St. Louis Eats and Drinks

1776

Before there was Hamilton, there was 1776. Who’d have thought a musical about how the Declaration of Independence might work?

That was Sherman Edwards, who worked his way through NYU as a jazz pianist. There were a few years of teaching high school history while he pulled together his career as a backup musician and composer, at which he was moderately successful. If you’re of a certain age, you will remember Johnny Mathis singing “Wonderful, Wonderful” - that was Edwards’ work. He’d wanted to do the show but hadn’t gotten far with it; it was the Sixties, and people were thinking about other things. Finally, playwright Peter Stone re-thought his initial refusal of Edwards’ suggestion. The two went to work and it opened in 1969. It turned out to be just the thing for a time of political turmoil.

So here we are today at the Muny, opening 1776 on the night of the second half of the first Democratic presidential debate. Could we all please just look at what these guys in Philadelphia – white and male and financially comfortable as they were – were going through?

Our leading man, leading the way as well as the cast, is John Adams (Robert Petkoff). Adams believes that the Continental Congress has dithered too long, and they need to take a stand. He’s made his feelings eminently clear – Adams is nothing if not a high verbal – and the opening number is “Sit Down, John,” with his peers instructing him to cool it. That’s not easy for him to do under any circumstances, and the show makes good use of the well-documented fact that it was very hot in Philadelphia, like St. Louis a city of brick buildings, as they worked things out. (And then you think about the clothing – shirts, vests, jackets, breeches coming only to the knee but stockings commencing immediately therebelow. Hot or what?)

George Washington, often heard from but never seen here, was commanding the ragtag Continental Army, created after the battles of Lexington and Cord the previous spring. It wasn’t going well. Dispirited communications arrive frequently, increasing the sense of urgency for some delegates and fear in others. This pulling off from the mother country was by no means a commonly accepted idea in the group. One argument was that it was impossible to pull off, no one had done it before, and it was disrespectful. Another, perhaps more visceral, and one that runs through the discussion is financial. For some of the delegates it was all about the money. It would imperil their usually considerable personal net worth. One might say it was all about the Benjamins if it were not for the fact that Benjamin Franklin (Adam Heller) himself was a delegate and ally of John Adams in the move to independence. Focusing on money rather than the big picture, too, sounds rather familiar.

The two other Pennsylvania delegates are among the reluctant, as are the New Yorkers and the Southerners. It’s the New Englanders that are all in – they’ve got British troops tromping through their village greens. But that quiet fellow stage left who spends much of his time reading turns out to be Thomas Jefferson (Keith Hines), as eloquent as we’d expect, but wanting to go home to his farm and his wife (Ali Ewoldt). John Adams’ dialogue with his wife Abigail (Jenny Powers), outlines much of Adams’ thinking, although she’s 300 miles away. (The letters have, thankfully, been preserved.)

The show is close to historically accurate, and that means there’s a lot of necessary exposition. Never mind that; the score is an absolute pleasure, especially the loving duets between the Adamses. It’s worth nothing that this is the only Broadway show in which the musicians’ contract allow them to leave the pit during the show, because at one point in the first act there’s about half an hour between songs.

Rob Ruggiero directed, helping show us how human these men, and women, were, letting the humor as well as the tempers show through. Luke Cantarella’s lovely version of the Assembly Room in Independence Hall pleases the eye. Despite the whole world knowing how it all turned out, the play manages to keep us engaged, even a little tense.

An emotional, satisfying, stirring evening. The bravery of the men who pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor” not knowing how it was going to turn out still carries an emotional impact.

 

1776

through July 3

The Muny

Forest Park

www.muny.org

Indecent

Indecent is a beautiful, heavy-going drama. Paula Vogel’s play, she of How I Learned to Drive and The Baltimore Waltz, among other works, tackles censorship, homophobia and antisemitism in an utterly seductive manner. It’s themes are serious-to-downright-grim, but it’s mesmerizing. The Max and Louie production of it at the Grandel gives it all they’ve got and does it proud.

It’s based on real events in the life of Sholem Asch, a Polish writer. His 1906 play The God of Vengeance was performed with considerable success all over Europe, and then came to the United States. And therein lies the rub. The play was about a Jewish man who ran a brothel and whose daughter became involved in an affair with one of his prostitutes. In his anger, he throws the Torah to the ground. Not only sexual scandal, but blasphemy as well – but the play continued to be performed even during World War I. From the inception, though, the play included an onstage kiss between the two women. In 1922, an English translation was created and it opened at the Provincetown Playhouse and subsequently in Yiddish, the play’s original language, at what we’d now call off-Broadway. In early 1923, it moved to a Broadway house, in English, with a story line somewhat altered. Within a few weeks the entire cast and the New York producer were all arrested for obscenity. They were convicted, although that was overturned on appeal, and the play’s lifespan did not end.

Indecent is about both Sholem Asch and the play, using a cast of seven, plus three on-stage musicians. Lemml, the stage manager, is a warm and utterly charming TJ Lancaster. He leads us through much of the action. The rest of the actors are multiple characters – here I’m identifying them mostly by their primary role. Paul Cereghino plays Avram for much of the play, a man who believes in beauty and art and a realistic portrayal of Jews in theater. The aging Asch is John Flak, but most of his time is spent playing the actor who’s the father running the brothel, and he’s particularly notable as that, throwing down the Torah to illustrate his anger. His daughter, Zoe Farmingdale, and Katie Karel as the girl downstairs, are wonderfully tender in their roles. Judi Mann is the mother, almost tearing her hair out at the scandal of it all, and Tim Schall is notable in several roles, including the Broadway producer.

Joanne Gordon directs this tightly-paced show with all its emotions. Besides the impact of the words and the sound of the band with its klezmer music, there’s also an immense visual contribution. Dunsi Dai’s set and Patrick Huber’s complicated lighting are as much a part of things as the words and music. It’s a surprisingly gorgeous setup, even with the quiet clothing of the eras, courtesy of Teresa Doggett. (Although there is that one costume for John Flack….)

Not easy. Really worthwhile.

 

Indecent

through June 30

Grandel Theatre

3610 Grandel Square

https://maxandlouie.com/

Kinky Boots

It's definitely a sign of how this town has changed when a big crowd at the Muny is roaring at the jokes in Kinky Boots. The folks who would have been horrified at La Cage aux Folles when it played at the Muny in 1986 certainly were nowhere to be found at this musical comedy, which began as a British film based on a true story, about drag queens and the factories who shoe them. 

