St. Louis Eats and Drinks

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, 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

Evil Dead the Musical

Evil Dead the Musical: You either get it or you don’t. There are some fairly rabid fans of this, not unlike The Rocky Horror Show followers, although it hasn’t gotten to the point of shouting the lines along with the actors, at least on opening night at Stray Dog’s third production of this show.

There’s nothing at all serious about a musical covering a horror movie franchise, certainly. It’s totally played for laughs, not suspense – to say it’s played broadly would be vastly understating things. Creepy cabins. Hormone-infested teenagers. Mysterious findings from an absent professor.

There’s a reason the first three rows of seating are covered, for this show, in plastic. The first two rows, “The Splatter Zone” are premium seating and include a t-shirt with the show’s logo, which is handed out before the show. The third, which is part of the open seating, is covered just in case, and it was a good thing, too. The chainsaw- and firearm-related splatter are pretty much the point of the whole evening.

That’s not to say the cast didn’t lean into it. Pretty much everything is delivered full tilt, except a few bars of some of the songs. Riley Dunn’s Ash, the leading man, is an iron-jawed guy wooing the beautiful Shelly, Dawn Schmid, who understands she’s almost better than he deserves. The other couple is Scott, Stephen Henley, and Shelly, Jennelle Gilreath. Scott’s the guy some of us want to march up to onstage and smack. It’s not that his being there is primarily for sack time with Shelly, who’s, uh, totally up for it. It’s his unbearable treatment of Ash’s sister Cheryl, Christen Ringhausen, blithely accepted by Ash.

A good time is also had by Maria Bartolotta as Annie, the professor’s daughter, Corey Fraine as Ed, her boyfriend, Josh Douglas as Jake, the country guy who leads those two up the wooded path, and Kevin O’Brien. “Bit-Part Demon” from Corey Fraine was perhaps the funniest song of the night. And a serious tip of the cap to Douglas, who voiced the moose, a spot-on rendition of Captain Kangaroo’s friend’s great pipes.

Justin Been directed, Tyler Duenow brings his usual skills with lights, Eileen Engel did the costumes, and the makeup is from Sarah Castelli -  a show like this must be quite an undertaking. Josh Smith did the scenic design, more complicated that it appears on entering the theater.

Fun if you’re in the right mood.

 

Evil Dead the Musical

through October 27

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

www.straydogtheatre.org

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night. [Credit not to Bette Davis in All About Eve but to Joseph Manckiewicz; we don’t give Olivier credit for “Alas, poor Yorick,” do we?]

But it is going to be a bumpy night at Mustard Seed Theatre for those who go see The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. It’s fast-paced, lines firing off so quickly that the laughter hasn’t passed when the next one comes, a full-on time warp of divine proportion, plenty of bad language, some excellent acting and a script that, while uneven, touches on some interesting things to think about.

It takes place in Purgatory, where Mr. Iscariot (Chris Ware), as he’s styled by some, is up for sentencing to hell. The judge (Chandler Spradling) seems, pardon the phrase, hell-bent to get through his docket – Iscariot is only one among many – and go on to other things. Up springs Cunningham (Courtney Bailey-Parker) to defend Judas. She says she has a writ to delay things. The judge is having absolutely none of it, despite her demands. El-Fayoumy (Carl Overly, Jr.) roars in, announcing he’s going to argue the prosecution side.

This is not going to be simple. We meet everyone from Judas’ mother (Carmen Garcia) to Sigmund Freud, including appearances from St. Monica (Rae Davis), the head of the Sanhedrin (Ariella Rovinsky), Mother Theresa (Rachel Tibbetts), Satan himself (Eric Dean White), whom the judge familiarly addresses as “Lu”, and more.

There’s a lot of multiple casting that crosses all kinds of lines, and in the context of considering great themes in theological terms, it makes considerable sense. If, in the words of the old Christian hymn, “In Christ, there is no East or West,” then there probably is no ethnicity or gender discrimination, so seeing Carmen Garcia playing Pontius Pilate, for instance, seems perfectly reasonable on several levels. The dialogue is full of cultural jokes from all sorts of sources.

Yes, definitely some excellent acting. Bailey-Parker has the most underplayed role and does well with it, not easy considering what’s going on around her, especially Overly’s ripping and roaring and caroming across the stage, showcasing his gift for physical comedy. Garcia’s magnificent, whether as the grieving mother – Judas Iscariot, you may recall, hanged himself – or as Pontius Pilate, where she seems to physically morph. Iscariot himself, Chris Ware, is pretty much catatonic for much of the play; Ware makes him believable despite that. Chelsea Krenning is, among other things, the long-suffering bailiff, and covers a lot of distance without breaking a sweat. The Saint Monica created by Rae Davis is clearly bringing it, and taking no prisoners. Not only is a nicely Parkinsonian Mother Theresa brought to us by Rachel Tibbetts, her Saint Thomas – you remember, Doubting Thomas? – is almost ethereal. White’s Satan is never oily, just coated in silicon. The timing needs a little work because of the laughter; it’s a shame to waste some of these lines.

Adam Flores orchestrated this collection of folks and directed the script from Stephen Adley Guirgis. Dunsi Dai’s set works extremely well, Michael Sullivan’s lighting slides our attention to and fro seamlessly and Zoe Sullivan’s sound is wonderfully done, smooth and often very discreet.

Guirgis’ second act goes on too long, unfortunately, including one of those points where the audience is left wondering, “Was that the end of the play?” It turns out not to be, the “not to be” changing the mood entirely and in serious need of trimming. He’s obviously used a lot of sources – I was immediately grabbed by something that may have been purloined from Haile Selassie speaking to Rose Kennedy in November of 1963 – and the intellectual workout he gives us is nevertheless worthwhile. An enjoyable, challenging evening, even with imperfections.

 

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

through October 28

Mustard Seed Theatre

Fontbonne University

6800 Wydown Blvd (enter off Big Bend)

314-719-8060

www.mustardseedtheatre.com

Raging Skillet

Raging Skillet is the sort of show that transports one to a very small theater in, say Greenwich Village. It’s not mainstream theatre, nor does it want to be. But it is very, very funny.

Rossi – a one-word name – is a chef who clawed her way up through the catering world to make a name for herself. She left home as a rebellious teenager, got shipped off to a Hasidic Jewish group in Brooklyn, and struck out on her own after that. Restaurants, particularly kitchens, are known to attract rebels. And often they’re the place where those rebels begin to learn self-discipline. The play is taken from her memoir/cookbook of the same name, and Rossi would, I’m sure, be the first to tell you she still rebels, and she’s right. She’s a strong feminist, and her chef-ery is very open-minded, too. No food snob, she, except when it comes to blandness.

