St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Wildfire

Because of my own life, I've long been fascinated by the question of nature versus nurture. Upstream Theater looks at just that as it presents the American premiere of Wildfire by Quebecois author David Pacquet, the English translation by Leanna Brodie. Phillip Boehm’s company has never hesitated to present the new and different, and here we have a surreal look at how the heredity/environment thing shakes out.

We begin with adult triplets, Claudette, Claudine and Claudia, played by Jane Paradise, Nancy Bell and Tom Wethington. They are all three...well, a lay person might say crazy. Let’s call the girls dysfunctional, each in their own way. Reality is particularly removed from this first part of the show, a clear signal that we’re in for an off-road adventure.

The three actors play other characters in the second and third parts of the 75-minute, no-intermission work, two shy people who meet and hesitantly hit it off, and a woman who explains why there’s a hammer in her television set. All this carefully, slowly, pulls things together in the exposition but still manages to leave us gasping.

It’s certainly a black comedy, but nevertheless deserves the name comedy. Paradise and Wethington are particularly poignant as the hesitant couple, and Bell’s monologue in the third part is a remarkable piece of salacious pathology. Interesting, seemingly simple sets from Michael Heil with Steve Carmichael’s lights let us focus on the characters. The use of red and black are highlighted by Laura Hanson’s costumes. And I very much enjoyed the music from Anthony Barilla, who’s credited as composer/sound design, a nice contrast to the warped experience we faced.

Phillip Boehm directed, and is probably happy when audiences walk out shaking their heads at the whole experience. It’s fascinating, like watching a train crash in slow motion. Of course, we’re all left to our own interpretations of how much of this is genetic and how much is how we were raised.

 

Wildfire

through February 9

Upstream Theater

The Marcelle

3310 Samuel Shepherd Drive

upstreamtheater.org

Songs for Nobodies

If there’s anyone around who doubts the level of our local talent, here’s – another – fine example. Debbie Lennon gives us a one-woman show, Songs for Nobodies, and pretty much knocks it out of the park.

The show’s premise is that five great women singers are shown via their encounters with ordinary women. The show was written by Joanna Murray-Smith. It’s a good look at the human side of idols, and a real workout for Lennon who plays all ten characters in settings that go all the way from Kansas City to a yacht on the Mediterranean.

Beatrice Ethel Appleton opens the show. She’s the powder room attendant at the Plaza Athenee Hotel in New York when Judy Garland arrives with her hem slightly ripped. And so we’re off, meeting along the way, an usher, a librarian, a cub reporter and a nanny, all in individual vignettes Those women lead us into Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Maria Callas. (It may affect the way you view photos of Aristotle Onassis for the foreseeable future, by the way.)

Lennon is remarkable, switching characters and accents. And she sounds fabulous. Nicholas Valdez, on piano, is the music director, with, on the night I was there, Blake Mickens on bass and Keith Bowman on percussion. They surely add to the fun. Dunsi Dai’s scenery, including some wonderful black and white photographs, set the mood well, as does Tony Anselmo’s lighting.

Dazzling work from Lennon, and lots of bang for the audience’s buck in this 90-minute, no-intermission little jewel from Max & Louie Productions that’s in the black box at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

 

Songs for Nobodies

through February 2

Max & Louie Productions

Kranzberg Arts Center

North Grand & Olive

maxandlouie.com/

 

The Thanksgiving Play

In a world that’s grown increasingly uptight, there’s little that’s as edgy-funny as universal offensiveness. That’s what the Rep Studio’s version of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play brings us. Amelia Acosta Powell, the Rep’s associate artistic director directs this story of How Not To Do It.

FastHorse, who is from the Sicangu Lakota Nation of Native Americans, loves Thanksgiving. But, she says, she’s really tired of how history is so often wrong, being written by the winners, and how strongly people cling to the errors despite information to the contrary. Her attempt to set things straight on the subject of Thanksgiving, rather than a this-is-what-really-happened line, is a comedy to remind us to think more about the real story of Thanksgiving, and, by inference, a lot of other things.

Thanksgiving plays were, and probably still are, a staple of childhood education in many places. Of necessity with kids, it’s boiled down to what (we think are) basic elements. The Thanksgiving Play sets us up with a high school drama teacher, Logan (Shayna Blass) trying to create a modern and more accurate version with her sort-of-significant-other Jaxton (Adam Flores), and a history teacher named Caden (Jonathan Spivey). Because she’s gotten a grant to help fund this, she’s also hired Alicia, a Native American actress to come in from Los Angeles (Ani Djirdjirian) and work with them so they can create a politically correct play.

Logan’s extreeeeeemly concerned about correct portrayals, hurt feelings, a higher level of consciousness – and keeping the school board happy. Being high-strung to begin with, this is all very stressful. Jaxton, who explains he’s a professional actor because he works at the local farmers market performing on the subject of recycling, is all in on this and the improv-style brainstorming Logan insists on. Caden, the history teacher and unpublished playwright, comes in with a written script that begins 4,000 years ago.

And then there’s Alicia. So Hollywood, so lovely, so un-woke – and so not Native American.