Of course it's funny – the words come from the delightfully wicked Harvey Fierstein, who never misses a chance to take a sharp stick to the eye of masculine stereotypes, one of his pet targets. The music is from singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, her only Broadway show to date, which won her a Tony for best original score. (She's the only woman to win the award solo.)

The shoe factory that Charles Price's family has run for four generations is in financial peril. Well-made but otherwise unremarkable footwear for men isn't making anything but returns to the stock room, and Charles, who seems only vaguely aware of that, is determined to get out of the Midlands of England and live in London with his fiancee. Just after they arrive, Charlie's dad dies and he's forced to come home and face the returns and the payroll. 

One night he comes across a couple of yobs attacking a rather tall woman. He steps in to protect her and ends up getting knocked cold. When he comes to, he's in the dressing room of a nightclub; he's protected the honor of the headliner, it turns out. And she is a he. Lola is, she explains firmly to Charlie, a drag queen, not a transvestite. As she takes off her high-heeled boots, Charlie remarks that they're cheap. No, says Lola, they're expensive, they're just cheaply made. And eventually, Charlie, thanks to Lauren, one of his employees, finally realizes that this might be a niche market that will enable the factory to remain open. If they can just get some made in time for the Milan fashion week, which is coming up very soon..…

Some reflection on father-son relationships, more on gender roles, and a lot on downright stereotyping, but it all works well together. Graham Scott Fleming gives us a stold-but-not-stolid Charlie, becoming increasingly frantic as the stressors magnify. Lola’s song “The Sex Is in the Heel” takes the joint apart in J. Harrison Ghee ’s rendition; he’s great all around, including containing himself when Charlie erupts in judgmental ire. And our own Taylor Louderman returns from her current Broadway gig in Mean Girls, taking a week off to come back to the stage where it all began, as she plays Lauren, the worker who acknowledges she’s pretty gaga over her boss.

DB Barnes is credited with “re-creating” the direction of the show after the original from Jerry Mitchell on Broadway. Mitchell also did the original choreography, where is here re-created by Rusty Mowery. Not surprisingly, Kinky Boots is heavy on the dancing, given the nightclub references, including Lola’s backup team, the Angels and it’s right on target, making fine use of Lauper’s fun score. But what about the costumes? I hear you saying. Are they fabulous? They certainly are in the house that Lola is in; the folks in the factory are equally appropriate if considerably less revealing and more demure in color, all courtesy of Gregg Barnes.

What a romp this is! Guaranteed to loosen inhibitions!

 

Kinky Boots

through June 25

The Muny

Forest Park

www.muny.org

Fire Shut Up in My Bones

One the (many) things Opera Theatre of St. Louis is doing right is bringing in new work. This year’s showpiece is the second one commissioned from Terence Blanchard after his success with Champion. That premiered here in 2013 and has gone on to acclaim elsewhere. Fire Shut Up in My Bones is based on the memoir by Charles M. Blow, NewYork Times op-ed columnist and former graphics director and art director there. Blanchard asked the multi-talented Kasi Lemmons, perhaps best known for her films, with whom he’s collaborated before, to do the libretto.

The result is a stunning story, and music that lures the listener in. Like good jazz, it’s a patchwork quilt, a combination of ideas carefully put together to create a harmonious whole that hasn’t been done exactly this way before. Experiencing new things must surely be good for the brain, giving it exercise and making new neural pathways; here’s a chance to engage the eye, the ear and the soul simultaneously.

Charles Blow’s story of his childhood and entrance into the adult world is sometimes lovely and sometimes dreadful. His sexual abuse at the hands of a cousin and the consequences thereof are at the heart of the story. The youngest of five boys, he has a strong mother determined to take care of them despite a carousing husband, a menial job, and an extended family that seems, with the exception of the despicable cousin Chester, supportive. Charles is sung by Davone Tines, who sounds marvelous. His younger self, known as Char’es Baby, is Jeremy Denis. Not only does he play an important part in the show and carry it off with charm, he has a delightful voice and holds his own with the older members of the cast.

It’s a show with strong women’s roles, and Karen Slack, as Billie, Charles’ mother, gives us a beautifully drawn, very human wife and mother whose hands are full with her rat of a husband and five little boys. Her voice is warm and full and extremely satisfying. The wondrous Julia Bullock returns to St. Louis to sing Destiny/Loneliness and Greta, enchanting and almost frightening at the same time in her roles.

One cannot use an adjective like “tasteful” to describe the actions that are the focus here, but it’s staged in a way that is mesmerizing but not graphic at all. Stage director James Robinson has things tightly in hand at all times, using Allen Moyer’s often dreamlike set perfectly.

The jazz-style combo in the pit is just right. It includes the celebrated St. Louis pianist Peter Martin, just to put on a final fillip.

It’s a remarkable piece of work. Charles’ mother’s advice to her son – in many things, not just this – is “You’ve got to leave it in the road. Let it go, move on.” Not everyone is able to do that. But Charles Blow has been able to and it’s our good fortune that his strength has helped give us this work.

 

Fire Shut Up in My Bones

through June 29

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

314-961-0644

opera-stl.org

The Coronation of Poppea

Is it really a love affair or a case of two power-mad people connecting? The Coronation of Poppea tells the story of the emperor Nero’s second wife, a sort of How To Succeed at Empressing Without Really Trying. We meet them onstage at Opera Theatre of St. Louis while Nerone, as he’s called in the opera, is still married to Octavia, although it’s going hot and heavy with Poppea, which is vividly shown. Bryan Miller in the Post-Dispatch explained that the show “was not for kiddies”; trust her on that, although there is no significant nudity. It’s hard to tell if Poppea is crazy for him or for the power that becoming empress would bring, but the reasons are hardly relevant.

More interesting is the behavior of Nerone to get what he wants. He cares nothing, he acknowledges, about the opinion of the people or of the senate. If he wants something, he will issue an edict to make it happen, consequences be damned. The philosopher Seneca, his counselor, (and, from historical background, his fixer) tells truth to power when he explains the possible consequences of ditching Octavia. Nerone sends one of his security guys to tell Seneca to kill himself. A charmer, that Nerone. There is – of course – a former lover of Poppea (who at this point, in real life, had already been married twice), Ottone, whom she’s spurned for Mr. Big. Octavia’s lady-in-waiting Drucilla, is crazy for Ottone, but he’s still pining for treacherous Poppea. This can only end disastrously, and the opera is sometimes described as one of the most bloodthirsty.

