St. Louis Eats and Drinks

IT IS MAGIC

Is IT IS MAGIC too much inside baseball, so to speak, for people who don’t live in the world of live theatre? Well, no, not unless this is your first time ever to go to a play. I admit, having experienced it, it’s difficult to explain to an adolescent whose world of entertainment is entirely on screens of one sort or another just why live theatre is so remarkable. And to some minds, watching the worst of special effects is preferable to seeing humans on a stage. (I’m thinking of finding some of those very early Japanese Godzilla-type films and making them endure that if they’re so convinced of the superiority of technology.)

No, trust me on this. The Midnight Company is back in the groove with a bang showing off this Halloween-y play by Mickle Maher. We’re in the basement of the Martier Civic Playhouse. On the main floor, the Scottish play is about to open. Here, there are auditions going on for an adult version of The Three Little Pigs. It’s a new play written by a first-time playwright, who is also directing it, and who works in the office at the civic center. She loves, loves, loves theatre, but is clearly an amateur. In fact, as it turns out, she doesn’t remember the name of the play opening tonight, or why no one will say its name. (If you don’t, either, here’s an explanation from folks who really know.)

But that’s just an aside. Deb (Michelle Hand), the playwright-director is casting the big role, the Wolf, and Tim (Carl Overly, Jr.) has been called back three times now because Deb just can’t make a decision. Moreover, Tim’s going to need to leave in a few minutes because he’s playing Second Murderer upstairs, thus his kilt. Sitting by Deb is her sister Sandy (Nicole Angeli), her head on the table, looking bored out of her mind. Or so we think. But it turns out that Deb wants the role. Badly.

Finally Deb lets Tim go, after picking his audition to pieces yet again and after the curtain upstairs has risen, in comes the artistic director for the whole place, Ken Mason (Joe Hanrahan). In other hands, either another author or another theatre company, this could have been the sort of character Gig Young played, rather sophisticated, slightly jaded, a martini in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other. Hanrahan’s much grittier Mason announces he can never stand to be in the room once the curtain goes up and he has to be elsewhere. Jaded? Like a piece from the Ming Dynasty. Forget the romance of theatre, much less the magic, it’s all he can do to be civil to the patrons in their khakis and chunky bracelets (and crocheted shawls, don’t forget the shawls) who keep things afloat with their donations. Of course, he poo-poohs Deb’s excitement, even though he has agreed to let her do the play the following season. The best that can be said is that he’s not condescending He’s just bluntly negative down to the point of complaining about the seats in the theater.

Somewhere in here, the play moves from satire into...another dimension. It’s very subtle at first. A woman named Elizabeth (Chrissie Watkins) comes into the basement, remarking that she knows the sisters “from somewhere”. Odd things begin to happen. And off we go.

This is really excellent ensemble work from all concerned. Director Suki Peters has orchestrated them like a piece of chamber music. Overly is a delight, throwing himself – repeatedly – into the Wolf audition, Angeli practically rending her garments with frustration and Hand leaning into the wonderfully overstated director’s role. Hanrahan switches back and forth between despair and the occasional encouragement faster than blinking, and Watkins at times felt like someone out of Star Trek with her electricity.

Kevin Bowman’s lighting comes into its own in the second half of the play – he did the set design as well – and the very subtle-at-first sound is the work of Ted Drury. Liz Henning did the costuming, including the Second Murderer’s outfit, which looks very au courant in certain circles.

Fascinating stuff, like so much Midnight Company does, but much twistier than one thinks at first.

IT IS MAGIC

through November 6

The Midnight Company

Kranzberg Black Box

501 N. Grand

tickets at https://www.metrotix.com/

https://www.midnightcompany.com/

Blue/Orange

Blue/Orange is the sort of play it’s hard for me to be neutral about. It’s set in a hospital, and some readers may know that for many years I worked as an RN. Nearly all that time was spent in acute-care settings rather than outpatient ones. I’m the sort of person it’s easy to imagine snarling at a television show, “Put the side rails up on that _____ bed!” or “His IV is hooked up to his catheter bag, for heaven’s sake!” As Gary Trudeau wrote in Doonesbury, “GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!”

Granted, Blue/Orange set in London, so it deals with the National Health scheme, socialized medicine. And it’s twenty years old, but that really isn’t a factor in the story or its details. It’s a story of a patient and his physicians. Christopher (William Humphrey) is about to be discharged tomorrow. After a mandated 28 day stay, he’s wildly ready to hit the bricks. “Wildly” is not too strong a word. If this is how his behavior is after four weeks of medication and talk therapy, one can only imagine what he was like on admission. He’s very manicky. In the interview with his psychiatrist, who seems in American medical parlance to be the equivalent of a senior resident or perhaps a fellow, he can barely be talked into sitting down. The doctor, Bruce Flaherty (Jason Meyers), is clearly hesitant about sending him home, feeling he’s not ready, but is equally uncomfortable telling him, probably because Christopher’s temper can erupt on a dime. Or a farthing.

Oh, my, look who’s dropping by mid-session. It’s Dr. Robert Smith (Ben Ritchie), the attending psychiatrist and Bruce’s boss. At first the relationship isn’t quite clear – they’ve obviously socialized together, Smith dining with Bruce and his wife, and the men have gone to a rugby game together with a pint or three at a local afterward. Now they’re about to butt heads, because Dr. Smith wants Christopher (who appears to have no surname) out so they can use the bed for someone else. Bruce is trying to politely make the case that the patient is nowhere near ready to unleash on the unsuspecting public of Shepherd’s Bush, the rather rough area of London where he came to the attention of authorities.

Christopher is Black. He has complained to Bruce in the past of feeling that he was being observed and judged because of that, and the language he has used to describe himself in such situations is derogatory. Smith is of the opinion that – to condense it considerably – standards of behavior are different for other ethnic groups and that should be kept in mind, so Christopher is fine to go. Nope, says Bruce, and asks Christopher to pick up an orange from a fruit bowl nearby and describe it. The orange, says Christopher – who clearly is bored by going through this yet another time – is blue. Blue inside, too. Disagreement breaks out. Christopher is asked to step out for more disagreement to take place.

Dr. Smith interviews Christopher alone. It goes well for a while; then that disintegrates to some degree, too, after he explains that he’s the son of Idi Amin. (Interestingly, Joe Penhall, the playwright spent six years working on the film The Last King of Scotland, about Amin, after he wrote this play.)

The next morning, Bruce has just left a disciplinary hearing because of what Christopher has said about him to Smith. Smith arrives, followed by Christopher, dressed to go home.

I’ll leave it at that.

Christopher, as brought to us by William Humphrey, is very real. It’s splendid work, showing someone internally tortured by some process whose clinical name is being argued over by the other two men. It’s the behavior of the aforesaid pair that is, while essential to the play, totally utterly unreal. Much of the disagreement over his diagnosis, his facts, his future would never be done in front of a patient – or a “client”, to use the currently fashionable if rather inaccurate term. There’s a great deal of racism on display, which certainly is part of the point of the play, and some quite tasteless sexism about Bruce’s wife early on, although nothing compared to the racism. Ritchie and Meyers carry on with their arguments with considerable elan, but must of necessity take a back seat to Humphrey’s activities, both verbal and physical.

It’s a harrowing evening. Justin Been, Stray Dog’s assistant artistic director, directed the play and did the set and the music. (Stray Dog always has really excellent music for their non-musicals; pay attention when you go.) He’s orchestrated things beautifully. Just be prepared to be slapped around a little by the ugliness of two educated, professional, white males.

 

Blue/Orange

through October 23

Stray Dog Theatre

Tower Grove Abbey

2336 Tennessee Ave.

straydogtheatre.org

The Gradient

Yet another premiere comes to St. Louis with the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’s production of The Gradient. It’s a slightly futuristic idea about a company that uses algorithms to treat men who’ve exhibited sexual misconduct.

Steph Del Rosso’s play gives us a strong, very controlled Natalia (Christina Acosta Robinson), who’s one of the directors of the program, and a young, newly hired counselor Tess (Stephanie Machado) to show us how this works. It’s an inpatient treatment program, although it’s not clear whether it’s voluntary or whether people are placed there by court order. Therapy at the facility seems to be a very assertive interaction that enlarges on traditional methods, confronting the clients and not holding back. It’s all based on algorithms.

Those clients are played by Stephen Cefalu, Jr. and Yousof Sultani. Cefalu inhabits eight different characters in a series of blackouts that is remarkable, and very funny. Sultani is Jackson, a single, pivotal character. William Demerrit plays the sole male employee we see, who only works behind the scenes.

The criteria for a man to be discharged from the program, or to graduate if that’s a more palatable word, are rather vague. One of them, though, is an apology. In the (only available online here ) program, director Amelia Acosta Powell, the Rep’s associate artistic director, she talks about “performative utterance”, a act of speaking that alters reality, and asks if apologies are performative utterances. Do they alter reality? Or are they merely performances? Apologies, real or not, really don’t alter reality. We measure reality by behavior. An apology, however articulate it sounds, is worthless if there is no change in both the apologizer and what they do in the future. Sometimes it’s hard to judge the latter factor, certainly, but behavior is really the primary criteria.