But the conflict we’re seeing is not really based in food. Rossi’s turbulent relationship with her mother is at the heart of this play. Mom, who stopped cooking as soon as she got a microwave, has been dead these twenty-plus years as the play begins, but reappears to attend the book release party where the play is set. The conflicts go way, way beyond Rossi’s being lesbian, but provide the fuel for the fire of funniness.

Sarajane Alverson is the rockin’ Rossi, bouncing around the stage. Her sidekick and DJ is Erin Renee Ross, doing some rocking of her own and sliding down poles, and Mom is Kathleen Sitzer, immediately returning from her retirement as NJT’s artistic director to wear a purple knit cap and stop magnificently off the set. Everyone is clearly having a good time in the script that Jacques Lamarre adapted from Rossi’s book.

There’s a great deal of Yiddish in the play from Mom, who’s pretty much the classic picture of The Jewish Mother. In the midst of the laughter, probably around the discussion about not wasting food, I began to wonder where the stereotype began. Anyone whose parents went through the Depression can identify with that particular scenario, as well as many others.

But this is definitively not a serious play, as shown by the small bites of Rossi creations handed out to the audience at intervals and the interaction with the audience, making it feel more like one of those live cooking shows. (There’s a reason for the napkins in the program.) Dunsai Dai’s set is just right for the action, set off by Michael Sullivan’s lights, sound and projection design.

Lee Anne Matthews directed this work of horseradish fluff and did a fine job pulling it together. Edward Coffield, a guy with a notable sense of humor along with his other gifts, has taken over the reins as artistic director of the company, and it’ll be fun to see what he brings us in the coming years.

Not, of course, for delicate ears. But you figured that out already, right?

 

Raging Skillet

through October 21

The New Jewish Theatre

www.newjewishtheatre.org

The Wool Family Studio

Jewish Community Center Staenberg Family Complex

2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur

Chef

I came across the first few pages of the script for Chef online. Upstream Theatre is giving us the American premiere of this play from the British-Egyptian playwright Sabrina Mahfouz, and directed by Marianne de Pury.

Chef, the only identification given to the character, arrives onstage carrying a peach. The script is written as a poem, and in retrospect I’m surprised that I was surprised. It’s not that Linda Kennedy’s Chef delivers her lines in that rhythmic style we associate with the genre. But when she begins to speak about the peach, among the most poetic of fruits, the feeling that’s given from the words and the delivery certainly fit.

She has, by this time, peeled off a chef’s jacket stained with what looks like the aftermath of breaking down a side of beef, and stuffed it under the pillow in her room, a prison cell. That’s an odd, illogical act right there. Her story is told in a series of blackouts and is about a great deal more than food – although food, as it so often does, serves sometimes as a metaphor for other things. Be prepared for some British food-isms, like “fruit gums”, one of those nostalgic childhood candies.

Like many of Upstream’s offerings, this is a little off the beaten path, and the story at times seems elliptical. Close attention is necessary, and occasionally dialogue is lost when Kennedy must turn around and face away from the audience. But it’s a fine performance from her, delivering strength and tenderness equally well. At times, one is strongly reminded of the ineffable real-life chef the late Edna Lewis.

De Pury has orchestrated a fine, smooth-moving piece. Kristin Cassidy did the scenic design, and Tony Anselmo the lighting design. An interesting 80 minutes of theatre.

 

Chef

through October 14

Upstream Theatre

Kranzberg Arts Center

501 N. Grand at Olive

upstreamtheatre.org

The Little Foxes

The theme for St. Louis Actors’ Studio’s 12th season is “Blood Is Thicker than Water.” Blood is an interesting metaphor for family. Compared to water, not only is it thicker, it’s stickier. It can leave permanent stains. It clots. It carries nourishment but it also provides a pathway for various illnesses. Yeah, it’s a dandy metaphor.

And that leads us right into The Little Foxes, Lillian Hellman’s play in part based on her mother’s family. John Contini directs this first offering of the season for SLAS, a good reminder that dysfunctional families weren’t a product of the last half of the twentieth century. The golden glow of the past shouldn’t allow us to overlook what great-grandma or fourth-great uncle endured.

It’s 1900 in a small town somewhere in the South. Regina Giddens (Kari Ely) is awaiting the return of her banker husband Horace (William Roth) from a long stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her brothers Ben (Chuck Brinkley) and Oscar Hubbard (Bob Gerchen), prosperous, avaricious merchants in town, are about to spring the ultimate big deal, landing a cotton mill in town. They’ll be investors with a Chicagoan named Marshall (Richard Lewis), and they need Horace to come through with a third of the money they need. It’s a long multi-train ride from Baltimore, where Hopkins is located, to home, but he has to be there to close the deal. Regina announces she is sending their only child Alexandra (Bridgette Bassa), perhaps 17 or 18, to fetch him home, unchaperoned. Oscar thinks if Alexandra is going to inherit from her father, who is by no means cured of his heart disease, he should marry his son Leo (Ryan Lawson-Maeske), who’s a teller at Horace’s bank, to her, cousin or not. Then there’s Oscar’s wife Birdie (Laurie McConnell), sweet and perhaps a little air-headed but totally undeserving of Oscar’s treatment of her.

Regina herself is no shrinking violet, we learn quickly, and the prospect of truly big money is almost intoxicating to her. Ely hits it out of the park with this one, looking cool while constantly thinking ahead. To call it “scheming” is to underestimate the power and quickness of her mind. It’s a strong, disciplined performance. Of her brothers, Brinkley is properly stolid. Gerchen is a wonderful and much more obvious villain. He almost slithers – except with his wife, when he coils and strikes at will. It’s impossible not to love McConnell’s Birdie, gabby and trying hard to do the right thing.

Regina’s husband Horace is so ill when he arrives home that it’s always been hard to tell if he is a strong man who’s weakened by illness or a soft guy that Regina has always had an upper hand with. Roth’s Horace shows the exhaustion of someone dealing with an illness, a man who’s had time to reflect and think. Bassa gives us Alexandra, a properly brought up young woman, as a blank slate who’s being inscribed with the lessons of realizing the world of the adults around her are not what she thought, and shows growth. Lawson-Maeske’s Leo, more interested in fast women and other leisure pursuits than in banking, not only is none too bright, his face is a wondrous map of response to his father and uncle. (In another example of why small venues are so great for theatre, watch him silently reading a newspaper. Details matter.) Wendy Greenwood is Addie, the cook and longtime pillar of the household, and an ally of Alexandra, strong and biting her tongue in a period when the N-word is thrown about as casually as it is in this script. Cal, the house man, played by Dennis Jethro II, does a lot of perfectly understandable but metaphorical eye-rolling at his employers’ family, and, in another bit of detail, exits mumbling quite wonderfully.

