St. Louis Eats and Drinks

The Play That Goes Wrong

Spring seems to be in sight. We should all be frolicking like lambs (except, perhaps, when we’re dealing with taxes). Sunlight has been seen, the snow seems all melted – so far – and spring training is on the radio. Enough with the heavy themes of the winter months, the furrowed brows, the deep sighs and the throwing of nearby objects at television news programs.

To help lighten our moods, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis has given us a murder mystery. Except...well, it’s not quite the classic English manor house whodunit. Definitely not.

The Play That Goes Wrong actually looks like one of the aforementioned, the splendid set from Peter and Margery Spack proving itself to be both even more and even less splendid as the evening progresses. It seems we are to be subjected to the work of the Cornley University Drama Society, whose invitation to the Rep, one finds, perusing the program, was financed by the inheritance of one of the student players. They’re doing The Murder at Haversham Manor. We’re welcomed by the prez of the CUDS, who’s also directing the players. (The actual show is directed by Melissa Rain Anderson.) We even have a listing of the “cast” as well as, a few pages later, the actual cast playing the characters playing the characters. If you follow me, I mean.

And if there were a curtain in the Rep, it would rise before the dead body of Charles Haversham (Benjamin Curns) is settled in place onto a chaise. It’s the evening of Charles’ engagement party to the lovely Florence (Ruth Pferdehirt), and there are no obvious signs of trauma on his body. Of course there’s a snowstorm brewing outside – isn’t there always? – and Inspector Carter (Michael Keyloun, who also plays the director) is summoned by the prancing younger brother of the deceased, Cecil (Matthew McGloin, also doubling as the gardener). There is, of course, a butler (Evan Zes)on scene, and Florence’s brother (John Rapson), too, there for the party and used to dealing with Florence’s hysterical spells.

Not so straightforward as it seems, though – these are very amateur actors, not theatre majors like we find at, say, Webster’s student productions. Declaiming. Missing cues. Forgetting lines. You say you get the idea? Far from it. Please mix in a set that isn’t quite done, a frantic stage manager (Ka-Ling Chung), a distracted lighting and sound operator (Ryan George) and an absolutely immense amount of physical comedy.

While the lines are funny, and the deliberate overacting and flubbing is funnier still, it’s the movement that sets this show apart from the very first. The falls, the crawls, the face plants both vertical and horizontal are almost constant. Director Anderson didn’t use a choreographer for all this, just blocked it herself, apparently. Between that dazzling accomplishment and the cast’s ability to keep it all straight while making sure they don’t do what they’re trained to do, which is act in the traditional theatrical style, is nothing short of stunning.

This is very fine ensemble work, which makes it hard to call out specific actors for their work, but attention must be paid to Ka-Ling Chung as the stage manager and Michael Keyloun, who gives vague hints of John Cleese in this performance. It’s all in keeping with a play that actually did begin with university students putting it together and running it in a 60-seat theater above a pub in the Islington neighborhood of London.

At times the dialogue is lost in the audience laughter, but the pace Anderson wants keeps rolling on, and no audience member will feel shortchanged by the end of the play. There’s enough going on that it’s a show that satisfies, if not the intellect, certainly the funny bone in a most remarkable way.

 

The Play That Goes Wrong

through April 7

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Beautiful

It’s hard to beat the exuberance of Beautiful. Of all the jukebox musicals, it has, I suspect, the longest time span of songs, so there are at least two generations that see the show and try to resist the urge to dance in the seats.

It is, like so many of these shows, the background music to many of our lives, but the show is more than that. It’s about determination and flexibility and energy and the joy of being creative. That sets it, to some degree, apart from the others in the jukebox musical genre; there’s a real story here that seems to draw people in even more than, say, Jersey Boys does, which also has a semi-accurate story line but doesn’t seem so personal.

Carole King was writing songs, and began selling them while she was in high school in the 1950’s. She met Gerry Goffin at Queens College, where she was enrolled at age 16. They became a couple, writing partners – he did lyrics – and soon thereafter spouses and parents. It took a little while before they were successful enough to quit their day jobs, but the number of their big hits kept rising. Turmoil in their personal lives? Why, yes. But nothing seemed to stop the music.

And that’s to our benefit. The music sounds great from the get-go, especially a multi-hit montage of the hits that came out of 1650 Broadway (not the famous Brill Building, but across the street). It’s not quite a medley, with sometimes only four bars or so, and lots of things going on at once, but a great mashup of songs. The Fox’s sound system has never sounded better, too, neither blowing out eardrums nor muffling anything.

It’s splendidly cast, with Sarah Bockel as Carole, from teenager to mature woman, very believable. Gerry Goffin is Dylan S. Wallach, charming and brilliant and unhappy and tortured, carrying full weight as a key to much of what happened with King. Another pair who began writing songs in the time period, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, have a big part in the show, and they’re played by Alison Whitehurst and Jacob Heimer, she all style and strength and he the hypochondriac who’s smitten with her; their songs are in here as well. Carol’s mother Genie adds a lot to things; she’s Suzanne Grodner, who tosses off some particularly funny lines. Don Kirshner, the music producer, is courtesy of James Clow, who amiably pushes his stable of artists to greater heights, including people like Neil Sedaka (whom King briefly dated in high school), Bobby Darin, and Phil Spector, long before he became an oddly coiffed defendant in a strange murder case.

The clothing is close enough to make us remember what many of us wore in those days before pantyhose. (How on earth could women get enough air wearing girdles?) And dance moves in heels considerably higher than what we see onstage, for which all the women in the cast should be eternally grateful, probably led to more sprained ankles than cobblestones after a night’s revelry.

But that leads into something that seems more common these days. Dance numbers, especially with smaller groups of dancers, seem considerably less coordinated than one would expect from professionals. If there are three or four, one person will too often be a half-beat behind or not fully in position. In a serious professional production, that’s a real flaw. It happens here. It’s less noticeable in the large numbers because there’s less simultaneous movement in most modern choreography. But things, not just with this company, are slipping on this component. Too bad, but it’s the most serious complaint I could offer about this joyous piece of work.

 

Beautiful

through March 17

Fox Theatre

527 N. Grand

www.fabulousfox.com

 

Nonsense and Beauty

Two people meet. A spark is struck. Words of love are spoken. After a while, one of them meets and marries someone else. What happens to the first relationship, especially if both parties are still invested in it, albeit to different degrees?

Nonsense and Beauty, now at the Rep Studio, brings the first full production of a drama St. Louis first found last year in the Rep’s Ignite! series. We have a world premiere of this story of E.M. Forster, who was the author of Howard’s End, Passage to India and other novels, and his love for a young policeman whom he met in the 1930’s. The author is Scott C. Sickles.

Not only was homosexuality illegal then, Forster (Jeffrey Hayenga) and Robert Buckingham ((Robbie Simpson) couldn’t even share living quarters. Buckingham, of course, being a policeman was held to a particularly high standard. Buckingham’s marriage to a young nurse tears Forster almost apart.

Much of the tale is told through Forster’s friend J.R. Ackerley (John Feltch), who introduces the two lovers and provides plenty of acerbic commentary. May Buckingham (Lori Vega), Bob’s wife, eventually, sort of, maybe, thinks Morgan – Forster used his middle name – is uncommonly fond of her husband, but that nothing happened. And then there’s Forster’s mother (Donna Weinsting), who’s not as dotty as she seems to let us think.

In some ways, this is not a new story – hidden love is as old as civilization. The close confines of the Studio Theatre make it up close and personal. The contrast between the hesitant, upper-class intellectual who dreams of a loving relationship and the much younger man who is pretty much the epitome of what he’s longed for, including being more forthcoming physically and emotionally, is striking. When Bob Buckingham falls in love with the young nurse, it doesn’t appear, at least in the play, to be a sham. When one loves two people, as someone recently said, you’re drawing from two different accounts.

What Forster and both the Buckinghams make of the situation is the path we follow, and a difficult, winding and rocky one it is. Hayenga’s Forster manages to blend reserve and impetuousness splendidly; Simpson, as Buckingham, is a wonderful fresh-faced young lover; watching him age is fascinating. Perfectly thrown-about banter between Feltch and Havenga is an absolute delight, Feltch being as irresistible as a snake-oil charmer. Weinsting is particularly in her element as a matriarch with a stinger – watch her face as she’s watching her son, for instance, even when she’s not throwing out her barbs and wails. Lori Vega as May Buckingham has as complicated a role as the two men in her life, perhaps more so, and she expands her awareness with considerable subtlety. If we finds her head too far in the sand, we have to remember the time period.

A side note about something in the play. Forster is horrified when he finds that Buckingham is involved with a nurse. The English stereotype of a nurse as being a slattern or alcoholic or woman of ill repute – think Dickens’ Sairey Gamp – was the barrier Florence Nightingale faced as a well-brought-up woman. The idea that it was not a profession into which the right sort of girl entered remained, especially in the upper classes, for several generations after Nightingale established the first non-religious nursing school at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. Her first graduates began practicing around 1865. [End of infomercial!]

Seth Gordon directed with a careful and sure hand, having directed its first public reading of it more than twenty years ago. His associates in the production are Brian Sidney Bembridge, scenic and lighting designer, Rusty Wandall, sound designer, and Felia K. Davenport, who has a particularly dab hand with the plaid suits which don’t somehow appear overwhelmingly garish.

Who knows where this play will go from here? Audiences have a chance to say we knew it when.

 

Nonsense and Beauty

through March 24

Studio Theatre

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Buffon Glass Menajoree

Bouffon Glass Menajoree was staged this weekend when the Ten Directions Production was hosted by Young Liars Theatre.

If you are, as I was, unfamiliar with the theatre style termed “bouffon”, here’s what Wikipedia says: “a modern French theater term that was re-coined in the early 1960s...to describe a specific style of performance work that has a main focus in the art of mockery.“ Tres avant-garde, even fifty years later. It goes on to explain that Jacqus LeCoq, the creator of the term, taught classes that emphasized “elements of burlesque, commedia dell'arte, farce, gallows humor, parody, satire, [and] slapstick”.

It is indeed based on Glass Menagerie, but very loosely – I suspect those unfamiliar with the story of the Tennessee Williams classic would be pretty lost. On the other hand, this isn’t the sort of show that attracts rookie theater-goers, it’s for the hard core among us.

Lynn Berg, one of the founders of Ten Directions, is Tom, costumed in a t-shirt showing his diaphragm in front and creating a hunchback behind his shoulders, plus cut-off jean shorts and white leggings resembling antiembolic stockings. His language and attitude toward his sister Laura, played by Audrey Crabtree. Crabtree is the other founder of the group. She wears a bloodied hospital gown open in the back and underwear with duct tape on it, and sports a platinum wig that is near-indescribable. Mother Amanda, Aimee Leigh German, who appears younger than Laura, merely sports pink jogging pants, white boots and another t-shirt stretched within a millimeter of its life, this time in the front of the torso.