How are they assessing whether a client really does regret what they did? How do they judge whether he understands why the behavior was wrong? It’s particularly relevant in the case of Jackson, Tess’ client who is just a little too smooth. The faint sheen of oiliness soon begins to appear.

Somewhere in the program, the play is described as a satire. In another note, the play’s described as portraying a cure for toxic behavior. Perhaps that’s the satire. While there are some very funny moments, it feels not-funny. Nevertheless, this is a beautifully put together piece of work, from the acting to Carolyn Mraz’ set and Mextly Couzin’s lighting.

It was clearly intended to be disconcerting, and it does just that.

 

The Gradient

through October 24

Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Berges Theater at COCA

6880 Washington Ave, University City

https://www.repstl.org/

The Story of My Life

It was a daring move for New Line Theatre to open this season, of all years, with a play about someone writing a eulogy. Too many of us have had to do that, too many of us have thought we might have to do that, too many of us have thought, Oh, God, please don’t ask me to do that. It’s been a stinking couple of years, but the fact that someone was brave enough to think it was material for a play, two someones in this case, book by Brian Hill, music and lyrics by Neil Bartram, is impressive. Scott Miller, New Line’s founder and artistic director, is well known for his fearless approach to what he stages, and once again we have him grabbing life, giving it a good shake and holding it up for inspection.

Jeffrey Wright plays Tom Weaver a successful writer from a small town, and Chris Kernan is Alvin Kelby, his friend from childhood, the son of the town’s bookstore owner. Plenty of cultural references here, not surprisingly, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Tom Sawyer and on to adult magazines, set things pretty firmly in the near-present. Interestingly, the writer is the mainstream guy; his pal is the one who seemed to wander around with his head in the clouds. Tom is tasked with writing a eulogy for Alvin, who appears not as a ghost but as a character in Tom’s head, reminiscing over the past.

But the focus is not on deciding what to say and what not to say in the eulogy. The focus is on Tom’s success and his writer’s block. He was blocked before Alvin’s death, and he’s still blocked as he tries this. Success has gradually turned him into rather a sod, despite his old friend’s continuing affection for him.

Wright turns in a fine performance as Tom Weaver, and Chris Kernan is easy and natural as the hometown guy. Miller is at the keyboard, styling himself “The New Line Pandemic Band”. He directed the show, too. I particularly liked “Mrs. Remington”, a nice tribute to teachers.

Rob Lippert’s set is a delight, as his often are. Lights come from Kenneth Zinkl, and the props masters – there are a lot of books on the set – is Alison Helmer.

All that said, this is a script that badly needs tightening. It runs about 90 minutes without intermission, but another 10 minutes of editing would benefit things immensely. And I do wish it had focused more directly on the creation of eulogies in general, at least in passing. A tip of the black hat to those who have had to write them.

 

The Story of My Life

through October 23

New Line Theatre

Marcelle Theater

3310 Samuel Shepard Drive

www.NewLineTheatre.com

Jersey Boys

I wasn’t able to see the new venue, the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center, until the opening of Jersey Boys from Stages St. Louis. The theater is an absolute winner. Sight lines are good, acoustics are good, and to my immense delight, there’s room for live musicians. It’s quite a lovely building, with parking in several places, including the two lots at Greentree Church. (For any newcomers, St. Louisans, city dwellers and suburbanites, are always concerned about parking.)

Jersey Boys is, to me, the best of the jukebox musicals. There’s an actual story line in there and while it’s not completely accurate in an historic sense - “It’s a play, not a documentary,” snapped someone years ago – it’s close enough to make dramatic sense. And the score is great fun, even if these guys weren’t your absolute favorites at the time the songs were popular. It’s the background music of a lot of those who come to see the show around the world.

I suspect in another couple of decades these shows won’t be done except occasionally as Broadway revivals because the target audiences won’t be around. Gloomy? Realistic? Either way, it’s a secondary kick in the pants for people to go see Stages’ version. Secondary? Yes, because this one is strong enough to stand on its own merits, despite a few quibbles here and there.

The first reason to go is the music, especially the harmony of the group in various iterations. It sounds right, just like it should. The visuals are fun, from the versatile set from James Wolk, which manages to go from jail to a concert stage without breaking a sweat, to the costumes, the awfulness of shiny suits, bouffant petticoats and more courtesy of Brad Musgrove. (How is it that the narrow-as-an-arrow ties still manage to look great, though?)

And then there are the players, all well matched. The Four Seasons themselves, Frankie Valli (Christopher Kale Jones), Nick Massi (Jason Michael Evans), Tommy DeVito (Brent Michael DiRoma) and Bob Gaudio (Ryan Jesse) have different personalities and there’s no question about which is which. DeVoto’s ego, Massi’s pondering whether to start his own group, Gaudio’s composing talent and Valli’s drive delineate them from start to finish. Jones, who at times looks a little like Bobby Darin, to evoke another pop star from the mid-20th Century, is a charmer. At times, his solo work moves from sounding very much like Valli to something close to a country music style, which I assume is a choice of director Michael Hamilton. It’s solely the call of the listening ear as to how this comes across, of course.

Fun from the supporting cast, too, such as Jenna Coker Jones, who plays Frankie’s girlfriend and then wife as well as his mother. She is, in fact, married to Christopher Kale Jones, and they met at Stages. Two local actors fill a long list of roles, and it’s great fun watching John Flack and Steve Isom pop up many times in deep disguise. Isom’s transformation as Gyp DeCarlo, the local leader of the mob, is particularly remarkable. It took a little while to identify him. Maybe the Critics Circle needs to consider a category of Quick Change Artist.

A final tip of the hat to the band, who occupies the top third or so of the stage. Under the direction of Jeremy Jacobs, they’re a most welcome addition to the Stages experience.

Seriously good fun.

 

Jersey Boys

through October 24

Stages St. Louis

210 E. Monroe, Kirkwood

314-821-2407

https://stagesstlouis.org/jersey-boys/

Elsinore

Another premiere of a new play in town? Yes, Elsinore comes to us via Prison Performing Arts. Their alumni group, aided by some professional actors, shows off The Chapel’s improved acoustics with this play from David Nonemaker and Eric Satterfield.

It’s the prequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, taking us from Hamlet’s adolescence forward. Shakespeare scholars argue over just how old Hamlet would have been at his demise – sorry if that’s a spoiler, but at least it’s not occurring in this play – but Elsinore covers about fourteen years. And if it does nothing else, it offers an explanation of why Hamlet’s mother and his uncle marry soon after his father’s death. Yeah, it’s always creeped me out, too.

When Elsinore opens, our hero the adolescent Hamlet (Oliver Bacus) has come to his uncle Claudius (Eric Satterfield – one of the authors), full of fire and fury over how his father treats him. He’s not interested, he whines, in settling down and learning how to be a king, he wants to follow his own Best Life. Uncle and nephew truly seem to have a close relationship and when Claudius suggests some time at university for the prince, that seems to be a possible answer. King Hamlet (John Wolbers), ye olde father, whose irritation at his son seems a mile wide and equally deep does agree reluctantly to shipping the young one off. Queen Gertrude (LaWanda Jackson) is more sympathetic to the boy, but can’t do much because of her husband’s bad temper and sharp tongue. And so we have the basic setup, aided by Claudius’ wife Colette (Julie Antonic), pregnant with a much-wanted child, courtier Polonius (David Nonemaker – and here’s the other author), Polonius’ daughter Ophelia (Summer Baer), and the ever-popular Rosekranz (Ryan Lawson-Maeske) and Guildenstern (Joey File), here in the employ of Claudius and sent off to school on his dime to keep an eye on the impulsive prince.

For all its serious ancestry, there’s certainly some humor here. Wolbers’ King Hamlet is mostly, and seemingly quite deliberately, over the top, making us even more sympathetic to the young prince. (And doesn’t it bring vague memories of a similar situation the world may have heard about a few decades ago?) The Nonemaker take on Polonius is a long-winded sycophant with the most deadpan face imaginable. Ophelia, courtesy of Summer Baer and the script, is a Modern Young Woman, interested in learning and willing to speak her mind when encouraged. And File and Lawson-Maeske bring the dynamic duo of R&G to the point of near-giggles.

The language, while Shakespeare-esque, isn’t so hard to follow as the original, for those new to this sort of thing. Particular kudos to Ellie Schwetye, sound engineer for this production, who knows the venue’s quirks well from much work there previously. Erik Kuhn’s lights and Liz Henning’s costumes helped pull it together.

Still, the biggest round of applause needs to go to Christopher Limber, the director and retiring artistic director at PPA, whose good work is surely appreciated.

The play only ran this past weekend, but if it pops up again, as sometimes happens with such things, it’s a worthwhile evening.

