St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Ci Siamo

A recent fast trip to New York had some great results: 

https://www.stlmag.com/dining/st-louis-native-danny-meyer-opens-ci-saimo-in-new-york-city/

A Christmas Carol

How satisfying is it when a classic you knew and went to see merely out of a sense of duty turns out to be almost thrilling?

Stand back: Here comes A Christmas Carol.

Of course the original is wonderful – the book, I mean. Just the scene of the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner alone is enough to make someone (ahem) read it aloud even though there’s no one else at home. The play has been done time and time again.

Forget that. Go to the Rep and fall into a wonderful semi-post-Victorian lushness. Yeah, sure, it’s grimy London and the fog machine is doing its thing. But the version brought to us by artistic director Hana Sharif is a sight to behold. Costumes. Music. Choreography. Add to that talented acting and charming kids, and pat yourself on the back for choosing to go.

The Rep has partnered with COCA to bring in young pre-professionals who auditioned for the show – there are two separate casts of them to spread the fun out. They’re a delight and perform up to the standards expected on this stage. Our Scrooge is Guiesseppe Jones, a little fierier and more agile than the average miser. His inevitable warming at the end gives out a more believable glow than usual, too. Armando McClain is the long-suffering Bob Cratchit, playing the role with more subtlety than is often seen in the saintly father.

One of the first clues that this isn’t the same old thing comes when Scrooge is awakened the morning of Christmas Eve by his housekeeper, and it’s Michael James Reed in drag, saluting the old tradition of the British Christmas pantomime. Reed also plays Jacob Marley. There’s quite a bit of multiple role casting here; J. Samuel Davis is one of the charity solicitors and a delightful Fezziwig, for instance, and Raffeal Sears charms as both nephew Fred and Scrooge as a younger man.

Tre’von Griffith, music director, gives us some wonderful harmony from the group, and Kirven Douthit-Boyd’s choreography ranges from modern dance to hip-hop. There’s plenty of song and dance without it actually being a musical, things moving along rather organically. It happens on a set that takes full advantage of what the Rep has, from the brick wall in the back to pop-ups downstage, using Tim Mackabee’s handsome work. Costumes designed by Dede Ayite work particularly well given the sets – pay particular attention to what the Spirit of Christmas Present is wearing.

An eminently satisfying evening, enough to keep even a critic from muttering, “Humbug!”

 

 

 

 

A Christmas Carol

through December 23

Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org/

A Piece of My Heart

Full disclosure: It’s hard for me to be completely neutral about A Piece of My Heart. It’s a story about nurses and other women who served in Vietnam during that war. That was my generation of nurses. Several of my original classmates enlisted. I don’t know their stories. The stories I did hear – I was off raising children – were from GIs who returned home and much later shared their stories of both the war and the aftermath.

The aftermath is very much a part of A Piece of My Heart. In fact, it’s the entire second half. Women weren’t as apt to be spat on as men, I suspect – and what idiot in some national media outlet said they suspected it was an urban legend, since there were no documented cases? [There were. Many.] – but there were far more consequences afterwards than that. Far more.

All these women we encounter before they begin the adventure that will take them to Southeast Asia. Steele (Patience Davis) is career Army. MaryJo (Chelsie Johnston) is in an all-girl singing group that’s moved to LA to make it big. Whitney (Annalise Webb) comes from a wealthy family and an Ivy League college. Martha (Mara Bollini)’s an Army brat, and Leeann (Vicky Chen) and Sissy (Madison Jackson) meet in nursing school. There are, obviously, men around, too, Shane Signorino as a multitude of them.

If you missed the Vietnam War because you were too young, you may find the play too melodramatic. It’s condensed experience – but it doesn’t exaggerate. I cannot compare it to subsequent ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I knew nurses from World War II and Korea, and Vietnam was a totally different experience. Whitney goes to work for the Red Cross and becomes a donut dolly, as the slang goes, and MaryJo is with the USO. Steele does intelligence work. All different experiences, all some very heavy lifting.

Thomas Wolfe must have been cited a lot back then – maybe you arrive at the place where you were raised, where your family is, but you can’t completely go home again. You change, “home”, whatever that is, changes. Wrestling with that is not so dramatic, but it’s hard not to be taken back to what Agent Orange did to families, not just the vets, or how PTSD didn’t manifest itself immediately.