The three actors created the script with director Eric Davis, who also did the original music and the frequently very interesting scenic design. It takes place in the present rather than in the twilight of the past, and there’s a fair amount of screaming involved, especially between the two not-so-loving siblings. Unsurprisingly, there’s audience participation involved, some of which is more elaborate than just catching cans of beer tossed from an onstage cooler.

All those elements named above came into play, certainly, as we hang out with the Wingfields. The difficulty is making out the difference between ninety minutes of this versus a certain adolescent how-much-can-we-shock-’em. At times this crept into the sort of feeling when some jokes were made over and over and over again, which left a can’t-you-find-something-new-to-insert-here idea hanging nakedly over the scene.

It’s raw and energetic and interesting, but clearly not for the Mrs. Grundys of the world. Ten Directions Production has relocated from New York to St. Louis, so we surely will see more of them.

 

Young Liars Theatre

on line

Ten Directions Production

on line

Well

Well, the current offering from Mustard Seed Theatre seems to begin with the concept of chronic illness and its effect on the family. It is, almost, a play-within-a-play-within-a-play. Don’t however, let those two descriptors put you off. Theatre is about storytelling, and often, indeed mostly, those stories are about stressful situations, whether the stress is good or bad.

Written by Lisa Kron, the playwright who gave us Fun Home, the lead is Kron herself, played by Katy Keating. She’s trying to put together what she insists is “a theatrical exploration” of her mother’s illness and her mother’s effect on her local community. Mom Ann, here Lori Adams, spends much of her time in a lounge chair, dozing and watching her daughter’s rehearsing of the theatrical exploration she’s staging, with the help of a pile of index cards. The opening monologue by Lisa points out, among other things, that no matter how much you achieve in therapy, when you go home into the family constellation, it all seems to go out the window, so we know we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Mom doesn’t quite get just what it is that Lisa is doing with the piece. Nevertheless, she watches the rehearsal from her half of the stage, seeing into the rehearsal space and into the audience as well, as Lisa shows how mom’s work as an inadvertent community activist when Lisa was young affected the neighborhood and, of course, her daughter.

Not surprisingly, her mother can’t keep from speaking up – Adams’ accent is slightly Marge Gundersonesque – and eventually she ends up surrounded by Lisa’s actors, Alicia Reve Like, Carl Overly, Jr., Bob Thibaut and Leslie Wobbe, all of whom play other characters as needed. They’re quick and funny, zipping through some costume changes with alacrity. Bess Moynihan did the set, and the Sullivans brought their talents: Jane Sullivan did the costumes, Michael Sullivan the lights (which are managed so as to remind the audience of how significant they are to a play), and sound from Zoe Sullivan. Deanna Jent directs Well well.

While the question of the effects of chronic illness is a serious one, this is not a grim show, although the question is almost peripheral to what we experience. There are some very funny lines here, for one thing. But it isn’t until the hospital scenes begin that we truly learn how much caricature is being used for illustrative purposes – and that’s quite legitimate, it just came as a surprise to someone who spent many, many years working in such places. A couple of twists make the audience even more surprised.

A fine 95 minutes of intellectual exercise, to be sure. No intermission.

 

Well

through March 17

Mustard Seed Theatre

6800 Wydown Blvd, Clayton (enter off Big Bend)

314-719-8060

www.mustardseedtheatre.com

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Woman in pursuit of a goal.

Stand back; author Lauren Gunderson is going to tell you all about it. In Exit, Pursued by a Bear she offers a tale of a young blue-collar couple in an exurb of Atlanta one Fourth of July. Gunderson’s the one who gave us Christmas at Pemberley Manor, the Jane Austen take the Rep did several years ago, but this is a waaay different sort of drawing room comedy. Drawing? Nan Carter is married to Kyle. She’s interested in drawing bears. Not sketching them, but luring them by means of fresh meat. Kyle, it seems, is one mean guy, especially when he’s been drinking, which seems to happen with considerable frequency. Nan is pretty tired of it, and intends to get out.

She started to realize she could when she got to know Sweetheart, a local amateur actor who moonlights at one of the “men’s clubs” that ring Atlanta, dancing as Miss Peaches. Somehow, it’s not surprising that they met at Subway. Sweetheart lent Lauren her copy of Shakespeare’s complete works. One thinks perhaps she also brought up George Bernard Shaw who said, “I dream things that never were and say why not?” Sweetheart’s dreams aim for Los Angeles and an acting career; Nan has begun to realize there’s a world out there that she’s really, really missing out on, and her marriage is an epic fail.

What to do, what to do…. Our first clue may be the many bear-shaped squeeze bottles that populate the set, which is the Carter home. Our second clue is that when we meet Kyle, he’s duct-taped to the recliner. Then there’s Simon, Nan’s BFF for years, who arrives for the fun wearing a Georgia Bulldogs cheerleader costume, complete with flippy little skirt.

Lexa Wroniak plays a very believable Nan, full of disillusioned innocence and able to quote Jimmy Carter, who, she admits, is no kin, at the drop of a noun. Sweetheart, aka Miss Peaches, is Tara Ernst, an absolute delight, making the character bigger-than-life – metaphorically speaking. Ethan Isaac’s Simon flounces, pompons and all, with the greatest of ease, making sure his bestie’s new pal is really acting (ahem) in her best interest. It’s hard to emote when you’re restrained in an overstuffed chair, but Alex Fyles, as Kyle, even manages to enunciate some fairly understandable words from behind the tape usually covering his mouth.

Teresa Doggett directed this romp with lighting design from Amy Ruprecht and sound design from Kareem Deanes. Lots of fun.

Who needs reality when you can have all this?

 

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

through February 17

West End Players Guild

Union Avenue Christian Church

733 Union Blvd. (enter on Enright Avenue)

www.westendplayers.org

Milk Like Sugar

Milk Like Sugar is the disquieting story of three young women, high school students who decide, when one announces she’s pregnant, they should all have babies together. “You can dress them up, and they’ll love you,” explains one. Also, people have to buy you what you want, like Coach diaper bags and tiny Air Jordans.

Yes, they are very young – we meet them in a tattoo parlor as Annie (Brandi Threatts) is about to turn 16 – so young that one of their ways of assessing a potential father is what kind of cell phones he has. (The play is set about 15 years ago, more or less when a similar pact was discovered among young women at a Massachusetts school.) Margie (Camille Sharp) is the one who’s pregnant. The high-energy queen bee Talisha (Tyler White) has an older boyfriend who actually has his own place. Birthday girl Annie will be the one auditioning potential baby daddies.

Annie’s clearly the only one even vaguely pondering other alternatives in her life, but she has no idea what. She sort of feels a spark with the tattoo artist (Brian McKinley). A senior, Malik (Dwayne McCowan), who’s heard she thinks he’s cute, wants to meet her in a park. Both of the young men talk, in different ways, about things they’re passionate about, encouraging her. Keera (Jillian Franks), a girl at school that Talisha has bullied into writing a paper for her and whom the girls disdainfully refer to as Holly Hobbie, the rustic cartoon/toy character, talks about how her loving father and her religion have given her happiness, but Annie has neither of those to identify with.

It’s really not until Annie is talking to her mom (Michelle Dillard) that we get a full sense of how much she wants something and how tough it’s going to be for her to get there. Mom cleans offices at night and writes stories in the daytime. Pregnant as a teenager, raising three children alone, she’s tired and angry. Now she hears her only daughter dreamily explain that “Babies aren’t real work.” More than reality rears its ugly head.

This is indeed real life. It’s not cute, it’s not contrived. It’s hard, it’s frustrating and it’s a problem that art can’t solve.

The young women actors are a delight. Threatts carries off the not-always-easy appearance of adolescent subtlety just as well as she does the excitement of the birthday. As Margie, Sharp is convinced she knows pretty much everything she needs to know, and her disdain when a nurse wearing a glove tries to hand her prenatal information is beyond scathing. Then there’s White’s Talisha, who is totally supercharged except when she’s talking about her boyfriend; then, somehow, she becomes distant. The off-key Keera from Franks is a wonderful puzzlement, so different that it’s hard to take one’s eyes off her.

Still, it’s mom that leads the way. Michelle Dillard pretty much owns that role, mopping up the floor with her daughter. Malik, the boy with an idea of the outside world, is hesitant and interested at the same time in Dwayne McCowan’s hands; Brian McKinley’s young tattoist opens up at last and lets us see the self-assurance isn’t all it seems.

Nicole Brewer directed, pulling it all together with verve. The fascinating scenic design is by Rama, the lights from Sean Savoie, and the interesting sound from Kareem Deanes. As to the script – I’ve heard the argument that the opening is too Over The Top. I’ve heard that the ending is too weak. Both are wrong. The opening is accurate, however grating adolescent women can be, and the exposition is spot-on. The ending...this isn’t an after-school special, to be sure. But in between, there’s a strong story about real life and some fascinating character development, and that’s the best of all.

No intermission, and it’s working in the black box at the Edison Theatre in Washington University’s Mallinkrodt Center – at the west end of the building.

 

Milk Like Sugar

through March 3

The Black Rep

A. E. Hotchner Studio Theatre

Washington University in St. Louis

www.theblackrep.org

 

Oslo

Most of us seldom think any more of the Oslo Peace Accords, even if we’re the sort of people who really keep up with world events. The results of those talks have been...well, modest compared to what many people had hoped for. Nevertheless, it was a momentous thing for the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to officially acknowledge the other’s existence and enter into formal agreements.

That all sounds very distant from what works in a play. But how the accord came to be is a fascinating and very human story about how individuals can make a difference in the world. A Norwegian couple, he a researcher and she a civil servant, thought perhaps there might be a way to get Israel and the Palestinians talking to each other if it were out of the public eye and done by people who weren’t public officials. The play Oslo, the Tony winner for Best Play in 2017, is an adapted version, written by J.T. Rogers, of what happened. (Here’s a link to how it went in real life.) Directed by retiring artistic director Steve Woolf, it’s just opened at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

 

We meet Terje Rod-Larsen (Jim Poulos) and his wife Mona Juul (Kathleen Wise). They tell her boss, Johan Jorgen Holst (Jonathan Gillard Daly), who’s the minister of foreign affairs for Norway, and his wife Marianne Heiberg (Michelle Hand), and discussions begin about how to do this.