OTSL’s staging is certainly visually lovely, more handsome to the modern opera-goer, perhaps than the 1642 Monteverdi score. First of all, if you’re one of those people who never thought about lighting onstage, this show should bring you to your senses. It’s a remarkable example of what lighting does to a show. Hats off to Christopher Akerlind for his work there.

Hannah Clark’s aqua-blue tiled set with a ladder akin to a swimming pool’s, a barn door and what seems to be a large in-wall refrigerator give us metaphors. Clark also did the costumes, which put things into a more modern setting, although the women range from something Lady Bird Johnson might have worn to preside over a meeting of senate wives to a slinky black dress that brought to mind a sommelier in a high-end New York restaurant. Not incongruous, just interesting, you understand.

Brenton Ryan is a wonderfully controlled madman Nero. Poppea is played by Emily Fons, swooping and steaming and singing beautifully. Of the supporting cast, David Pittsinger’s Seneca (shown below) was perhaps my favorite, impressive in many ways.

The 8-person orchestra is onstage, quite fun, including some uncommon instruments like a lirone and two theorbos. Nicholas Kok conducts from one of the two harpsichords.

Stage direction is by Tim Albery, and a fine job that is, not just because there are more steps taken on a tabletop than surely ever before at OTSL. It’s a new way to add height to a staging, and it certainly works. He also manages to rein in the gory aspects to a fair degree without losing their impact.

Not your usual opera, despite its survival for centuries, but worthy for a number of reasons.

 

The Coronation of Poppea

through June 28

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

314-961-0644

opera-stl.org

Guys and Dolls

Let’s cut to the chase here.

Guys and Dolls, which has opened the Muny’s 101^st season, is nothing short of splendid. Yes, the new stage is marvelous, including the orchestra pit, which has elevators in it. (You’ll see.) But the show, a perennial for many reasons, in this version is a peak American musical theatre experience.

Based on the wonderful Damon Runyon short stories of New York City’s underworld in the Twenties and Thirties, and moved in time to the late Forties, and as good as the Frank Loesser score is, to me the greatest accomplishment are the words, both the lyrics to the song and the book, or script, itself. Runyon’s characters manage to combine slang and high-toned language in a delightful-despite-being-stylized fashion. Funny? You bet. I’d forgotten the line about a Scarsdale Galahad (Scarsdale, NY, is still the second-richest town on the East Coast), but will never lose “...a gent paying all kinds of rent for a flat that could flatten the Taj Mahal,” from the title song.

There’s gold in the material. What has the Muny done with it? Director Gordon Greenberg has brought a gifted cast to us, and choreography by Lorin Latarro and Patrick O’Neill mixes throwback Agnes deMille style with the snap of Bob Fosse to great effect. One seldom thinks of this as a dance show, but in Forest Park it is and it’s absolutely delicious.

Ben Davis is Sky Masterson (shown above with Brittany Bradford), the suave gambler who takes a bet on whether he can take “a mission doll” (doll being the generic word for female with these guys) to dinner. He’s warm and convincing in his belief that he can get her to dinner – and that he’s not the type to become a Scarsdale Galahad. Jordan Gelber plays Nathan Detroit, who runs the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York, as Loesser described it. Gelber moves like James Corden, and has a face that occasionally brought to mind the late Karl Malden in a very good mood, making Detroit altogether irresistible despite his 14-year engagement to the star of a local nightclub.

The distaff side is equally well-represented onstage. Sarah Brown, the “mission doll”, comes to us courtesy of Brittany Bradford, a strong-willed and virtuous young woman who denies her tingles just as loooong as she possibly can. A wonderful voice, put to good use, and fine acting. St. Louisan Kendra Kassebaum (shown below with Jordan Gelber) creates Miss Adelaide, the long-suffering chantoosey with the ongoing engagement to good old reliable Nathan. She just tears it up, particularly with “Adelaide’s Lament”, and happily, the sound system is good enough that the lyrics came through loud and clear, occasioning loud and much-deserved laughter.

The supporting players are a significant part of this show, and we can start with Ken Page as Sarah’s grandfather, who runs the mission with her. He’s never sounded better. Nicely-Nicely Johnson, one of Detroit’s buddies who sings, “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” is Orville Mendoza. Nicely-Nicely was originated by the late Stubby Kaye, and this is a good point to say that despite the amazing number of well-known actors who’ve done this show, all these folks are not channeling anyone else’s performances. They own these roles, no easy task with such a heritage.

The new stage and video screens are used to great effect here, spangled with neon signs and logos from the period. (Bonus points to anyone else who remembers Tofenetti’s.) And do keep an occasional eye on the orchestra pit, from which rises occasionally a cast member or two.

A wondrous start to the new season.

 

Guys and Dolls

through June 16

The Muny

Forest Park

www.muny.org

The Boy From Oz

For years, Peter Allen was mainly known for being married to Liza Minnelli, back when she was mainly known for being Judy Garland’s daughter. The Boy from Oz tells the story of his life from well before the marriage until his death at age 48. Allen, of course, was a performer and songwriter from Australia. (As a friend of mine once had to point out, the title of the show does not refer to his former mother-in-law’s most famous film about the wizard.) He won an Oscar for the theme to the movie “Arthur”, and if that doesn’t ring a bell, try the line, “When you get caught between the moon and New York City.” Of course, there’s always “I Go to Rio.”

Is all this worth a jukebox musical? In this case, the story is more interesting than the average show of that genre. Currently on the boards at Stages, it stars David Elder as Peter, who was born Peter Woolnough in the outback of Australia. Opening night, the young Peter was Ben Iken, who alternates with Simon Desilets. Elder, like the rest of the cast, doesn’t seem to have much of an Australian accent, but he gives us an Allen as vigorous as the original, dancing and singing and having a swell time. His younger self, courtesy of Iken, is almost as zippy and clearly a charmer.

The distaff side is spread pretty equally among Mom, Judy Garland and Liza. Mom, Corrine Melancon, seems a cliche at first, but in the second act comes into her own with a couple of fine numbers to claim her place. Michelle Ragusa, a Stages newcomer, is Judy Garland, and, while not doing a true Garland impersonation, has the strong delivery and the gestures. She sells it all with plenty of elan. Liza comes to us via Caitlyn Caughell. She has some really funny lines, unexpected, like many of the zingers in the script, but she doesn’t seem to get much beyond the unsure-of-herself kid that we first meet.