Playwright Shirley Lauro has given us a memorable collection of characters, and WEPG cast them well. Davis and Signorino give particularly good performances for director Dani Mann.

Unlike the Depression or World War II or COVID, the Vietnam War influenced American society slowly, stealthily. In this time when our attention is diverted in so many other ways, a reminder about war isn’t at all out of line. A Piece of My Heart is a good chance to learn or remember.

If this is your first time at this venue, there’s a good-sized parking lot behind, and the entrance is back there as well.

A Piece of My Heart

through December 19

West End Players Guild

Union Avenue Christian Church

733 Union Boulevard

www.WestEndPlayers.org

Comfort

Comfort really isn’t a comfortable play. Coming from the pen of Neil LaBute, that shouldn’t surprise us. LaBute always looks at the uncomfortable parts of human nature, and his newest play falls right into line. This, written before COVID and having its world premiere at St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s home base, the Gaslight Theater, is a particularly remarkable piece of work, giving us human pathology with a near-singular quality of wickedness. It’s a play that asks a lot of its two actors. Kari Ely and Spencer Sickmann deliver in spades.

Iris (Ely) has very little about her that’s sympathetic. She’s a writer with a fabulous career who believes she deserves every bit of it. She disdains anyone who isn’t perfect. That includes about everyone except herself. It particularly includes her son and his father, whom she divorced as soon as the royalty checks began. She has, to use an old Flannery O’Connor line, no pleasure but in meanness. Iris makes me think about Tennessee Williams going to work on the character of Lady Macbeth

Iris repeatedly says that she hated being a wife and a mother, and was glad custody of their son Cal (Sickmann) went to her ex-husband, a high school teacher who wrote a little himself. Is it any surprise that Cal turned out to have a tongue far beyond the serpent’s tooth? She frequently brings up the money she’s given him for various things and how whatever he tries to do, he’s not enough of a success.

She excuses her nasty remarks by saying she’s “being honest”. So is Cal when she pushes his buttons – those ones she installed herself. The battle ebbs and flows. He tries to give as good as he takes, but Iris is made of iron. It’s amazing seeing the vitriol come out of a suburban matron with a polite, well-modulated voice – if Iris is iron, Ely playing her is steel. Sickmann, though, holds his ground, and the battle remains joined. There are splendid performances, rough and tough, yet nuanced.

Annamaria Pileggi directed the play – one has the feeling it might be more like being an orchestra conductor, considering the sweep of emotion, and keeps thing just as tight as they ought to be. Patrick Huber’s set and lighting design fit right in, the upper-class home of someone who didn’t care about homemaking but could afford to hire a decorator.

The script will almost certainly undergo more work before it hits any boards in New York, and it could use some tightening. But it’s very close to the precipice of greatness, aided by the excellent work of Ely and Sickmann, and Iris could well be one of those roles that actress itch to be cast in.

 

Comfort

through December 19

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theatre

358 N. Boyle Ave.

314-458-2978

stlas.org/

Tinseltown

One of the great unheralded pleasures of small theatre is small venues. The Midnight Company’s new show Tinseltown is working at the .ZACK. There are times when the black box there isn’t a good fit for a show, the sort of thing that happens with many venues due to many things. But here we have a very fine match.

Tinseltown is a new play from Midnight’s co-founder and artistic director Joe Hanrahan, under the subheading “3 short plays 24 hours in L.A.” It’s a two-hander, with Hanrahan and frequent collaborator Ellie Schwettye as various residents, either permanent or temporary, of LaLa Land.

There’s a thread running through it about a movie that is being proposed, but that’s merely an excuse for some interesting work by two accomplished actors. Schwetye is a fading diva, a musician and a director; Hanrahan is an agent, a musician and a fading British actor. Fine work from both of them, not just the broad stuff in terms of physical comedy but more subtle things. And that brings us to the venue. This is a perfect situation for taking advantage of the small venue. Sit close and watch the actors work. Look at faces when they’re not speaking. Watch what the hands and shoulders do. It’s a great way to understand how deeply actors can go into their characters, fascinating stuff.