The talks begin with two Israelis, Yair Hirschfeld (John Rensenhouse) and Ron Pundak (Michael James Reed), interacting to two Palestinians, Ahmed Qaurie (Rajesh Bose) and Jassan Asfour). This proves to be a wonderful tag team match. Over the course of the play, watching them spar and carouse is almost as much of a high point as the message of the drama, which is that sometimes you have to try the impossible. As the world knows, the talks progressed and a formal signing was held at the White House in September of 1993, but even at that point, there was posturing going on. Bill Clinton tells of worrying about handshakes between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat and what to do if Arafat leaned forward to kiss Rabin, the traditional Arab greeting, at the signing of the Oslo Accord that day. A number of people here play multiple roles, often to the point where they’re hard to recognize.

It’s a fascinating play, well written and surprisingly funny. There are even food jokes. The hostess at the estate where the talks begin has planned a nice dinner with the main course roast pork. And do not be surprised at the appearance of waffles, vafler. Waffles are very Norwegian. The Norway bureau of the Pollacks remind me they’re not a breakfast food, they’re a snack. I’ve seen them offered – waffle iron, pitcher of batter, tub of sour cream and some jam – in a hotel bar in dark late afternoons in December. Parents’ clubs sell waffles to raise money at football games and such. So when the waffles come out, you know this is all the real thing.

Michael Ganio’s scenic design works really well, with fine use of Nathan W. Scheuer’s projections. I muttered for a while about Dorothy Marshall Englis’ choice to use ties on all the Israeli government officials, but by this period in time, except for highly formal occasions, at least half the members of the Knesset appear to have worn them, a change from the original tradition.

A very successful show, with fine acting and a good story line. It’s sad that things have not gone as well as they hoped, but that’s another point of the whole thing. To use Jesse Jackson’s trademark phrase, keep hope alive, keep hope alive.

 

Oslo

through March 3

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

The Crucible

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials of the late 1600’s, as a sort of allegory about the McCarthy hearings. Miller himself had been subpoenaed, testified and was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to identify other people at meetings he attended.

Seeing it in the current production by Stray Dog Theatre in the stage of American political thought we’re enduring now, one cannot help but look for parallels, of course. One can, and I’m sure many people have, argued that things were different then. Still, human behavior does repeat itself..

This, of course, was more than eighty years before the American Revolution when Massachusetts Bay Colony was still a part of England,, so English common law was in force. And when the daughter of the widowed Reverend Samuel Parris (Ben Ritchie) lies unresponsive after being found with her friends by her father dancing – oh, the horror of it – her father, and the rest of the small town, wonder if witchcraft was being practiced. The ripples, yea, waves from this extend widely, as evidenced by the size of the cast, 21 people, perhaps the largest SDT has ever used.

Not only is it a large cast, it’s a long show by the standards of today, four acts running over three hours. The plot is relatively complex when trying to explain what happens, other than this is the reason the phrase “witch hunt” has entered the American vocabulary, and who the characters are. Nevertheless, it’s clear that John Proctor (Graham Emmons), a local farmer, and his wife Elizabeth (Cynthia Pohlson), will be pivotal. Reverend Mr. Parris’ orphaned niece Abigail (Alison Linderer), who’d been hired as a maid by the Proctors, and then fired because she and John Proctor had become sexually involved, was one of the girls found dancing, and, we discover, was trying to evoke a curse on Mrs. Proctor, so she could marry him. Arrests begin on charges of witchcraft and the number mushrooms almost overnight as the hysteria spreads. There are trials. The penalty for being found guilty is death; if a defendant pleads guilty of being a witch, then there’s jail time and a ruined life – in this deeply, vigorously religious colony of Puritans.

It’s a carefully assembled cast, but some folks stand out, Ritchie, for instance, is so smug and pious it’s hard not to rush onstage and smack him. Emmons hits a good balance between being strong-willed on many things and deeply contrite toward his wife; opposite him, Pohlson is as stalwart as we imagine a loving-but-Puritan wife to be. Linderer’s Abigail tries hard to be seductive, but she’s really pretty bland, not surprising in that context.

Abraham Shaw gives a substantial Reverend John Hale, the visiting witchcraft authority from Andover, whose character evolves through the process. The redoubtable Rebecca Nurse, called Goody Nurse, using a title common in the era, short for “good wife”, is a fine, strong performance from Suzanne Greenwald. Deputy-Governor Danforth, who is presiding over the trials, comes courtesy of Joe Hanrahan, sometimes snarling, sometimes soothing, always satisfying.

Beyond considering any parallels to modern society, it also brings to mind stories of some Middle Eastern courts. It’s what happens when church and state are intertwined and how dangerous that is.

Especially for those who haven’t seen this classic of American theatre, it’s worth the commitment of time.

 

The Crucible

through February 23

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

www.straydogtheatre.org

The Hundred Dresses

A fast tip of the hat – and a swoosh of the petticoats as well – in the direction of Metro Theater Company, St. Louis’ long-lived children’s theatre group. Their current offering, The Hundred Dresses, gives audiences the eternal question of dealing with The Other – a person or persons who are different from those around them. Taken from Eleanor Estes’ 1944 children’s novel of the same name, based on her own experience when a refugee began attending her school, it looks at how we view and what we do when faced with Others.

In an elementary class taught by Mr. Mason (Phillip C. Dixon), the students include Maddie, our narrator (Alicia Reve Like), the exuberant Tommy (Jacob Cange) and Peggy (Hailey Medrano), who swans about in true queen bee style, long before the phrase was coined. They’ve obviously been classmates before. Wanda Petronski (Sophie Murk) joins the class, and the giggles start with her last name. Then they notice she only wears the same dress every day, and her lunch is very simple. The metaphorical knives come out.

Artistic director Julia Flood directed this story of how a girl with one dress talks about a hundred dresses. David Blake designed the sets and the costumes, complete with what would have been at the time (which seems rather Fifties) called “can-can slips” come to us courtesy of Lou Bird. Medrano makes good use of the can-cans for her character’s superior preening and flouncing. Like‘s confusion over what to do about the conflict between the two other girls is carefully played but not overdone. And Murk’s Wanda is quite excellent, her hesitation and confusion weighing on her as she forges on.

Running time is about 55 minutes, no intermission. A worthwhile experience for the young and those who want to open their worlds wider.

 

The Hundred Dresses

through February 25

metroplays.org

Metro Theater Company

Grandel Theatre

3610 Grandel Square

Avenue Q

Does the whole world know by now that Avenue Q is a puppet show that definitely isn’t for kids? One would hope so, but just in case….

The version that’s currently at the Playhouse @ Westport Plaza seems even rowdier than the first version I saw. I didn’t find it offensive, and neither, apparently, did the people around me to judge from their responses, but I wouldn’t take my prudish Uncle Ralph to it.

The concept is that there are live actors who play some of the characters, and there are other characters who are puppets handled by actors who voice them. Sometimes necessity causes one puppet to be handled by two people, sometimes it causes a puppet to be handled by a different person than originally, although this is pretty brief. But each puppet’s voice is done by the same person. It’s pretty amazing how easy it is for the brain to assume that it’s the puppet speaking and not realize for a little while it’s a different human handling them.

This Avenue Q is locally cast, with some newcomers to the area, as well. I’m impressed with how well our folks are rocking the puppet handling and voicing. Lee Ann Matthews directs the crowd with a steady hand. The avenue itself seems to be in the Bronx, and we meet the neighbors, a la Sesame Street. Princeton is fresh out of college and ready to start his adult life, figuring out how just that works. His neighbors Brian (Brett Ambler) and Christmas Eve (Tori Manisco, subbing for Grace Langford for the performance I saw), Kate Monster, Rod and Nicky, Trekkie Monster and Gary Coleman (Illeana Kirven), who’s the super for his building, form a supportive community even though each of them have things they’re dealing with, too – just like real life.

This all sounds pretty innocuous, but you don’t have to wait long for truth to appear. Brian’s lost his day job; he wants to be a comedian. Christmas Eve, his girlfriend, is a therapist with no clients and is impatient with Brian’s lack of employment. Kate Monster is a minority, and as Princeton finds out quickly, not related to Trekkie Monster. Rod’s a slacker and Nicky, the uptight banker can’t admit his same-sex attraction. Gary Coleman’s life is a terrible comedown from having been a child star. One of the first songs is, “It Sucks To Be Me”, giving a hint of what’s to come. That’s followed by songs like “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today” and “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist”.

On the puppet side, Jennifer Theby-Quinn handles Kate Monster, and others, Kevin O’Brien handles Nicky, Trekkie Monster and others, and April Strelinger works multiple puppets that are secondary characters. The coordination is just remarkable.

This is running until early March. It’s a show that works as a date night, although maybe not a first date. (But on the other hand, it might prove a valuable assessment tool.) Very funny, very bawdy, fine work from the whole cast.

More local ties? Charlie Mueller is the musical director, Ben Nordstrom choreographed, Dunsi Dai did the scenic design, and Michael Sullivan the lighting. And director Matthews is ours, too. Nice to see the Playhouse utilizing our fine local talent pool.

 

Avenue Q

through March 3

Playhouse @ Westport Plaza

www.PlayhouseAtWestport.com

Classic Mystery Game

Classic Mystery Game is, as often happens with SATE Ensemble Theatre, rather a romp. Written and directed by Katy Keating, it’s a take on the board game Clue. It’s an Agatha Christie-ish murder in an English country house bringing together a bunch of strangers – strange strangers, in this case – to address some rather awkward business they turn out to have in common.

A video opens the show, making full use of The Chapel’s Oxonian architecture as though we were entering the aforesaid almost manor-sized house. The butler Wadsworth, Michael Cassidy Flynn, begins to welcome the guests who arrive mostly one at a time so we can learn about them. But why is this disparate group being assembled? What do they have in common?

To be sure, it’s an amusing group. Carl Overly, Jr., is the redoubtable Colonel Mustard, Ellie Schwetye the stylish widow Mrs. White, and Rachel Tibbetts plays Mrs. Peacock, the mutton-dressed-as-lamb wife of a senator. Mr. Green is Will Bonfiglio, the research scientist Professor Plum, Paul Cereghino, and femme fatale-slash-madam is Maggie Conroy. Mr. Boddy, who arrives late, is Reginald Pierre.

It’s a brave move for SATE to stage the show in a setting with known problems with acoustics and then choose to have so much of the dialogue delivered rapid fire. Between Flynn’s English accent and the speed of his delivery, which eases only slightly as the show progresses, quite a lot of details seemed to fly by the ear without landing comfortably. Others were affected as well, especially at first, but because he carried the majority of the lines, it fell primarily on Flynn.

There’s some very funny stuff here, to be sure, and the cast carries it off very well, diving into the play without chewing the scenery. Schwetye’s Mrs. White never seems to be without her carefully posed arm and upturned chin; Conroy slinks expertly as Miss Scarlett, never missing an opportunity for a double entendre. Cereghino slithers quietly about so well we scarcely realize he’s avoiding attention, and Tibbets’ barely-up-from-dowdiness is remarkable. Overly, as Mustard, is a worldly, wise chap without the puff and bluster the character is often given, and as Boddy, Pierre offers us marvelous menace. Kristem Strom is the French maid, and Marcy Ann Wiegert and Bess Moynihan play several roles, the former with much changing of chapeaux.