The story line is fairly singular. After all, who wouldn’t want to know what Garland was like as a mother-in-law? But besides the two big numbers we mentioned, there’s not much material from the Allen oeuvre that’s particularly memorable. Appropriate, yes, but basically fluff. It’s a show that depends heavily on the performers. Fortunately, they deliver, frequently in spades.

Unlike many similar shows, it’s balanced between the two acts. Ragusa’s Garland shines in the first act. In the second act, Melancon playing Allen’s mother steps right up and claims her place. So don’t think it’s okay to leave at intermission. For another thing, the last number is totally Busby Berkley-worthy with Brad Musgrove’s band of elves putting out more spangles and feathers than Halloween in Las Vegas, and folks strutting down stairs courtesy of James Wolk’s scenic design. Director Michael Hamilton gets it all right; the weakish score isn’t his fault.

Allen addicts will love this fizzy summertime treat. And for the rest of us, it’s hard to resist “I Go To Rio” as a postmortem spectacle.

 

The Boy From Oz

through June 30

Stages St. Louis

Robert G. Reim Theatre

111 S. Geyer Rd., Kirkwood

314-821-2407

www.stagesstlouis.org

Rigoletto

Where would opera, indeed, all fiction, be without deceit, or, at the very least, misunderstanding? Rigoletto, the great Giuseppe Verdi opera, is based on deceit and love; Opera Theatre of St. Louis gives it a dark, dramatic treatment showcasing both those elements. Despite darkness, drama and deceit, it manages to be quite beautiful, no small trick.

Based on a Victor Hugo story, the opera was originally set in the court of the duke of Mantua. Director Bruno Ravello has moved it to mid-19th Century Paris. It opens with a scene that’s Toulouse-Lautrec out of Degas with some lighting by Rembrandt, all at a cabaret full of the upper crust and some of the demi-monde. The duke is deeply licentious, bedding as many women as he can; tonight he’s considering a young ballerina and enjoying the can-can dancers. Rigoletto, an entertainer at court, is there. He’s disfigured by a major birthmark on his face, but uses a ventriloquist’s dummy to make cutting remarks to one and all. An old nobleman comes into the festivities. The duke has seduced his daughter but his outrage is met with scorn from the duke and Rigoletto as well. The aged father pronounces a curse on them both.

In other news, the duke’s roving eye has also hit on a sweet young thing he’s seen at mass. He intends to identify and then move on her. He has no idea she’s Gilda, the daughter of the widowed Rigoletto, who’s very tight-lipped about his private life. In fact, courtiers who have seen them think she’s Rigoletto’s mistress. Gilda, very sheltered by her father, knows there’s a handsome young man eyeing her at church and tells her maid she’s in love with him. There’s a knock at the door – and there’s her young man. It is, of course, the duke, using what we might term a nom de sheets. Just a penniless student, he assures her! Loves her! Will never love anyone else! She’s swooning, but dad’s coming and he ducks out before he’s caught.

The courtiers decide to kidnap Rigoletto’s “mistress” as a gift to the duke, and cart her off to his bedroom. [We have no idea of what she initially thinks when her “impoverished student” turns out to be a duke who has his wicked way with her.]

And this is just the first act.

Roland Wood, as Rigoletto, is splendid, both in his acting and his singing, a gorgeous voice showing his pride in his daughter and his terrible pain. The duke, Joshua Wheeler, is a charmer, great on the surface, but showing little if any conscience about what he does, even when we’re thinking maybe he really does love Gilda. His is the signature aria, la donna e mobile, and it sounds quite delicious if one overlooks the boldly superficial outlook it delineates. Gilda is So Young Park, an amazing voice, although physically rather stiff in her early scenes.

The curse-invoking father sung by Nicholas Newton, is deeply enraged, memorable in both sound and presence. A hired assassin comes to us via Christian Zaremba, slithery and threatening, and his sister, with whom he lures victims, is Lindsay Ammann. She’s quite a character, with a thrilling voice.

That wondrous light I spoke of, a golden glow, reappears several more times, and is the work of lighting designer Christopher Akerlind. Tom Watson created the wigs and makeup, particularly key in this birthmark-centric version, and the carefully-done costumes come from Mark Bouman. Roberto Kalb is conducting the orchestra for this beautiful, and of course very dramatic score – hey, it’s Verdi.

An exciting opening evening, even if it hadn’t been enhanced by thunder and rain outside while a thunderstorm is threatening onstage.

 

Rigoletto

through June 30

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

314-961-0644

opera-stl.org

Love's Labors Lost

People who are serious about the language generally love Shakespeare. That said, “serious” is a word that probably should not be applied to Love’s Labors Lost, a comedy he wrote around the time he was tossing off Romeo and Juliet.

It’s full of word jokes, although I admit lots of them are not easy to grasp given the references of the late 1500’s versus those of today. The cast working in Forest Park at this year’s Shakespeare Festival St. Louis makes it easy to laugh, though, even at ones that make one think, Wait – whaat? Yet the giggling continues to burst forth.

The very young King of Navarre (Sky Smith) wants to have three of his pals sign an oath calling for three years of study, fasting – and no women. Of course he’ll sign it, too. And he means it. The guys agree, although Biron (Bradley James Tejeda) is the most hesitant, seeming to understand more than the others how difficult this will be at their age. Egad, sure enough, the princess of France (Kea Trevett) appears with three lovely ladies-in-waiting and a majordomo, all to bargain with Navarre over a debt he owes her ailing father. Need I go further?

Well, actually, yes. Ne’er ran smooth and all that, so on top of all this we throw in Count Armado (Phillip Hernandez) a visiting noble from Spain who has the hots for a country maid named Jaquenetta, also the objet de passion of a peasant named Costard (Patrick Blindauer, who has a marvelous voice). The ladies-in-waiting and the king’s pals all know or have heard about each other, including Biron’s meeting Roseline (Laura Sohn), the feistiest of the young women, at a dance previously. Sparks were struck.

It’s always nice to get some idea of the story line in Shakespeare and opera if you’re not familiar with a show, and here's this year's Post-Dispatch story on it, by Calvin Wilson and Judy Newmark . That will help clarify even more.

