids. His uncle Billy, whose dottiness, combined with the greed of town boss Mr. Potter, nearly brings disaster down on the Bailey Building and Loan. Clarence, the apprentice angel assigned to save George from suicide. Ernie the cabbie, Bert the cop, Vi the blond bombshell and all the others in tiny Bedford Falls whose lives would have been poorer, in some cases tragically so, if George had never been born.

Do we really need to experience this story again? Of course.

There's a reason "It's a Wonderful Life" remains an immortal TV presence in December, and this pared-down stage version reminds us of everything we love about the movie, often in surprising ways. How is it possible that an adult actor pretending to be little Zuzu ("Not a smidgen of temperature!") could tug at our hearts even more than 6-year-old Karolyn Grimes does on screen? Or that watching another actor mimic the crack of ice with a branch of bamboo could help us feel the chill of the lake that almost claims George's kid brother, Harry?

That's theater.

Asheville director Hans Meyer -- he also plays Clarence and other parts in the show -- keeps his fellow actors busy scoring this "Playhouse of the Air," as the faux broadcast is billed, with low-tech sound effects. A hand slapping an eggplant: That's Mr. Welch, the teacher's husband, slugging a distraught George in Martini's bar. Sure, it's a gimmick, but Landry's radio-theater approach fits the period and, far from distracting us, refreshes dialogue most viewers already know by heart.

The production's staging might be cute, but the portrayals are clear, earnest and deeply felt. Actor Willie Repoley makes the leading role his own, neither imitating nor departing radically from James Stewart's iconic screen performance. Repoley gets strong support from Lauren Fortuna (Mary), Kathryn Temple (Vi, Zuzu and others) and especially Joe Sturgeon, a man of a thousand voices (from God on down) who would have had a lucrative radio-theater career in another era.

True, Charlotte should be producing more of its own high-quality theater, not importing it from Asheville. But as George learns on that fateful Christmas Eve, when in need, there's no shame in accepting gifts from well-meaning friends. Let's accept this sweet little show as George does his own miracle, with open hearts, and be thankful that the members of N.C. Stage will be using their newly earned wings to fly back to Charlotte soon: In April, they'll bring another play with cinematic roots, Ron Hutchinson's "Gone With the Wind"-inspired comedy, "Moonlight and Magnolias," and in June, Lee Blessing's smart satire of politics and dogs, "Chesapeake."

Godspeed.

Virginia Woolf at HART

I recently came across a blog called wnctheatre.livejournal.com and was delighted to find some reviews of local shows. I have no idea who the blogger is or how to get in touch, so for now I'm posting these without permission. If anyone knows the blogger, please check and see if they mind!
Bernhard Grier--

Who's Vaguely Perturbed by Virginia Woolf

Haywood Arts Repertory Theatre's recently-closed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf left me to answer the titular question with, “Eh, not I.” I am left, perhaps, a little gassy by Virginia Woolf. To be fair, I seemed to be relatively alone in this feeling, as most of the audience exited the theatre in awe, utterly enchanted by this adequate interpretation of the iconic Albee classic. Additionally, several members of the crowd were absolutely guffawing at George and Martha’s acerbic repartee and Martha’s drunken swagger and frequent mugging. While I certainly find the play to be pithy and the dialogue as witty as it is scathing, I’m not sure if the full-out cackle is really the intended effect. If it is, I think the directors and actors certainly incorrectly ascertained the spirit of the show. Several people also commented at being completely riveted the entire three hours plus, while I found myself checking my watch with increasing frequency towards the end of the second act. So take that as you will.

Upon entering the theatre, many of us were struck by the beautiful and detailed set, which included a rather exquisite bar I intend to steal and cram into my tiny apartment (after strapping it to the top of my tiny car) as soon as the show closes. Don’t tell. Aesthetically speaking, the show was quite lovely, if the physical casting a bit odd. Mickey Hanley, portraying Martha with an abundance of sass and attitude, is striking in the role, but we are constantly reminded by Albee’s text that she is to be six years older than her husband, which she very clearly is not. To me, she generally lacked the subtle vulnerability that gives Martha her essential humanity, which leaves us with primarily a caricature of bravado and bluster, followed by an impressive complete emotional breakdown at the end of the show. I wouldn’t say she missed the mark of the character entirely, but there were some dimensions left unexplored. She captured the comedy of the role magnificently and, when the character did finally crack, the effect was fairly devastating. David Hopes was solid as George, unwavering in matching Martha in verbal spars, albeit a bit level and detached. Have these two ever had affection for each other? Do they now? It seems from the end of the show that they still share an emotional bond, but they come across more as a petulant child and her persevering guardian a great deal of the time. Some pacing difficulties here and there, perhaps in part due to the wordiness of the script. Trinity Smith was unassumingly charming as Honey, and Ben Marks a decent foil as her quick-tempered, upstart young husband.

This work is a challenging one to tackle, to be sure. It is rather easy to do an okay production of it, and very difficult to do an excellent one. I feel here we saw a lot of the surface of the relationships, while I wanted to see the subtext and intricacies that make human interaction so fascinating at large, and specifically intriguing in Albee’s opus.

--wnctheatre.livejournal.com

Jingle Taps

This is from the C-T
BG--

‘Jingle Taps’ dances in the holidays
by Jim Cavener, take 5 Correspondent
published December 14, 2007 12:15 am

When N.C. Stage Company added a show called “Jingle Taps” to its Catalyst roster for this winter, it was a tad confusing, since the theater often hosts riotous comedy or stunning drama. But we attended “Jingle Taps” on the opening weekend, and it was a good decision.

The first act is a series of vignettes with a lame story line meant to hold together an interesting series of body movement loosely classified as dance. A rhythmic percussive element opens the show with Santa’s Irish elves becoming shoe- and boot-makers, using hammers and tools, hands, thighs and feet to create the bang.

Despite the silly theme and the striped stockings, the range of dance was impressive and exquisitely executed. Still, there is too much contrivance and too many conceits.

In the second act, all is forgiven when the troupe of six skilled dancers re-emerge in less contrived costumes, yet still managing to evoke the season. The fun begins with this intense and high-energy troupe blasting off in classic clog dancing form, with the bounce and flash one has come to expect of competent clogging.

The short set at the finish of this barely hourlong presentation is simply stunning. Six young dancers, with two “spares” rotating in performance give a world-class demonstration of the best of clog dancing.

This high-powered clutch of foot-stompers grew out of Mars Hill College’s award-winning Bailey Mountain Cloggers, with all but one of the crew either current students or recent alums. One is only a 17-year-old who will enroll at Mars Hill next year. The directors of the show, Heidi Kulas and Cheryl Renfro, are members of the All-American Clogging Team and have vast professional clogging experience.

The rest of the team includes Misty Searcy, Joseph Quattlebaum, Tyler Mercereau, Meghan McCartney, Matthew Kupstas and Leah Cunningham. Cunningham and Quattlebaum were the two who were missing at the performance reviewed but will perform this week.

Jim Cavener writes for the Citizen-Times.

Romance

From MX
BG--

Theater Review: Romance
by Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt on 12/06/2007

This holiday season, Zealot Productions decided not to launch the typical Christmas play — indeed they decided to do just the opposite. Romance, a comedy by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, is set in a courtroom and follows a trial that’s literally gone crazy. With a pollen-sensitive judge popping antihistamines, an anti-Semitic lawyer defending a Jewish chiropractor and a homosexual prosecutor caught in a relationship crisis with his flamboyant boyfriend, this play isn’t for the faint hearted.

If you’re not familiar with the most recent developments in derogatory name-calling, this unabashedly non-P.C. play will bring you up to date, and in doing so it will leave you bent over your seat in a fit of laughter. The small amount of order that the trial begins with quickly collapses, resulting is a disorderly and intensely funny debate between these broadly painted characters as they poses many worthy questions: What will resolve conflict in the Middle East? Was Shakespeare a Jew… was he gay? What do homosexuals really… do? What will happen if a man takes too many of his allergy pills?

Zealot’s cast of seven is strong, and the play’s director, Ryan Madden, seems to know that his cast shines on stage. In a theater made to hold 50 people, the BeBe enhances the feeling of being a part of the play’s dysfunctional trial. If you want to laugh this holiday season, don’t miss Zealot’s production of Romance. However, be sure to leave the kids at home.

Romance will at the BeBe Theatre till Dec. 8th and begins at 7:30 p.m.

— Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt, listings assistant

Flat Rock's Tuna

from the C-T again...
--BG

by Tim Reid, take 5 correspondent
published November 30, 2007 12:15 am

FLAT ROCK — The Christmas Phantom threatens to ruin “A Tuna Christmas” in the hilarious sequel to “A Greater Tuna” by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard.

Veteran Flat Rock comic actors Scott Treadway and Michael Edwards play all 22 characters as Texas’ “third-smallest” town prepares its annual Christmas decorating contest.

Vera Carp has won the contest 14 years in a row but faces strong competition from upstarts like Tasty-Crème waitresses Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd. And no one is safe from the mysterious phantom, who wrecks somebody’s yard decorations each year.

Radio station personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie provide a running dialogue on Tuna’s Christmas preparations, interspersed with commercials by Didi Snavely, owner of Didi’s Used Weapons.

A touching drama plays out as Bertha Bumiller struggles to have a traditional Christmas with her family. This is complicated by the fact that her trucker husband is absent as usual, her son Stanley is almost certain to go back to jail, and her daughter Charlene has a crush on gay theater director Joe Bob Lipsey.

Treadway and Edwards are awesome as they deftly switch characters, keeping up the frantic pace that gives the play its punch. The humor is wild, the satire on small-town life is revealing, and the laughs are nonstop.