The pacing is sometimes as slam-bang as the delivery of those lines, although far less disconcerting – watching the group move through the “house” is pretty amusing, and the adjustment of Bess Moynihan’s set at times becomes part of the fun. Liz Henning’s costumes delineate the characters very well, especially for Mrs. White.

The show runs about 90 minutes including the intermission – it’d be improved by adding another 10 or 15 minutes so we could understand the dialogue more completely.

 

Classic Mystery

through February 10

SATE Ensemble Theatre

http://slightlyoff.org/

The Chapel

6239 Alexander (off Skinker)

Fiddler on the Roof

Fiddler on the Roof has become one of the standard American musicals. It’s popular with all kinds of groups, from schools to monster-sized professional theaters like the Muny. The show’s been seen in tiny 50-seat black boxes, school gymnasiums, under canvas. Residents of Anatevka, the village where it’s set, have been portrayed by actors from 5 to 85, of all persuasions. Many theater-goers have seen it multiple times, finding different versions of the village, of the costumes, of the fiddler himself – who is not, if you haven’t seen the show, the main character.

It opened Tuesday night (January 29, 2019) at the Fox. If you’ve seen it before and liked it, or even if you just “liked it okay” - you need to see this. This. Is. A. Broadway. Musical.

It’s not just the size of the stage and of the cast. It starts out big, really big, with “Tradition” almost bringing down the house. The orchestrations are large and joyously brassy. Eye-catching choreography pulls us in. This show is bigger, far bigger than Anatevka.

This revival of Fiddler is from Bartlett Sher, who’s given us some very impressive work in the past, like the revival of The King and I, seen here in November of 2017. (He also directed Oslo, a play that’s upcoming at the Rep.) He obviously likes to work in sweeping strokes when dealing with classics like this, and it’s to the benefit of both the show and the audience. There’s no single right way to stage these shows, and while there’s benefits to intimacy, a venue like the Fox is perfect for them.

Yehezkel Lazarov, our impressive-sounding Tevye, is from Israel, where he also directs and does lots of other theatrical things. His Tevye doesn’t carry the weight of the world quite so heavily on his shoulders as some, giving more of an impression of strength. As Golde, Tevye’s long-suffering wife who’s anything but a silent partner, Maite Uzal is merely extremely impatient and not seemingly permanent enraged, another change of style that benefits things – she’s often portrayed as the next worst thing to the Czar’s government. One of the drawbacks, though, of these huge venues is that it’s difficult to discern the subtleties of how a character is played, and that means that Tevye’s five daughters aren’t shown to full advantage. Mel Weyn, Ruthy Froch, and Natalie Powers, playing the three eldest girls, are charming but subdued, appropriate historically but seldom as vivid as their swains, the taylor, the scholar and the non-Jew.

The secondary, comedic roles are a lot of fun here, Motel the Taylor, played by Jesse Weil manages the physical comedy as well as the dialogue with shaking precision, just as demanded. Carol Beaugard, as Yente the matchmaker, roars through her job wheedling and suggesting and not taking no for an answer, with verve.

Michael Yeargan gives us a seemingly simple set with adaptation and additional work from Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams, and lighting from Donald Holder. The Fox sound system is in fine fettle, using Scott Lehrer and Alexander Neumann’s sound design. That amazing choreography has a long lineage, beginning with Jerome Robbins’ winning a Tony for the original show. This version explains that it’s original choreography by Hofesh Schechter, recreated by Christopher Evans, who’s worked extensively with Schechter. (Yes, the bottle dance is still there.)

It’s delightful that a show of this age can still be so full of excitement.

 

Fiddler on the Roof

through February 10

Fox Theatre

527 N. Grand

fabulousfox.com/

L'Italiana in Algeri

Winter Opera St. Louis staged L’Italiana in Algeri this past weekend. Not so well known as some other Rossini operas, it nevertheless proved to be mostly quite delightful despite the plot’s distasteful number “Viva, viva, il flagel delle donne”, or, more or less, “Hooray for striking the women”.

The bey of Algiers, Mustafa (Alec Soare) is bored with his wife, Elvira (Holly Flack), and decides he needs a new spouse. (Rossini apparently wasn’t aware of multiple wives in Islam, we assume.) He’s the fellow who says he “knows how to treat women”. The bey, among his other activities, runs a fleet of what we’d now call Barbary pirates, regularly bringing in captives whom he uses as slaves. The fresh crop includes a beautiful woman, Isabella (Kate Tombaugh), whom the bey immediately picks as the object of his affection. But one of his personal slaves, Lindoro (Gregory Schmidt) – who he’s planning on freeing and sending back to Italy, freed but married to his soon-to-be-ex-wife – turns out to be the beloved of Isabella.

It’s complicated, of course. No surprise there. Elvira loves her husband and doesn’t want to leave him, and Isabella is burdened with an aging admirer, Taddeo (Nicholas Ward), captured with her and who convinces the bey he’s Isabella’s uncle.

The bey’s personal habits in dealing with women are brought to heel by Isabella, who with fine deliberation outsmarts him from start to finish, and he’s straightened out quite satisfyingly.

Some very fine voices here, Tombaugh, Schmidt, and Soare in particular, working the zippy, tuneful score. Soare is wonderfully glowering as the bey. Ward proves to have quite a gift for comedy as the show moves on into the second act, including his dancing (shown above). Darwin Aquino conducted, and Eric Gibson stage directed. Scott Loebl did the scenic design, and Natali Arco the lighting. Special kudos to JC Krajicek for the fabulous costumes, a particularly notable job.

Winter Opera is now in its 12^th season, and continues to mature. A delightful show overall. They're doing Norma the weekend of March 8th.

 

L’Italiana in Algeri

January 2019

Winter Opera St. Louis

Website

 

Wittenberg

Upstream Theater is pretty much a sure bet for theater-goers who want something different. Their current offering, Wittenberg, described as “a tragical-comical-historical play”, is full of the high-verbal work that often graces their shows.

It would have to be high verbal, given that the main characters are Martin Luther, Faustus and Hamlet, all converging on a college campus in the town of Wittenberg - which must have been quite a happening spot - in the fall semester of 1517. Intellectual Fencing R Us, yes? Hamlet, a returning senior who has yet to declare a major, is being wooed into philosophy, mayhap a nice graduate program, by Dr. Faustus, since the kid seems to be the sort of person who ponders and ponders his options, just the right temperament for a budding philosopher. But a professor of theology, the Augustinian priest Martin Luther has his eye on the lad, and the lad’s eternal soul.

The fact is that Luther and Faustus have been colleagues, intellectual jousting partners and, indeed, drinking buddies for years. Faustus is brought to us in the person of Steve Isom. He’s an ebullient charmer, a long-time bachelor who, as a side note, has decided to propose to his lady love. Luther, courtesy of Alan Knoll, lapses into irascibility at any excuse, and frets at fruitless length about the spiritual health of Faustus, just one of a long list of his complaints and concerns. Those range from the sale of indulgences in the Catholic Church to the state of his own peristalsis. Knoll less than two months ago was playing God at another theater in town; is there a pattern emerging here?

Hamlet is Casey Boland, just coming back to school after a summer term in Poland studying astronomy with Copernicus. Copernicus has just posited that the earth actually revolves around the sun, which has the young scholar all a-twitch. Both these learned men are fond of him, and he’s got plenty of options ahead of him – he thinks.

It’s all about wit, both mental agility and humor, and we get plenty of both here. Some of the speeches, particularly of Hamlet, run a tad long, coming perilously close to what would in the 21^st Century be called a rant, but mostly it’s good fun and a pleasure to try to keep up with.

Isom and Knoll are both romping through this, showcasing their abilities with timing and delivery. Boland plays wide-eyed enthusiastic idealism with verve. The fourth member of the cast, Caitlin Mickey, quadruples in brass as the Virgin Mary, a bierhall server, an ambassador and the object of Faustus’ affection, an ex-nun who is not quite so honored by the great man’s attention as one might expect. (This is not, we hasten to add, the ex-nun whom Luther married after the time period of the play.)

Phillip Boehm, Upstream’s artistic director and the director here, keeps things moving at a fine clip. Michael Heil’s imaginative set is charming, and Laura Hanson’s costumes, especially the wondrous headgear of Luther and the swellegant coat of Faustus are enthralling. Boehm did his own sound design, and Steve Carmichael is responsible for the lighting.

Who needs sword fights when the brains are the sharpest around?

 

Wittenberg

through February 10

Upstream Theater

The Kranzberg Arts Center

upstreamtheater.org

District Merchants

Overheard at District Merchants on its opening night at The New Jewish Theatre: “Shakespeare​? I didn’t know this was Shakespeare!”

The extraordinary production of Aaron Posner’s play, which riffs on The Merchant of Venice the way Posner did with Chekhov in Life Sucks! (a take on Uncle Vanya), requires no familiarity at all with the older script. He moves the setting to post-Civil War Washington, DC, where the interaction between the Jewish moneylender Shylock and Antoine, a successful merchant whose father had won his freedom from slavery in the War of 1812, is the focus of the story.

Like Shakespeare, Posner’s characters speak directly to the audience, breaking the invisible fourth wall, and inviting us into the world they’re in. This makes for greater intimacy, even in this relatively small venue, although the majesty of the set is altogether fitting and proper. What they deal with on the surface – love, death, honor – is only the beginning. Shakespeare probably never realized he would give us dialogue about stereotypes regarding race, origin and gender. We have all that here, carefully, elegantly brought forward so skillfully that it catches one unaware at some points.

Two St. Louis veterans, Gary Wayne Barker and J. Samuel Davis, play Shylock and Antoine. The characters have done business before, but both are racist, their civility to each other a fragile veneer that cracks quickly. Antoine’s young friend Benjamin (Rob White) needs some cash to woo a young woman in Massachusetts he’s swooning over, and while Antoine’s waiting literally for some ships to come in, he goes to Shylock for a loan he can lend to Benjamin. The collateral? A pound of flesh. Literally. Something could go wrong here….

Shylock’s daughter Jessica (Alicen Moser), strenuously watched over by her father, is on the receiving end of some fine flirtation from a young Irish vegetable merchant (Paul Edwards). Shylock, if he knew, would be horrified. Benjamin’s beloved is Portia (Courtney Bailey Parker), a well-funded orphan who’s attending Harvard Law dressed as a man. Their obstacle is that Benjamin is passing as white, something that’s obvious to Portia’s maid Nessa (Rae Davis), a woman of color, but he says Portia just sees him as swarthy and exotic. As a bonus, Shylock’s butler ((Karl Hawkins) goes gaga for Nessa when she and Portia make an urgent trip to Washington. The impediment here is that he’s illiterate and Nessa is so intellectually agile, he’s blown away – although very far from speechless. Yes, all this does sound like Shakespeare. (He was always a guy who wanted patrons to get their money’s worth.)