 

Elsinore

Prison Performing Arts

http://www.prisonperformingarts.org

The Zoo Story/The Dumb Waiter

When it comes to timelessness in playwrights, the gold standard is Shakespeare. So flexible, goodness knows – but then there’s that language, beautiful but clearly dated. Ibsen? The misogyny, so painful to watch, but thankfully from another time. (At least we hope so.)

So it was interesting to realize that St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s opening presentation this season is a pair of one-act two-handers that date from before most Americans were born. And there’s only one giveaway to their age. SLAS has placed the show in the capable hands of veteran director Wayne Salomon.

Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story takes place in Central Park, where Peter (William Roth), a successful Upper East Side resident, is quietly reading on a park bench. Up wanders Jerry (Joel Moses) – and since it’s Albee, you know the fireworks will start quickly. Jerry’s been to the zoo and wants to talk about it. Peter, following New York style, wants minimal interaction with this guy. Jerry’s nervous. Or something. Joel Moses’ Jerry is as mesmerizing as a snake who keeps coiling and uncoiling. Is he crazy-malevolent or merely malevolent? How much of his story is true? What does he really want? Peter seems as hypnotized as we are. Well, for a while.

From across the pond comes The Dumb Waiter, an early work from Harold Pinter. A couple of yobs with working-class British accents are on cots (in the American sense of the word, not baby cribs, the British usage) in what seems to be a basement. They’re waiting for the word to finish an assignment, apparently a murder of some sort. They’ve done this before. As we meet them, Ben (William Roth), fully dressed, reads a newspaper. Gus (Joel Moses), the younger guy, has his tie untied, shirt tail out and is putting on his shoes after a nap, a particularly fine bit of wordless physical comedy. Still, this is Pinter, so there’s some fine wordplay, too. Even the title – dumb as in mute? Dumb as in not smart? Waiter waiting on tables or waiting for something to happen? Patrick Huber’s fine and extremely versatile set even gives us what is almost a third character in the basement.

Moses is clearly an actor to keep one’s eye on. It’s only his second St. Louis appearance onstage – he did the Aphra Behn Festival in 2020 – but he steps right up and owns the parts, particularly in Zoo Story. For Roth, his unshakeability in both plays becomes intriguingly frayed in the Albee and we see it balancing off the craziness of the Jerry character. Salomon is directing them like Leonard Slatkin handles his baton.

What? The dated thing? Both these edge-of-your-seat plays were written and opened in the late 1950’s, The Zoo Story in 1958 and The Dumb Waiter from 1957. The single thing that dated them, to my ear, was Roth’s Peter in Zoo Story admitting to Jerry that his salary – which kept up an apartment big enough for his wife, two daughters, and their pets in the Upper East Side of Manhattan – was $18,000 a year. Another commonality? Both were considered so radical at the time that they weren’t first performed in their countries of origin. The Pinter opened in Frankfurt, the Albee in Berlin. (And for trivia buffs, the original off-Broadway company in New York, ca. 1960, had William Daniels as Peter and George Maharis as Jerry.)

A fascinating, amazing double feature.

 

The Zoo Story/The Dumb Waiter

through October 3, 2021

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theatre

360 N. Boyle

314-458-2978

stlas.org

Dreaming Zenzile

The Rep reopens – and with a world premiere. Dreaming Zenzile is based on the life story of Miriam Makeba, the singer-songwriter-activist. Probably a couple of generations are saying Who’s she?

A Black woman born in the townships of South Africa, she began singing with groups and was participated in Come Back, Africa, a film that was in the Venice Film Festival in 1959. She was brought to Venice for the festival. That kicked off her international career. Harry Belafonte was her mentor, she moved to New York and began singing in the New York jazz clubs, merging jazz and African styles. Record contracts and national television followed. Living in South Africa during apartheid would probably be enough to make anyone super-socially conscious, but when she tried to go home for her mother’s funeral, she found her South African passport had been canceled because she’d spoken out on racial issues. Over time, she became as well known as an activist as she was as a musician.

This is the woman that playwright Somi Kokoma introduces us to on the Rep stage. Kokoma, a singer and songwriter herself, plays Zenzile Miriam Makeba, whose first name was dropped as she began to sing professionally. Four other actors, Naledi Masilo, Phindile Wilson, Aaron Marcellus and Phumzile Sojola portray different people in Makeba’s life and are credited as the Sangoma Chorus – sangomas are traditional healers in southern Africa. We’re also in full sight of the musicians, Herve’ Samb (music director and guitar), Toru Dodo (piano), Sheldon Thwaites (drums) and Pathe’ Jassi (bass).

The story isn’t linear, but it’s fairly easy to follow, even though much of the first act isn’t in English. The music certainly is universal and comes from many sources, from Zulu through Afropop and the Great American Songbook to her own compositions. She sang in Swahili, Sotho and Xhosa, and, yes, Xhosa is one of the languages with the “click” consonant. In fact, one of Makeba’s hits was a traditional song that she recorded as “The Click Song” - you can hear it here . There’s also ululation, the warbling, high pitched back-of-the-mouth sound found through much of Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. I believe it’s the first time it’s heard on the Rep stage.

Kokoma certainly has the pipes to play Makeba; she sounds wonderful. And the chorus, especially singing a capella, are remarkable. The arrangements of the songs, many of which are done by Kokoma and Samb really resonate. And it’s fun to watch the band during the numbers that swing.

Lileana Blain-Cruz directs the ensemble. The set, a concert stage in Italy, is by Ricardo Hernandez with lighting by Yi Zhao and projections designer Hannah Wasileski, all very subtle to contrast with the music and action. Mimi Plange’s costumes move well, particularly in the second act.

The fly in the ointment for this otherwise-satisfying show is that the sound, especially in the first act, is often blurry, with the music overriding lyrics, even in English and the spoken word not resonating. This is not a house that generally has acoustic problems, so it’s particularly notable.

Still, a worthwhile evening for music lovers and those who want to learn more about a world-renown activist. You can learn more about Miriam Makeba on this from the Rep's website.

 

Dreaming Zenzile

through October 3

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

314-968-4925

repstl.org/

Sweat

The Black Rep starts the ‘21-’22 season off with a bang. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat is definitely a play that talks about lots of things we struggle with. Nottage takes on racism, classism, the perfidiousness of corporate management, all in one sweeping evening. Substance abuse is just a sort of garnish to everything else.

Alas, she hasn’t got a cure for those things, but that’s no excuse – at all – for not talking about them. Director Ron Himes, the founder of the Black Rep, has pulled it all together for an enthralling evening.

It’s a blue collar world in Pennsylvania, mainly a bar, where the action takes place. Three women, regular patrons, have worked in a local factory for decades. Two of them have sons considering getting jobs there. Life is thrumming along, although one woman has just finally thrown her husband out because he’s again relapsed with his drug use. A fair amount of alcohol is being consumed, but the bartender, who’s obviously known them for a long time, is unflappable. It turns out there’s a job posting for a manager. Much joshing bout who should apply, and eventually two of the three do just that. Only one, of course, can get the job, and since there are men applying too, the outcome is up in the air.

Cynthia (Velma Austin), the one who’s bounced her husband, gets the nod to leave her slot on the floor and move into the office. She’s Black. That factor isn’t a component for a while. As time passes and the plant looks more and more like it’s going to have some serious layoffs or shut down entirely, it raises its ugly head. Management is trying to hire replacement workers if the union walks out over the company’s demands – you’ll hear the word “scabs” used to describe the replacement workers, if you’re unfamiliar with the term. Tensions rise everywhere in the community. The people whose jobs are in danger seem in denial at first and then cannot understand why their one time friend can’t fix this, why the union is helpless

Austin, Amy Loui and Kelly Howe are the trio of women, and the rowdy group navigates the changing emotion of the time period – from 2000 to 2008 – extremely well. Blake Anthony Edwards is the bartender, a remarkable, graceful referee in an establishment whose walls hold everything from dancing to threats. Oscar, his right-hand guy, is Gregory Almanza, who fleshes out Oscar’s increasingly important story as the show progresses. Franklin Killian and Brian McKinley play the two sons, one more curious about the outside world than the other, but both wanting to protect their mothers. And A.C. Smith as the banished husband exhibits his considerable ability to go from charming to explosive in a nanosecond, as he has often shown Black Rep audiences.

David Simon, who created “The Wire” was discussing the late actor Michael K. Williams in The New York Times. And he said this:

It’s about the death of work, I told him. When legitimate work itself dies in an American city, I argued, and the last factory standing is the drug corners, then everyone goes to a corner...it’s about economics and the collapse of the working class – Black and white both.

This is a painful, important and truthful play. The Black Rep gives it full respect. Great work from all concerned.

 

Sweat

through September 26

The Black Rep

Edison Theatre at Washington University

https://www.theblackrep.org/

The Ville: Avengeance!

Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Much argument about this quote, its exact wording and original source, to be sure, but the message is the same: We need to learn history. St. Louis Shakespeare Festival annual event Shakespeare in the Streets is back after a year’s hiatus, giving us the remarkable piece The Ville: Avengeance! There’s lots of relatively unknown history in it.