It has been three years since Flat Rock last presented “A Greater Tuna.” Judging from the spontaneous standing ovation given Treadway and Edwards for this go-around, which is directed by Betsy Bisson, Texas’ third-smallest town has lost none of its appeal.

Tim Reid reviews theater for the Citizen-Times. Contact him at timreid4@charter.net.

Hospitality

C-T, of course...
--BG

Theater review: Enjoy some down-home ‘Southern Hospitality’
by Tim Reid, take 5 Correspondent
published November 23, 2007 12:15 am

ASHEVILLE — The Futrelle sisters swing into action to save their beloved Fayro, Texas, in “Southern Hospitality,” the third installment of the popular story by Asheville comedy writers Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten.

This time Fayro is suffering an economic decline with the loss of businesses and jobs. Even Geneva Musgrave (Thelma Cousins), owner of the Bookoo Bouquet florist shop, complains there hasn’t been “a good funeral” in months. Folks are going to have to leave their beloved town if a major new employer isn’t found soon. The Futrelle sisters aren’t about to let that happen.

Honey Raye (Joan Atwood) concocts a scheme to put on a giant “Fayro Days” festival to impress the president of a hot sauce factory who is considering moving his plant to Fayro.

Her sister Frankie (Kay Crews St. Clair) is pressed into hosting the visitor in her home, which they pretend is a bed and breakfast.

Meanwhile, just about everyone in town tries to make the hastily concocted “Fayro Days” a big success to impress the hot sauce king.

Frankie’s husband Dub (Roger Magendie) helps coordinate a Civil War battle re-enactment — never mind the fact there was no battle within hundreds of miles of Fayro.

Their daughter, Gina Jo (Julia Cunningham), puts on a petting zoo despite the fact that all she can muster are a dog, a cat and a stuffed emu. Her preacher husband, Justin (Cory Boughton), meanwhile gambles away their car at a nearby casino.

Twink Futrelle (Kerry Shannon) is determined to make her longtime boyfriend, John Curtis Butner (Steve Wilde), marry her as the highlight of Fayro Days.

Shirley Cohen nearly steals the show as Dub’s irascible Aunt Iney, who spits and fumes vitriol at Dub and Frankie’s every attempt to win her favor — and her sizable estate.

Frank Salvo does a wonderful job as Reynard Chisum, a simple but sweet town character who keeps gushing how great Fayro is while residents make absolute fools of themselves.

Jessie Jones directs this hilarious tale in which all the characters are over the top but somehow reminiscent of real people with all their faults and foibles.

A strong cast and an irresistible story line make this a sure crowd-pleaser.

Tim Reid reviews theater for the Citizen-Times. He can be contacted at timreid4@charter.net.

Harm for the Holidays at NCSC

I’ve reliably missed Tom Chalmers perform David Sedaris’ “The Santaland Diaries” every year so far, and will miss it again this year. So I made a special effort to see his autobiographical one-man show “Harm for the Holidays,” running as part of the Catalyst Series at NCSC.

I don’t think this is the funniest work ever I’ve seen from Chalmers, but the evening’s mix of personal stories is a good one, and the tone is set as something less than a “laff riot” from the very beginning. Which is not to say it is not funny — it is. But many of the biggest laughs come packaged in groans of discomfort that such horrible things could happen to poor Tom, and some of the most effective material is a gently comic slant on these otherwise horrible situations, most of which involve uncomfortable family situations, and all of which are undercut by the slightly melancholy sense of relying on comedy to survive tragedy.

The play starts with the Christmas Eve death of a beloved grandfather, and this sweet but somber beginning firmly establishes the layout of the evening. It is surprisingly funny, but it is tinged through with a hint of sadness that grounds the show in a nicely real way. As an added bonus, this allows the moments where Chalmers seemingly riffs off script to be true asides that break the mood and inject the purest, least compromised laughs of the evening.

I don’t want to say too much about the material, and risk giving away any surprises. I’ll just end with this: if you are only interested in seeing “Tom Chalmers: Funnyman,” you may be slightly under-whelmed. But if you are looking for a very sweet, very heartfelt, and, yes, very funny performance that makes you appreciate both the flaws and wonders of your own family, consider coming “Harm for the Holidays.”

And now I turn the joke writing back to Mr. Tom Chalmers, ladies and gentlemen, who’s actually good at it.

--Willie Repoley

The Pleasure Principle

Ok, I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for the drama department at Hendersonville High School. I can always count on their fall play to be one of the most exciting, surprising, and genuinely theatrical shows of the season, and this year’s offering is no exception.
This unexpected phenomenon started a few years back, when HHS produced Edward Gorey’s bizarre collection of random sentences passed off as a play called “Helpless Doorknobs”. Only Heather Malloy’s recent “The Many Deaths of Edward Gorey” has threatened to overtake that production as the most wonderfully inventive re-imaging of the spirit of Mr Gorey ever seen. I loved it.
I loved even more 2005’s ingenious re-thinking of an antiquated French play, “La Dispute,” a sort of allegory about two couples in a years-long pseudo-scientific experiment to study love and fidelity, as well as the nobles who commissioned and are watching the experiment. It was delightful and enchanting and earnest and moving, and I still hold it up with NCSC’s “The Syringa Tree” as one of the very the best shows of the season.
I regret to say that I had to miss last year’s reportedly post-noir Nancy Drew-meets-the-Hardy Boys concoction.
This year, I caught the possibly ill-conceived revival of a play they competed with earlier this season, an original piece called “The Pleasure Principle”. For the record, I only say “ill-conceived” because the performance had a slight air of a play who’s life had peaked during it’s first run, and this was a sort of post-show performance that couldn’t quite muster the oomph of the original run, especially not with a largely listless and rather small audience, comprised mostly, it seemed, of people who had probably already seen the show, and were now, a bit like the actors, returning dutifully, but not wholly enthusiastically.
But be that as it may. The show itself was beautiful and flawed and engaging and bizarre, and great, even on a slightly off night. Described as a “surrealistic fantasy,” it was based partially on the writing of Sophocles (Oedipus Rex), the theories of Sigmund Freud (especially the Oedipal Complex), and the political activism of the Zapatistas. The mix is odd, and does not always make literal or immediate sense, but they don’t call it surrealism for nothing.
Our hero, Edmund, played by Turner Rouse with his reliable mix of sincerity and wonder, is a 16 or 17 year-old student whose parents are going through a divorce, and whose sister Tista (Arie Romstadt, a convincingly child-like narrator, without being cloying) talks in the third person and sometimes shares his visions of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, played with a thuggishly Johnny Depp scowl and giant blue sombrero and black moustache by Katie Bailey. He also sees visions of Sigmund Freud and of is led of course to the inescapable destiny of killing his father and marrying his mother (who happens to share wardrobe choices and names with his girlfriend.)
The overarching theme of Destiny (and the idea that if one is destined to do something, it ceases to matter if it has already happened, or will happen at some point in the future) ties the disparate ideas together visually as well as thematically; the very cool set consists of a few key furniture pieces, all askew on the stage and painted white, with bits of the face of a black clock showing up on each piece. Behind the action are two painted flats, also blanked white, and if the two pieces were ever put together, a single giant clock with sharply black Roman numerals would be formed.
Like the other HHS shows I have seen, one of the highlights of the play is a bold visual beauty. The design elements were meticulously thought out and executed, both by the designers and builders and by the cast’s interactions with them. I loved that the brother/sister pair had an artfully correlated blue/red color scheme, for example. Possibly the most striking image was the use of a giant red flag, first as a long banner proclaiming some absurdist version of a universal/revolutionary truth, and then as an impromptu full-body wrap—part swaddling cloth, part shroud—for Edmund, who of course, also joins his sister in some sort of optical degradation, as prophets and other seekers of the truth must do (just ask Sophocles or Tony Kushner, or even Shakespeare).
Perhaps most importantly, throughout all the absurdist double talk, the visions of ballet dancing revolutionaries, a marriage that is also a divorce, death that is also life, blindness that is also clarity, and other potentially confusing contradictions, the cast maintains an essential sense of ensemble, with each member not just pulling his or her weight, but actively pushing the play forward with bold, sweeping leaps of imagination and trust in each other. It is truly inspiring to see young people so dedicate themselves to making the play a powerfully actor-driven event, one that finds beauty in the everyday, in the extraordinary, and of course in the absurd.
This is complex, confusing, and engaging story telling, presented by a fearless cast. If every high school in the country had a drama program as creative and daring as the one under Todd Weakley’s care at Hendersonville High School, the state of the American Theatre would be in spectacularly exciting hands.
--Willie Repoley

History is About to Crack Wide Open (Millennium Approaches)

North Carolina Stage Company has launched a new series for the 2007-2008 season. Four plays have been selected to be read on stage. The first offering is Angles In America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner, directed by Angie Flynn-McIver. This is part one of a two-part play.

I have seen the full production of Angles In America twice and have found it to be powerful and moving. Entering the theater, I wondered if a reading could capture my attention for the almost three hour long drama. Can a group of actors sitting around on stage, reading from a book be that compelling? Can they do justice to the script?

It didn’t take long to find out. The eight people assembled for this reading, some local and some out of towners, turned out to be actors, not readers. Without the usual trappings of costumes, lighting, lines to remember, and all the technical issues with a full production, they were able to focus on the script. Their acting ability cut to the heart of the play in a powerful and dramatic way, giving us Kushner’s words, thoughts, and emotions in a lively and compelling performance.

The actors did not just speak their lines. That would have been boring. Sitting in those chairs, they acted their lines. They made us laugh and cry. They made us glad to be alive and afraid that we were. They challenged old thought patterns; not by saying “you must agree with everything in this reading,” but by offering us an opportunity to pay attention to who we were.