Shakespeare’s play has often been considered a comedy; Posner describes District Merchants as “an uneasy comedy”, which is close to the mark. There certainly are some laughs in here, but that’s not the takeaway, nor should it be, to my way of thinking. Barker uses Yiddishisms to good effect, often as humor, but that’s only a small part of a demanding role that he carries with deep feeling. No less emotionally wracking is Davis’ portrayal of Antoine, with a near-visible restraint at some points and glowing warmth at others. This is, to borrow Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book title referring to a group of Washingtonians from six or so years earlier than the play, a true team of rivals, experienced actors working off each other.

Portia, of course, is one of Shakespeare’s great roles for women, and Parker gives a young, strong, true-hearted portrayal. Davis’ Nessa is a worthy companion for Portia’s, alert and pert and self-assured. Rob White’s Benjamin falling for a strong young woman tells us a lot about him, that he’s not intimidated by her brains or her poise, just the question of whether or not to tell her he’s passing. Lancelot, the butler, as played by Hawkins, is a zippy rendition of a character that’s more interesting than one first thinks. While the pairing of Moser’s sheltered Jewish girl and the go-get-’em Irish immigrant from Edwards does evoke Abie’s Irish Rose, it works well, too.

There are several stop-action moments when characters reflect aloud on what’s going on around them and what they’re thinking, and that further draws us into the play. Some of these are particularly worth further mulling after leaving the theater. It’s all drawn together well by director Jacqueline Thompson, who’s overall creation is completely remarkable. Her team includes the creator of the great set, David Blake, Sean Savoie, who gives us the lights, subtle but significant sound from Zoe Sullivan, and Felia Davenport’s costumes, which are as interesting for the men as the women, something that’s often not the case.

It’s an important work to kick off 2019 for the company. Don’t hesitate on this one.

 

District Merchants

through February 10

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

website

2019 Theater Circle Nominees

Here are the nominees for the 2019 Theater Circle Awards. We will announce the winners at the ceremony March 25 at the Rep. Tickets for what's been referred to as "theatre nerd prom" are at Brown Paper Tickets. 

 

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy
Kari Ely, Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Carmen Garcia, Luchadora!, Mustard Seed Theatre with Theatre Nuevo
Jennelle Gilreath, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Stray Dog Theatre
Katy Keating, Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
Shannon Nara, Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy
Gary Wayne Barker, Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Isaiah Di Lorenzo, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, St. Louis Shakespeare
Brad Fraizer, A Christmas Story, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Stephen Henley, Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre
Carl Overly Jr., Luchadora!, Mustard Seed Theatre with Theatre Nuevo

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy
Sarajane Alverson, Raging Skillet, New Jewish Theatre
Michelle Hand, Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Nancy Nigh, Every Brilliant Thing, R-S Theatrics
Ruth Pferdehirt, Born Yesterday, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Heather Sartin, The Great Seduction, West End Players Guild

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy
Will Bonfiglio, Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre
Alan Knoll, An Act of God, New Jewish Theatre
Luke Steingruby, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Stray Dog Theatre
Robert Thibaut, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, St. Louis Shakespeare
Pete Winfrey, The Importance of Being Earnest, Insight Theatre Company

Outstanding Lighting Design in a Play
Rob Lippert, Silent Sky, Insight Theatre Company
Jon Ontiveros, Macbeth: Come Like Shadows, Rebel and Misfits Productions
Peter E. Sargent, A Christmas Story, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Sean M. Savoie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Nathan Schroeder, Silent Sky, West End Players Guild

Outstanding Sound Design in a Play
James Blanton, Silent Sky, Insight Theatre Company
Rusty Wandall, A Christmas Story, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Rusty Wandall, The Humans, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Amanda Werre, Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
Amanda Werre, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Outstanding Costume Design in a Play
Lou Bird, Born Yesterday, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Megan Harshaw, The Little Foxes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Amy Hopkins, Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre
Michele Friedman Siler, Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Michele Friedman Siler, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Outstanding Set Design in a Play
Dunsi Dai, End of the Rainbow, Max & Louie Productions
Gianni Downs, The Humans, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Peter and Margery Spack, Blow, Winds, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Peter and Margery Spack, Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
James Wolk, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama
Nicole Angeli, Doctor Faustus, or the Modern Prometheus, SATE
Lana Dvorak, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Laurie McConnell, The Little Foxes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Jennifer Theby-Quinn, Silent Sky, Insight Theatre Company
Brandi Threatt, Torn Asunder, The Black Rep

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama
Chuck Brinkley, The Little Foxes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Ryan Lawson-Maeske, Tribes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Thom Niemann, Admissions, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Spencer Sickmann, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Eric Dean White, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Mustard Seed Theatre

Outstanding Actress in a Drama
Elizabeth Birkenmeier, Blackbird, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Sophia Brown, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Kari Ely, The Little Foxes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
LaShunda Gardner, Torn Asunder, The Black Rep
Angela Ingersoll, End of the Rainbow, Max & Louie Productions

Outstanding Actor in a Drama
Ron Himes, Fences, The Black Rep
Nick Narcisi, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
John Pierson, Blackbird, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Rob Riordan, New Jerusalem, New Jewish Theatre
David Wassilak, The Dresser, St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Outstanding New Play
Stacie Lents, Run-On Sentence, SATE
Scott Miller, The Zombies of Penzance, New Line Theatre
Nikkole Salter, Torn Asunder, The Black Rep
John Wolbers, Doctor Faustus, or the Modern Prometheus, SATE
Vladimir Zelevinsky, The Great Seduction, West End Players Guild

Outstanding Achievement in Opera
Susan Graham, Regina, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Kenneth Overton, Lost in the Stars, Union Avenue Opera
Susanna Phillips, Regina, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Patricia Racette, La Traviata, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Shaun Patrick Tubbs, Lost in the Stars, Union Avenue Opera

Outstanding Production of an Opera
An American Soldier, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
L’elisir d’amore, Winter Opera Saint Louis
La Traviata, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Lost in the Stars, Union Avenue Opera
Regina, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis

Outstanding Musical Director
Charlie Alterman, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Rick Bertone, Jersey Boys, The Muny
Jennifer Buchheit, The Robber Bridegroom, Stray Dog Theatre
Charles Creath, Crowns: A Gospel Musical, The Black Rep
Nicolas Valdez, Anything Goes, New Line Theatre

Outstanding Choreographer
Camille A. Brown, The Wiz, The Muny
Tony Gonzalez, Mamma Mia!, Stages St. Louis
Dana Lewis, Oklahoma!, Stages St. Louis
Rommy Sandhu, Singin’ in the Rain, The Muny
Gustavo Zajac and Mariana Parma, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Musical
Joy Boland, Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Variety Theatre
E. Faye Butler, The Wiz, The Muny
Julia Knitel, Gypsy, The Muny
Macia Noorman, The Light in the Piazza, R-S Theatrics
Megan Sikora, Singin’ in the Rain, The Muny

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Musical
Kent Coffel, The Light in the Piazza, R-S Theatrics
Matthew Curiano, Oklahoma!, Stages St. Louis
Zachary Allen Farmer, The Zombies of Penzance, New Line Theatre
Nathan Lee Graham, The Wiz, The Muny
Sean MacLaughlin, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Outstanding Lighting Design in a Musical
Rob Denton, Jersey Boys, The Muny
Rob Denton, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Muny
Tyler Duenow, Jesus Christ Superstar, Stray Dog Theatre
John Lasiter, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Sean M. Savoie, Mamma Mia!, Stages St. Louis

Outstanding Set Design in a Musical
Luke Cantarella, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Dunsi Dai, Crowns: A Gospel Musical, The Black Rep
Paul Tate dePoo III, Singin’ in the Rain, The Muny
Michael Schweikardt, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Muny
James Wolk, Mamma Mia!, Stages St. Louis

Outstanding Costume Design in a Musical
Leon Dobkowski, The Wiz, The Muny
Colene Fornachon, Anything Goes, New Line Theatre
Daryl Harris, Crowns: A Gospel Musical, The Black Rep
Robin L. McGee, Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, The Muny
Alejo Vietti, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Outstanding Actress in a Musical
Michelle Aravena, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Sarah Ellis, Oklahoma!, Stages St. Louis
Beth Leavel, Gypsy, The Muny
Kay Love, The Light in the Piazza, R-S Theatrics
Sarah Porter, Anything Goes, New Line Theatre

Outstanding Actor in a Musical
Corbin Bleu, Singin’ in the Rain, The Muny
Tielere Cheatem, The Light in the Piazza, R-S Theatrics
Phil Leveling, The Robber Bridegroom, Stray Dog Theatre
Pepe Nufrio, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Blake Price, Oklahoma!, Stages St. Louis

Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy
Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told , Stray Dog Theatre
The Realistic Joneses, Rebel and Misfits Productions
Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre

Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama
As It Is in Heaven, Mustard Seed Theatre
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Mustard Seed Theatre
The Little Foxes, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Macbeth: Come Like Shadows, Rebel and Misfits Productions
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Outstanding Ensemble in a Musical
Anything Goes, New Line Theatre
Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, The Muny
The Robber Bridegroom, Stray Dog Theatre
The Zombies of Penzance, New Line Theatre

Outstanding Director of a Comedy
Gary F. Bell, Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre
Nancy Bell, Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Edward Coffield, Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
Pamela Hunt, Born Yesterday, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Anna Skidis Vargas, Luchadora!, Mustard Seed Theatre with Theatre Nuevo

Outstanding Director of a Drama
Lorna Littleway, Fences, The Black Rep
Bobby Miller, The Dresser, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
Tim Ocel, New Jerusalem, New Jewish Theatre
Tim Ocel, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Annamaria Pileggi, Blackbird, St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Outstanding Director of a Musical
Justin Been, The Robber Bridegroom, Stray Dog Theatre
Linda Kennedy, Crowns: A Gospel Musical, The Black Rep
Scott Miller and Mike Dowdy-Windsor, Anything Goes, New Line Theatre
Josh Rhodes, Jersey Boys, The Muny
Rob Ruggiero, Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Outstanding Production of a Comedy
Born Yesterday, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Into the Breeches!, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Life Sucks, New Jewish Theatre
Luchadora!, Mustard Seed Theatre with Theatre Nuevo
Red Scare on Sunset, Stray Dog Theatre

Outstanding Production of a Drama
Blackbird, St. Louis Actors’ Studio
End of the Rainbow, Max & Louie Productions
Fences, The Black Rep
New Jerusalem, New Jewish Theatre
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Outstanding Production of a Musical
Anything Goes, New Line Theatre
Crowns: A Gospel Musical, The Black Rep
Evita, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
Jersey Boys, The Muny
The Light in the Piazza, R-S Theatrics

Special Awards
The Muny, for its centenniall
Kathleen Sitzer, for lifetime achievement
Steven Woolf, for lifetime achievement

Wolves

A pack of young she-wolves are roaming the Studio Theatre at The Rep these days. They’re energetic, sometimes focused but often with short attention spans, and very yappy. The Wolves, by Sarah DeLappe, is about a girls’ soccer team called the Wolves. They’re high-school-aged, playing in an indoor league, some of them long-time acquaintances.