Director Tom Ridgely, the Festival’s executive producer, has greenlighted a style that’s all in, and so it should be. Armado, the Spaniard, is reminiscent of Don Quixote but minus the shaving basin. Plenty of leering and physical comedy, especially from the men, with some characters mixed in specifically for comic relief, the way Armado is.

Tejada’s Biron is, in some ways, a stronger character than Smith’s king, who’s nicely restrained in his majesty. Biron is freed from having to play it cool when his hormones jump into gear. It’s the same with Trevett’s princess and Sohn’s Roseline, the former taking the lead but deliberately allowing her attendant leeway to use her special talents to confound the menfolk. Sohn grabs that with gusto.

Two of the comedic characters also call for some recognition. Katy Keating is Nathaniel, a priest, and Carine Montbertrand a mortarboard-wearing tutor and scholar. Montbertrand seemed to be channeling Fran Lebowitz, not that there’s anything wrong with that, goodness knows. The two provide some of the most understandable and funniest moments in the show. Special credit to Toodle Bug, playing the role of Goat, who is said to be “the only goat in D Bar S farm history to perform in a role other than dairy-related.” A tip of the leash to Molly Meyer who, as Jaquenetta, does a graceful job handling Toodle Bug and her other responsibilities as well.

The play is set outside Navarre’s castle, so the stone walls and garden benches and a nice iron gate set designer Jason Simms give us fit right into Forest Park. Melissa Trn gives us chronologically varied costumes, many reminiscent of the 1904 World’s Fair era and some harking back to conquistadores and others of Shakespeare’s periods. Interestingly, this isn’t at all jarring, merely piling on the fun. John Wylie did the lights and Rusty Wandall the sound. Matt Pace and Brien Seyle are the composers of the score and do much of the delightful and often slyly charming onstage music, too.

If this spring’s precipitation gives you pause, please know that there’s a weather hotline for the show. 314-531-9800, extension 7, is updated hourly beginning at 7 p.m. And you can even reserve a blanket and a spot for it now.

A romp in the park, indeed.

 

Love’s Labours Lost

through June 23

Shakespeare Festival St. Louis

Shakespeare Glen

Forest Park

www.sfstl.com

Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust

Charlie Johnson is a retired insurance guy who lives in a small town in Indiana. He is not, to be sure, the former Big Red quarterback who completed his master’s and PhD degrees in chemical engineering at Washington University while playing here. (His photo playing in the incredibly muddy game in 1964 with the Giants hangs in my living room. That’s another story.)

No, this Charlie is just an ordinary guy and perhaps the last person you’d expect to be knocking off all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. You may remember it better as Remembrance of Things Past. When we meet him in The Midnight Company’s Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust, he’s living a life of bi-weekly card games, driving the church’s bus, not that he’s not one himself, and going to Snappy Seniors meetings.

It’s easy to get lulled into thinking that this is just another cornball-meets-culture story. But it’s not. The exposition is very well-paced, although there’s a bit of a giveaway when he lapses into some lovely descriptive language about tomatoes. Charlie’s stories range from childhood to the present, Hanrahan’s low-key approach a perfect form for the character.

It helps to have read Proust – or just read about Proust – to get more out of the humor, perhaps. But it’s certainly not necessary. Charlie explains...well, not all of Proust, but enough to let everyone enjoy the evening and connect the massive work to his life, and, in various ways, to ours, as well.

Sarah Lynne Holt directs the show. Chuck Winning gives us a living room with lots of pictures that aren’t accidentally chosen, and worth a post-show look. Tony Anselmo did the lights, which accentuate some of the remembrance.

The play is by Amy Crider. This may be only its second appearance in the country, but it’s a warm, interesting 70 minutes or so, and one hopes it can continue to be performed. It's a delight. 

 

Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust

through June 15

The Midnight Company

Kranzberg Black Box

501 N. Grand

Metrotix

The Marriage of Figaro

The Marriage of Figaro certainly is one of the classic operas, among the most frequently performed in America and world-wide. That said, if you’re a novice to this form of entertainment, this production of it from Opera Theatre of St. Louis could well be an entry-level drug.

Consider it, if you will, a sort of Downton Abbey in a condensed form. The action, four acts, one intermission, three hours, takes place over a single day and has the sort of complicated story that was common in those pre-cinema days. (People expected to get their money’s worth in terms of tales told. And they had longer attention spans.) Figaro is the manservant of Count Almaviva and wants to marry Susanna, the Countess’ maid. But the count – who, I assure you, is no Robert, Earl of Grantham – has other ideas. His roving eye has hit upon Susanna and thinks it’s time to reinstate droit du seigneur, that custom wherein the lord of the manor has the right to bed any maiden in his fiefdom before her husband does. In addition, we have young Cherubino, an adolescent in full hormonal storm, although that has nothing to do with it being a trouser role, which means it’s sung by a female. Cherubino is wild for a young woman named Barbarina, but he’s also gaga over his godmother, the beautiful countess, whom he worships from considerably more afar. The count has figured this out and does not believe what’s sauce for the goose, etc. In addition, there’s a slick music teacher, a physician-lawyer with ulterior motives, and an older woman who really thinks she should be marrying Figaro instead of Susanna.

If all this seems a little much to follow, remember OTSL sings and has supertitles in English. You should also read the story in the program if you can. (Of course you got there early. Maybe a picnic, maybe to stroll the garden, maybe to people watch.)

The music is a delight. Aubrey Allicock as Figaro is a clean-cut swain, smart if slightly naive and sounds great. Susanna, brought to us by Monica Dewey, has lots of work to do – it’s a heavy-duty role with lots of singing – but she carries it off with elan. As the countess Rosina, Susannah Biller is stunning in style and song. One thinks this Rosina could have done better than the count, here played by Theo Hoffman with suitable jealousy and conniving. Cherubino, Samantha Gossard, is zestfully played, a lovely voice and lots of spirit.

The feast continues with the visual. The set uses bits of the hedonistic Fragonard’s paintings enlarged to dream-size as well as turning into intriguing interiors, all this from set designer Paul Steinberg. More deliciousness arrives in the form of costume Designer Constance Hoffman’s work, including the countess’ wonderfully oversized floral prints, especially a negligee. Tom Watson’s wigs and makeup fit right in with the era, especially the men’s towering bicornuate perukes.

And afterwards, please remember the tent up the hill is for anyone, not just cast and the people who give large (or even smaller) donations. Wander up, humming, have a glass or an ice cream and smile about it all.