Was this play really three hours long? Time flew by as the performers expertly drew us into the play. It seemed all to soon when the stage manager said “End of Part One.” For a long moment we were all stunned into silence, audience and actors alike. Together we were thinking, “Is it really over? I’m not ready to end it. Look at what happened here!” Now I am wondering if some day there will be an Angles In America, Part Two..

Robert Arthur

Smokey Joe's in Flat Rock

Theater review: Songs of ’50s, ’60s get grand treatment
by Tim Reid, take 5 correspondent
published October 19, 2007 8:30 am

FLAT ROCK — Flat Rock Playhouse really rocks the house with “Smokey Joe’s Café: The Songs of (Jerry) Leiber and (Mike) Stroller.”

This exuberant musical review features the legendary songwriters’ pop/rock standards of the 1950s and ‘60s that were performed by Peggy Lee, Elvis, The Coasters and many others.

The show includes some of the best-known songs from the duo that is credited with marrying rhythm and blues with pop music.

Older members of the audience will thrill to the tunes of their youth such as “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakkety Yak” and “Charlie Brown,” and a whole new generation will learn to appreciate the music.

Director Ray Kennedy has assembled a talented cast of mostly new faces at Flat Rock for this high-energy production that keeps the tunes coming almost nonstop.

Alexander Elisa, Joelle Lewis, Keldon LeVar Price and Terrill Williams form a close-harmony foursome, their tightly choreographed movements giving the music an extra energy.

Nova Y. Payton belts out some of the show’s most unforgettable blues tunes, relishing the persona of a strong-willed woman versus her wishy-washy men.

And Flat Rock favorite Amanda Treadway sizzles as the sultry blonde in “Teach Me How to Shimmy.”

Daniel Bogart is paired with Treadway in some of the show’s most engaging boy-girl reveries, and Jackie Burns and Wendy Hayes also provide strong vocals.

The show is worth going just to catch the red-hot “I’m a Woman.”

Musicians Steve Alford, Paul Babelay, Jim Beaver, Kip Brock, Charles Holland, Amy Elizabeth Jones and George Wilkins Jr. deliver the big sound required for some of this era’s best-loved songs like “Kansas City” and “On Broadway.”

It’s a little surprising that Flat Rock has scheduled such a big show so late in its season. Judging by the almost sold-out house on opening night, you had better get your tickets early.

“Smokey Joe’s” is smokin’ hot!

Tim Reid reviews theater for the Citizen-Times. He can be contacted at timreid4@charter.net.

Macbeth

THEATER REVIEW: N.C. Stage Company’s ‘Macbeth’ is a ghostly Halloween treat
by Jim Cavener, Citizen-Times Correspondent
published October 21, 2007 12:15 am on www.citizen-times.com


ASHEVILLE — Not only is N.C. Stage Company opening its sixth season with a major production of the epic tragedy “Macbeth,” it is also inaugurating the new NCSC Chase Gallery of art in its lobby.

The gallery will display thematic exhibitions relevant to each show in the upcoming 2007-08 season. The first exhibition, “Vice & Virtue,” grows out of themes in “Macbeth” and consists of photography, pen and ink, and mixed-media art by local artists.

NCSC has established itself as the pre-eminent professional theater in Asheville, in great part because of the production standards of several shows attributed to, or based on, Shakespeare.

Twice it has done “Shakespeare’s R&J,” a zany take on “Romeo and Juliet.” Last year, it was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and early on in the company’s history, director Ron Bashford delivered a truly legendary production of “Hamlet,” which caused the regional theater world to sit up and take notice.

“Macbeth” as done by the NCSC, is not a costume drama that dazzles the audience with period drag from the royal court. The dazzle is in the script and the intensity of the acting.

The setting is limited to a timeless, ageless, glimmering Mylar scrim behind a sheet of clear plastic with paste-on, milky suggestions of trees.

Costumes are modern, grungy, grimy, monochromatic and reflecting the black-and-white world of Cecil Beaton. Costumer Shelley Porter inserts a couple of plaid, or tartan robes, about the only color on stage.

A clever conceit to emphasize the darkness of the material and bring grim reality to the house is the use of powerful hand-held LED flashlights for facial lighting, with virtually no other light source during the first 20 minutes or so. When well-aimed, this is an effective gimmick, but often the beams are misdirected and light more of the audience than the actors’ faces.

Other lighting use is skillful and earns kudos for designer Keith Kirkland.

Ten able actors take on the 27 roles in the dire drama, with more than a bit of gender-bending in this casting. Female Lords (Thanes, in Scots-speak), and male witches work well under Ron Bashford’s deft direction. John Crutchfield, Mike Coghlan, Bill Munoz, Hans Meyer, Michael MacCauley and Adam Vernon-Young do fine ensemble work.

Neela Munoz has a virtuoso vignette as the castle porter, while Lauren Fortuna is an apt Lady McDuff.

Jenn Miller Cribbs brings national credits that equip her with power in her Lady Macbeth. The mad scene is marvelous.

Company co-founder and artistic director Charlie Flynn-McIver approximates his excellence in the title role of NCSC’s 2003 “Hamlet,” and this Macbeth is everything a demanding director might wish.

The eerie, spooky opening and many successive scenes with ghosts, apparitions and other unnerving elements is appropriate for a production running through All Hallow’s Eve.

This is big people’s Halloween candy for the mind, with an inspired cast and adept technical values.

Jim Cavener writes on theater for the Citizen-Times. E-mail him at JimCavener@aya.Yale.edu.

Congratulations!

Hi all, this is not a review, but a mutual congratulation: I just got word that the readers of Mountain Xpress voted us third best blog in town. And we've only been operating for about 10 months! Yay! So, thanks, and congratulations to all of you for reading, contributing, and helping to make this site a valuable resource for the local performing arts scene.
Here is the link to the full article:

(also-- it's been pointed that my hyperlinks don't actually work. Sorry about that - I think I've got it fixed, now. If the one above works, we're good. If not, I'll keep working on it...)
thanks
Bernhard Grier

Laugh your Asheville

I just found this one on the XPress site (http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2007/review_laugh_your_asheville_off/)
--BG

Review: Laugh Your Asheville Off
by Alli Marshall on 10/15/2007

Though there’s some sort of show to check out every night of the week in Asheville (dance, theater, music, visual art, etc.) the one performing field that’s under-represented is comedy. Luckily, for stand-up fans, local comedian-turned-show producer Greg Brown is changing that.

Brown and his partner Rowan Lischerelli introduced the first-ever Laugh Your Asheville Off Comedy Festival back in July. The three-show run, held at Diana Wortham Theatre, brought an extensive roster of local and regional comics to downtown Asheville. But Brown and Lischerelli didn’t sit back and bask in the success of that first production. They immediately set about organizing other comedy events including last weekend’s one-night follow-up.

The Friday, Oct. 12, show at Diana Wortham featured Charlotte’s “Comedian of the Year” Joe Zimmerman as the host of the show along with other up-and-comers like Carlos Valencia, Felicia Gillespie and Justin Chambliss.

If you caught the July show, you recognized Zimmerman, Valencia and Chambliss. All three pretty much repeated their earlier performance to varying affect. Zimmerman’s riff on the Asheville scene hits pretty close to home (his bit about protesting Staples: “If we get office supplies, what’s next? Offices?"). Valencia’s schtick about STDs and having a terminal disease named after him was more awkward than funny. Comedians tend to ride that line between humorous and creepy, but Valencia edges closer to creepy for me. Then again, his MySpace quote is “Bringing unsettling creepiness back” — mission accomplished!

My favorite acts of the evening were headliner Dave Landau, whose laid-back delivery and banter with the audience made for a fun and fast-paced routine, and Asheville-based comedian Tom Chalmers, who started his set with an impression of a bluegrass band.

Chalmers came to WNC from New York City where he served as artistic director for Gotham City Improv. In Asheville, he teaches comedy writing workshops through Asheville Community Theatre. He also performs the annual one-man play, The Santaland Diaries.

On the whole, this second Laugh Your Asheville Off show was a fun evening with plenty of laugh out loud moments and a pleasantly surprising number of good regional artists. Hopefully what was originally intended as an annual festival will quickly become a quarterly event.

—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter

Ruthless

Again, C-T. Find the original at http://www.take5online.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200771011065
Sorry about the occasional half-sentence in this review-- I presume the paper printed better than the website, but I dropped my subscription some time ago, so this is the best I can do!
--BG

Theater review: ‘Ruthless!’ offers a study in bad taste
by Jim Cavener, take5 correspondent
published October 12, 2007 12:15 am

ASHEVILLE — “Ruthless!,” now running at Asheville Community Theatre’s 35below space, is high camp comedy. Nothing is sacred. This is an acquired taste but also tricky business, a mix of the good timing of farce, overstatement of melodrama, cleverness with lots of double-entendre and less-than-subtle interjections of bad taste.

Also required is a cast that can wring all the trashy nuances out of tasteless parody.

The players in “Ruthless!” are far better than the material they are working with. This script by Joel Paley is not bad, it’s just interminably silly and misses good chances to slip in more ironic pretense and gross excess.

There are ample allusions and asides, quick suggestions of gay icons and over-the-top interpretations of otherwise ordinary situations, but it misses some chances to be vulgar and naughty, while giving a great framework for successful send-up.

The plot twists and turns and writhes through wonderful territory. Director Eric Mills, who did “Miss Gulch Returns” two years ago at 35below, milks the material for more than it demands and gets bravado performances from the assembled crew. It is difficult to know who steals most of the scenes.

An emerging star

Any 12-year old in such a show has a leg up on accolades. Emily Eliot-Gaines plays young Tina, a demonic child who is determined to get the lead in the school play. This young woman holds her own among a mature cast of attention-getters as the kid everyone loves to hate.