The Rep is staging it stadium-style, two sets of risers facing each other across a strip of synthetic turf, giving lots of room for the bouncy young ones to stretch and run. A few folks in the front rows, in fact, ended up nudging balls back onto the field.

As it opens, it’s immediately obvious that this is no idealized picture of teen-aged girls. The crosstalk is of many things, from politics to gossip, views strongly held and loudly verbalized. Crosstalk is a keyword here. At a number of points in the play, several dialogues are going on at once, and we can’t follow all of them. In addition, there are lines that are addressed in the direction of half the audience and don’t make it to the other half, one of the dangers of such staging. I still have the feeling that there was a subplot that I missed almost completely. Obviously this hasn’t been a problem across the board – the play was a finalist for a Pulitzer.

It’s a series of scenes pre- or post-game through much of a season, with a difficult denouement. None of the characters have names; they’re referred to and addressed by jersey numbers. The team – or pack – is headed by Rachel Logue, strong and confident in her leadership. Esmeralda Garza’s goalie is, for the most part, silent but intensely focused and very watchable. There’s an air of queen bee around Keaton Whittaker, who has what a previous generation would have called potty mouth. The newcomer to the group, Mary Katharine Harris, is intriguingly played as she becomes more comfortable with her peers. Colleen Dougherty’s wide-eyed, yea, clueless, innocence is balanced by Maya J. Christian’s energetic, outspoken, if a little unfocused verve.

Director Melissa Rain Anderson gives us an honest picture of adolescent girls, no sweetening it up. That means there’s talk about sex, ranging from “What’s Plan B?” to physical mimicking, and a certain amount of disinformation. At times, it’s very funny – a tossed-off question, “Why were you watching a documentary?”, for instance.

The creative team includes scenic designer James Wolk, lighting designer John Wylie, sound designer Rusty Wandall and costume designer Marci Franklin, whose job of distinguishing between girls in uniforms makes an audience’s job easier.

It’s an interesting, different 90 minutes of theatre, but be prepared to have your attention whipped around at times.

 

Wolves

through February 3

Studio Theatre

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Love, Linda

Is it a love story or a cabaret act? Love, Linda is a combination of the two. Max & Louie Productions’ current offering brings us an interesting variation on what’s often referred to as the “And then I wrote...” genre. Linda Lee (her maiden name) Porter, a now-divorced Louisville belle, was married to Cole Porter. Both had some family money and she had acquired a fat sum in her divorce from her abusive husband. The upshot was a dazzling lifestyle even before Porter became the toast of Broadway, living in Paris, renting a palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice and parties with titles, glitter and, of course, lots of entertainment.

Cole Porter, as some used to say, batted for both teams. He seemed mainly to prefer men, but it seems clear that she understood the situation and accepted it as long as she wasn’t displaced. The play emphasizes that she loved him almost unconditionally and, when they were on the verge of a divorce, returned to his side to she could take care of him after the horseback accident that nearly cost him his legs.

The story is interspersed with plenty of Porter tunes, both famous and obscure, the entire evening in the hands of Debbie Lennon as Linda. Even diehard Porter fans may well find something they’ve never heard before. Lennon’s voice is at its best with the bigger songs, the sort that Porter wrote for Ethel Merman, whose voice, said Porter, “was like a band going by.” Lennon is backed by Greg Schweizer on piano, Guy Cantonwine on bass and Kevin Gianino on drums. Whether Lee was the inspiration for Porter’s work, as she says, or not is pretty immaterial; in an age where women with money were expected to be decorative ornaments with a gift for hostessing, she carried out her duties with vigor, for the most part, even with Cole’s close personal friends who, she says, just “became part of our family.” To modern eyes, it’s not always a comfy story.

Teresa Doggett, costume designer, shines with the red coat in which Lennon makes her entrance, Dunsi Dai’s set manages to combine minimalism and Art Deco, and Patrick Huber’s lighting ties it all together. I’m not sure who came up with the hanging light fixture stage right, but an extra tip of the hat to them.

Ken Page directed this Cole Porter confection, an early Valentine’s Day present for the romantic, especially the sophisticated romantic.

 

Love, Linda

Max & Louie Productions

through January 27

The Marcelle

3310 Samuel Shepard Drive

Metrotix: 314 534-1111

maxandlouie.com 

 

Canfield Drive

The Black Rep is premiering, not just a St. Louis premiere, but a world premiere, of Canfield Drive. For the rest of the world, the name may not evoke instant memories, but for St. Louisans, it can’t help but do so. Canfield Drive is where Michael Brown was shot in August of 2014. The play was four years in the writing, with Kristen Adele Calhoun and Michael Thomas Walker receiving a grant from the National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund, co-commissioned by 651 Arts in Brooklyn, NY partnering with The Black Rep. Several visits to St. Louis and workshops on the play in Brooklyn, Denver, Hartford and St. Louis all helped craft the work.

This is, to be sure, a difficult play. It had to be. “Unpleasant” doesn’t even start to describe the event and what followed. For many of us, it’s a hard reminder of what the black experience is even today in the 21^st Century.

The play centers on two people who are commentators on a major network talk show about racial questions. Kristen Adele, the co-author of the play (who doesn’t use her surname when she appears as an actor), is the woman; Christopher Hickey is the man. She’s African-American, he’s white, and while she’s talking about systemic racism, he’s talking about law and order. It falls to Eric Conners, as the host and moderator, to try to keep order. They’ve come to St. Louis soon after Brown’s death to interview people, gather information and discuss things in a studio.

Other people appear, some of whom are depictions of real people, quoted by name, like Starsky Wilson and Susan Talve. Conners and Amy Loui play all these roles. The series of vignettes speak vividly to what life was – and is – like for everyday people. There are, as well, a couple of scenes that are close to nightmares, both satirical takes on other, recognizable, television shows.

The point of the play is not so much the story arc as it is broadening our ideas of the factors in the death of Brown and the subsequent unrest. Are the main characters, particularly Hickey’s, cliches? There are plenty of people out there like him, and more of them seem to be on television now than formerly. If the point of art is to make people think and not merely to entertain, then Canfield Drive certainly can accomplish that.

The acting is excellent from all four cast members, especially Conners. Margery and Peter Spack have brought fine scenic and video design and production to the show. There’s a video of a trio of ladies singing that’s an absolute delight, and scenes of St. Louis which contribute significantly to the sense of place so relevant to the story.

And this is our story. We have to be able to listen to what other people are saying about their experience. It may be uncomfortable to hear, but these things not only must be said, they must be heard. There are no easy answers to the big question of what can I do? Many of us asked ourselves that question in 2014 and after. One thing people can do is listen.

 

Canfield Drive

through January 27

The Black Rep

Edison Theatre

Washington University in St. Louis

www.theblackrep.org

Alabama Story

Is Alabama Story just another play about racism? Hardly. History is basically story-telling – and then, as a retired history teacher said to me recently, “connecting the dots to see the bigger picture”. The closer the story is, whether it’s in terms of time or geography or sociology, the more relevant it is. Surely it’s harder to draw lessons from King Tut or adventurers at the South Pole than from something nearer.

The story here, based on actual events, is within living memory – and within 600 miles from us. In 1959, an Alabama legislator became incensed because a children’s picture book was about a wedding between two rabbits, one of which had white fur and the other black. He and the White Citizens Council wanted the book removed from the state library system, even burned. The state librarian, Emily Wheelock Reed, understood this was censorship and resisted. One wonders what, say, a teenager today, would think about the situation, as farfetched as it seems, at least to most of us, today.

Kenneth Jones’ play began when he read, we suspect an obituary, about Emily Reed in the New York Times in 2000. He fictionalizes the legislator as Senator Higgins, and sets up the author of the book, the noted artist Garth Williams as the narrator of the story. (Those illustrations in the Little House on the Prairie? Those, and many more beyond that, were Garth Williams’.)

Emily Reed is played by Jeanne Paulsen. While the word “librarian” evokes stereotypes, Paulsen is indeed spot on in her speech and action. So perfectly does she evoke plenty of librarians I knew in that time frame that seeing her reach for a cigarette was slightly shocking. It’s a bang-up job. Her nemesis, the senator, is Carl Palmer, thumbs behind his lapels and preening his superiority as a native-born Alabamian white male, a combination of a snake and Foghorn Leghorn. To be sure, at this distance in time he can’t help being a caricature, but Palmer doesn’t overplay it.

Larry Paulsen is a charming Garth Williams as well as various other characters in the show. Reed’s second banana – surely she would have objected to that phrase – at the library, Thomas Franklin, comes to us courtesy of Carl Howell, and he’s very serious but a sweetie, just the sort of earnest young man you’d find patrolling the stacks.

There’s a secondary story line about two people who grew up in Demopolis, Alabama. (Serendipitously, that’s the town from whence came Lillian Hellman’s family seen in The Little Foxes and Regina, the latter an opera that OTSL did on this very stage less than a year ago.) Child hood friends, the white woman and African-American man meet near the library after many years. The resultant stiffness and attempts at resolution punctuate things. Both Anna O’Donoghue and Corey Allen show the results of being in the adult world of 1959, both verbally and in their body language. It’s an interesting idea but feels totally detached from the main thread, despite being in the same place and time frame. In addition, it’s rather unrealistic.

Paul Mason Barnes puts together a rewarding experience overall, strong and moving and reminding us about the necessity of the free flow of information. William Bloodgood’s excellent set is neutral only in color, emphasizing the majesty of words.

The extra story line feels superfluous, but the strength of the basic conflict is beautifully delineated. It’s a fine reminder of the fact that Second Amendment rights, by extension, flow right into what we have a right to read.

 

Alabama Story

through January 27

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told

Not all holiday plays are meant to be...um, family-friendly. The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told would work for some families, certainly, but not for those with smaller, curious children or who are offended by nudity or sexuality or even sexual orientation.