Contini has assembled this group and orchestrated it beautifully, helped along by Patrick Huber’s deeply Southern interior, using inference more than direct reproduction, with, for instance, old mural-like wallpaper that make me think of the early Fifties. Megan Harshaw designed the costumes, full of pleats and fabulous fabrics and hints of a bustle.

Fine acting in a classic American play from a woman who was no shrinking violet herself. We’ve gotten accustomed to obscene language and nudity onstage; if one can bear with hearing racism portrayed in all its nastiness, this is an exemplary piece of work.

 

The Little Foxes

through October 14

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theater

360 N. Boyle

314-458-2978

stlas.org

 

Mamma's Boy

The fascination over the assassination of President John Kennedy has waned in recent years. It’s now almost fifty-five years since that November lunchtime in Dallas and the current political situation has eclipsed many things that went before. But there was a time when several generations could cite chapter and verse of not only where they were When They Heard, but could discuss the related events and personalities and theories the same way they discussed the local sports team or the scandalous behavior of a neighbor or a dissolute movie star.

One of the strangest of the minor characters in that event – a title for which there’s a fair amount of competition – is Marguerite Oswald, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald. Rob Urbinati has written a play about her called Mamma’s Boy, and it’s now on the boards here, courtesy of the Tesseract Theatre Company.

Lee was the youngest of Marguerite’s three boys. By the time he’d returned from his defection to Russia, the older two were more or less estranged from her, and she was, at best, ambivalent about his Russian wife, Marina. That’s about the point at which the play opens, although there are a couple of flashbacks. Brandon Atkins is our Lee Harvey Oswald, struggling to escape his mother’s smothering and sometimes succeeding, struggling to escape the mediocrity that he felt he didn’t deserve, struggling for recognition. Atkins’ Oswald is more human than the character is often shown.

Donna Parrone brings us mamma Marguerite, in all her pathology. Marguerite was convinced that her son was a government agent and had gone to Russia on a mission and, alternatively, that he didn’t kill JFK or that he did so on orders from his government handlers. She was prone to over the top dramatics, angry that Jacqueline Kennedy got “all the attention” and believed that she was entitled to just as much sympathy and recognition. All this and more pour out of Parrone-as-Marguerite’s mouth, causing gasps from the audience. Parrone lays into the content with spirit and vitriol, just right for the unpredictable woman. (Such remarks from Mrs. Oswald are fairly well documented, rather than an immense literary reach.)

Marina Oswald, Carly Uding, is easily believable as Marina, who starts out polite and docile but soon shows a mind of her own and tries to stand up to the Oswalds mere and fils, although this proves to be nigh-on impossible. Uding carries it off well, going from wide-eyed to fiery. The middle brother, Robert, Jeremy Goldmeier, whose role in the aftermath of the assassination was largely unsung, is given the gentle and kind portrayal of a man who mostly managed to untangle himself from his mother’s clutches.

Director Brad Schwartz stages the play using four dancers, referred to as “shadows”, They don’t follow characters onstage but instead seem to represent thoughts of the characters and those of the audience as well, and are used in some scenes, as when Marguerite visits Lee in Jail after he’s apprehended, to assist in the setting. It’s fine work from him, using Tanya Shea’s choreography for the dancers to soften the rough edges of the terrible reality.

Mamma’s Boy is certainly family drama writ large, dysfunction and pain behind the headlines. Much of the story seems to be fairly accurate, according to news reports. For instance, when Marguerite heard about the assassination and who had been arrested, she had no transportation from her home in Fort Worth, so she called the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and asked for a ride to Dallas police headquarters. When she identified herself as Oswald’s mother, the reporter who answered the phone agreed, and borrowed a car to pick her up. That reporter was Bob Schieffer, who’s now the CBS newsman leading the network’s Washington bureau.

A fascinating story and very well told. Not just for history buffs.

 

Mamma’s Boy

through September 30

Tesseract Theatre Company

.Zack Theatre

3224 Locust St.

tesseracttheatre.org

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening and The Hunchback Variations

FAUSTival, a collaborative series of four plays based on the Faust legend and the numerous works of art that sprang from it, has a September offering from The Midnight Company. It’s a double bill, the first being An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening, followed by The Hunchback Variations, both from author Mickle Maher.

Joe Hanrahan, Midnight’s artistic director, and David Wassilak team up for both plays. In Apology, Hanrahan is Dr. Faustus, and we do indeed meet him as he is about to go to hell as per the terms of his agreement with Mephistopheles, Wassilak, resplendent in a purple velvet blazer and immense shades. (If you’re not familiar with the story, in a nutshell, Faust sold his eternal soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and pleasure.) On the final day of his earthly life, Faust is plagued by his “servant”, Mephistopheles, whom, he complains, reads his diary and sits on his bed eating boiled eggs. It’s immediately clear we’re in absurdist land (Absurdistan?) and we’re off to the adventure, including recalling yesterday’s trip to the future to buy Hanrahan some clothes at a strange store with the name “Army” in it and visit another whose name he can’t recall, either, except that it was “two words that rhymed, a sort of poem”. Hanrahan delivers the near-monologue as perfect, casual conversation and Wassilak manages to glower without our ever seeing his eyes, no small trick, that.

Deeper in Absurdistan, The Hunchback Variations are a panel discussion between Ludwig van Beethoven, played by Hanrahan, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Wassilak.

Don’t be put off by the phrase “panel discussion”; we’re dealing with a real person and a fictional character who lived (or “lived”) three hundred years apart, so it’s readily apparent this won’t be the usual threadbare beating of expiring horses. And don’t be surprised by the repetition of the scene over and over – watching things fall apart is the game. Wassilak in particular is phenomenal. St. Louis theatre-goers have seen him for years but may never have realized he has an amazingly rubbery face.

For those who haven’t been exposed to this style of theatre, here’s a chance at a very reasonable ticket price, $15. Tonight (Saturday), plus three more days next week. Note the 7 p.m. curtain time on Thursday. Try it. You may really like it. I do.

 

An Apology for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening

and

The Hunchback Variations

through September 29

The Monocle

4510 Manchester

midnightcompany.com

Love Never Dies

Mozart probably wrote Cosi fan tutti with a quill. Andrew Lloyd Webber appears to have written Love Never Dies with a broad-tipped Magic Marker.