Her stage mother from hell, Judy — later Ginger — is done ruthlessly by Beverly Todd, who comes equipped with a piercing voice that can be heard six blocks away.

Her selfless innocence, as well as her ruthless ambition in the second act, are way over-the-top.

Lori Beland Hilliard as Miss Thorn and Miss Bloch comes in close to the top as giving outrageous characterizations that work well.

Tamm’s outrageous side

Clearly dominating every scene he’s in is veteran local actor Peter Tamm as Sylvia St. Croix. Tamm is known as a serious actor, making this appearance all the more outrageous.

The costumes steal more scenes than these able actors. Linda Neal Underwood deserves kudos for the range of rags with which she adorns this cast.

Musical Director Ruth Sieber Johnson gives the sometimes-lame score the boost it needs and keeps the tempo up and racing toward the silly denouement.

Caberet

"CABARET" AT HART IN WAYNESVILLE....
by Jim Cavener, Citizen-Times Correspondent

[editor's note-- this was forwarded to me as the full text of this review, a slightly shorter version of which was published in the Citizen-Times. -B.G. ]

Is it simple serendipity that Haywood Arts Regional Theatre opens it's spectacularly novel production of "Cabaret" the same week as Ken Burns' "The War" runs on PBS, as Asheville's immediate theatre project finished its run of "Copenhagen," while UNCA's Center for Diverstiy Education and Pack Library are opening thier month-long exhibition and programs on Anne Frank? Whether planned to coincide or not, this is a heady diet of powerful recollections of the Nazi horror in Europe some 70 years ago.
All this convergence on a horrendous historical event in mid-20th century is a learning experience and a powerful reminder of the worst of human atrocities. Director Charles Mills and company executive Steve Lloyd came up with a plan to make this an extraordinary production of a legendary classic of American Musical Theater. And effective it is.
Their approach was to construct a large platform out over the audience seating area, where the action takes place. The audience is seated at bistro tables on the traditional stage. Literally turning around Waynesville's Performing Arts Center, they have created more intimacy between the audience and actors, bringing the horror of Nazism close to all viewers. The cast serves as greeters and servers in the Kit-Kat Club before and between the acts. We become the 'good Germans' who are drawn into the seductive appeal of decadence, debauchery and deviousness that was Berlin in the 1930s.
Christopher Isherwood's first-hand stories of that time and place were altered for the stage by John van Druten ("I am a Camera") before musical masters Kandler and Ebb ("Chicago," "Kiss of the Spider Woman") got ahold of the material in the 1960s. With thier knack of catching sinister themes for musical presentation, "Cabaret" became the classic Broadway and film hit, making a star of Joel Grey and bringing this story to new audiences.
Mark Jones gives us an androgenous and seductive Emcee, with the help of gender-bending costumes by Cary Nichols and make-up by Beth Swanson. His slinky and sinister cabaret master of ceremonies suggests the way the German nation was programmed by the leaders of National Socialism. Jones carries the show with panache
The other major role whose talents match the music is Julie Kinter as Sally Bowles, the impish young ingenue from Britain who finds herself out of her depth in the turmoil of Berlin in the 1930s. Kinter can carry a tune and emote with the best of 'em. Her romantic interest is the boyish and winsome David Ostergaard as the young American, Clifford Bradshaw, who has come to Berlin to write -- reflecting Isherwood's own pilgrimage.
Touching performances were given by Casey Dupree and Stan Smith as Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz. They, too, carry the poignancy of this troubled time. Paul Heathman as Ernst Ludwig and Jennifer Sanner as Faurlein Kost advance the cause, and Sanner sings with elan. Among the Kit kat girls are Mary Katherine Smith, Christina McClellan and Kristen Pallota, who use those bentwood ice-cream shop chairs in the fine, erotic legacy of Bob Fosse. Beth Holmes' choreography captures the feel of the original.
The cabaret boys -- doubling as waiters and dancers -- do good dialect work and move with high male energy. Adam Kampouris, Joshua Merrell, Ian Olson and James Bradley add to the ambiance of this sad era in our recent history. Chuck Taft, Anne Rhymer, Linda Davis and David Bruce did their darndest to get the feel of the fine score by John Kandler. A few more real instruments and fewer electronic substitutes may have aided the support sounds behind the voices.

ACT's Beauty

C-T, of course. The original is at http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770920075
sorry this is so late.
BG

Theater review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ appeals to all
ACT actors, costumes bring classic to life
by Tim Reid, take 5 Correspondent
published September 21, 2007 12:15 am


Asheville Community Theatre thrills young and old with “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,” the classic tale of a young maiden who transforms a fearsome beast.

Based on Disney’s award-winning animated film, the stage version has made this one of the best-loved stories of modern times. “Beauty” is an ambitious undertaking for any community theater with its lavish music, costumes and scenery, but ACT has risen to the challenge, summoning a level of talent that would have been unthinkable in earlier days.

Rachelle Roberts is enchanting as beautiful Belle, whom neighbors in the quaint French village regard as odd because she likes to read. Tony Lance gives an awesome performance as the handsome prince who is turned into the loathsome Beast when he refuses to give a beggar woman shelter for the night.

Belle has caught the eye of the town’s most eligible bachelor Gaston (Rod Leigh), who is so full of himself that he scarcely notices or cares that she can’t stand him. Gaston’s admiration for himself is exceeded only by his fawning friend LeFou (Trevor Worden).

When the Beast imprisons Belle’s eccentric inventor father Maurice (Bruce Henderson), she agrees to become his prisoner if he will free her father.

The former prince’s servants have fallen under the same curse that made him a Beast and are gradually being transformed into household objects instead of people. Cogsworth (Payton Turpin) is an uptight clock complete with winding stem, and Lumiere (Richard Blue) is morphing into elaborate candelabra. Ruth Butler and Lincoln Belford are delightful as Mrs. Potts and her son, Chip, who are finishing their transformation to a teapot and cup.

Time is running out for the Beast and his household servants — he must fall in love and find someone to love him, or the curse will become permanent.

Director Christopher Lynn, music director Ginger Haselden, scenic designer Jack Lindsay and costume designer Kate Russell, plus a wonderful cast, have created an unforgettable evening of theater.

Copenhagen

I saw immediate theater project's production of
Copenhagen at the BeBe Theater last Saturday night.
We expected (after itp's absolutely brilliant All
My Sons) it to be good, and were right. Copenhagen
was almost as shattering as All My Sons, but in a
different way. It is extremely talky -- just three
people talking and talking, on stage all the time --
but very moving.

All three actors were excellent. Kay Galvin is always
wonderful; we hadn't seen the other two before. They
seemed just right -- Lance Ball as the nervy Heisenberg
and Earl Leininger as the "good man", the fatherly Bohr.

Really there wasn't much to fault in the whole production
-- a couple of tiny and unimportant stumbles over lines
is all I can come up with if I think really hard.

The play is suitable, even edifying, for adults and
high school students. It's about... Life and
theoretical physics? History? Subjectivity? Lots of
interesting things on lots of levels. Overtly it's
about a meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen
during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. (There's also a
lot of interesting history -- like the amazing escape
of most of Denmark's Jews, and the fact that several of
the guys who came up with the Bomb were Jews who had fled
to America.)

Michael Frayn (the playwright) is quite a guy -- to have
had the understanding of the very counter-intuitive concepts
of theoretical physics that he must have had to have written
the play -- and somehow applied them to life -- is impressive.
(And then he becomes a Brueghel expert for his excellent
novel Headlong!)

So don't miss it -- Copenhagen ends this weekend, on the 30th.
itp's doing some other interesting things over the next year --
check out their website.

--Tahani Sticpewich

Twelve Treatises on Memory

The latest edition to North Carolina Stage Company’s Catalyst Series is a piece written and directed by local poet, playwright and performer John Crutchfield, “Twelve Treatises on Memory: An Epistemological Slapstick (With Sock Puppets), presented by Jynormous Theatre Company.
Unlike many play-goers in this community, I am not someone convinced that anything written by a local playwright is good theatre (I can type you up a short list, if you‘d like to argue this). You can tell in the first five minutes of the play that Crutchfield is no hack, tinkering about with playwriting in his spare time. The scenes are nicely laid out, the characters are interesting, and the lines are nothing short of eloquent.
In fact, that is what impressed me most about the play. Some of the writing in this show is the prettiest I’ve heard since I saw “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at NCStage earlier this summer. The succinct timing and pace of the funny parts leave the audience in stitches. The drama is also valid and easy to sympathize with.
The acting is also spot-on. The portrayal of two childhood sweethearts, reunited for one night of reminiscing and questioning past decisions, by Joe Sturgeon and Anne-Marie Welty is truly compelling. Both actors express a clear knowledge of their character’s intention and personality.
My problem with the show, however, is a big one… the subject matter.
You know that angry poem, or scene, or narrative that you wrote back in high school or college about a time when someone unjustifiably jilted you, which you never got full closure from. We all have one. They are always a little melodramatic because the pain we feel is so raw and authentic (usually because it is being felt for the first time). Still, in perspective, being dumped is not that big of a deal and not necessarily a worthy premise for a dramatic play.
I don’t mean to downplay it. Lots of great plays are based around the ins and outs of love. This play entirely rests on the connection between a slightly geeky guy named Mark (Sturgeon) who is somewhat stuck in the past and his former flame Beth (Welty), who is kind of cocky and enjoying that she still has the power to make Mark swoon. The two spend a night together, talking in circles around how dynamic the love they shared was and why it ultimately ended.
Creating a good “Why did you break up with me?” play is already a challenge. Having a man be both writer and director of a breakup play in which the man is more or less the good-natured victim and the woman is semi-manipulative, arrogant, cold and constantly in-control doesn’t help the play’s credibility either.
To cool down the laden bitterness that is apparent throughout “Twelve Treatises,” Crutchfield introduces two sock puppet scenes, where the two actors get behind the couch they had been sitting on in the previous scene, swap gender roles, and basically re-do the dialogue from the point of view of two Punch & Judy type characters portrayed by socks on their hands. Except in these scenes, the characters say what they really mean, instead of all the game-playing they do in human form.
While an interesting and entertaining way to cut the show’s heaviness, the puppet scenes end up clashing with the dramatic moments. It makes it much harder to take the characters’ pain seriously when they come forward to recite a dramatic monologue in a spotlight, when we have barely caught our breath from laughing at their whininess when they were puppets.
While an unarguably beautiful and witty play, “Twelve Treatises” is uneven in its tone. It is, however, a lot of fun and completely worth watching. I would give it 4 out of six stars.
--Meg Hale

etc's Athena

sorry this has taken so long to post. Please check out the original threads on Mountain Xpress website, too... B.G.