Remember when you thought opera meant stuffy?

 

The Marriage of Figaro

through June 29

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

314-961-0644

opera-stl.org

I Now Pronounce

He’s just sort of stunned. She’s a bridezilla. Expect very little optimism from a comedy about a wedding. Then you’ll be all set for I Now Pronounce, the comedy now at the New Jewish Theatre. Ed Coffield, NJT’s artistic director and a guy with an active sense of humor of his own, has directed this Tasha Gordon-Solomon play that starts out with a coughing codger of a rabbi and goes on from there.

It’s not funny to deal with people who know weddings are not as important as the marriages they begin, people who don’t bicker and demand and freak out. Fortunately, none of those folks are onstage here. Instead we have the aforementioned groom (Graham Emmons) whose groomsmen (Ryan Lawson-Maeske and Will Bonfiglio) are offering to help him escape instead of going back into the reception. The bride (Jessica Kadish) is locked in the restroom crying and shrieking because the rabbi has ruined her wedding by dying mid-ceremony. Her bridesmaids (Frankie Ferrari and Delaney Piggins) aren’t having much luck cajoling her out, although Piggins’ character is somewhat distracted by the cute EMT she’s given her phone number to as he carted the rabbi off.

Things get rough at several points, include the bride lighting into the groom with razor-sharp words that make audience members gasp (and one mutter, “Get out now, pal”). A speech by Bonfiglio is so deeply cynical as well as nasty that it, too, sears us. Ferrari seems to be the always-a-bridesmaid-and-never-a-bride character (once upon a time, kids, that was a phrase used in advertising) and Lawson-Maeske is separated from his wife. Temporarily. He thinks. Or not.

The script is not just bouncing from laugh to laugh. There’s some serious struggles going on here, and we’re seeing fine work from these folks. However, let me cite the immortal W.C. Fields, who warned other performers never to work with animals or children. We have three young women here, the flower girls. Lydia Mae Foss, Abby Goldstein and Millie Eidelman, and they are splendid. They skitter through scene after scene worrying about ghosts as well as grownups, nailing lines, dancing with the rest of the cast, and generally being irresistible. They don’t steal the show, but it’s good they’re mostly onstage when everyone else is not. Particular kudos to Coffield for managing this group so well. Eidelman in particular does her shrieking in fine style.

David Blale was the scenic designer, Tony Anselmo designed the lights, and Amanda Werre the sound, all of which are well-coordinated.

Despite the flower girls, the language onstage means this is more of a production for adults, so be forewarned. And the program is wrong; this is a 100-minute no-intermission production.

 

I Now Pronounce

through June 2

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

Website

Nina Simone: Four Women

Once again because of a show in town, it seems like a good time to recount some too-recent history. On September 15, 1963, in the midst of the civil rights movement, which was particularly active in Birmingham, AL, a bomb went off at the 16^th Street Baptist Church. It was during Sunday school hours. Four little girls, ranging in age from 11 to 14, were killed. The church, badly damaged, had been very involved in the movement and was the starting point for many of its marches.

Nina Simone, a popular singer and pianist, became deeply involved in the movement. Nina Simone: Four Women puts her in Birmingham in the immediate aftermath of the bombing as she’s writing a song about the struggles. She’s in the ruins of the church composing. One at a time, three other women come in.

Leah Stuart is Nina Simone, strong and angry and not disposed to put up with interference. Sarah, whose name we don’t learn until late in the show, is a maid. Denice Thimes moves like a woman of some age, maybe a little arthritis in the knees and hips, guarding her dignity and puzzled about Simone’s whole slowly revealed story. Alex Jay is Sephronia, a teacher, who fairly quickly recognizes the woman trying to compose, and wants her out marching as well as writing songs about it. Then Sweet Thing – and that probably isn’t her real name, either, but we’ll never know – sweeps in, all cleavage and a pair of turquoise blue spike heels. Played by Camile Sharp, she’s not much interested in the movement, just having a white-hot talk with Sephronia and laying verbal waste to the others who protest her overall attitude.

Through all this, there’s talk about the movement, the violence, Dr. King and the four young lives that have been lost. “They say,” signs Sarah, “you can hear them crying sometimes.” As to violence, well, there was a reason the city was called “Bombingham” for a while.

Director Ron Himes pulls great performances from all the cast. Charles Creath, the musical director, who’s on the piano Simone is using as a desk, is a guy one could listen to all night under most any circumstances. Much of the music is what Simone co-write. Scenic design from Tim Jones is deeply evocative.

One wishes the script were a little better. The aura of magical realism works well, but there’s so much exposition, one wonders if it were intended at one point for young audiences, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Still, we’ve got some fine work here from the whole cast and crew. And there is the deeply still-relevant line from the script:

We all have a lot to learn.

 

Nina Simone: Four Women

through June 2

The Black Rep

Edison Theatre

Washington University in St. Louis

www.theblackrep.org

 

Come from Away

It’s coming on to eighteen years since the awful events of 9/11. There’s a whole generation now that doesn’t remember the actual day or has only a cursory knowledge of what happened. There was so much going on and so much not going on that it’s easy to overlook one of the largest of the small good stories that came out of the horror.

Flights coming into the US from foreign destinations were diverted and American airspace was shut down. Canada took all the flights coming in from Europe if they were past the point of no return, i.e, didn’t have enough fuel to return to the continent. The little town of Gander, whose airport had been, among other things, a serious departure point for aircraft during WW II, and who was closest to northern Europe, received 38 planes. The people of Gander, population of around 10,000, fed and housed 6,700 passengers and crew from all over the world until they were able to resume their journeys on September 14.

Come from Away is the story of that experience. There aren’t any words to describe it that haven’t been used and seemingly overused. It is, indeed, a picture of the milk of human kindness writ large, of how on short notice a small town on an island pulled together a humanitarian mission and carry it off with warmth and grace. Book, music and lyrics are by Irene Sankoff and David Hein.

I went into this with a certain degree of skepticism, expecting saccharine sweetness and rainbows. Nope. Cast your cynicism aside and be swept away by a story of ordinary people rising to a challenge – on both sides of this story. It opens on the ordinary Tuesday morning everyone talks about with the mayor of Gander meeting his pals and other constituents in the Tim Horton’s in town. The school bus drivers are on strike, and negotiations aren’t going well. And then the policeman rushes in and says, “Turn on the television.”