It’s a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, and in many ways, “opera” is the key word here. It’s as broadly played as any grand opera, certainly, capes flourishing and arms flying up in horror. (It’s based on the book The Phantom of Manhattan, by Frederick Forsyth.) The story is tricky to follow unless you saw and remember Phantom itself, but continues the eternal triangle theme, the Phantom, Christine the soprano and Raoul, now her husband. The Phantom, in another man-of-mystery guise, has slipped out of Paris and set up shop in Coney Island running what seems to be a combination vaudeville and side show. He’s mainly behind the scenes; Madame Giry, from the Paris Opera, is the director, and her daughter Meg the leading lady. Christine, now famous, married and a mother, is coming to New York with her family, having signed a contract to sing at Oscar Hammerstein’s opera house. (No, not Oscar “Some Enchanted Evening” Hammerstein. This was his grandfather, a noted impressario.)

Our friend the Phan is, of course, still throbbing with passion for Christine. What will he do? What will she do? And why is it set in Coney Island?

One of the reasons that it must have been set there is that it could make for interesting sets. As in so many Lloyd Webber shows, boy, are they, fascinating stuff, often quite beautiful, with references to Art Noveau here and there. No one needs falling chandeliers with this onstage. Pay attention to how well the lighting works, by the way, especially if this isn’t normally something you’d notice.

Overplayed roles are just the way the script leads, but the audience should just give up and lean in. The voices are excellent. Bronson Norris Murphy, playing the Phantom, sounds glorious and gives us a far more human sort of man than the near-monster often portrayed in the original, as well as its predecessor, the novel of the same name. He’s even more overwhelmed with emotion now. Meghan Picerno’s Christine is well acted, repeatedly torn between the men in her life, growing from delicate, protected flower into a woman who steps up to the plate when forced to do so. Her husband, Raoul, has turned out to be a ne’er-do-well despite his titled family, and he’s brought to annoying life by Sean Thompson. Another stunner was Jake Heston Miller, who played Gustave, their son, on opening night. He was, in a word, impeccable. The role alternates between him and Christian Harmston.

This is another of those shows where the wits trot out the old line about no one ever walking out of a theater humming the set. In the score, there are a few bars here and there that are throwbacks to Phantom, but it seems relatively formless overall. Some references talk about Lloyd Webber using music of the era as reference points, but if true,it’s impossible to tell whether that has hurt or helped. Mostly the sound system at the Fox was in good shape, but some of the explanatory lyrics – for instance, from Mme. Giry – were blurry enough that someone who didn’t know the story would be floundering about who she was and how she got to New York too, for instance.

Simon Phillips directed, and can take a great deal of the credit for what’s positive about the show. Set and costume design are from Gabriela Tylesova, and the lighting design is that of Nick Schlieper.

Beautiful and well sung, with some very good acting. Oh, and if you’re going – please don’t talk during the overture and entre’acte. That’s not background music in a grocery store.

 

Love Never Dies

through September 30, 2018

Fox Theatre

527 N. Grand

www.fabulousfox.com

Oklahoma!

You've been acquainted with someone for years. You think you know them. And then, after spending the evening together as usual, you find that they're not quite the same person you thought you knew.

Consider the same thing in theatre. Stages St. Louis closes its 2018 season with Oklahoma!, a show that first graced a stage during World War II. It's a perennial, one of the major assets in the Rogers and Hammerstein catalog. Many of us have seen it multiple times. And yet here's something new and fresh about our old acquaintance.

Maybe it's the intimate venue that pushes things along. We can really see these people in Oklahoma Territory in 1906 or so. Certainly part of it is the casting we can more appreciate with our proximity showcasing subtleties. Whatever it is, it works. In fact, it almost glows.

The eternal triangle is at the heart of things, with our heroine farmer Laurey being wooed by cowboy Curly and lusted after by Jud Fry, the farmhand on Laurey and her Aunt Eller's place. Laurey is both headstrong and playing hard to get, and declines Curly's invitation to the box social that night, since he waited until the last minute to ask her. Instead, she agrees to attend with Jud.

Blake Price and Sarah Ellis are Curly and Laurey, and it's easy to sense Laurey's gradual letting down of her guard. The chemistry between the two is palpable. David Sajewich's Jud is in some ways not as menacing as seen in other versions. But not broadly telegraphing his ill intent from start to finish gives depth to the character, in some ways making him more frightening yet.

Zoe Vonder Haar is Aunt Eller, wise and very funny, and well-delivered. The fun of watching her is only equaled by seeing Ado Annie, played by Lucy Moon, a young woman who's far too friendly for her and her would-be fiance, Will's (Con O'Shea-Creal) own good. She's become quite taken with Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler, another juicy role and one that Matthew Curiano makes the most of.

It is, of course, a wonderful score, and hearing Price and Ellis sing “People Will Say We're in Love” is a high point. Director Michael Hamilton gets the best out of all his cast and crew. Dana Lewis' choreography is a graceful bow in the direction of the original Agnes de Mille work. The set from James Wolk, including managing most of the famous surrey, even on this relatively small stage, charms. Most of Brad Musgrove's costumes are perfect, except for Laurey's overalls and plaid shirt in the opening scene – women weren't wearing them then, and the overall effect is a little too Daisy Mae. And speaking of Dogpatch, the Appalachian-esque accents early on seemed strange. It's easy to tell that Hammerstein was using what New Yorker he thought was the way country people in Oklahoma talked in terms of dialogue – the entire play is dated in many respects, like racial and gender cliches – but it's grating. (Besides, if one really wanted to be authentic, Eller's title would be pronounced “ain't”, not “ant”.) But minor complaints, to be sure, in a swell evening.

A lovely close to the season.

 

Oklahoma!

through October 7

Stage St. Louis

Robert G. Reim Theatre

111 S. Geyer Rd., Kirkwood

314-821-2407

www.StagesStLouis.org

Crowns

BEAUTIFUL is the best word to begin to describe Crowns, The Black Rep’s opening show of the new season. Staged at Washington University’s Edison Theatre, it’s a celebration of African American women, the glory of their hats and where the tradition arose.

A show that’s sung as much as it is acted, it brings satisfying work from all the cast, headed up by Anita Jackson. She, like most of the others, plays multiple characters, but she’s a pleasure to watch and hear. Tyler White is the young woman who is sent from Brooklyn to live with her grandmother in South Carolina. She stood out even as a very young dancer with The Black Rep. It’s nice to see her in full flower as a performer.

Amber Rose tears it up with her singing, and Leah Stewart, another vet since she was young, temporarily returns from working with Disney to show us her talent. Maureen L. (Hughes) Williams seems to have a particularly good time with things, and Eleanor Humphrey rounds out the cast with her Black Rep debut. Myke Andrews is the sole male in the company, with a wide variety of characters, all of whom take advantage of his fine voice. (You may have heard him in Lost in the Stars at Union Avenue Opera.)