http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2007/080807athena
http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2007/players_inject_life_into_dying_dog

Players inject life into dying dog
by Cecil Bothwell on 08/16/2007

In last week’s preview of enigmatic theatre company’s world premier of Athena, I wrote that it “demands special effects that can’t reasonably be expected to work in the NCSC black box space.” Either I jinxed them, or some wag on the crew decided to pull a plug for my benefit.

The second performance of the play, Aug. 15, was crippled by a backstage power failure which eliminated video projections necessary, again quoting my preview, to “suggest the climactic house-wrecking wind storm” in the penultimate scene. It’s always something. Video or no, the storm scene was more effectively portrayed than I anticipated. Alas, the play itself was no better. There wasn’t a lot of there there, and not much to care about.

However, stellar performances by David Hopes, as Donald, a lightning victim of quiet beauty, and Tiffany Cade, as Kate, a slightly neurotic post-partum mother, graced the evening. Others on the cast turned in commendable performances and brought a bit of life to the stage.

Michael MacCauley’s direction was inspired, weaving the multiple scenes of an extended one-act play into a continuous tapestry, and Brian Sneeden’s lighting and sound were excellent. Knowing Peter Brezny’s work, I could only imagine that the multimedia piece of the puzzle would have been equally fine — but there was that pesky blackout.

The direction, production and acting in this show left me hoping for more from this young stage company. Next time with juice.

— Cecil Bothwell, staff writer

Terpsicorps' Many Deaths of Edward Gorey

Let me begin by admitting that I know next to nothing about dance. I never took classes, I don't see much of it, and I have only recently begun to read reviews of it. Oh well. Heather Malloy's The Many Deaths of Edward Gorey, presented by Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance a couple of weeks ago needs to be written about, and trained or not, I am rather keen to be the one to start.

Because it was fabulous. That much was clear even to me.

The evening actually included three other pieces, in addition to the Edward Gorey, and I think I'll work backwards.

The last piece was inspired in concept, if not as much in execution. Local artist Ben Betsalel created an original painting each night during, and presumably inspired by or in some sort of relation to, the performance on stage. The painting in progress was projected digitally, thanks to G. Craig Hobbs, as a much larger than life backdrop for the dancers. I thought this was a terrific idea, but over all the dance was my least favorite. The piece, called Work in Progress, was choreographed by Ms. Malloy, and I’m sure it was very well done, it just didn’t happen to be to my particular taste. The original score, by Michael Bellar was probably very good, I just did not happen to like the sort of latin-jazzy style of music. The painting itself was a splattered canvas reminiscent of, say Jackson Pollock, and I just don’t happen to know that much about that particular style, and am not super interested in it. The look of the show was very light and colorful, but it did not grab my attention as much as some of the other pieces. And while the intersection between painter and dancers seemed very interesting in theory, I could not quite catch the relation in actuality. I found myself craning my neck to watch the artist at work on the balcony, as often as I was watching the stage. And I had a hard time sitting back and trusting that there was some “story” relating the painting and the dancing, because I just didn’t see it.

But that points to my inexperience with dance as much as anything, perhaps. What seemed clear to me at some point, was that watching ballet is, for me, a lot like conversing in a foreign language. If I try and translate everything word by word, I will not only be constantly behind, but I will lose the overall sense in favor of a few isolated moments of clarity. If however I don’t worry so much about the details, I will understand more than I expect, and will feel much more a part of the conversation. The ballet was the same: If I tried to make logical sense of every move, I was frustrated and confused, and felt like I was missing something. But when I just sat back and let the dance wash over me, it was satisfying on a much more visceral level.

This was very much true of the middle pieces, The Waiting Room and Senza Fretta (Without Worry), both choreographed by the late Salvatore Aiello and staged here by Timothy Rineheart-Yeager, Terpsicorps’ Ballet Master (and, for Waiting Room, by Ms. Malloy as well). In both pieces, I was impressed by the dancers’ skill, grace, humor, and passion, and for both pieces, I had to stop trying to create a narrative in my head. Part of the problem, especially for The Waiting Room, was that I had not looked to see what the title of the piece was, and just that would have helped me feel at ease, knowing that I was at least on the same page as the dancers. After the performance, we got to hear a little about Mr. Aiello, and how he composed the ballet after receiving some very bad medical news. I could not help but wonder if the piece would have worked even better if we had known that up front. None of this kept me from enjoying the dance, however. Written for three women, Jennifer Cavanaugh, Emily Gotschall, and Sadie Harris, and staged and lit with beautiful simplicity, the piece was wonderfully uncluttered, and moved forward with the quiet drive and peculiarly intense boredom that can only come while waiting endlessly for something of life-shattering importance.

In Senza Fretta, a cocky young man (Christopher Stuart) struts across the stage, only to be ousted by another brash young fellow (Nathan McGinnis) and there begins a very fun romp through playful competition and bold masculinity. The dance is so energetic and fast paced that it was hard even for me to care too much what the “story” was; it was easy to get caught up in the dancers themselves. The story was incidental to the event, and both dancers were both impressive and fun to watch.

The jewel in the evening’s crown was of course, The Many Deaths of Edward Gorey, which had as much beauty and intrigue as The Waiting Room, as much fun and energy as Senza Fretta, and at least as much spectacle as Work In Progress.

Dear me. I seem to have neglected a piece. I suppose I should go back and edit this document, rather than interrupt it, but I kind of think the interruption is appropriate. I have to admit, I completely forgot about That Caterpillar’s Trippin’ Again, an excerpt from Terpsicorps’ adaptation of Alice in Wonderland a few years back. It’s not that it was not memorable; it certainly was. But it was maybe a little spectacle heavy for my tastes. Very psychedelic, very flashy. The great fuzzy orange costumes were very showy and cool, but distracted me. I guess whatever I’ve been saying about not over-thinking a dance, I wish this had had more of a resemblance to Lewis Carroll’s story. The G. Craig Hobbs projections were kind of cool, but as usual I thought they mostly distracted from the performers, rather than enhancing the experience of watching them. But what if this had been an opportunity to…I don’t know, let Alice and the Caterpillar recite “You Are Old, Father Williams” in some clever, funky, ballet way? But maybe it worked better as part of the full ballet, and maybe I was just spoiled by the clever, funky, ballet adaptation of the work of Edward Gorey that I had just seen.

Ok, back on track.

To really present the look, much less the spirit, of Edward Gorey on stage seems daunting to the point of hopeless. Fortunately, no one asked me, and the Terpsicorps team delivers a piece that is just about perfect in every conceivable way (except its length, but more on that later). The look of the show is incredible. Conceptualized by Ms. Malloy and Evan Bivins (a versatile performer who plays with Jump Little Children, among others, and provided musical direction for Gorey), every detail was taken into account, but not slavishly adhered to: the show breathes equal parts homage and originality, and is inspired at every turn. The whole thing is done in a stark black and white palate, which fits Mr. Gorey’s dark, crosshatched drawings and delightfully macabre spirit very well indeed. Even the dancers’ faces are exceptionally pale, with darkened eye sockets and the occasional accent of a handlebar moustache.

The costumes (Malloy again, on design, and brought to life by Leslie Lambrecht) are key to this wonderfully expressive black and white scheme, and they could not be more appropriate or delightful. They look old fashioned, even stodgy, but actually help the dancers create a very particular world in which such seeming limitations instead elevate them to astoundingly complex heights. Height actually features heavily in the look of the show, from the almost dangerous-looking stabs of lights by designer Erik McDaniel to the high platform erected at the far upstage end of things, which serves as home for the delightfully odd, dark, and whimsical band, and also allows Edward Gorey himself (Holiday Childress in the requisite full length fur coat and sneakers) to watch/create the action from above when not actively participating in it.

The first image of the evening is also one of the most enduring and exciting: a faithful recreation the figure of Death on the cover of Gorey’s 1963 mini-masterwork The Gashlycrumb Tinies. This top hat-ed, black clad figure with skull face and ominous black umbrella appears from the copious (but not overdone) fog in a delightfully eerie musical stillness, and then the mask and umbrella swoop up into the vast black depths of the air, never to be seen again. Brilliant.

From there, the ballet uses characters from Gorey’s books as well as just a general Gorey influence to introduce a bizarre and wonderful collection of characters including a waifish, jerky and of course doomed ballerina (Sadie Harris), a pair of androgynous and macabre Odd Cousins (Emily Goschall and Christopher Stuart), the mysteriously gloomy Veiled Lady (David Tlaiye), and two children (Jennifer Cavanaugh and Nathan McGinnis) who have a spectacular pas de deux (if I’m using my ballet terms correctly) with an epileptic bicycle. Each of these has spectacular moments of their own, as well as collectively, and that does not even take into account the peculiar ballet instructor (Allison Heryzberg) and her wards (Sarah Margaret Qualley and Emily Williams). Frankly, I cannot even remember all that I liked about the dancers and the piece itself, but it left a powerful and lasting desire for more. It was engaging, highly creative, very theatrical, very fun, and even the most faithful Gorey interpretations were still full of their own originality, life, and surprise.