The show is fun – I think the second of the three plays is the weakest link, but even it has that same watch-the-magic feeling. The excellent acting takes place in a physical world created by Erik Kuhn, who did the minimalist set and lighting design and Michael Musgrave-Perkins’ video design. (Perkins has done quite a lot with Midnight, including the lovely A Model for Matisse.)

Rachel Tibbetts directed, keeping good pacing and a feeling of freshness despite what might be considered some cliched situtaions. Fine work there, too.

It’s an opportunity to see something new, see some fine work and to really watch what happens in theatre.

 

Tinseltown

Midnight Theatre Company

through December 18

.ZACK

3224 Locust St.

https://www.midnightcompany.com/

Who's Holiday

Cindy Lou who?

Don’t give me that blank look. You know perfectly well the little girl who tried to steal our hearts in The Grinch…. Yes, the now-classic children’s Christmas book/television special/Jim Carey movie/animatedmovie. That one. Whatever happened to Cindy Lou? Surely you’ve asked yourself that question practically every holiday season.

Or not. Our girl has had a hard life by the time she resurfaces in Who’s Holiday, a play by William Lombardo. It’s part of the (fairly) long tradition of rowdy R-rated Christmas offerings from Stray Dog Theatre. (Gary Bell, the founder/artistic director: “There’s already a lot out there for families. We just thought we’d do something different.”) It’s a one-Who show, with Cindy Lou being played by Sarah Polizzi for most of the run. For two days in the last week of the run, Sarajane Alverson takes over the role, but given the wackiness of Cindy Lou, that somehow feels par for the course.

Our heroine, living in what appears to be a small trailer as we meet her, is bravely preparing to host a Christmas Eve gathering. It’s a long (well, not that long; running time is a little over 90 minutes), sad and rather sordid story of what happened after she became a teenager. But it’s pretty funny, make no mistake. It’s certainly not for kiddies or the easily offended. Language? Yes. Content? Yes. Politically incorrect, or at least sociologically? Oh, definitely yes. So don’t bring the kiddies or anyone whose social mores you don’t know well.

Polizzi has a terrific time as Cindy Lou, make no mistake. She’s rowdy, bawdy, outspoken – but still has a soft side, clearly. Josh Smith’s mobile home interior rings very true, and Megan Bates’ work as costume designer works splendidly. Gary F. Bell directs this little askew bijou of a show, which is not for the fainthearted or easily offended, but ready to let fly with plenty of zingers. In fact, the play was the subject of a lawsuit from Dr. Seuss Enterprises, citing copyright infringement. The estate lost. While the dialogue is delivered in couplets very Seussian, which certainly does add to the amusement, one could scarcely mistake this for The Real Thing.

Have a couple of eggnogs first and prepare to be entertained.

 

Who’s Holiday

through December 18, 2021

Stray Dog Theatre

Tower Grove Abbey

2336 Tennessee Ave.

straydogtheatre.org

Football and food?

Why, yes, and we're not talking about Super Bowl snacks. The SEC Network (that's the South East Conference for athletics, to which Mizzou belongs) has a food show with serious cred. John T. Edge, noted author on the topic of Southern food and founding director of Southern Foodways Alliance, in conjunction with the New York Times, has created TrueSouth, a show about food and the South and the changing perceptions of both. He describes St. Louis as "on the cusp of the South", and brought his crew to town to film an episode about, as Joe Holleman would say, our fair burg. Read more about it here: 

https://www.stlmag.com/dining/true-south-espn-sec-network-st-louis/

Such a Deal!

One of the lesser-known jewels of Jewish holiday food is available until Saturday, the end of Hanukkah. AO & Co. has sufganiyot – that’s a long “o” and the last syllable is emphasized – from noon until they sell out, through Saturday. The festival celebrates the oil for lamps not burning out, which means fried food to celebrate. Latkes, the potato pancakes, are apparently mostly an American invention – they were originally made with cheese, it turns out – but sufganiyot are very Israeli.

They’re doughnuts, jelly doughnuts, to be precise, with a wonderful tender and rich brioche/challah type of dough and just a little powdered sugar on top, but not enough that my sweatshirt got powdered. And these are big guys, almost 4 inches in diameter.

Only available this week. Hurry up or wait until next year!

 

AO & Co. Market & Cafe

1641 Tower Grove Ave.

314-899-0991

http://www.bengelina.com/