The fast-moving satire is punctuated by entre-acte bits depicting possible children’s plays about Thanksgiving and quotes from real teachers’ lesson plans and Pinterest boards. Reality, as usual, can be as funny as anything authors can create.

It’s a wonderful acting ensemble. As the sincere-but-fragile drama teacher, it seems Blass’ head may blow apart at times. Flores’ wide-eyed Jaxton follows his own logic down rabbit holes that dead end. Jonathan Spivey is less driven by correctness but more by his love of history and his perpetually thwarted efforts to see his own work performed – his thrill at hearing actors use his lines is touching.

Ani Djirdjirian, though, almost steals the show as the not-Native American whose looks let her audition for many so-called ethnic parts. (Logan hired her from her photograph.) The annoyance at this discovery lets us gradually discover Alicia isn’t quite as Betty Boop-y as she seems. When challenged on inauthentic casting, she says, having worked at a Disney park, “After all, Lumiere isn’t really a candlestick!” Alicia is just as over the top as Logan; Djirdjirian is utterly irresistible with the eye-rolls, the flouncing and the much-vaunted hair flip.

For those who disdain political correctness, there’s obvious delight here. But for those who understand it, we quickly see just how goofy extremes are. And that’s the point. In addition, we’d point out that theater is often at its funniest when it looks at itself. There’s considerable poking of fun there as well – where else do you hear a joke about dramaturgs?

Great fun, considerable laughter, and ninety minutes with no intermission.

 

The Thanksgiving Play

through February 9

Studio Theatre

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles

Is Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles a dream or a nightmare? Luis Alvarez’ play, directed by Rebecca Martinez, uses Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy as a base for a story about life in Los Angeles barrio (and has been adapted to being localized in New York and Chicago productions). It seems to have some hints of magical realism about it, opening with a ritualistic sort of dance.

Reality, though, immediately follows as we meet Tita (Alma Martinez), who is, among other things, a housekeeper, curandera (a folk healer), functional “auntie” and – a rather shocking word in the contemporary time frame in which this is set – slave. Tita gives us backstory on the household of Jason (Peter Mendoza), Medea (Cheryl Umana) and their son Acan (Cole Sanchez). The family came from Michoacan, Mexico, and crossed illegally. They’re not doing badly – Jason has a job working on apartment buildings, and Medea, to whom Tita has caught cuanderia skills, is a gifted seamstress, although working for very little money out of their apartment.

Medea is a loving mother and partner, although her health seems a little iffy, and we come to realize she’s fragile. She doesn’t want to leave her home, even to go out with Jason and Acan, doesn’t have any friends. Jason, on the other hand, is downright exuberant over the opportunities he’s finding in their new neighborhood and is eager to assimilate, to the point of encouraging Acan to call him Dad and not Papi. The outside world, though, presents itself to Medea first in the form of Josefina (Guadalis Del Carmen), who Tita has met. “Josey”, as she’s been re-named by the hipsters who are gentrifying things, vends her baked goods from a cart but she regards them with a realistic eye; she’d really like to charge them more for her pan dulce than she charges her paisanos who are regular customers.

Jason gets a couple of promotions, and his boss asks him to bring Medea to dinner. That won’t work, but the boss comes to their home, and we realize that the boss is a woman, Armida (Maggie Bofill). Moreover, it turns out that Jason has told bosslady that he and Medea aren’t actually married. It was sort of optional where they were, and we get more details on the circumstances of their departure from Mexico. Amida is the opposite of Medea. She’s shiny, slinky and driven – you can’t be modest and make it in America, she tells Medea, who’s traditional in dress and attitude. Amida has obviously impressed Jason. She turns out to be the monkey wrench we’ve been expecting in the works and the nightmare part begins.

Umana, as Medea, evidences the struggle that her character has with life in this strange place. When she agreed to come to the United States, she was rather a different person, but events have wrung her out. Playing Jason, Mendoza obviously loves Medea but wants more from the new life than she does, and is willing to do quite a bit to achieve success in caring for his family, or so he thinks for a while. The physical relationship between the actors shows the affection and the hesitation of each. Cole Sanchez’s Acan is right on the mark, a warm charmer who’s more than just a body showing off his parents’ individual clothing preferences for him. But it’s Tita, Alma Martinez, that draws me with her strength and her warmth. It’s a fine performance, and her backstory, I daresay, could make for another play.

Mariana Sanchez’ set turns out to be part of the unsettling final minutes of the play, and Maria-Cristina Fuste’s lighting smooths things throughout the show. Carolyn Mazuca takes on the job of designing a seamstress’ clothes and showing both modern and lovely traditional frocks that fascinate. Original music and sound design by David R Molina carry us along.

Plays like this, that originate in very old, traditional stories – Euripides, you know, didn’t come up with these characters on his own; these are from the stories of the Greek gods – don’t really need to be measured against the originals. There surely are similarities here, but this story sets its own standards. My only serious complaint is that the ending, unless you do have some idea of the original story, comes with no foreboding at all, leaving some audience in shock. And there’s nothing wrong with that, even if it’s not the classical tradition.

 

 

Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles

through February 2

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org