Not surprisingly, costuming plays a big part in this show. Designed by Daryl Harris and put together under wardrobe shop supervisor Marissa Perry, they’re part of the delight. They did not, however, do all those hats. Many of them were a gift from Louiedean Ray, hats she inherited from her mother Velma Hollis, who passed away at the age of 100. All the hats are wonderful, and the vintage ones especially charming.

Dunsi Dai did the set, a straw boater hat, Joe Clapper’s lighting contributed to the feel of the show, and Kareem Deanes’ sound sounded perfect. Charles Creath the music director and keyboardist always manages to make whatever he’s working on sound like he’s having a good time, and this is no exception. He’s aided and abetted by Matthew Clark on percussion.

Linda Kennedy directed Crowns and should be very satisfied with this production. It sounds good, it looks good, and it’s hard to imagine not smiling through much of the show.

 

Crowns

through September 23

The Black Rep

Edison Theatre at Washington University

theblackrep.org

Evita

The Rep opens its 52^nd season with Evita, a blockbuster of a show that takes full advantage of the extra time the summer gave to crank things up. The second major Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber show, it’s become something of a cult favorite, lacking the built-in audience for the earlier Jesus Christ Superstar or the easy appeal of Cats.

The subject is a very serious one, the life of Eva Duarte Peron, the young woman who went from a hard-scrabble world to the wife of the president of Argentina. Juan Peron was a dictator who, among other things, went about silencing his opponents, including shutting down newspapers. Eva apparently slept her way to the top and after she married the much-older Peron became a populist firebrand herself, appealing to the masses and assuring them that she believed in them and would help their plight. But she died at 33 of cervical cancer.

The fabulous set gives a taste of what’s to come, with an ornate gilt balcony that’s actually a stage-wide second level over casually placed stacks of chairs on either side of the primary stage. It’s the first signal about the conflict between the haves and the have-nots. It’s where we first meet Che, who’s a sort of narrator. Played by Pepe Nufrio (shown below), he gives the character a calm and truthful spin – some believe the character is based on Che Guevara, who was born in Argentina, but there is no evidence that the two historical figures ever met.

Michelle Aravena returns to St. Louis to give us Evita, after playing Mary Delgado Valli in the Muny’s Jersey Boys this summer. She’s splendid, giving us a strong but not shrewish Eva, driven and fully able to work as a team with the 24-years-older Peron as they assume control of the country, and the country’s bankroll. Sean McLaughlin’s Peron seems genuinely smitten with the young woman, smooth and charming without seeming predatory – although with Eva, it may have been a case of two strong people finding each other, at least in this version of the story. There’s a feeling of genuine chemistry in the relationship. The singer Augustin Magaldi who takes Eva to Buenos Aires from her little town in the country is Nicolas Davila, who smolders wonderfully.

Director Rob Ruggerio has put together a team that has given us an almost completely satisfying show. Not surprisingly, given that this is the land of the tango, the dancing, with choreography by Gustavo Zajac, is quite delicious, with credit to the tango consultant Mariana Parma. That aforementioned set was created and the film clips of the actual Evita assembled by Luke Cantarella. Costumes, at both ends of the economic scale, including the Dior-esque gowns for Aravena, come to us from Alejo Vietti. The lighting, subtle unless one begins to reflect on it, move our attention through the theater; it’s the work of John Lasiter.

The voices are great, from top to bottom, including five uncredited very young chorus members who do very well indeed. This is certainly among the greatest of Lloyd Webber’s scores. But the miking was problematic. This is a sung-through show, and I heard a number of complaints about being unable to understand the words. Sometimes the orchestral music overwhelmed them, sometimes things were just blurry. Matt Kraus, the sound designer, needs to do some fine tuning.

With that said, it’s an enjoyable evening, the sort of thing that will have lots of folks trying to repress the urge to sing along, even though it’s a long way from a musical comedy.

 

Evita

through September 30

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Lost in the Stars

I am deeply regretful that I didn’t get to see Lost in the Stars until its closing night. Union Avenue Opera finished its 24^th season with the Kurt Will/Maxwell Anderson work from 1949, based on Alan Paton’s well-regarded novel Cry, the Beloved Country. It was, quite simply, splendid.

A Zulu Anglican priest’s son has moved to Johannesburg looking for work, and his parents haven’t heard from him. The father goes in search of the boy, and finds him deep in the slums after a brief spell in jail and with his pregnant girlfriend, both living hand to mouth. In a robbery to get some money, the son accidentally kills a man whose family his father knows, a white man who has been racially extremely progressive. (The play was written as the apartheid laws in South Africa were being formulated.)

There’s more, of course, a story that talks about racial struggles on another continent but resonates seventy years later on our own, and Anderson, who not only wrote the lyrics but the show’s book, uses Paton’s exquisite language in both to slip into the soul of the listener.

The casting was more than satisfying, especially Kenneth Overton as Stephen Kumalo, the father, and Tim Schall as the conservative father of the man who was killed. Melody Wilson, as a singer in a small club, tore it up with “Who’ll Buy”. Scott Schoonover, UAO’s artistic director, conducted the orchestra. Roger Speidel did the set and Teresa Doggett the costumes. Joe Clapper’s lighting was a particularly integral part of the production. Shaun Patrick Tubbs was the stage director.

Beautiful music, beautiful words, beautifully presented. Sorry I couldn’t praise it while it was still open.

 

Lost in the Stars

Union Avenue Opera

unionavenueopera.org

Meet Me in St. Louis

The Muny closed out its centennial season with Meet Me in St. Louis. It seems unnecessary to add “of course” at the end of that sentence. Unless one is a complete curmudgeon and sneers at any hint of boosterism or being a homer, it was very hard to resist this show.

The Muny, clearly not happy with the 1989 Broadway version of the show, brought in Gordon Greenberg to revise the book. The results are a good part of the pleasure. I acknowledge not having seen the film more than once and that many years ago, but the story is different from both the film and that earlier version, airier and with fewer disagreements between the young adults. The songs, over the years, have had adjustments made to their lyrics as well as the expected removals and reappearances. (Those original lyrics to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” for the 1944 film were wistful to the point of sadness, reflecting, perhaps on the strain of World War II; they were changed well before the earlier version of the musical play.) This version includes a song not in the original, but which, like the title song, dates from the year before the fair opened, and a surprise to the audience – it’s “Under the Anheuser Busch”.

This may be the most well-cast play of their season. From start to finish, we see great work. Among the residents of 5135 Kensington are the parents, Alonzo and Anna Smith, Stephen R. Buntrock and Erin Dilly – who are married in real life. The two older daughters Esther and Rose are Emily Walton and Liana Hunt; the two small girls, Katy and the irrepressible Tootie, are Elle Wesley and Elena Adams. Grandpa, Anna’s father, a retired physician, is Ken Page. Their son, Lon, played by Jonathan Burke, is home from Princeton for the Christmas holidays. The famous boy next door that Esther swoons over and sings about is Dan DeLuca, and his friend Warren Sheffield, Michael Burrell is clearly sweet on Ruth. Kathy Fitzgerald plays the family’s general factotum, having worked for them for years, and as full of opinions as the rest of the household. Lucille Ballard, who seems to be a rival to the girls is Madison Johnson.