As is the tradition, it’s outdoors, with some seating, but mostly BYO lawn chairs (or blankets, but the street is blocked off for the audience, and most of us would be mighty uncomfortable). The stage is the lawn of Annie Malone Children and Family Services’ lovely Georgian-style building in the midst of the historic Ville neighborhood.

Playwright Mariah Richardson (a graduate of nearby Sumner High School and the author of, among many other things, Love at the River’s Edge, a previous SLSF Shakespeare in the Streets) brings us the ghosts of Annie Malone (Michelle Dillard) and a young man named Hopeless (Tylan Mitchell) who was killed nearby. They both appear before two guys visiting the neighborhood. Hamlet (Brandon Ellis), who’s inherited a house his grandfather owned in the Ville, has brought his buddy along from North County to take a look at the property. They hadn’t bargained on a couple of ghosts.

But it’s the ghosts that bring it to these suburban guys, talking about the Ville, complete with honest assessments of things like segregation, redlining and urban crime. The stories of the neighborhood that supported Black businesses and cultural institutions are mostly news to Hamlet and Heratio, and probably to some of us as well – despite how well we think we know St. Louis history. The story is clearly, vividly told, including Hamlet’s grandparents. The fictional Grandma (Arthurine Harris) was a graduate of Homer G. Phillips School of Nursing, which I can tell you from personal experience produced some extraordinary women; his grandfather (Carl Overly, Jr.) quite a persistent charmer from Mississippi. Alex Jay, as the narrator, rounds out the cast, all of whom can be pretty much described as enthralling. Nevertheless, Dillard’s Malone stands out, a formidable woman who tells the story with powerful restraint.

In addition, there are two music breaks from The Legend Singers, whose long history goes back to Kenneth Billups, who taught music at Sumner, and who was certainly a legend himself. They add immensely to the experience.

Thomasina Clarke, who also has deep, deep roots in the Ville, directed. The history of the neighborhood is enhanced by the set from Peter and Margery Spack, using multiple smaller white screens upon which are projected illustrations of photos, advertisements and newspaper clippings relevant to the story. Bryant Powell deserves credit for the lighting, which moves the story along smoothly.

A delightful and important piece of work that contributes greatly to the understanding of life in St. Louis. Alas, only running for three nights, closing Saturday, September 11. Do your best to see it if you want to learn a lot and have a fine outdoor theatre experience.

 

The Ville: Avengeance!

through September 11

St. Louis Shakespeare Festival

https://stlshakes.org/production/theville/

Chicago

The Muny wraps up this short-but-most-welcome season with Chicago. And what a treat it is. Anyone familiar with the show knows about the delightful Kander and Ebb score – think “All That Jazz” - but the Muny brings us more. Lots more, in fact, starting out with the choreography that pretty much opens the show.

This is a show with Bob Fosse’s fingerprints all over it, of course. After his then-wife Gwen Verdon read the script for a straight play based on the original true story, she suggested to Fosse that it would make a good musical. He eventually obtained the rights, and the couple, along with a man named Richard Fryer, became the producers. They hired Kander and Ebb to write the score, Fosse and Ebb wrote the book, and Fosse directed and choreographed.

Denis Jones, who now qualifies as a Muny regular (and who’s a former winner of the St. Louis Theatre Circle Award) takes on those same roles, director and choreographer, here. The results are great. It’s hard to imagine just how many feet are raised above chest level in Forest Park every night with this show, so vigorous are the dance routines. It’s easier to count the laughs.

It takes place in and around the justice system of Chicago in the Twenties, complete with murder, adultery, yellow journalism and the expected bad language. Chorus girl shoots lover, gets arrested, and, bingo, she’s in the city jail. What could go wrong?

Sarah Bowden returns to the Muny as Roxie Hart. the chorine with poor impulse control. The role exemplifies big shoes to step into – the Muny’s first production of Chicago starred Ann Reinking, another Fosse connection – but she’s a fine example of playing the character, not the star. Her Roxie is indeed a small person desperate to become Big. Making us “get” Roxie opposite this particular Velma Kelly is even more of a challenge.

That’s because Velma, in a Muny casting coup, is played by J. Harrison Ghee, whom Muny audiences first saw when he played Lola in Kinky Boots. It’s a straightforward performance, no camping it up, at least relative to Velma’s generally high-voltage approach to life. Ghee is just fabulous. It’s the role he was born to play. As he and we, the audience, settle into the evening, it’s a high-voltage piece of work, with gender totally irrelevant. The combination of Bowden and Ghee works very well indeed.

James T. Lane is Billy Flynn, the high-rolling lawyer who masterminds the defense (or lack thereof) of both Roxie and Velma. Billy’s ego is exceeded only by his hypocrisy. Lane is totally straightfaced about the latter but gives the former a wide-open field in which to operate. Emily Skinner, another Muny regular, is the jail matron, and sounds great. It’s good to see the familiar face of Adam Heller back, playing Amos, Roxy’s working-man husband, and giving us a fine rendition of “Mr. Cellophane”.

Delicious costumes of the Roaring Twenties are courtesy of Emily Rebhotz, complemented by wigs of Tommy Kurzman. And a particular tip of the critical cap to the pit orchestra helmed by Charlie Alterman. There’s nothing quite like a good pit orchestra, and this is a score that shows off their work exceptionally well for a relatively contemporary show.

One more throwback note, this one for Law and Order fans – Jerry Orbach, Lenny Briscoe in that series, was the original Billy Flynn.

I missed On Your Feet! and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but of the three shows I saw this season at the Muny, this is the star in the crown. Go and have some very adult fun.

 

Chicago

through September 5

The Muny

1 Theatre Drive

Forest Park

muny.org

The Glass Menagerie

It is, surely, heresy to compare Tennessee Williams to William Shakespeare. And yet every summer that Carrie Houk’s brainchild, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, comes to fruition, it’s hard to resist the urge. The range of human experience, American-style, is evoked in lovely and unlovely ways, the conflict between aspirational dreams and everyday necessity drawn in bold strokes.

In this year of struggle to return to live theatre, Houk and director Brian Hohlfeld had only 2 ½ weeks to rehearse the show they’d been dreaming and plotting and planning for this year. It’s Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. If there is such a thing as a classic St. Louis play, Meet Me in Saint Louis only wins in the musical category. Menagerie is surely the great St. Louis drama.

The venue is a parking lot behind one of the numerous addresses the Williams family had in the Central West End and University City, so that it’s easy to put to good use the fire escapes where Tom Wingfield, the narrator of the play who is clearly the young Williams himself, steps out of his mother’s apartment finding a relatively quiet place to dream.

For those unfamiliar with the story, which takes place during the Depression, Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle whose husband bolted some years ago, lives with her two adult children. Tom works in the warehouse of the International Shoe Company. (Why, yes, that is indeed the building now housing the City Museum and The Last Hotel.) Laura, his sister, is traditionally played with a limp – there’s discussion at one point of her having worn a brace in school, and Amanda will absolutely not hear the word “crippled”. She’s very shy, loves her long-gone daddy’s collection of old Victrola records and a small collection of little glass animals.

Amanda worries what will become of her children, particularly Laura. About the only possibilities for the young woman are an office job or marriage. Unknown to Amanda, she’s dropped out of a commercial business college. As to what Amanda refers to as gentleman callers, there have never been any. She considers Tom an impractical dreamer. While her motives are pure, she is constantly nattering at them. She is, to use a word none of them would probably recognize, a noodge.  Can’t Tom, she pleads, find someone, the right sort of someone, of course, at the warehouse for Laura?

Hohlfeld and Houk have assembled a balanced team, which is what this script needs, four actors, each strong in a particular way. Brenda Currin is a petite, seemingly fragile and clearly aging Amanda. Unlike some portrayals of the character, hers is less acerbic, letting us understand her worries and fear. Tom Wingfield, played by Bradley James Tejada, holds his temper pretty well, considering his mother’s persistent imploring and demanding, but it’s obvious that he would rather be almost anywhere but in this situation. He’s mostly guarded in his responses to his mother, even to his sister, until he erupts at Amanda in a torrent of invective. Elizabeth Teeter’s Laura is docile enough except when she faces us instead of her mother. She clearly has what we’d now consider social anxiety disorder. When she deals with her mother’s encouragement that she, too, can be a social butterfly just like Amanda was in her youth, she looks just like a modern young woman, glaring and rolling her eyes out of her mother’s line of vision. All she’s missing is the iPhone.

Drumroll, please. Enter The Gentleman Caller. Well, okay, his names is James O’Connor, but that’s not how we know him, at least at first. Chauncey Thomas’ TGC is a charmer, self-assured, not overwhelming but warm and encouraging despite Laura’s near-terror at his arrival. It’s a particularly remarkable rendering of the character, bigger, more rounded and approachable than most. He delights Amanda, who’s hauled a remarkable dress out of a trunk for the evening. He keeps the dinner table conversation going despite the power going out. Is he a diamond that’s not so rough or a cubic zirconia?