Written by Paul Rudnick, who Ben Brantley, reviewing this play for The New York Times, said “might be the funniest writer for the stage in the United States today”, it’s rapid-fire laughs take no prisoners, starting, quite literally with the Garden of Eden. Rudnick gives us Adam and Steve, those legendary guys that first appeared in the mind of some conservative evangelical Christian. He then throws in Jane and Mabel, and the argument over who came first.

We cover the Flood – no, not the 1995 one, that one with the Ark? - a run-in with a pharoah, and the nativity, and then jump to New York City in the 1990’s. For a twenty-year-old play, it’s held up remarkably well and, as director Justin Been says in his program notes, “it’s surprising (and maybe a little sad) how little we’ve learned”.

Luke Steingruby and William Humphrey are Adam and Steve, warm together, Humphrey having a good time with the occasional side-eye at the exuberant Steingruby. Maria Bartolotta and Angela Bubash play Jane and Mabel, Bartolotta strong and pretty serious and Bubash sometimes wafting along merrily, as when she, too, rollicks through their various incarnations. Because it’s the four of them hanging out in that New York apartment. Someone at their Christmas open house asks, “How long have you two been together?” and the reply is an airy, “Oh, forever.” That eternity isn’t really a focus of the play, but it goes right along with most of it.

The supporting cast all play multiple roles except Patrice Foster, who gives theatre-goers an extra bonus. She’s cast as the stage manager, working onstage, and it’s a good way to see what a stage manager really does. (The actual stage manager is Josh Littrell.) I particularly enjoyed Jeremy Goldmeier’s rhinoceros, Steven Henley’s Christmas elf and Dawn Schmidt’s Cheryl Mindle, who’s part of the play’s nod to Angels in America. Stray Dog does its usual swell job with the music, and the opening videos are a real pleasure, all this presumably courtesy of Josh Smith and Justin Been, the latter doing double duty with his directing.

Not for everyone, true. But those who are up for rowdiness will have a splendid time.

 

The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told

through December 22

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

straydogtheatre.org

A Christmas Story

I admit I always think about A Christmas Story with a bit deeper nostalgia than some people. I, too, grew up in a small Midwestern town, but it’s not that commonality making me smile. I was, I believe, the only little girl in town with a Red Ryder carbine action air rifle – or, as we usually referred to it, a bb gun. After the traditional but surprisingly perfunctory warning from my mother about shooting someone’s eye out, I was let loose on the surrounding landscape and never inflicted significant damage on things living or inert.

The Rep has chosen A Christmas Story for its holiday offering, and it’s a production designed to appeal to all ages beyond the script. The tale is of a boy and his family in a small town in the Midwest before television appeared in living rooms. It’s just before Christmas, and Ralphie’s heart’s desire is a Red Ryder bb gun. As the big day approaches, he plots a campaign to convince his parents that he should have it, but nothing, of course, seems to go the way he wants.

Ralphie is Charlie Mathis, who charmed us as Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird, and he carries the lead with poise and considerable zest. Actually, there are two Ralphs, the boy and the grown Ralph, played by Ted Deasy, the narrator looking back at his childhood escapades. Sometimes he appears in the house he’s growing up in, the adult Ralph watching his younger self. It’s a modulated, careful approach that could easily have turned into sticky sweetness, but this is careful and merely pleasantly nostalgic.

Ralphie’s dad, referred to as The Old Man, comes to us courtesy of Brad Fraizer. The physical comedy for him, per Seth Gordon’s direction, is broad and well-played, especially an episode with a ladder, as things get giddier and giddier during the course of the show. It’s not just the Bumpus neighbors’ dogs that send him flying.

Laurel Casillo gives us a calm mother whose constant dinner menu of meatloaf and cabbage must surely be another figment of a child’s imagination. Except for that air rifle thing, she has more of a challenge with Ralphie’s little brother Randy, Spencer Slavik, wailing and weeping with believable fervor when he’s not hiding in one spot or another. (One wonders what contemporary childhood behavioral assessments would make of this kid.)

Ralphie’s gang of pals are charmers, Scut Farkas (Tanner Gilbertson), Schwartz (Rhadi Smith) and Flick (Dan Wolfe), the latter being he of the unfortunate flagpole episode. The two young women who deal with those rascals are Ana McAlister, as Esther Jane, who sorta likes Ralphie, and Gigi Koster as Helen, who dazzles their long-suffering teacher, Miss Shields (Jo Twiss) with her book reports.

Director Gordon’s creative team includes Michael Ganio as scenic designer. While the house is warm and endearing, it’s the Higbee Department Store that brings us into fantasy and perhaps visions of the 10^th floor of Famous-Barr when we were kids, an ice mountain for Santa Claus. Clothing looks somewhat vintage without being cringe-worthy, courtesy of costume designer David Kay Mickelsen, and if that seems faint praise, pay attention to the back of the green coat one of the girls wear, which caused two women in the audience near me to murmur in admiration.

This is a fine thing to introduce kids to live theatre, silly and understandable without any ghosts clanking around the way they might be in that other Christmas warhorse. (I know. I love Dickens, but the Cratchit posse needs a rest. Why hasn’t anyone taken the BBC Radio play, Christmas at Dingley Dell and put it onstage?) Even the numerous teenagers in the audience seemed to have a good time. Fine family entertainment.

 

A Christmas Story

through December 23

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

An Act of God

To paraphrase Judy Blume, are you there, St. Louis? It’s Me, God.

God’s decided to return to St. Louis, not that He ever left, but it seems He’s doing some revisions of the Ten Commandments. To make Himself manifest to us, He explains, He’s appearing as an actor named Alan Knoll. And that’s just the beginning these next couple of weeks at The New Jewish Theatre, where they’re presenting An Act of God.

Essentially a one-man/two-archangel show, Knoll has a fine time explaining it all to us, in a manner Sister Mary Ignatius could only envy. (Bonus points if you recall that St. Louis theatre contretemps.) Not that he’s harsh, he’s just outspoken. And funny. Very funny, although with a considerable edge – for instance, he calls the Book of Job an absolute hoot. There’s a fine, logical explanation of what really happened with the flood and that boat. One could go on, but it would spoil the fun.

His archangels are Gabriel, mostly calm and patient, played by Amanda Wales, and Michael, played by Cassidy Flynn, who works the audience like Jonathan Mangum of “Let’s Make a Deal” but in hyper mode.

Josh Smith did the set and lighting design, the latter being particularly potent in evoking things. Amanda Were’s sound design balances things well. But God’s robe, from Michele Siler, in which he swans about and then has to bundle up to sit down with any ease at all, is deeply remarkable.

Edward Coffield, New Jewish’s artistic director directs this romp, which has no intermission.

Just because this review is brief doesn’t mean this isn’t ninety minutes of laughs and some thought-provoking questions.

 

An Act of God

through December 16^th

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

website

Shotspeare

Shotspeare is way not just for Shakespeare buffs. In fact, I’m sure that some Deeply Serious Shakespeare-ophiles will be Deeply Offended by it. But rowdy, indeed bawdy humor was common in Elizabethan times. Shotspeare fits right into that.

The small venue that’s the Playhouse at Westport is pretty much perfect for a show that involves a lot of audience contact before the actual play begins and continues during the intermission. Said contact involves vodka and, to a lesser degree, beer being proffered to audience members who are interested. (I declined and no one made a big deal of it.) The players are doing Romeo and Juliet. Well, sort of. Five cast members and one audience member, a fellow who performed his duties on opening night with considerable elan, attack a much-abbreviated script with large amounts of what seems like (but probably isn’t) adlibbing and some fast, funny costume changes. They’re putting away the alcohol too, or at least it seems that way. Certainly the beer is definitely Pestalozzi Street’s Finest, and the vodka for the audience is the real thing. If the actual cast is downing vodka at the rate they have us believe, they may have a gastroenterologist on retainer.

The language is frequently X-rated, if that bothers anyone. Lots of physical comedy, some of which is equally free-wheeling. A fair amount of throwing rolled-up athletic socks also occurs, the socks being far cleaner than either of the two previous items.

It’s an excuse to laugh and see a group of quite gifted actors – Westport never hands out cast lists, so I can only say that Matthew Morgan, Brandon Breault, Heidi Brucker Morgan, Brian David Sloan, Tyler Moss and Timur Kocak all work very hard to make it look easy. And when they occasionally break into unexpected classical Shakespeare, they carry it off well. Many of them, if not all, have some serious Shakespearean background. Matthew Morgan adapted the script and directs.

How fitting is it that the code word VODKA can get a discount on tickets? Just don’t expect a night of anything but silliness. They’re dark this Thanksgiving weekend, but return for two more weeks immediately following.

 

Shotspeare

through December 8

The Playhouse at Westport

Westport Plaza

playhouseatwestport.com

Doctor Faustus, or the Modern Promethius

This autumn has been a fertile harvest season for those who seek more than the Same Old. SATE Ensemble Theatre’s contribution to Faustival is Doctor Faustus, or the Modern Promethius, John Wolber’s work playing on the kit Marlowe classic.

Wolbers interlaces the centuries-old tale with today. Despite the seeming incongruities, it mostly works. Hearing the words “toxic masculinity” spoken in iambic pentameter could grate on the ear. I found it, and other contemporary working tucked into the script, curiously refreshing. (Yes, a tip of the bottlecap to the old Schweppes ad phrase.)

Dr. Faustus (Ashley Bauman) is a young woman, a physician, philosopher and generally serious person. The time frame is a little hazy – she gets hassled on the street by a couple of louts – wait, that’s far from era-specific – and seems to live with her boyfriend Wagner (Michael Pierce). But being a female physician seems to be pretty unusual; it’s remarked on several times in the early part of the play, As well, the costumes and much of the dialogue have a clear feeling of Elizabethan times.

She’s determined to Do Good at any price and thus somehow trades her immortal soul to the devil and his henchman Mephistophilis. The latter manifests himself in various forms, and she eventually succumbs to the evilness that comes with the infernal territory. The trajectory is so gradual and so carefully played by Bauman that the first incremental steps cause a Wait, what did she just do? moment in the viewer.

Director Ellie Schwetye gives us a strong supporting cast with folks like Joe Hanrahan, Nicole Angeli and Kareem Deanes. Taleesha Caturah is strong as two powerful women Faustus aspires to be, in several senses.

The relatively simple-seeming set by Bess Moynihan works well, assisted by Dominick Ehling’s lights. Delicious, imaginative costuming is the product of Liz Hemming. The Chapel’s challenging acoustics are dealt with by Deames, doubling with sound design, and work better than is sometimes found at this venue.

Overall, a surprisingly satisfying two hours.

 

Doctor Faustus, or the Modern Prometheus

through November 17, 2018

SATE Ensemble Theatre

www.slightlyoff.org

The Chapel

6238 Alexander Drive

map

Admissions

Admissions. The word has two accepted definitions. One is “a statement acknowledging the truth of something”. The second is “the process or fact of entering or being allowed to enter a place, organization, or institution”. The Joshua Harmon play by that name, at the Rep Studio, uses both senses of the word, although it’s quickly apparent that the second is what leads us into the play.