It was revealed after the performance that there is a possibility of expanding and re-mounting the Gorey piece and the audience cheered the idea wholeheartedly. In the meantime, Malloy is resurrecting her neo-puritan, post-apocalyptic, Appalachian-punk version of The Scarlet Letter in August, and I am already lamenting the sad fact that my work will keep me away from that show.

Heather Malloy and Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance are not only raising but re-imagining the bar for the local performing arts scene. Even if I don’t agree with every choice they make, it is clear that their creativity, intensity, passion, and exceedingly high artistic standards are helping to move the discussion of the performing arts in Asheville to a new level of professionalism. They are not alone in this, but they are among the leaders of the pack, and I’m pleased to say that it is becoming increasingly difficult for some of us to keep up. And there is not much that is more exciting than that.

--Willie Repoley

The Epic of Gilgamesh

thanks to the C-T, again...
-BG

THEATER REVIEW: 1-man ‘Gilgamesh’ is sparse yet lush
by Jim Cavener, CITIZEN-TIMES CORRESPONDENT
published June 28, 2007 12:15 am


ASHEVILLE — David Novak is simply an exceptional storyteller, and his production of the renowned “Gilgamesh,” at North Carolina Stage Company is well worth seeing. The material is legendary, with elements from early mythology. But, it’s the presentation that distinguishes this tale-well told.

The world’s oldest known novel or ancient piece of quality literature, “Gilgamesh” was regarded as among the greatest literary creations for at least a couple of millennia, then was lost for another two or more millennia before being rediscovered in the 18th century.

Now, Novak is giving the classic a narrative telling in his usual exceptional way. This pared-down “Gilgamesh” is a single-voice piece.

The show features one actor-narrator, 29 bamboo poles in assorted assembly and a few clay shards in three piles across the front of the stage — no costumes or clutter, but discerning use of well-chosen music and light cues. Those light and music cues are especially remarkable given that actor Novak’s work is not scripted, and the technical staff must simply listen carefully and sense when the changes are ripe.

Gilgamesh is a harsh monarch over the city of Uruk, in Babylonia, present-day Iraq. His exploits send him to meet a wild super-masculine figure, Enkidu, who joins the monarch in heroic endeavors leading to a strong emotional relationship between them. Enkidu’s tragic death changes the course of the narrative, sending Gilgamesh into deep despair and ongoing grief.

There are graphic erotic descriptions of sensuality, poetic but pointed and extraordinarily eloquent.

The second half of the story reflects on human immortality. Gilgamesh still mourns for Enkidu. Poetic construct, and awesome meter and cadence, coupled with this moving tale of lost love make for powerful theater.

Great theater needs something to see as well as to hear. Though simple, the choreography of Novak’s body propelled across the stage, coupled with the light and music cues as well as the use of bamboo and reed mats, is varied enough to rivet the attention both of sight and sound.

Jim Cavener writes about theater for the Citizen-Times. E-mail him at JimCavener@aya.Yale.edu.

Bindlestiff Family Cirkus

Saw a strange little show at Club Hairspray last week: The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. These guys are on a tour, and have some sort of sponsorship relationship with Magic Hat brewery, but, thankfully, the Magic Hat people don’t seem too interested in censoring the show or even in keeping the quality up, which is actually refreshing. It was billed as part vaudeville, part burlesque, and honestly I don’t know enough about either term to know how closely that matched what they did, but at any rate it was pretty neat stuff.

The show started out with “Mr. Pennygaff” as a silent “hobo” clown, complete with funny nose, big shoes, and balloon animals. And his routine was very good, actually; a charming mix of innocence and innuendo. I kept thinking, “so this is why people go to clown college…cool.” From there, “Philomena,” (a fire-eater in a yellow tutu) took the stage as the MC, walking us through a variety of magic tricks, clown routines, sword swallowing, tightrope walking, and various gimmicks ranging from inspired to inane, all underscored by nifty live organ music by the talented Mr. Frederik Iversen.

For me, the straight up sideshow stuff was sort of cool, but not that enthralling. I mean, the sword swallowing (for example) was good, but not that theatrical, the only story or drama being “gee, this guy could really hurt himself.” It just didn’t hold my attention, generally speaking. The lame jokes and audience participation gimmicks (drink this beer without using your hands, etc.) worked in the context of the show, but the best stuff was all wordless. Neither of the co-MCs (Pennygaff dropped the clown duds in favor of a direct-audience-address huckster suit for Act II) quite had the flair to really tie the show together, and the sort of medicine-show aspects were only serviceably clever, but some of the silent, one-man routines backed by organ were totally spectacular.

This is, of course how the show got started, and although he seemed a little nervous and awkward as an MC, Mr. Pennygaff’s clown routine was an exciting opener, and a pleasant reminder that “clown” does not necessarily equal “boring” or “kid-stuff.” Luckily, I did not have to wait too long for more, courtesy of Joel Baker, who had less stage time over all, but made the most of even his occasional forays onstage to help clean up after an act. He really had both the shtick and the look down pat, in his black ballet slippers, wide-legged gray trousers, white suspenders, and ruffled dark pink shirt. He even powdered on just the right amount of white make up—not so much that he looked like a “Circus Clown,” but enough to draw out the anarchistic and delightful peculiarities of centuries–old camp; he achieved a silent film black-and-white look, only in color. Very neat. His silent wide eyed character was exiting and enthusiastic, always a step or two behind the audience, but never aware of it. He is also something of an acrobat, seeming to specialize in balancing upside-down (and/or sideways!) on a variety of chairs and even a lampshade. His best sequence (and possibly my favorite of the evening) was a simple, classic gag of a person being outsmarted by an inanimate object. In this case, Mr. Baker (accompanied by organ, don’t forget! Makes everything better!) drags over a lamp, sits in a chair next to it, and proceeds to open a book, clearly intending to read. He looks at the audience—perhaps he is going to read aloud to us? As soon as he actually looks at the open pages, of course, the light goes out. Surprised, he looks at the light, which comes back on. He settles in again, looks at the book, and the light goes out, but when he looks back at the light, it… well, ok, so it’s not exactly a surprising routine. But it doesn’t have to be . Baker is such an engaging performer, that his simple, if seemingly supernatural, struggle is riveting and strangely moving.

The other highlight of the show is A.J Silver, the smoldering olive-skinned hunk of the show. He is just as underused as Baker, but he makes such a impression in his two routines that he pretty much steals the show. The first sequence involves him in black leather and rhinestone cowboy getup doing rope tricks. And he’s incredible. He starts a lasso swinging, and never slows down. He swings it around, makes it bigger and smaller, jumps back and fourth though it, jumps up and down through it, I can’t even begin to tell you what all he does, it all happens so quickly and flashily. And he never stops looking at the audience and grinning like, “yeah, it’s cool, right?” With some performers, that could be annoying, but with him, it’s just fun. He ends the number with a delightful and surprisingly PG lower body striptease that finishes up with (attn: No Shamers) a hat trick that beats mine by a mile. Or, well, by 6 to 8 inches, anyway...

His second act, near the end of the evening, is a rhythm trick: he has on high heeled boots and starts two small, dense balls twirling rapidly on the end of long strings, one in each hand. He manages to swing them in circles at his sides so fast and so deftly that they create a reliable and wonderfully versatile pattern of loud clacking when he lets them brush the floor. He fills in around the clacking with the tapping of his boots, so that he is doing this graceful and wild stomping dance that is making more noise than should be possible, even with tap shoes (which he does not have). It’s a wonderfully exciting and unbelievable feat of deceptive simplicity and grace. Yeah, it’s just a side show trick, but it’s a loud, fast, and exciting side show trick! And he even manages syncopation! Woo-hoo!

One thing, though, is that the women got a bit shafted. Sure Philomena got to do fire tricks, but like sword swallowing, it’s got limited appeal, at least for me. And she’s a good MC, but maybe doesn’t find quite the right line between modern and vintage. As for Ariele, the last of the performers, she mainly serves as the cheery assistant in a leotard (which looks modernly out of place) except for a trip out to the courtyard to see her perform on a tightrope. And she’s excellent, doing a variety of jumps and stunts, and even managing an incredible split on the rope before the routine ends, but as talented as she is, it’s just not as showy as lasso tricks and loud noises, nor as theatrical as trying to read by an uncooperative light. Plus, she had to make do with canned music.

But it left me wondering if maybe the cannon of vaudeville performers is so skewed towards the men, that the women have trouble fitting in and building their own routines that do not rely as heavily on male stereotypes. I mean, when I think of great silent clowns, I think of men: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, right? Were vaudeville women exclusively either in need of rescue or bearded? I have no idea, honestly. I’ve never seen them, but from what I’ve heard, The Rebelles have certainly found a feminine way to take the stage in a vaudeville-esqe sort of way. So I’m not sure why the Bindlestiff Family seemed so male-centric, but it did. At least to me. Well, I guess it was because the guys got all the best material! Whether by choice, or by accident, I don’t know, and would be interested to find out.

All in all, though, I was very glad someone talked me into giving this show a try. It had charm, some wit, great music, and most of all, reminded me how simple and pure great comedy can be.

But next time, how about a little more of the quiet fellow and the dude in the cowboy hat, eh…?