It’s pretty amazing sitting in a parking lot watching a set that feels like a near-abstract dream, the product of scenic designer Dunsi Dai, with lighting punctuating the movement of both time and memory, courtesy of lighting designer Catherine Adams. Hooray for Kareem Deanes, whose has the sound near-perfect. That amazing gown of Amanda’s plus the more mundane late-Thirties clothes come from Michele Siler.

On my visit, one of The Caller’s big speeches was punctuated by fire trucks. The breeze was right. It was summer in St. Louis. And the Wingfield family lives on in memory – which is clearly what Williams intended in the play.

 

The Glass Menagerie

through August 29

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

various festival locations

twstl.org

'ART'

Nobody has to explain outdoor theatre to St. Louisans, one would think. Not with our century-long tradition of the Muny, and the now-established popularity of Shakespeare Festival-St. Louis with its increasingly varied venues. But somehow, the side lawn of Tower Grove Abbey feels new and different. Stray Dog Theatre is offering ‘ART’ – while adhering to careful COVID protocols.

Artistic director Gary F. Bell is functioning as de facto maitre d’, greeting theatre-goers at the walk and escorting them to their two-seat pods, all numbered and spaced, and giving directions on the procedure for any trips to the restrooms, which involves a one-way loop. Masks are required unless you’re in your seat.

‘ART’ is a good choice for the temporary stage erected at the back of the lawn. Three actors, a simple set, only one prop. And what a prop it is. The story revolves around three long-time friends after one of them buys a very serious piece of art. At least he feels it’s serious.

Yasmina Reza, the author, always writes great dialogue, giving actors a chance to shine. Stephen Peirick, Ben Ritchie and Jeremy Goldmeier are the friends. Peirick goes to visit Ritchie, who reveals that he’s paid beaucoup francs for a painting, which he proudlly exhibits. It’s solid white, or pretty much so – that’s one of the bones of contention – with three diagonal lines sliding across it. Peirick’s character laughs at the painting, kicking off the disagreement. Goldmeier, who’s a peace-at-any-price guy visits later and says he rather likes it, but dissembles somewhat when he and Peirick are together. Chaos, of course, ensues, questioning the basic nature of their friendships.

While it’s a serious drama, there are some very funny lines (interesting what happens to audience laughter when carefully spaced outside) and the timing among the three is very well done. It’s great ensemble work, including the non-verbal. All three actors pull their weight, Peirick as the surprisingly nervous Marc, Ritchie who’s not as self-assured as he comes across and Goldmeier, who’s facing his wedding with increasing discomfort, not to say his new job with his bride’s family.

Director Gary F. Bell has orchestrated this to perfection. It’s a very satisfying ninety minutes. That leaves time to stop for a drink on the way home and discuss which character resembles someone you probably know. Good fun for a summer night.

 

‘ART’

through August 21

Stray Dog Theatre

Tower Grove Abbey

2336 Tennessee Ave.

straydogtheatre.org

The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music: Is it a musical theatre cliché? For those who’ve seen it many times, it surely might be. It verges on teeth-on-edge sweet. It’s not the best of Rogers and Hammerstein’s scores. And having it played over and over via video recordings may have put some folks over the edge. (Not that this happened in my family, but….)

I’m happy to report that the Muny’s current staging is a pleasure. In avoiding the excesses we tend to think of with the show, they’ve come up with a charming, easy-to-enjoy rendition. It left me walking out thinking, okay, exactly why did I find this so likeable? One tries to avoid the critic-as-curmudgeon thing, for sure, but WHY is a constant question in this line of endeavor.

Director Matt Kunkel has chosen to go in the direction of subtlety. On a stage this size, it’s easier to deal in broadly drawn manifestations of character, but Kunkel has throttled back just a tad to let the story and the music reveal themselves without that push. Kate Rockwell’s Maria does not run around figuratively leaping on rocks to show us her zest for life. She’s certainly warm and relatable when we first meet her apologizing to Reverend Mother Abbess (Bryonha Marie Parham), but not hyperactive. Captain von Trapp, played by Michael Hayden, despite his hard-nosed insistence on discipline early in the play, relaxes pretty quickly, rather than remaining stiff but slightly warmer, as has often been the case in the past.

Even Frau Schraeder, the widowed Captain’s fiancee-to-be, here played by Jenny Powers, no longer seems to be an ancestor of Cruella deVil, just an upper-class woman who thinks the Captain is a good match for her. And Max Detweiler, the family friend and concert impressario, usually played pretty broadly, is given a more subtle turn by John Scherer. Even the children, who were clearly cast for their singing abilities, not because of how well they stairstep down the age gradient, come across that way.

All this adds up to a story that’s more human and less Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It becomes the love story of a marriage.

Rockwell sounds great, Hayden perhaps not quite so remarkable but his acting makes up for it. There’s good chemistry between them. Parham turns out to be a Missouri native, and every once in a while you can hear it in the way she handles a note, not quite the staid and proper abbess, but very satisfying. The children, some of which are clearly old enough to be irritated by my use of that category (which means about 9 or so, in my experience), are Elizabeth Teeter, Victor de Paula Rocha, Amelie Lock, Parker Dzuba, Jillian Depke, Abby Hogan and Kate Scarlett Kappel. Young Ms Kappel is the only one given the green light to be aggressively Cute, and is appropriately delightful. The offspring sound particularly wonderful.

Paige Hathaway’s scenic design gets particularly high marks for the wedding scene, using all the Muny’s new toys to maximum advantage, in conjunction with Caite Hevner’s video design, to be sure. Ben Whiteley directs the pit orchestra, an ensemble that Rogers and Hammerstein always made full use of, and it’s very satisfying. Beth Crandall’s choreography adds to the romance. Tristan Raines’ costumes are also in keeping with the non-comic book look of the show, although in honesty one cannot help but be taken by Max Detweiler’s clothing, a symphony in plaid. Notice that in the last scene the children become clad in colors that would blend right into that mountain that they’re about to climb.

Definitely worth a second – or even a fifth – look.

 

The Sound of Music

through August 9

The Muny

1 Theatre Drive

Forest Park

muny.org

 

Tiny Beautiful Things

Advice columns are a secret vice for a lot of people who think they’re a little too close to tabloid material. But who among us can resist the occasional chance to overhear, so to speak, stories out of other people’s lives? That’s what the columns give us, whether it’s questions about heartburn or heartache.

Cheryl Strayed, a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, found herself, in 2010, writing an advice column under the pen name Sugar. Strayed has had quite a life of her own, and used her experiences in answering the letters, so it’s a far – indeed, a far, far – cry from vintage Dear Abby. She published some of the letters in Tiny Beautiful Things.

Max & Louie Productions bring the play, adapted from the book, to the Grandel.

It’s a worthwhile ninety-or-so minutes, fluffy and fun at times and deeply serious at others. Michelle Hand is Sugar. It’s a pleasure to see her back onstage, sinking her teeth into a role that completely covers the aforementioned span. The other three cast members play an assortment of seekers of wisdom and truth, to use Frank Loesser’s great phrase. Greg Johnston, Wendy Renee Greenwood and Abraham Shaw differentiate their characters well. They let us hear the chorus of people pushing Sugar to reveal her private identify, an intermittent but persistent occurrence, as well as voicing many of their letters, some of which truly peel back layers of both writer and respondent. It’s quite a cast of characters they bring to life so competently. Some of the questions are light-hearted. Others, as well as some of Sugar’s answers, are anywhere from potentially uncomfortable to downright disturbing. They’re a reflection of real life and an ability to roll with the punches that’s reassuring, and at times refreshing.

Director Sydnie Grosberg Ronga has assembled a fine team for the show, including Dunsi Dai’s versatile set and Patrick Huber’s lighting to help us keep track of things. In addition, the sound at the Grandel, long a challenge seems to be working out very well, thanks at least in part to Phillip Evans, the sound designer and audio engineer. Nia Vardalos, who wrote and starred in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, adapted the book, and starred in the off-Broadway run of the play.

Tiny Beautiful Things hits the sweet spot between easy and serious, with notably fine work from all hands.

 

Tiny Beautiful Things

through August 8

Grandel

3610 Grandel Square

maxandlouie.com

Smokey Joe's Cafe

It’s the Muny. The full-strength Muny. The only thing missing was the pre-show dinners at the Culver Pavilion, a small price to pay for a surprisingly pleasant weather-wise evening of The Real Thing. Yes, they suggest masks. But it was obvious in the way Mike Isaacson, artistic director and executive producer was greeted for his traditional curtain speech that the audience was more than ready to rock and roll.

That’s fortunate, since the opener for this shortened season is Smokey Joe’s Cafe, the revue of songs from the prolific team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They produced the soundtrack for many of our lives, tunes coming from jukeboxes and car radios stretching from the bobby sox years through to the acid-groovy ones.

When faced with shows like this, one always wonders is anyone too young to have heard this music even interested in such stuff? Goodness knows the traditional teenaged eye-roll is always a threat. And yet...and yet....