Who’s great at what? Well, Walton and DeLuca, the young lovers are a delight, she with the rules of well-brought-up young ladies fighting with her own innate curiosity and drive, he with a wondrous feeling of aw-shucks propriety that his instinct is telling him to bend a little. Buntrock as the patriarch and Dilly as the mother who runs the house and is almost – almost – an equal partner with him feel very comfortable to watch. Rose, Liana Hunt, the elder daughter, discovers she can and will be a little more forward and strides through it very properly, although her confusion between her emotions and her internalized “rules” when Burrell proposes unexpectedly is amusing and very well played.

Surely everyone wishes they had a grandfather like Ken Page gives us here. Warm and attentive, little girls on his lap, and that great voice, especially paired in the opening number when Tootie begins to sing the title song, and he takes up the lyrics, it’s almost hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck. And the two little girls are remarkable. It’s hard to realize these kids are acting. Happily, the script doesn’t give all the smart lines to Tootie, Elena Adams; Elle Wesley’s Agnes gets off some sharp ones, too.

It’s a physically beautiful show, a marvelous set complete, naturally, with a trolley, that combines Michael Schweikardt’s scenic design, Matthew Young’s video design, and Rob Denton’s lighting. Lovely costumes from Tristan Raines fit quite beautifully.

Marcia Milgrom Dodge directed the production, which certainly glorifies and magnifies St. Louis, although one wishes Mr. Smith and Dr. Prophater’s glowing predictions of the city’s future greatness and prosperity had been fully met. It’s clearly a loving birthday tribute, a gift from the Muny to all of us. I’m not sure if it would work in Cleveland, but it was a show that left even this critic not caring about that at all.

And the closing fireworks were the perfect touch at the end.

...And many more to one of St. Louis’ great institutions. See you next year.

 

Meet Me in St. Louis

The Muny

Forest Park

https://muny.org/

The Robber Bridegroom

Talk about blood lines – The Robber Bridegroom book and lyrics are from Alfred Uhry, who gave us Driving Miss Daisy, from a novella by the esteemed Eudora Welty, who in turn apparently kipped it from the Brothers Grimm.

Grimm, yes, but grim, not so much. Oh, there’s fightin’ and cussin’ – this takes place in 1795 on the Natchez Trace – but it’s really pretty lighthearted, an amusing story of mixed-up identity, a young woman who’s hungry for love and romance, and an older woman who’s a rowdy take on the wicked stepmother. Plus, just for fun, a talking head.

The script takes a while to get momentum, but the cast moves smartly through the early slog, thanks to director Justin Been. Phil Leveling plays Jamie Lockhart, who moves through life alternatively as a gentleman and a bandit. He meets a very wealthy planter, Jeffrey M. Wright, by cleverly saving his life and earning the planter’s gratitude, especially after he turns down a financial reward, but gets invited to Sunday dinner at the plantation.

The planter has a beautiful daughter, Rosamund, Dawn Schmid, who looks like her late mother. Dad never fails to comment on this, to the chagrin of his scheming second wife, Sarah Gene Dowling. Dad thinks he’s going to marry Rosamund off to the gentleman coming to dinner – shades of Glass Menagerie – but Rosamund dreams of romance, and probably getting away from her nasty stepmother. Frequently sent out into the field to gather “herbs”, what we’d think of as leafy greens, for the most part, she runs into the Bandit of the Woods, who is, of course, Lockhart in his other guise. He doesn’t physically harm her but removes the beautiful dress her father had brought her and her underwear as well. Traumatized? Hardly. Romanticized would be the word. She wants to see him again, and they both return to the field.

This experience has left Rosamund deeply uninterested in this guy her dad’s bringing to dinner. She covers her red hair and puts on the wacko-act when the dinner guest arrives. Neither of them recognize the other, as the erstwhile bandit has removed the berry juice with which he stains his face for his other line of work. Ah, chaos. It’s the little black dress of theatre.

Leveling’s rascally character is strong and believable, very much a here-today-and-gone-tomorrow sort. Wright, as the planter, does a swell job, wrapped around Rosamund’s little finger and blind to the schemes of his wife. In addition, it’s impossible to avoid discussing his suit, all costumes courtesy of Stray Dog’s artistic director Gary F. Bell. This particular one, whose last owner may have won the third race at Cahokia Downs, is an eye-stunning mustard-colored plaid.

Schmidt’s Rosamund seems flaccid by modern standards, but by the standards of the late 18^th Century, she’s actually pretty radical, which is exactly the sweet spot needed here. It’s well played. And Sarah Gene Dowling’s Salome (an appropriate name for the stepmother) is wonderful, even when she’s silent and upstage watching her stepdaughter, much less when the gentleman caller arrives.

Two other robbers, the Harp brothers, Logan Willmore and Kevin O’Brien, who has the very choice role of the talking head, are great fun. The method of creating the head is pretty amusing, too. Susie Lawrence is a talking raven – watch her costume, too, by the way – and Bryce Miller and Christen Ringhausen are a couple of intellectually challenged kids who play significant roles in ending the misunderstandings.

The music is from a 6-person band, with lots of string work from various instruments, all in a style that’s old-style country/folky/bluesy. Sounds good, some amusing lyrics, and the harmonies, especially on “Deeper in the Wood” are delicious.

Not your usual musical, but it’s fun to watch it grow as the evening progresses. One of those rare shows where the second act is better than the first, I think.

 

The Robber Bridegroom

through August 18

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

www.straydogtheatre.org

Gypsy

The Muny’s doing Gypsy this week, a show that’s been around so long that some folks don’t remember just how good it is. The script, based loosely on a memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee, a rather elegant (and relatively restrained) burlesque dancer of great fame, and written by Arthur Laurents, gives actors some serious stuff to dig into. Jule Stein wrote the music, and Stephen Sondheim, after some persuasion by Oscar Hammerstein, wrote the lyrics. Yes, Sondheim. Who can doubt it with rhymes like “You can sacrifice your sacro, working in the back row,” from the deliciously bawdy “You Gotta Have a Gimmick”, sung by three strippers (shown below) to the rookie who’s about to attempt it for the first time?