--Willie Repoley

Chesapeake

Hi-- here's another C-T review. You can find the original at http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770510094
thanks.
--editor


Provocative play ‘Chesapeake’ wins with outrageous humor
by Tony Kiss, Tkiss@CITIZEN-TIMES.com
published May 11, 2007 12:15 am

ASHEVILE — North Carolina Stage Company finishes its fifth season with the biting political comedy “Chesapeake,” the story of a conservative Southern senator, a wild performance artist, and the lawmaker’s dog, which comes between them.

Except for the pooch, the show recalls the 1993 clash between controversial performance artist Karen Finley and the former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

But wild as Finley is, “Chesapeake” playwright Lee Blessing goes way beyond reality in this witty piece. It’s a one-man show, delivered with exceptional skill by Charlie McIver, directed by his wife Angie Flynn-McIver, both co-founders of N.C. Stage. The language and subject matter can be adult in nature, but it’s performed with outrageous humor — humor that clicked on opening night, with McIver rightly earning a standing ovation and a couple of curtain calls.

He plays the role of Kerr, an artful eccentric who has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his “show,” which consists of having audience members come on stage, and remove pieces of his clothing, one at a time until he stands naked before them. None of this is actually performed at N.C. Stage, but is part of Kerr’s dialogue.

Kerr’s performance, and the grant, earns him the wrath of fictional U.S. Rep. Therm Pooley, whose condemnation of the piece basically gets him elected to the Senate. Kerr then vows revenge against Pooley, and turns his wrath against the man’s dog, a Chesapeake Bay retriever.

That’s as far as we’ll go with the story line, except to say that Kerr’s plot goes horribly out of control, and leads to a transformation of everyone involved.

With no one to share the dialogue, and little in the way of props or staging (except for a rear projection screen), McIver caries the load alone, reeling off this monologue, mostly in the role of Kerr, but sometimes as Pooley or the dog. It’s a masterful bit of acting, showing again that he is among the top players on the local scene.

Take Me Out

Once again, of course, this review is taken from the Mountain Xpress, without their knowledge or consent, and we hope they don't mind.
--BG

Scapegoat hits a home run

Take Me Out parks local theater collective in the majors

by Cecil Bothwell in Vol. 13 / Iss. 40 on 05/02/2007

Going into the 2007 season, Director Taryn Strauss had loaded the bases, having previously coached the Scapegoat Theatre Collective productions of Everything in the Garden, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and The Exonerated. Now, like any pinch hitter worth the name, she has blasted one over the fence. The company’s current production of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out is superb.

The play scooped up a Tony Award for Greenberg—a good starter for any acting team, but the scale of the drama had to pose a directorial challenge. Eleven male actors on the bench, cast in 14 roles and scenes that ran from bar-room intimacy to group nudity in a locker-room shower offered plenty of opportunities to drop the ball. At the end of the action, the players, the 18-member crew, producer Lauren Alleman and Strauss deserved the roar of the crowd and the extended standing ovation accorded them on opening night.

OK. Enough with the baseball metaphors. For all the fun—and the play is oft-times hilarious—Take Me Out is also a deadly serious examination of homophobia, racism and personal responsibility. The story is that of a major-league star who comes out of the closet in the middle of a winning season. More importantly, it’s an exploration of the reaction of his teammates and coach, his business manager and friends. The casual, even slightly homoerotic behavior of sports players in jock straps is cast in a new light. The fact that the gay player is black adds another layer of tension, with racism tossed into the uneasy mix.

As the producers have accurately explained, “This show explores what happens when America’s favorite pastime becomes a true reflection of our country’s diversity, and how this affects the boys who are faced with that all important question, ‘Which team do you bat for?’”

Jason Williams shines as business manager Mason—adroitly funny, and sweetly gay. Liam Smith brings a quiet, goofy charm to his portrayal of Jason, lifting a supporting role to the heights. And Darren Marshall, perhaps type-cast as team coach, delivers in three roles with a stunning dynamic emotional range. The casting is excellent throughout, and Anna Tillman deserves high marks for her imaginative and convincing set design.

Scapegoat’s mission is to create “exceptional, transformative theatre,” and they are rapidly establishing a reputation as Asheville’s cutting-edge troupe. It’s easy enough to be political and artsy, and to expect that the choice of hot-topic plays would suffice to make a mark. The troupe far exceeds expectations, again. Extending its reach from proselytizing to practicality, Scapegoat also uses its productions as fund-raisers. Take Me Out is a benefit for I-RISE, a GLBTQ nonprofit that aims to be a forum for communication and education and provide a safe venue for socialization and entertainment for the other-than-straight community.

A hint for I-RISE: You don’t need to worry about the entertainment. A hint for everyone: You don’t need to be other-than-straight to love this play, but there is some strong language and one pair of naked buttocks.

Applause. Applause. Applause.

A Midsummer Night's Dream at NCSC

Shakespeare came alive for me at North Carolina Stage Company. I have often doubted my ability to understand his dialogue, and I have often questioned the wisdom of making his plays "relevant" to modern times. Not any more.
How did this cast capture my attention and win me over? After being delightfully entertained for 2 hours I'm still not sure. Walking into the empty theatre, I could see the stage was set with simple props, yet I was drawn to them, knowing they would soon be part of a story.
The ensemble of eight actors entered and went to work, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they came to play. With each taking on multiple roles, they worked together so well that they made it look easy and fun. The performance, in spite of much complicated movement and dialogue, was polished and smooth from start to finish.
I was intrigued that the actors made almost all costume changes on stage as well as doing all the set changes themselves. I felt that there was a message there for me. I believe the message said, "We are the actors. We are about to do our part. You are the audience. Your job is to follow our lead and allow your imagination to take you on an adventure."
What an adventure it was! We laughed our way through comedy, poetry, drama, and slapstick. This powerful group of professional actors was sharp, quick, and on target all night long.
It is true that I missed some of the words. But the play was so creatively directed and the actors so engaging in their art, that it did not matter. If Shakespeare could see his play and the modern use of scooters, a skateboard, and cell phones, he might raise an eyebrow or two. His work though, is alive and well at North Carolina Stage Company.

--Robert Arthur

Raindrop Waltz

In the rather hit or miss world of Asheville theater, I find it impressive that 35 Below manages to consistently produce what I think is really good theater. I believe it's a testament to the vision of the ACT staff, and to Jenny Bunn in particular, who pick out these often unheard of, and sometimes risky plays, and produces them with the same amount of, or sometimes more, professionalism as any show ACT does. Perhaps I'm a little biased because I work on so many shows at 35 Below, but I think their shows are some of the best theater in town.
One show I did not work on in any capacity was their recent production of The Raindrop Waltz, and so I think I can say this with little prejudice, it is another truly great show.
The script is well written and very moving. It also struck a chord with me because it's about the area around WNC, where I grew up, and I love seeing places and characters that seem familiar to me. It gives me a sense of pride to be able to identify in some way with these people. It's also not about Southern stereotypes, but about real people who live in a specific culture.
It is filled with many authentic and nuanced performances from the entire cast, but especially notable are the performances by Cory Boughton, Sally Cheney, and Mike Vaniman. Broughton is the narrator and the glue of the story. His character, Jody Lee, is more a storyteller than anything else, and his job is to assemble the poignant pieces of his family's story together for us. Broughton speaks to the audience with such comfort that it almost seems as it is truly his story. The great thing about Broughton's performance is that it's big enough to convey his inner feelings, but subtle enough to seem authentic.
Sally Cheney plays the slowly deteriorating matriarch of this broken family. She endues her performance with such a familiarity and sweetness, that even when she talks bad about her own family, we still can't get upset with her. Sally gives herself over so completely to her character, Agnes Tester, that it's like watching one's own parents or grandparents out there. In fact I saw a lot of things in her that I also recognized in my own grandmother.
Finally Mike Vaniman gives a compact but powerful performance as Manard Potts, a town derelict who reveals to Jody Lee, and us, the events of one tragic day that finally broke this already fragile family. It is a captivating part, and Vaniman plays it with a nice mixture of wild abandon, and sage wisdom.
Don't however let this disparage the merits of the rest of the cast. This is a very talented ensemble. Every actor seemed in the moment, and they made every character believable.
The set is probably one of the most ambitious sets I've seen in 35 Below. It consists of a very authentic looking front porch flanked by two pieces of scrim on either side which are painted to represent to nearby mountains. There is a nice stump on one side of the playing area, and a small bench on the other. The space was used very efficiently and the lighting helped to differentiate areas and time well.
I feel though that it was a bit cramped in 35 Below however. The space felt like it limited the actors movements a bit, and didn't allow them to be as free in their characterizations as they could have been. Also the seating arrangement chosen for this show is not my favorite. When things are set "Proscenium" style at 35 Below sight lines become a big problem, as was the case in some parts of this show. Many of the seated moments and things of the floor were blocked. It's hard to say what space would have been right for this show. While things felt a bit cramped in 35 Below, it gave the show a good intimacy. On the other hand I fear the mainstage would have been too big for this production and much of the actors very nuanced performances would have been lost. Probably a stage about the size of NCStage's would have fit the play well.
The only other critique I have is the use of the scrim. It is used rather effectively for several flashback scenes in the second half, but I wish the effect would have been introduced sooner in the first act. The first use of the scrim didn't come until the second act and when it first happened it was a bit jarring. I think there were several moments in the first act that might have been appropriate places to employ the scrim effect, and would have allowed us to get accustomed to the effect, keeping us in the scene more. Maybe it's just the designer coming out in me, but I knew it was going to be used sometime and was sitting there waiting for it to happen.
This however doesn't take away from the fact that 35 Below's production of The Raindrop Waltz is very well done, with many great performances, and a real engaging script. I think it's definitely theater worth seeing.