I can recall being exposed to my mother's Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman sounds and thinking that they sure sounded dated – but were pretty pleasant to listen to. I suspect that response is what led me into discovering jazz by my sophomore year in high school, when absolutely no one else listened to it, or at least admitted same. And I was thrilled this past year to discover that in the small town/rural county where I grew up, some kids have become excited by jazz band classes. So there's hope for the generations to come. In the meanwhile, nostalgia reigns in Forest Park.

Revues generally don’t have much if any story line, and that’s true here. It distracts not at all from what we see and hear. The audience is greeted by a set that takes us back to that time, with plenty of images from the glory years of Gaslight Square. After all, one of the most visible things there was a line of Greek columns marking the sidewalk outside Smokey Joe’s Grecian Terrace. The St. Louis visuals continue – a shopping bag clearly marked with the logo of Stix, Baer & Fuller literally drew gasps from some of the audience. The orchestra, smaller in size for this music, has been moved out of the pit, upstage and on an upper level. A tip of the Cardinals cap to scenic designer Edward E. Haynes, Jr., for this fun.

There’s a wide range of great songs, many of which will be familiar to even the casual listener. “Stand by Me” gets a great treatment from Charl Brown. “Searchin’”, another classic, is in good hands with Mykal Kilgore. Yes, of course there’s “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown”, both universally guaranteed to produce a smile on the listener. Those of a certain age will find themselves thrown back into things like dancing in a friend’s basement to this music.

It’s sometimes easy to forget that Leiber and Stoller also wrote many of the early Elvis Presley hits. Interestingly, one of the big Elvis hits was a cover. “Hound Dog” was originally recorded by Big Mamma Thornton in 1952, and Tiffany Mann’s version of it is an absolute winner, clearly in that blues-shouting style. (You can hear it here, although that sure looks more like Josephine Baker in the photo showing in the video.) Forget that kid from Tupelo, here’s how you talk about a cheating man. Brown and Dee Roscioli, another belter, team up for a great “Love Me/Don’t”. Christopher Sams (who’s quite the hoofer) and Nasia Thomas cover “Spanish Harlem”, whose very sound sent me back to when I made my single (and very under-age) visit to a roadhouse called The Artesian.

Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s splendid production outclasses any I’ve seen of this show. It’s a totally swinging evening and a simply sparkling start to the season.

 

Smokey Joe’s Cafe

through August 1

The Muny

1 Theatre Drive

Forest Park

muny.org

Roadrunner:

The movie about Anthony Bourdain opened this weekend. What a fascinating, out of control personality he was. I wrote about it here in Dining on the St. Louis Magazine website: 

https://www.stlmag.com/dining/roadrunner-anthony-bourdain-movie-opens-st-louis/ 

Now Playing Third Base for the St. Louis Cardinals...Bond, James Bond

Didn’t grow up in St. Louis? Don’t speak baseball? Never saw From Russia with Love?

Never mind; you’ll probably still enjoy Now Playing Third Base for the St. Louis Cardinals...Bond, James Bond, the current offering from The Midnight Company. Joe Hanrahan, Midnight’s co-founder wrote this out of his own St. Louis youth, and performs the one-hander. (If you’re one of those people who hates having the fourth wall broken – a performer directly addressing the audience – you’re better off going to Ted Drewes.)

It’s the summer of 1964. JFK is newly dead, the Cardinals just can’t get it together, and kids play outside. There’s backstory, of course, as there always is when we tell tales of our childhood, or what might have been our childhood. That’s fair warning that this isn’t totally a linear story. Hanrahan takes us down any number of rabbit holes, from Freund bakery trucks to the origin of one-performer theater pieces. Fascinating stuff, nearly always. (And congratulations to whomever persuades him to join their trivia team.) The pace is leisurely, but that’s okay. We all know the ending – well, at least most of us do. It’s the journey that’s the point of this trip, not the destination.

There’s a screen behind the set, but on the night I saw the show, the video appeared to have gone out for an Imo’s or something, and couldn’t be persuaded to return. But the very simple set, involving a bench, a bat, a ball and a glove, are just fine, and it all flowed well. Most importantly, the erratic acoustics of The Chapel appeared to have been brought under control, even with the music of the period used to emphasize things. Of course you couldn’t have this without the Bond theme music, for instance. And since there’s discussion of the Beatles, who made their debut on American television that summer, there are a few of their early tracks as well.

Shane Signorino directed Hanrahan in the show. The production and lighting designer was Kevin Bowman, and Elizabeth Henning serves as stage manager. Audiovisual design came from Michael B. Perkins.

It’s a charming, low-key show, delightful escapist stuff with lots of anecdotes and moving back and forth from Bond script to locker room to selling soda at old Busch Stadium. Quite satisfying unless you’re a Yankees fan.

 

 

Now Playing Third Base for the St. Louis Cardinals...Bond, James Bond

The Midnight Company

through July 25

The Chapel

6238 Alexander Drive, 63105

MidnightCompany.com

Feast

What becomes a legend most?

That was one of advertising’s most famous lines from the mid-Twentieth Century. The campaign for Blackglama mink used wonderful Richard Avedon photos of celebrities who – mostly – qualified as legends. All of them, of course were in the dark, lush and hard-to-photograph fur. Fur coats were probably a given in the world from whence comes Feast, the first offering of the season from Tesseract Theatre.

There probably are people who clearly recall studying Beowulf in high school, but for most, it’s only a vague memory – for me, it gets mixed up with hearing Chaucer in Middle English from the very excellent Carolyn Allers, who was tasked with my particular class. The epic poem is considered pretty much the beginning of English literature, although the roots of the story are probably Scandinavian. Those Viking types were always big on sagas, of course. For us, Beowulf is the starting point for Megan Gogerty’s play Feast, which was originally intended to be part of a group of new plays for Tesseract. Not a year for plans to go smoothly, of course.

In the long, long poem named for its hero, Beowulf is the good guy, going off to slay monsters. But as with almost every story, there’s more to it. Grendel, the magical creature Beowulf first goes after, is described in some versions as a descendant of Cain. After slaying Grendel, Grendel’s mother, The Woman With No Name, comes after Beowulf, as any mother would. That’s who we meet in Feast.

Donna Parrone is this mamma bear who’s lost her only cub. Oh, she looks like a human being, of course, explaining that she’s created this manifestation out of clay so we, her guests, can see her. There’s very much an air of magical realism, set in a medieval-ish banquet hall but taking place in the present. She tells the tale of what happened from her standpoint – those who never knew the story line will be fine – and when she howls, “They hung my son’s arm on the wall!” we’re quickly pulled into the narrative.

Feast, however, goes far beyond the family narrative. Why, she asks, is the only character without a name? (Sexist!) Just what is a king, anyway? Why did these people come in, kill trees, stack them up and make blocks in which they enter? It’s fascinating how these discussions and diversions end up referring as easily to modern events as to the fable from which the story began.

While the script may wander some, especially early on, it’s a tour de force performance from start to finish for the ever-reliable Perrone. Despite the grim nature of things, she snaps off funny lines as easily as she wails about the loss of her beloved child, stretching in both directions as easily as breathing.

Directed by Shane Signorino, with scenic and lighting design from Tesseract’s artistic director Taylor Gruenloh as well as Brittanie Gunn. They’ve managed the .ZACK’s often-ungainly space pretty well. The audience is asked to mask in the theater, and there are some seats available for those who prefer to socially distance.

Some performances are sold out, so make haste to see this interesting piece of work. Runs about 65 minutes without intermission.

 

Feast

through June 27

The Tesseract Theatre Company

.ZACK Theatre

3224 Locust St.

https://www.tesseracttheatre.com/

Highway 1, U.S.A.

It’s a very different Opera Theatre of St. Louis this year as they emerge from the COVID months. Sitting – safely distanced – on the parking lot of Webster University facing a stage that looked like those set up on athletic fields for rock concerts becomes, however briefly, one of those am I really in St. Louis? moments. But it works, and serves to remove a little more of those snooty opera stereotypes that remain, especially as the audience is far more casually dressed than has been usual. (Side note: I freely admit that fashion-watching at OTSL was often very rewarding in The Before Times, a nice little lagniappe for anyone into that.)

Tickets are hard to come by this year, what with the reduced capacity, but luck was with me, enabling me to see Highway 1, U.S.A., the William Grant Still one-act that tells the story of a couple and their hard work to put the husband’s brother through college. Still, a Black composer, worked from the Thirties through the Sixties, but is seldom heard now. Highway 1 makes one wonder why.

Like all the season’s offerings, it’s a single-act, no-intermission work. Ron Himes, a director well-known to St. Louis audiences, makes his OTSL bow here, setting the time period in the early Sixties. Bob and Mary have a filling station, and as the show opens, Bob is preparing to go, alone, to his younger brother Nate’s college graduation. Mary has to stay behind to run the business. No self-serve gas in those days, certainly. Getting the young man educated was the boys’ mother’s dying wish, and the couple have sacrificed a great deal to accomplish that. Mary admits finally that she looks forward to being able to afford a few nice things now that Nate is about to graduate.