When will these passengers be told what’s happened? How long before they’re allowed off the plane? Immigration control still has to be observed. Hand baggage only, a good reminder not to put essentials like medication in checked luggage. Are there animals on the plane? How many public places can be used as shelters? How can guests be transported to shelters? How many telephones can we provide for them? There’s a particularly delightful brief number when the toilets at an elementary school/shelter need to be cleaned and a group of men, allegedly cardiologists, in lab coats and gloves present themselves when no one else volunteers.

A cast of 12 handles passengers, crew and townspeople, and somehow manage to keep almost everything clearly defined, although they’re not so much defined by name as by roles, the mayor, the captain, the oil company employee and so on. The music, some of which is clearly Celtic in style, very characteristic of Newfoundland – who knew? - is often charming with Irish flutes, a harmonium, and a bouzouki (not so Celtic there...), among other things. The musical staging from Kelly Devine, including choreography with chairs on the stage’s turntable, works very well. Beowulf Boritt’s set is one of those less-minimal-than-it-seems things that’s quite beautiful, and the lights from Howell Binkley add to the aura. Sound design in the Fox is always a balancing act, and in the opening number it was hard to hear the lyrics because of a thudding bass. Things improved some after that.

It’s not a perfect show. About 100 minutes without intermission compresses things, and leaves characters sometimes shortchanged and sometimes somewhat stereotyped. Some of the score is deeply unremarkable and little of it will survive independently.

But it’s a great story, carefully told and well put together by director Christopher Ashley.

 

Come from Away

through May 26

Fox Theatre

527 N. Grand

www.fabulousfox.com

Dear Mr. Williams

For those who are suckers for storytelling, let me warn them that Dear Mr. Williams ran only over the weekend just past. The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis brought in Bryan Batt, who created the piece and performs it, for three shows. Batt, of course, is an actor who has had a SAG Award for “Mad Men” and several encounters with the Drama Desk Awards.

The show is a cabaret act without music, and that’s no insult. Batt weaves his personal story with quotes from Williams, the way a singer might tell stories and then fall into some fine Gershwin song. Batt’s a native New Orleanean, a real yat, from the sort of family has for generations participated in Mardi Gras balls and cotillions. He was, he says, always a kid interested in beautiful things, thanks to his mother. He discovered theater and Tennessee Williams in high school, and found that Williams loved New Orleans. And then, slowly, he recognized what he was seeing in Williams was what he was seeing in himself.

Batt’s a fine storyteller, giving us tales of the New Orleans we know and the New Orleans we may not know, family stories and insider glimpses of his world growing up. The Williams quotes fit in smoothly, wise and deep. We even end up with stories about Helen Hayes.

If the show’s come and gone, why am I talking about it now? Because this is the sort of thing the festival does well, finding these smaller, offbeat things that are related, the sort of events that are worth taking a chance on. Dear Mr. Williams certainly was.

 

Dear Mr. Williams

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

twstl.org/

A Lovely Sunday in Creve Coeur

It’s not often that one thinks of Tennessee Williams as having a light hand at drawing the human condition. But it surely shows in A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.

It’s a Sunday morning in June, the sun is up, a pigeon coos outside the window of a small apartment in St. Louis. Dorothea (Maggie Wininger) is a single woman, a teacher at nearby Blewett School, which was, at the time of the play, a high school on Enright Avenue, just off Union. She shares the apartment with Bodey (Kelley Weber), an older woman who works at International Shoe. Dorothea’s waiting for a phone call from the man she’s dating, who’s her principal at the school. Bodey’s frying chicken. She’s putting together an outing to Creve Coeur Park, then the terminus of a trolley that ran down Delmar, through Overland and out to Creve Coeur Lake. She still hopes that Dorothea and her portly brother will hit it off, an idea Dorothea has repeatedly nixed in favor of the principal, who’s so fancy he drives a REO Flying Cloud.

The two women are very different. Dorothea, who’s moved from Memphis, is very conscious of her appearance and is very focused on having a husband and family. Bodey is a bustling hausfraulein who knows she’ll probably never marry but focuses on the pleasures of right now – and of getting her brother settled, despite his cigars and rumpled appearance. Two guests arrive. One is another tenant, Miss Gluck (Ellie Schwetye), for her daily coffee and consolation over the recent death of her mother. The other is the icily magnificent Helena (Julie Layton), an art history teacher at Blewett, who’s very mysterious about the reasons for her unexpected call.

Kari Ely directed this surprising piece of fun with its rapid-fire dialogue, some of which is exceedingly amusing. It takes place in Ali Strelchun’s wonderful set, all light and color. Watching the actors come up the center aisle upstairs at the Grandel, where it’s staged, is a nice preview of what’s to come, Weber’s Bodey a masterpiece of bustling, for instance.

Some discussion of Dorothea in recent years has the character a faded Southern belle, in the style of some other Williams women, but Wininger looks and acts younger. Maybe we don’t regard a teacher in perhaps her mid to late 20’s as aging, but things have changed since the mid-Thirties when the play is set. Wininger is more dazzled and determined than desperate, which works very well. Weber’s Bodey has a warm, kind heart that tries to protect her roommate and settle her into the sort of domesticity that she always wanted for herself. Only a remarkable performance by Julie Layton can hold up to the magnificence of her hat, the product of Garth Dunbar, the costume designer. And Ellie Schwetye is a sobbing black stork, only occasionally breaking into heavily accented English.

Not among the greatest of Williams’ works, certainly, but how fun to see him at play!

 

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur

through May 19

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Grandel Theatre

https://www.twstl.org/

Death Tax

You know those people who announce they didn’t like a play or a movie because,\ the uniforms of the soldiers didn’t have the right patches for whatever unit and time frame was involved? Or the style of fork in a banquet scene hadn’t come into use for another 70 years? Seems unfair to trash all that artistic effort just because a costuming error noticeable to perhaps 1% of the audience or the wrong forks because a small theater company needed to use what they had. But there are folks for whom that detail can ruin an evening.

Having worked as an RN for umpty-ump years, I have my list of Things, too. Every medical series on television except MASH I left quickly or never started. So plays about that sort of thing I admit to casting a particularly careful eye on. The good ones, though, work well despite some problems with details, and that’s how it is with Death Tax. It’s from the pen of Lucas Hnath, who wrote, among other plays, A Doll’s House, Part 2, which the Rep did in 2018, and the current Broadway offering Hilary and Clinton. This is a guy who knows his way around a keyboard.