Mamma Rose, the ultimate show biz mother, is at the heart of the story. Beth Leavel (below) turns in a fine performance moving from driven to obsessed and then, eventually, beyond that. It’s a beautifully nuanced piece of work from her. Her daughters, June and Louise, are dancing and singing in vaudeville as children; kudos to Amelie Lock and Elise Edwards, respectively, who portray the sisters during their childhood.

For the remainder of the show, June, who the world came to know as actress June Havoc, is Hayley Podschun (below), the fair-haired child of her mother because she’s their headliner, more talented than her sister. Louise, Julia Kneitel, is the older by a couple of years – neither of the girls is sure of their age, since Mom has fibbed about it so often, adding years because of child labor laws, subtracting them when dealing with theater owners because little kiddies might be a bigger draw. Louise isn’t as cute, not as graceful, not as good a singer, and is always June’s supporting cast. (At least Rose doesn’t relegate Louise to being either the front or the back end of the cow she decides should be a part of the act. Faint consolation, I suppose.)

Rose finally manages to snag an agent. Herbie’s a candy salesman who used to be an agent, but Rose draws him in. He’s played by Adam Heller – who, probably not coincidentally, is the boyfriend of Beth Leavel. Heller is a delight, warm and funny and charming, with a singing voice like butterscotch. Herbie’s a stalwart guy, pretty patient with Rose’s obsessive focus on making June a star.

June escapes and Rose’s focus turns to Louise, but vaudeville is waning as motion pictures are becoming more popular. The act, scraping the bottom, finds themselves booked into a burlesque house when the headliner is arrested. Mamma Rose volunteers Louise to take her place, and the transformation begins – aided by the experienced strippers – both in Louise, who becomes Gypsy Rose Lee that night, and in the balance of power. And Kneitel (shown below) steps into Gypsy’s (and Gypsy’s) power with immense grace.

As with many of the older shows that have had several revivals, there are different versions. This one is not nearly so bleak as some, but that doesn’t lessen the impact. Director Rob Ruggiero has done a fine job in putting this remarkable show together. It’s great to see it again.

The only misstep is the persistent problem this year of mics not coming on as performers start to speak for the first time or after a prolonged period of silence. It’s corrected in a few syllables, but it’s slightly jarring to the listener, especially considering the smoothness of most everything else.

A great chance to see a fine version of one of the greatest classic American musicals. And how can one resist a chance to hear that fine anthem, “Have an Egg Roll, Mr. Goldstone” (shown below)?

 

 

Gypsy

through August 2

The Muny

Forest Park

www.muny.org

The Realistic Joneses

Jennifer and Bob sit outside on a summer night. It’s quiet and pleasant. Soon, there’s a noise offstage, and then footsteps. It’s their new neighbors, John and Pony, who banged into the garbage can, uh, while they were listening to Jennifer and Bob. But politeness prevails, and it turns out that the new couple has the same surname as the longtime residents. They’re all named Jones. We're seeing The Realistic Joneses, by Will Eno. 

But this isn’t Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel. It isn’t even Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. It’s apparent from the start that all these folks are hanging on the edge in various ways. Conversation bolts off from the expected to give us more story and/or to lead us into the land of the puzzled. It’s all close to absurdist.

Of the four, Jennifer, Laurie McConnell, seems the closest to normal, whatever that means in such a neighborhood. She’s a bookkeeper but is taking some time off because her husband Bob played by her real-life husband Alan Knoll, has been diagnosed with a rare degenerative neurological disease. (Note: The Harriman-Leavey syndrome they refer to here doesn’t really exist.) It’s causing some memory problems, and whether from the disease process itself or the overwhelming knowledge that he has a fatal illness, seems to be at the root of Bob’s habit of suddenly speaking harshly to his wife.

Pony – her father, Pony remarks at one point, thought up her name – is not just a garden variety neurotic with her insecurity and neediness. Her line of thought is frequently, almost brilliantly, illogical, bouncing like a tennis ball out of the lines and into an unsuspecting spectator’s face. She’s Kelly Hummert, the artistic director of Rebel and Misfits Productions, the presenting group. Her husband John is the strangest one of the group, and Isaiah Di Lorenzo leans into the role, leaping and crawling across the stage, ignoring boundaries of personal space, tact and good sense.

The story line is linear, short vignettes interspersed with blackouts, full of crackling dialogue but not leading to a tidy ending. It’s all typical of author Will Eno, whose work we’ve seen in St. Louis with shows like Thom Pain (based on nothing) and Title and Deed. Ed Coffield directed, using his actors pretty much spot on. McConnell and Knoll are smooth and believable in their first roles playing a married couple, letting the threads of normalcy fray and fall away in shreds of varying sizes. Hummert’s Pony knows she’s fragile but pushes herself anyway, sometimes almost trembling with the intensity of her feelings. Does Di Lorenzo’s John choose her because she’s so vulnerable? Watch his face for micro-expressions as his predatory instincts come up for air and are shoved down. At least they are some of the time. A warped-reality set from Peter and Margery Spack fits right in, with Jon Ontiveros’ lights and Ellie Schwetye’s sound. Coffield conducts this band of Misfits with considerable style.

Not your usual evening of theatre.

 

The Realistic Joneses

through August 12

Rebel and Misfits Productions

The JCC Blackbox

2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur

314-534-1111 (Metrotix)

rebelandmisfitsproductions.com

Mamma Mia!

The original version of the movie Mamma Mia! looks better than ever now that the followup film continuing the story has been released. (You want irritable? Try The New York Times review of it.) Stages St. Louis currently shows off their version of the stage production on which the movie was based, and the smaller venue is a good way for its numerous fans to enjoy it – again, in many cases.

You know the story – Donna Sheridan, the lead singer in an all-female rock trio, left her group when she found out she was pregnant in the Seventies, and now runs a small hotel and taverna on an obscure Greek island. The daughter, Sophie, now 20, is getting married and thinks she may have identified who might be her father, the family secret. Three candidates, British, Australian and American. Unbeknownst to her mother, she’s invited the guys to the wedding.

Lots of themes resonate here. Sophie, Summerisa Bell Stevens, is very young to be getting married, especially by the standards of Donna, one of the original free spirits as played by Corrine Melancon. Donna doesn’t know which of the men, is the father, either, ex-head banger Harry, David Schmittou, Aussie explorer and writer Bill, Steve Isom, or the American who left her to return to his fiancee, Sam, played by Gregg Goodbrod. Her diary, found by Sophie, uses ellipses about each man right around when it happened. The groom Sky, David Sajewich, is rather a cipher, but that’s mostly the fault of the script.

Despite all this, it really is a lighthearted show, especially when Donna’s former bandmates show up, the frequently-married Tanya, who’s Dana Winkle, and Rose, Dan’yelle Williamson, less of an Earth Mother here than in some versions of the show.