But wait. Nate, who now prefers to be called Nathan, isn’t getting a job. He wants to “establish himself” first, explains Bob. Ah, yes, he’s considering his possibilities. How many of us have heard this before? There’s the rumble of metaphorical thunder in the distance with this development. Because Nate’s moving in.

The music is mostly quite delicious, with touches of jazz here and there. Will Liverman and Nicole Cabell are Bob and Mary, sounding great. Supportive Aunt Lou is Rehanna Thelwell, a former Gerdine Young Artist at OTSL, and she nails it. And then there’s Nate – excuse me, Nathan – sung by Christian Mark Gibbs, managing to come across as so smooth he’s downright slick, entitled to the max, but not quite as smart as he thinks he is. Himes has brought us a domestic drama with high-end music, and the emphasis on that drama adds a great deal.

It’s also delightful to see Leonard Slatkin right where he belongs, leading a crew of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra musicians, all of whom look like they’re having a bang-up time with things. Set design of the kitchen of Mary and Bob’s home attached to the filling station, including some nice video projections created by Greg Emetaz, works well.

A very satisfying evening both musically and dramatically. The fact that it celebrates a strong working partnership of a marriage is the final fillip.

 

Highway 1, U.S.A.

through June 17

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Webster University campus

opera-stl.org

Mlima's Tale

 Aaaaand...we’re off!!!!!

Live theatre is back, and for many of us, Mlima’s Tale is the kickoff. It’s the initial offering of the season from The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and it looks like they’re heading right for the end zone.

If you’ve heard this is a story about an elephant, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re getting The Lion King. While there are some physical similarities, this is a far darker story. Lynn Nottage’s elucidation of the ivory trade is a stunner, even if you’re basically familiar with the sad details.

Kambi Gathesha is Mlima, both before and after falling prey to poachers. Mlina (the “M” is almost silent) is what we learn is called a “tusker”, an elephant with amazingly long tusks, traditionally those touching the ground. He’s a wise and experienced bull whom hunters have tried to bring down many times. It is, of course, his tusks that the humans want. The journey of the tusks and the people, whether by choice or unwittingly, involved in it is carefully, seductively offered up, with nary a note of didacticism from Nottage. Gathesha’s work in this very physical role is almost hypnotizing.

Those humans (and three other elephants) are played by Ezioma Asonye, Will Mann and Joe Ngo – for a total of 28 characters as the tusks move through and out of Kenya, then transit Vietnam and go into China. The changes are clear and easily followed, in part thanks to Helen Q. Huang and her wondrous costumes as well as the work of dialect coaches Julie Foh and Barbara Rubin.

Mlima’s Tale is a good example of how the parts of theater arts that we sometimes don’t think about all merge to give a full experience. The direction and design is by Shariffa Chelimo Ali and she’s done a bang-up job. The set of You-Shin Chen starts things off – is that a lake onstage? Jasmine Lesane’s lighting gives us, among other things, shadows on the wall of the Berges Theater at COCA that add to the overall effect. And the sound from composer and sound designer Avi Amon greatly heightens our awareness. Special attention needs to go to Kirvin Douthit-Boyd, listed as choreographer, but whose work, one suspects, went far beyond the dancing. Just watch those elephants move.

Yes, the show is not on the Webster Groves campus, but in a new building at COCA – see what they’ve been up to while we were sheltering in place? - called the Berges Theater. It’s a lovely space with good acoustics and comfortable seats. Parking is directly across the street in a garage Webster and Washington U’s share. (Use the entrance with the yellow lift gates.) Temperature on entering, masks required in the building. The audience is carefully spaced.

Ninety minutes, no intermission.

 

Mlima’s Tale

through July 11

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Berges Theater at COCA

6880 Washington Ave, University City

http://www.repstl.org/events/detail/mlimas-tale

Food and Music: The Great Combination

And now, as the old Monty Python title goes, for something completely different. The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, dark because of the virus, is putting out a series of four cooking-and-music videos. They’re being released on successive Fridays, the first one, which I’m going to talk about, already out, the next on Friday, December 18, and so on right through the fourth episode debuting on New Year’s Day.

The first installment gives us the creations of David Kirkland , chef-owner of Turn Restaurant in Grand Center. Kirkland, who many came to know from his time at Cafe Osage before he opened Turn, lightens and modernizes traditional foods. (No one else in town, for instance, is selling a flight of biscuits.)

The show opens with Tonina, singing and playing the bass, accompanied by guitarist David Gomez. Over the course of the 45 minutes of the program, we hear some tasty-to-the-ear stuff, a little Christmas, and then other things, including a number called Serpiente 2, which is a marvel.

The menu Kirkland demonstrates begins with French toast made from panettone, the Italian Christmas bread that’s become increasingly common in the last decade or so and a nice fruit compote to go over that. And if you’ve ever looked at ground turkey and wondered what on earth can I do with that, Kirkland has the answer, turning it into breakfast sausage. Finally, he has a how-to on biscuits including just what the texture should be combining flour, rising agents and butter before adding liquid, and the technique for layering the dough. Very worthwhile if you’re wanting to duplicate what the ancestral kitchen wizards probably did.

And finally, there’s a brief cocktail lesson using Big O, the St. Louis-based spirit.

There are details here. One ticket allows for two viewings of your chosen show for $15. All four shows cost $60, and include recipe cards. Rep subscribers can redeem a flexpass for access to all four shows. All shows will be viewable on line until the end of January.

The next episode, which will be available tomorrow, December 18, shows off paella with Frank Schmitz of Barcelona Tapas, with music from Paige Alyssa.

 

Website

Hello From Bertha

Theatre is a very different thing these days, of course, and there’s another chapter in what the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis is doing this year. They’re giving us radio plays that we can pick up online either when they’re run on Classic 107.3 FM on alternating Saturdays at 5 p.m. or later via the TWSTL.org wegsite.

Hello From Bertha is the current offering, and it’s a stunner. One of the best of Williams’ short works – running time is about 25 minutes – it’s set in a brothel in East St. Louis during the Depression. Bertha, one of the women working there, is ill, indeed, very ill.

Director David Kaplan, who directed the play in 2016 as part of the first season of TWSTL, returns and utilizes the same cast. A wise move on his part, using Anita Jackson as Bertha, with Donna Weinsting as Goldie, who runs the house, and Maggie Winninger as Lena, another, younger resident of the establishment. Jackson is particularly fine, managing to create a picture of a woman in physical distress – one can almost see her heaving about in the bed – and emotional pain as well, not knowing and knowing how sick she is, thinking of a former lover now far away and married. Weinsting’s Goldie can see how sick Bertha is, and would like to get her off the premises and into a place where she can get some help. We’re not sure which takes priority, Weinsting balances things so well. Bertha is a little confused in the medical sense, forgetting things, refusing help, a little paranoid, and at one point calls to Lena, who’s very gentle with her but equally unable to satisfy everything wants.

It’s a difficult, poignant play, tightly written and focused. It won an award from a small theater in New York in 1940, which led to Williams meeting Elia Kazan. Their mutual tendency to create controversial work led to several fruitful collaborations like A Streetcar Named Desire.

The link to Bertha is below, and it’s good until September 5. That evening at 5 is the online broadcast of the next in their series of short Williamns plays, Summer at the Lake.

But don’t, under any circumstances, miss this one.

 

Hello From Bertha

until September 4, 2020

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

https://classic1073.org/hello-from-bertha/

This Property is Condemned

Another sign that society operates in circles has appeared in St. Louis. Eighty years ago, people listened to drama on the radio. That would be 1940 or so, the year Tennessee Williams’ play Battle of Angels was professionally produced in Boston. (It didn’t go over well.)

Nevertheless, Williams persevered. And so has the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis in 2020, accepting the necessary cancellation of the year’s festival but bringing us instead a group of Williams’ short plays, not as podcasts but as actual radio broadcasts that can be listened to, after their premieres, streaming online.

Classic 107.3 is airing them at 5 p.m. every second Saturday through September 19. This past weekend, the second one, This Property Is Condemned, began. It will stream until August 7, and you can listen here . Elizabeth Teeter is Willie, a teenaged girl who’s been abandoned but is determined to make her way back to her fantasies, and Tony Merritt a boy named Tom who meets her along the railroad tracks of a Mississippi Delta town. This is not a budding romance – Willie’s eyes are not on the present at all and it’s not hard to see Tom “Tennessee” Williams in the boy who’s soaking up Willie’s story and saving it for telling decades later. Teeter gives us a Willie that’s very easy to picture in our minds, trying to grit it out in a town that’s not got a whole lot to offer. She’s trying very hard not to be fragile, as so many of Williams’ young women are. Merritt’s Tom is rightfully doubtful about much of all this, but properly too innocent to put the pieces together. Tim Ocel’s direction weaves the story together well, making the most of the 25 minutes or so that it runs. Henry Palkes’ music is darn near perfect.

After the 25 minutes, there’s a commentary from Tom Mitchell, a Williams scholar at the University of Illinois, who makes it perfectly clear (and rightly so) that this is only slightly related to the Natalie Wood/Robert Redford film of the same name. (Mary Badham, who played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird is Willie and Jon Provost, who was Timmy in the “Lassie” series, is Tom, but they get short shrift in the film version.) That’s fine, but the pleasure here is in just being pulled into the combination of good acting and your own imagination.