Hillcrest is a very selective prep school in New Hampshire, the sort with headmasters and immense tuition. The admissions office is helmed by Sherri Rosen-Mason (Henny Russell), who’s worked hard over the years to bring the percentage of minority students up. She’s married to the headmaster, Bill Mason (R. Howard Duffy). Their son Charlie (Thom Niemann), is waiting to hear about early acceptance from Yale. So is his best friend Perry, whom we never see. His mom Ginnie (Kate Udall), Sherri’s friend, is married to a Hillcrest teacher, also unseen, who is biracial.

Perry’s admitted to Yale. Charlie is deferred, which means, in effect, “Well, maybe; we’ll look at your application again later”, pretty much a “no”. The distraught Charlie lets loose a screed about diversity and inclusion that certainly asks some interesting questions. His mother, when she can get a word in edgewise, tries to explain – not, we assume, that the young gentleman hasn’t heard these same words at the dinner table for many years. He’s an angry white kid who isn’t getting into the school he felt he should. (Ah, should – a word that can be fraught with danger whether onstage or off.) His dad, when the young one half-runs out of steam, erupts, calling Charlie a “privileged brat”, among other things, saying that he can go to, oh, Dartmouth or Brown, his safety schools.

The discrimination they’ve worked so hard to erase at the prep school has now – and, yes, it almost certainly is the case, from the script – bitten their only child in the wazoo. The couple had deliberately gone to work at Hillcrest in order to have free tuition for him so that he could have the best of all that 1% world offered, and now this. What to do? Principles versus protective parenting.

Steven Woolf directed the play, which is excellently paced, the characters clearly drawn. Russell’s Sherri opens as a woman devoted to doing her job superbly, dealing with an underling played by Barbara Kingsley in a delightful turn. The change from say-the-right-thing to Mamma Bear is an interesting one. Duffy’s dad is strong and enjoyable, a believable character. As the son, Niemann, even in his anger, is a little too controlled, although one’s never sure if that’s a directorial decision or the actor working. Udall’s Ginnie, the friend and other mom, shows her unsureness with considerable skill.

The script really brings points of the argument – on both sides – forward to be considered, and that’s an important thing. It’s difficult to do something like this without preaching, and the rant from Charlie is noticeably too articulate and well-thought-out for an angry adolescent. It also feels too long.

The play is also terrifically classist. That’s hard to avoid when you’re writing about elites, certainly. It was the frequent haranguing about community colleges that grated most. Implicit stereotypes, racial, educational, social – all seemed to add up as the two-year institutions being worthless substitutes for actual learning, catering to the unworthy unwashed.

Harmon’s previous work, like Bad Jews, uses humor to get at things, and there are a lot of laughs in this show. But certainly some of it has a tinge of discomfort to it. And that’s quite proper.

 

Admissions

through November 11

Studio Theatre

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Macbeth: Come Like Shadows

It’s not Shakespeare for Dummies. Rebel and Misfits Productions’ offering of Macbeth: Come Like Shadows would not be a good choice for those unfamiliar with the Bard.

Nevertheless, in many ways this is an exciting production. It’s innovative, taking the audience from a meeting spot near Soulard Market, via bus, to the site of the production itself, a deconsecrated church on the North Side, explaining that we, the audience, are political refugees and giving a set of “rules”, emailed and then again read aloud en route. It’s feminist, with a plot twist that I won’t reveal. And it’s beautiful.

Yes, beautiful. Gorgeous, in fact. The sanctuary is hazy inside, plaster peeling, John Ontiveros’ lighting carefully planned. The audience has access to Joe Novak’s entire set, so long as they stay out of the actors’ way. It fits very well with the location, but it’s what was here long before Rebel and Misfits arrived which becomes the frame and backdrop for all the rest. My first careful look up at the vaulted ceiling was, between the light and the haze, almost other-worldly. It’s like walking into a dream.

Much of the casting is excellent. Macbeth (Sean Patrick Higgins, the co-director) disintegrates well, stepping from functional to delusional – well, perhaps gracefully is not the adverb of choice, but with absolutely no grinding of gears; we see it happening before our eyes as we stand in the nave of the church. His Lady Macbeth (Kelly Hummert, artistic director and producer of the company and the other co-director of this show) feels sinuous from our first sight of her writhing alone in her red-draped bed.

Kudos to Spencer Sickmann’s Macduff and to Shane Signorino’s Banquo for excellent characterizations, as well. Duncan (Jeff Cummings)’s dignity is painstaking and poignant. His son Malcolm (Paul Cereghino) holds his emotional fire well until it erupts. But all the cast’s efforts are sometimes for naught. That lovely, moldering architecture catches any words not directly aimed at the individual listening and bounces the lines from surface to surface to surface. Swallowing up a large percentage of the dialogue makes it a challenge to keep up with what’s happening for those who don’t know the story pretty well, especially since this script has some deviations from the usual plot line.

Audience members need to plan on standing, walking, being careful of steps and cables on the floor of the former sanctuary, and being able to climb a couple of flights of stairs. They’re reminded occasionally of their refugee status, some of which seems politically relevant to contemporary times, but doesn’t quite fit into why we refugees are in the estate and castle of a Scottish general. No intermission, but a cash bar beforehand after being processed through refugee red tape.

Not for everyone, but the visuals and a great deal of the acting make it worthwhile.

 

Macbeth: Come Like Shadows

through November 10

Rebel and Misfits Productions

rebelandmisfitsproductions.com

Into the Breeches!

A good time is clearly being had by all.

Or at least the company of Into the Breeches! surely makes it seem that way. A project of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, the first of three pieces offered by their IN THE WORKS festival at the Grandel Theater, it certainly deserves to be described as rollicking.

George Brant’s play gives us the home front of World War II, with a script that’s individualized to reflect the city in which it’s played. That’s the sort of thing that adds to the fun with insider jokes to offer a few swirls of decorative icing on top of this very elaborate cake. We’re in the Oberon Play House, which is canceling its season because its resident director and almost all the men connected with it are away at war. Maggie (Michelle Hand),the director’s wife, wants to stage a condensed version of Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V with an all-woman cast. Ellsworth (Gary Wayne Baker), who owns the theater, is absolutely having none of it. Still, he hesitantly goes along when his wife Winnifred (Katy Keating) is offered a role. After all, she was in a play when she was at Rosati-Kain – where, she reports proudly, the Post-Dispatch said she “rounded out the cast.”

Celeste (Kari Ely), the resident diva and the only one with serious acting experience, is on board immediately. But the response to Maggie’s audition notices is tepid. They end up with June (Mary McNulty) and Grace (Laura Reisinger), whose husbands have enlisted. Three actors to do a four-hour show? Stuart (Ben Nordstrom), the long-time stage manager, volunteers to appear onstage as well. And Ida (Jacqueline Thompson), the house costumer, steps up to the plate. Maggie will not only direct, she, too, will act. They’ll have to do with seven, four of whom are rookies. And Stuart is not a woman.

Somehow, the chaos that inevitably ensues is not laced with cliches; there are serious issues at hand. It’s exquisitely cast by director Nancy Bell. Hand and Ely work together like yarn and knitting needles in the hand of a fiber wizard. Nordstrom is at his best, using his gift for physical comedy to great effect. It’s a pleasure to see the warm midlife marital relationship of Baker and Keating. Thompson is strong as a talented woman in a still-legally-segregated St. Louis. Mc Nulty and Reisinger’s young military wives discovering they can have a life of their own are very watchable indeed.

Margery and Peter Spack did the backstage-y feeling and very adaptable set. The costumes from Michele Friedman Siler kept getting more and more fun. Joe Clapper’s lights added to the half-real/half-make-believe feel of the evening, and Rusty Wandall’s sound design, combined with the actors’ care, made this space, sometimes an acoustical nightmare, work as well as I’ve heard it in a long, long time.

Reassure your friends they don’t need to be familiar with Shakespeare to enjoy Into the Breeches! and carry them forthwith to the Grandel. 18 and under get in free, for an added bonus. This is an absolutely delightful piece of work.

 

Into the Breeches!

Through November 18

Shakespeare Festival St. Louis

website

Grandel Theatre

3610 Grandel Square at Grand

A Doll's House, Part 2

When last we saw Nora Helmering, she was walking out the door, leaving behind her husband Torvald and their three children. She had come to believe her whole life was, if not a lie, than an untruth. That was the close of A Doll’s House, Ibsen’s then(1879)-shocking play.

There are certain children who, after hearing a story from a book or storyteller, demand to know What happened then? Lucas Hnath might have been one of those curious young ones, because he’s written A Doll’s House, Part 2, currently at The Rep Mainstage. Happily, it’s not necessary to have seen the Ibsen to enjoy this work; there are enough backstory references (without seeming awkward, always a potential clunkiness) to make it comprehensible to anyone.

Director Timothy Near gives us a play that is both period and modern. It balances both sides beautifully. From the ghost-ish set by Scott C. Neale to the contemporary language of Hnath’s characters, we’re walking that tightrope without getting dizzy. Nora (Carolyn Kozlowski) has returned after 15 years, only notifying the housekeeper Anne Marie (Tina Johnson) who was her nanny when she was a child. After she left their nameless town in Norway where Torvald was a banker, many people thought her dead, so reticent was Torvald about her absence.

She hasn’t told Torvald she was coming, but she needs to speak to him in the morning, she tells the housekeeper. And, no, there’s no reason to tell the one child remaining at home, Emmy, who’s now 20, that she’s returned. “She has her own life,” Nora explains – or rationalizes.

Nora, it seems, has discovered that Torvald never divorced her. Given the Norwegian law of the time, this is about to cause her plenty of big problems. We know that Torvald (Michael James Reed) is apt to burst through the door hours before his usual time, and indeed he does.

The tension between the two is exquisite, erupting from time to time into shouting, but mostly done with fine emotional restraint. Anne Marie, too, is pulled between options, and when Emmy (Andrea Abello), appears for a one-on-one with her long-absent mother, there’s even more disturbance, although here, it’s of a chilly sort.

What has Nora been doing to stay alive these last years? Will Torvald ever soften? Does maternal instinct exist? What exactly is a happy ending? Hnath isn’t quite Ibsen, but there are interesting questions, some answered and more asked.

Besides the lovely set – is the house a ghost since Nora left? – there is very relevant lighting from Ann G. Wrightson. One could spend the entire evening looking for details on Victoria Livingston-Hall’s costumes were one not so wrapped up in the drama itself.

It all works quite splendidly. No intermission, by the way; running time is roughly 90 minutes.

 

A Doll’s House, Part 2

through November 4

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org