--Jason Williams

Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath

Elisabeth Gray is a wonderful actor. She is an engaging and even magnetic performer, and when she is actually allowed to perform, Edward Anthony’s Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath is a very compelling and moving play. Unfortunately, Ms Gray is almost constantly upstaged by the technical elements of the production, and thus is unable to salvage through her acting alone a very interesting play that is bogged down in technical trickery.

The play explores the suicide of Sylvia Plath through the eyes of Esther Greenwood, named after the protagonist of Plath’s The Bell Jar, thus allowing both a personal connection and a certain amount of “colorful revisionism” in regards to the poet herself, and this is a good thing. The play begins and ends with her head in the oven, and through conversations with the oven (voiced in delightful “wa-wa” noises by Ms. Gray, and accompanying flashes of light by the oven), a cooking show performed for the audience called “Better Tomes and Gardens” (which title quickly became more confusing than funny, as it was continually reintroduced), and periodic lapses into memory provided by a projector screen, the audience is allowed to see the final hazy reflections of Esther Greenwood on what has driven her to this oven, especially focusing on her adulterous husband Ned Pewes.

As a concept, this works very well, but the structure relied too heavily on technical tricks, and not enough on theatrical imagination.

Although quite strong overall, part of the blame lies in the writing: the production script has evolved significantly from the playwright’s first editions, and although the script remains smart, witty, funny, and at times mildly provocative, at least one fundamental change was made that greatly lessens the impact of the play over all. In earlier versions, the play was imaginatively and evocatively structured after the four phases of Hypoxia, the condition that develops as one dies of gas inhalation. This allowed the gradual devolution from Stage one (little effect except on eyesight; a gradual dimming of the world) to an increase in circulation, respiration, and blood pressure, to the third stage which includes major disturbances including hallucinations, and finally to the fourth, fatal stage. While the new script is probably tighter overall and certainly flows better in places, the abandoning of this structure leaves the audience with less to discover, less to see unfold. Rather, we seem to start in phase three and simply exist there for an hour and a half, while Esther Greenwood explains over and over that her parents, but mostly her adulterous husband have driven her to suicide.

Of the two major conceits she uses to make that point (the cooking show and the projected video) the former is most effective. There is something delightfully mid-century Americana about the over the top cooking show featuring Seven Liar Lasagna and Black Tar Brain Soufflé. It accents the desperate struggle for some kind of “normalcy” in a life that is falling apart at the seams, and helps provide a through-line for the audience. I did find myself growing slightly tired of the same two recipes, but overall the concept works.

The video projection, however, is probably the key to the ultimate collapse of what could have been a great play. Really almost nothing about it worked, theatrically speaking. Certainly, it turned on when it was supposed to, you could see it from all of the audience, etc, but despite these marginal technical successes, it stifled the creativity of the production and distracted from the really interesting thing about the piece—the performer. For one thing, the film was shot in a jerky, flat, and somewhat washed out style that made it look amateurish and dull. It may have been meant to evoke the feel of an early silent film, with its jerky cuts and sometimes unsteady camera, but even if so, it raised another question: why evoke an early 20^th century period, if the play was presumably taking place at mid-century? Of course, I’m only guessing that because of the time-line of Sylvia Plath’s life, and the tenor of Ms Gray’s performance, but the costumes on the video looked only vaguely evocative of some earlier time—perhaps the 60’s—the music seemed mostly drawn form the 40’s (and, oddly, did not include the Ryan Adams song after which the play is named), and the houses featured look decidedly 70’s. (Ms Gray’s electric red dress was evocative of the 50’s in that peculiar way only certain 80’s fashions can be, an issue not wholly related to the video, but distracting nonetheless.) Ms Gray was also unable to quite sync her voices (she provided the voices for the mouthing actors on the screen) with those being projected, which may have also been intentional, but I could not see what purpose it served, aside from being distracting, an making me wonder why these sequences were not more rehearsed. Overall, I was surprised that a video that featured so prominently in the play would not be more polished and professionally produced.

The real failure of the video, however, is that is was simply not interesting theatrically. The strength of any one-person play is always the performer, as much as the material, and Elisabeth Gray seems quite up to the challenge, but she was never quite allowed the opportunity to show it. Her connection with the audience kept being interrupted by the intrusion of the video, which physically dwarfed her and forced her to upstage herself terribly whenever she talked to the screen. Her natural public affinity was thus continually compromised by her reliance on the screen to tell the story for her, and by her physical disconnect from the audience whenever the device was employed. I recognize that the playwright was very concerned that none of the characters in the story be neglected or left out, especially Ned Pewes, and I’m sure the producers were interested in finding new and clever ways of doing that, but I believe that the most effective tool at their disposal was their actor. My point was proved by about 20 seconds of the play in which Esther spoke in her mother’s voice but did not do so while looking at the screen (which was not on), and replied in her own voice. This dialogue was brief, Esther’s only word being a repeated “no,” but the moment was possibly the most moving of the play, and largely because of the human struggle that was suddenly seen in this actor finally being given the chance to expose herself to the theatrical magic of her own strengths, and her character’s deep needs, worries, and flaws. It was a lovely, but frustratingly singular moment.

Not everything about the video was awful, and a few moments were quite nice and even theatrical, such as seeing Esther on-screen going through the same physical motions as Esther on-stage, and seeing only in the video that she is placing towels under the doors so as not to accidentally gas her children. The final moment of the play, with Esther on-stage placing her head in the oven while behind her Esther on-screen is placing her head on her pillow was a brief and beautiful glimpse into the possibilities of the projection screen, if had had been used more theatrically and less literally all along.

Instead, however, the final moments in the theatre, when the play is clearly over, are dominated again by the video, which intrudes dully: In lieu of a curtain call, the credits (the same credits that we have in our programs, mind you) are scrolled across the screen movie style, while Esther and her daughter wave at the camera and traipse through a meadow. It’s not that the idea is all bad—I think there can be great value in curtain calls that challenge audience perceptions in some way- but in this case, it was distracting and annoying. Perhaps if the video usage had been more creative and integral all along, this ending would have seemed appropriate, but I suspect that many in the audience felt as I did: that we did not come to see a video, and did not want to applaud to a video. Rather, we came to see a performer, who created a world with her words and made us joyful at the magical possibilities of human interaction to create much more than what we see in front of us, and we wanted to applaud the person, the actor, who in that moment had created this world for us. Ms Gray never appeared, which was certainly a choice to make the audience feel something, but probably not what this audience member felt: cheated—cheated out of the chance to thank the performer. The notion that a video could stand in for real human connection seemed rather rude and presumptuous.

It that way, though, it was the perfect conclusion to a play in which it had, sadly, been allowed to do just that.

--Willie Repoley

itp's Oleanna

Editor's note: this review is www.mountainx.com, the Mountian Xpress website. You can read original posting at http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2007/play_review_oleanna_at_nc_stage

~

Play Review: Oleanna at NC Stage

—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter

by Alli Marshall on 03/22/2007

It’s telling that title of this two-person David Mamet play is completely obscure. It’s taken from a 19th century folk song that references the ideal of utopian societies. Got that?

The play, performed by immediate theatre project (itp) at NC Stage Company, is not an easy one to watch—though certainly not due to the dramatic talents of stars Katie Fuller and Peter Tamm. The show revolves around the interactions between a pompous, self-absorbed (though likely harmless) university professor and his disturbed female student in jeopardy of failing a course. Following these characters over three acts, Oleanna deconstructs the source and use of power—both real and imagined—between these two people.

Interestingly, Mamet wrote the play 15 years ago (a year after the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, notes Wikipedia.org). My initial reaction as a viewer, with no previous knowledge of the show, was that seeing an older man paired with a college-aged woman screamed “taboo,” especially with the collegiate setting thrown in to the mix. Is it just that recent events involving alleged teacher abuses of students makes any teacher-student interaction suspect? Has too much political correctness poisoned our collective perception? These are some of the questions around which Oleanna dances.

ITP’s staging of the play has the two characters both facing the audience, the stage split by white electrical tape. Professor John sits behind his desk regarding two chalk-drawn squares representing two chairs, while student Carol sits in one of the chairs facing a large chalked rectangle representing John’s desk. They both deliver their lines in halting, awkward, oft-interrupted phrasing that builds tension and confusion. The trick is, they interact with each other without actually looking at each other, the entire time addressing their speech to the audience. It’s a clever approach that doesn’t fully reveal its effectiveness until the first eruptive moment of physical contact.

As far as the characters go, Tamm offers up a deliberately contrived intellectual, bolstered by self-importance and pretension. “I asked myself if I engaged in heterodoxy,” he says at one point. And, “You find me pedantic.” He seems to be teaching a course based on his own life experience and self-examination.

Fuller, meanwhile, plays Carol as a creepier version of Ally Sheedy’s “Alison the Basketcase” in The Breakfast Club. Think class misfit-meets-recently converted femi-nazi with the lingo to boot. Words like “hypocrisy,” “elitism” and “exploitive” pepper her speech. As the scenes progress, Carol’s appearance shifts from disheveled and dumpy to pulled together and militant while John evolves from button-downed to unglued. It’s worth noting that William H. Macy starred in the debut.

As I said, Oleanna isn’t a fun show, and it doesn’t offer much in the way of answers. In fact, I found myself rushing from the theater with the rest of the audience after the final terse moments, no more clear on the point than when the play began. That said, it’s completely worth seeing—especially for theater-goers who like their drama on the dark side. The play moves briskly along without a single dull moment and the outcome—obtuse as it may be—will have viewers questioning many commonly held conceptions.

Oleanna runs through Sunday, Apr. 1, Wednesday-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 Wednesdays and Sundays, $15 other nights. 350-9090.