Melancon’s Donna is a hard-working mother of the bride, visibly hesitant about the whole thing and even more rattled when her exes arrive, but she sounds good. Stevens gives us a Sophie that’s a lot more, uh, sophisticated than her lines would have us believe, and she, too, makes good use of the score. The three ex-swains all are pleasing, and in particular their harmonizing at the end of “Money, Money, Money” was a delight.

It’s also a real pleasure to see that choreographer Tony Gonzalez has in the number, ”Lay All Your Love on Me”, utilized swim fins for the men of the dance ensemble, a wonderful bit that is remarkably funny. Overall, it’s a handsome show with scenic design by James Wolk and lighting from Sean M. Savoie. The opening number of the second act, “Under Attack”, as Sophie dreams, shows great imagination, with plenty of surprises and some of the best use of black light I’ve seen in a number of years. Director Michael Hamilton has put together a fine tech ensemble for the show.

Still, these days, how many people in the audience, when they weren’t wanting to sing along, were wondering, What if she had been able to get those DNA kits?

A number of performances have already sold out – get a move on if this is your bag, as we would have said in the Seventies.

 

Mamma Mia!

Through August 19^th

Stages St. Louis

Robert G. Reim Theatre

111 S. Geyer Rd., Kirkwood

314-821-2407

www.stagesstlouis.org

The Importance of Being Earnest

It’s hard to resist a play that includes probably the 19^th Century’s greatest food scene. The Importance of Being Earnest is the current offering from Insight Theatre Company, scampering across the stage at the Grandel Theatre. It’s Oscar Wilde at his best, one funny line after another.

One of the main reasons this production glows so brightly is the combination of Will Bonfiglio and Pete Winfrey. Bonfiglio plays Algernon Moncrieff, and Winfrey is his chum John Worthing. The two are bachelor men-about-town, living on inheritances and having a fine time doing so, but Worthing has become smitten with Algie’s cousin Gwendolyn and intends to propose to her.

They’re expecting cousin Gwendolyn and her mother Lady Bracknell, for tea when the play opens. Gwendolyn knows her suitor as Earnest – that’s the name Worthing uses when he’s in London, up from his country house. The proposal comes when Algie drags Lady Bracknell off to another room for something, and her sudden return throws thing into a tizz.

Bonfiglio and Winfrey bounce off each other like they’ve been doing it for years, all in the droll, arch style that so marks this script. It’s a pleasure to watch. Lady Bracknell, brought to us in full battle-axe style by Thomas Murray, is utterly splendid. I’m not sure when the role was first cast with a male, but contemporary revivals of the play have used actors such as Geoffrey Rush and Brian Bedford to great effect.

Gwendolyn, as smitten with her suitor as he is with her, is Gwen Wotowa, who brings a little more gravitas to the role than sometimes is seen. Jack/Earnest’s ward Cecily, who lives at his country house is Julia Crump, all pinkness and fluff, to the dismay of her governess, Miss Prism, Ruth Ezell. (Yes, that Ruth Ezell, from the Nine Network, making her professional stage debut.) The country rector, played by Steve Springmeyer, and Miss Prism seem to be sympatico, another potential romance, all played with nice subtlety.

The heart of this play is the dialogue, which is rapid-fire and demanding. Director Ed Reggi has chosen to use English accents for the show, fine and fitting, and the dialect consultant Jeff Cummings has done yeoman work with the cast. Because the lines are rapid-fire, one quip often immediately following another, the timing of their delivery is crucial, giving the audience a chance to react without drowning out the next line. That, too, is handled well nearly all the time. The Grandel space continues to be a challenge for hearing, though. Mostly, the cast aims toward the middle of the nearly 180-degree sweep of the audience, and that works pretty decently. But in one instance on opening night, one line was aimed toward stage right – and that half of the audience were the only ones that were laughing. There were a few instances of lines seeming to be lost from too-rapid or too-soft delivery, but those were transient problems that righted themselves.

Kudos to Laura Hanson for her lovely work, for the men as well as the women; you may put Lady Bracknell in whichever category suits you. (Whoever chose the wig for the character deserves special acknowledgment.) The sets, two drawing rooms and a garden, come from Lucas Shryock.

The food scene? Early in the second act, there’s a scene dealing with muffins, including the deathless line, “I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner.” A strong recommendation overall, especially for those of us who enjoy banter. Wilde’s gift for offering a fast pace in a sedate setting rises to its peak here.

 

The Importance of Being Earnest

through July 22

Insight Theatre Company

The Grandel Theatre

3610 Grandel Square

www.insighttheatrecompany.com

H.M.S. Pinafore

Ah, those staid Victorians…. H.M.S. Pinafore, now staged by the Union Avenue Opera Company puts the lie to many of the stereotypes we, uh, pin on them. It’s classic Gilbert and Sullivan, of course, and modern theatre-goers might be interested to know that their work bridged things into modern musical theatre as it began to bridge the gap between opera and the British music hall. For one thing, the prolific pair hired their own actors rather than taking what the owner of the theatre insisted they use. And for another, they wanted acting that was natural rather than stylized and histrionic, apparently fairly uncommon at the time.

The daughter of the captain of the Pinafore is in love with one of the sailors, an inappropriate match because of their unequal social status. The First Lord of the Admiralty, the equivalent of our Secretary of the Navy, is hot for the lovely young thing, but she’s having none of it.

All’s well in the end but not without two other marriages, one of which is two cousins marrying and the other a foster mother marrying one of her foster sons. Incest. Near-incest.

There are some very funny songs in the show, all brought to light by a fine cast. Josephine, the sweet young thing is Leann Schuering, who sounds marvelous. Her heartthrob, Ralph (please to note it’s pronounced “Rafe” in the British style) Rackstraw is Anthony Heinemann, clearly and tunefully entranced by her. The First Lord, the most broadly comedic of the characters and given some of the funniest songs, such as the one in which he explains just how he got to be “the ruler of the Queen’s navee”, is sung by Steven Condy He makes the most of it. Someone has thrown in another, quite contemporary verse in the song, too, and it works splendidly. The sailors are having a fine time despite the admiral’s visit and so are “his sisters and his cousins and his aunts”, who arrive with him to see the ship and enjoy the company of the sailors – despite what one presumes is more social inequality.

A simple set, but lots of work with the lights from designer Andy Vieluf, and some charming costumes from Kyra Bishop Sanford. Eric Gibson directed the stage work and Scott Schoonover, UAO’s artistic director, directs the fine pit orchestra.

All great fun, and a nice, easy introduction for someone who’s new to opera.

 

H.M.S. Pinafore

Union Avenue Opera Company

773 Union Boulevard, St. Louis

314-361-2881

www.unionavenueopera.org