This Property is Condemned

through August 7

listen here

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis  with more about the series

 

Theatre in the Year(s? I hope not plural!) of the Plague

Things are starting to stir a little, which is exciting. Here's a chance to livestream something new, make a contribution if you choose, and avoid the potential for being Zoombombed. ERA is presenting MOSCOW!, Chekhov with vodka. Yes, it's Three Sisters with alcohol, livestreamed with social distancing. Because why not?

Three performances for each of two weekends, The audience will need tickets to view, with pay as much or little as you can - this takes care of the Zoombombing. May 21-23 and 28-30. Thursday and Friday nights at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 1 p.m.

A fine antidote to quarantine boredom, and one might be tempted to view more than one performance just to see how the show evolves. Details on their website.

 

MOSCOW!

ERA: Equally Represented Arts

eratheatre.org

 

Awards!

Finally, we have news about the St. Louis Critics Circle Awards for 2020. We will be livestreaming the awards on HEC TV on April 7, at 7 p.m. We will be practicing social distancing so we won't be hanging out in the studio reading and laughing and celebrating, but we are, with the help of HEC, having the ceremony, in a somewhat altered format. 

Take a look at your television guide to see what channel HEC is on for you, stock up on the wine, and prepare to hear the scoop!

 

Awards!

Finally, we have news about the St. Louis Critics Circle Awards for 2020. We will be livestreaming the awards on HEC TV on April 7, at 7 p.m. We will be practicing social distancing so we won't be hanging out in the studio reading and laughing and celebrating, but we are, with the help of HEC, having the ceremony, in a somewhat altered format. 

Take a look at your television guide to see what channel HEC is on for you, stock up on the wine, and prepare to hear the scoop!

 

Annapurna

Things come in cycles sometimes, don’t they? I’ve found myself in the midst of one that involves people from the past coming together again and resolving, at least, halfway, their questions. It’s been all around me. First-person stories in the New York Times, tales from people I know, episodes in literature, even in my personal life – and now at St. Louis Actors’ Studio, Annapurna.

Written by Sharr White, Annapurna is about two people well into middle age who were once married to each other. There is no “meet cute” about it. Emma shows up, extremely unannounced, at the – well, to call it a mobile home would be to give the trailer a dignity it may never have possessed – where Ulysses now lives. It does have a marvelous view. He’s in Colorado’s intermountain territory, the magnificence of the Rockies just outside his hamlet.

There’s been no contact between them for the two decades since Emma left in the middle of the night, taking their 5-year-old son with her. He doesn’t remember why she left. But there are other things he doesn’t remember, too. He drank, a lot. And when he quit drinking, he took up smoking, which explains why he has an oxygen concentrator backpack on.

Why is she there? How many secrets are they keeping? The carefully drawn dialogue between the two is nothing short of exquisite. Forty minutes in, I found myself thinking, “This is just a beautiful little play.” And it is. Even when the tempo changes and the audience may sense what’s coming, it’s magnetic.

Laurie McConnell is Emma, trying hard to be civil. She’s more successful at that than she is in understanding exactly why she’s come to see Ulysses. Mainly, at first, it seems to be to find out if he really doesn’t remember what happened the night she left. But there’s other, hidden things, that drive her from where she has been to right here right now. It’s a lot of condensed emotion, sometimes creeping quietly into McConnell’s face and her body language until even she erupts.

Ulysses, former college professor, published writer, and recently discharged hospital patient, is John Pierson. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (said the retired nurse) is hard to carry off onstage, but he does a pretty good job of it, and he hits it out of the park on the rest of Ulysses. Of course, considering his vocation, he’s glib, which means he has the advantage of many of the funniest lines, but well beyond that, this is a fine, fine performance.

Annamaria Pileggi orchestrated these two professionals wonderfully resulting in a surprisingly delicate creation, which showcases them and the script’s slowly growing cobweb. Patrick Huber is responsible for the dilapidated set, and Steven J. Miller the light design.

A remarkable ninety minutes or so of theatre. Very worthwhile.

 

Annapurna

through March 1, 2020

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theater

360 N. Boyle

314-458-2978

stlas.org

The Mystery of Irma Vep - A Penny Dreadful

Nelson T. Eusebio III’s production of The Mystery of Irma Vep – A Penny Dreadful at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis gives us a comedy so broad the Veiled Prophet could steer his entire float, queens and all, through it. Irma, the brainchild of the late Charles Ludlam, was never meant to be subtle, of course. Ludlam one of the early creators of what came to be known as theater of the ridiculous, certainly never was himself.

It’s a mish-mosh of camp, Gothic horror, multliple references both broad and subtle to various works of literature, cross-dressing jokes and stereotypes. That’s a lot to put into one show. The script sags under the weight of it all. Particularly in the first act, holes appear.

Valiant efforts from Esteban Andres Cruz and Tommy Everett Russell, the two actors who portray eight characters, and who give it their all. Scenery-chewing is a given, with this script, so you can’t fault them for doing so at appropriate times. There’s tremendous energy from each of them as they roar through their various roles. They also carried off with great elan a glitch in the set on opening night.

The other star in a show like this has to be the costume designer, here Sara Ryung Clement. She shines, especially for Lady Enid, giving wonderfully tawdry work that clearly rips off and zips (or Velcros) on in the flash of a hat. One costume in particular for Russell, with its pointy cups, seemed to be direct from Frederick’s of Cairo.

The set from Michael Locher, equally flamboyant, looks good to most of the audience. But about a quarter of play-goers are unable to see the portrait of the late Lady Irma, and another quarter unable to see into a sarcophagus. Both items are sources of jokes and activity, and it’s our loss.

The script is one of those that created isolated laughter in various parts of the audience, a sure sign of obscure jokes. That’s no sin, but Not Getting It makes audiences restless. Plenty of physical comedy, some of it bawdy, partly helps to remedy that. There’s an unverifiable statement dancing around the internet that this was the most-performed play in the United States in 1991, but one is surprised, given the weakness of the script.

Rowdy. Energetic. Illogical, of course. But if you want to remember what voguing looked like, this is probably your only chance this year.

 

The Mystery of Irma Vep – A Penny Dreadful

through March 8

Mainstage

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Dress the Part

It must be quite a show if the names Sondheim and Stupefyin’ Jones pass through my mind in the first thirty minutes or so. Dress the Part, from Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis is a take on The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Explaining it’s set in an American high school, Verona Prep, and done mainly as rap, may still cause some to look down their high-flown noses, but that would be a mistake.

DtP is, not to put too elegant a point on it, a laff riot, as Hollywood used to say. It’s eighty minutes, no intermission, of an incredible workout for Jordan Moore and Garrett Young, who play 13 characters, including a remarkable middle-of-the-song triple tradeoff. Proteus and Valentine are the mainstays of the public prep school’s high-performing football team. It’s a typical high school with students tracking themselves into social ruts, jocks, socies (there’s probably a more contemporary phrase for that, but…), artists, nerds, ad infinitum, but Proteus has discovered the wonderfulness of a fine young woman, Julia, who’s seriously into arts. He’s dropping the football team to pursue her and her interests. Valentine is shocked, but then a newcomer who’s been elected head cheerleader, Sylvia, appears. Her effect on him – and not just on him – is about like that of Stupefyin’ Jones, the lissome lady of Lil’ Abner, whose appearance causes men to be hit by the Whammy. (Or occasionally the Double Whammy, but that’s not necessary here: Coals to Newcastle with young men in the throes of adolescent hormones.) And there’s more, adults at the school and at home, Julia’s lockermate who has the hots for the band’s leading flute player, the Crabs’ (that’s the school mascot) waterboy – it’s a veritable symphony of characters. The only one playing it straight is Crim Dolla Cray, the DJ for this amiable madness.

Okay, so there’s the Stupefyin’ Jones reference. Wherefore the Sondheim? The music and lyrics are from the Q Brothers, whom, if you are fortunate, you remember from The Bomb-itty of Errors The music is fun and toe-tapping. The lyrics, however are at times as agile and witty as Sondheim or Porter, with amusing rhymes and fine jokes, a delectable show of abilities.

Peter and Margery Spack have turned The Ready Room’s stage into a charming, bright interpretation of the school, and Rusty Wandall keeps the sound flying with blessed control and clarity. Still, pride of place might well go to Christina Leinecke, whose costumes, so integral to the variety of characters, are carried off with immense humor.

In the Shakespearean tradition, there’s a green show 30 minutes before, so to speak, kickoff, and the schedule for that is on the website. We had a young juggler, Sean Petric, with a good sense of humor.

There’s a certain amount of bawdiness in the show, but aside from that, it’s a great introduction to theater for reluctant young ones above a certain age. Use familial judgement, but please don’t deprive yourself. This is another remarkable show from Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis.

 

Dress the Part

through February 15

The Ready Room

4195 Manchester Ave.

sfstl.com