It’s a nursing home where Maxine (Kim Furlow) is a long-time patient and Tina (Jeanitta Perkins) is her nurse. Maxine is old and cranky and has some unnamed serious illness. “I know I’m going to die,” she announces. It’s not so much the dying that she’s concerned about, it’s her estate. Estate taxes will go up after the first of the current year, she explains to Nurse Tina, and she wants to stay alive until after the taxes go up, so her daughter (Kristen Strom) won’t get nearly as much as she would if Maxine died before New Year’s Day. (Dysfunctional R Us.) Maxine thinks the nurse is being paid by the daughter to knock her off before then. Maxine offers a solution to the problem, and Tina agrees.

Todd (Reginald Pierre) is perhaps a nursing supervisor, certainly Tina’s superior. He calls her into his office because he’s been given sort-of proof of Tina’s unethical behavior with Maxine. But he’s been dating Tina and is clearly quite smitten with her; alas, his affection is not returned in equal portion.

Somewhere in here it begins to dawn on us that this is moving away from reality. There are various signs, but the biggest one is why doesn’t Maxine just call her lawyer and change her will to benefit some charity? There’s more sticky stuff beyond nurses accepting bribes, interoffice (internursing station?) romance between unequals, and paying off physicians. But it hangs on the edge of reality so well that it all works.

Furlow does crotchety wonderfully, bringing us up to the edge of wanting to smack her but not quiiiiiite there. Perkins’ Tina is a nicely slow reveal until hormones raise their eager head; she’s great to watch and then does a second turn as a social worker in the last part of the show. Pierre’s meltdown is wondrous to watch, and he, too, has a second part as Maxine’s grandson. When we finally get to meet the daughter, whose story is, not surprisingly, rather different than Maxine’s version in this game of Who Do You Trust, Strom gives a shakily on-target rendition, which furthers our questions.

The unusual set from Jamie Perkins works extremely well, with lights from Michael Sullivan and sound by Zoe Sullivan. Bess Moynihan pulled it all together in fine fashion and it’s a remarkably interesting evening.

That said, here comes the nurse’s rant. And it’s aimed at every group that’s used a hospital bed in a set, so Mustard Seed folks, all you did was remind me.

Theatrical convention – and that includes television and all the soap operas in particular – seems to dictate that hospital beds never have the siderails up. That’s wrong. For all but the most physically able patients, at least one would be up, at least. They give patients something to hold onto and help themselves turn in the relatively-narrow beds and their mattresses which range from hard and slippery to deep and squooshy. And the sicker the patient is, the more apt the rails are to be up.

Thank you, end of rant!

 

Death Tax

through May 19

Mustard Seed Theatre

6800 Wydown Blvd, Clayton (enter off Big Bend)

314-719-8060

www.mustardseedtheatre.com

The Night of the Iguana

The Night of the Iguana kicks off this year’s Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, and it’s a hot time in the old town. Taken from a short story which evolved into the play and then a film, it’s one of the classic Williams pieces, full of steam and drama.

A seedy hotel in the rain forests of Mexico, a point between feverish daze and reality carefully created by Dunsi Da, is the setting. It’s owned and run by Maxine Faulk, a bawdy, strong-willed woman whose older husband has recently died. She’s employed a couple of young men who have worked as cliff divers at other hotels, barking orders and utilizing them in other ways, not all of which are seen onstage. Climbing up the steep hill to the hotel is a returning guest, the Reverend Mr. Lawrence Shannon, who’s unexpectedly brought a busload of Baptist ladies who comprise a group tour he’s leading.

Shannon has more than a busload of problems. He’s a binge alcoholic and has a taste for very young women. The group is unhappy with pretty much everything he’s done on the tour, from food to no sightseeing. The crowning touch is his overappreciation of a 16-year-old on the tour.

Maxine doesn’t want the Baptist ladies, who are still in the bus, and the ladies don’t want to stay there, but Shannon is in the middle of what could charitably be called an(other) existential crisis, dodging both the group leader and the little sweetie who still has the hots for him. To add fuel, Maxine certainly would like for Shannon to stay. Then two more unexpected guests arrive, a middle-aged woman and her very elderly grandfather, both itinerant artists.

It’s a show packed with great work. James Andrew Butz, (the actor formerly known as Jim Butz) gives Shannon desperation and wildness, falling into self-contemplation and then completely losing it, a tooth-rattling performance. The crowning touch is his mastery of the mid-stage hammock, hammocks being nice to look at but the very devil to manage gracefully. Maxine, the hotel owner, comes to us via Lavonne Byers in a performance that could have been played far more widely. But that would have given us a caricature of character. Instead we see a long look or a raised eyebrow instead of a more salacious move. It makes the audience look more closely.

New to St. Louis is Nisi Sturgis as Hannah, the sketch artist-granddaughter. The family is from Nantucket, and Hannah is a self-contained New Englander. Nevertheless she eyes Shannon with restrained curiosity and kindness, enough that Maxine senses a challenge to her play for him. Sturgis’ Hannah is half-ethereal, reality-based but still, somehow, almost floating. Hannah’s grandfather is played by Harry Weber, perhaps better known to St. Louis as a sculptor.( Ironically, the bust of Tennessee Williams at Euclid and McPherson is Weber’s work. He’s swell as the aged grandfather, a poet trying to create his swan song.)

Williams’ plays, like Woody Allen’s movies, always have a character that is at least partly identifiably Williams. Here it’s Shannon, but in another sense, it’s part of Hannah, as well, a different side of Williams, the calm and almost loving talking to the nearly-out-of-control.

Tim Ocel directed, clearly using a clear vision of what this ought to be, and he’s delivered in spades. Jon Ontiveros’ lighting is a key, and so is Ellie Schwetye’s sound. It’s been a while since the play was done in St. Louis, and it’s something theatre-goers ought to flock to.

 

The Night of the Iguana

through May 19

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

Grandel Theatre

https://www.twstl.org/

 

Salt, Root, and Roe

Growing old is not for sissies: That saying and its variants have been around for several generations, so long there’s no good attribution for it. Like many such lines, it’s remained evergreen because it’s pretty much true. And if anyone forgets, there’s Salt, Root, and Roe to remind them.

Upstream Theater brings us the American premiere of this play by Tim Price. It’s a co-production with Stages Repertory Theatre Houston. We’re offered a family living in Pembrokeshire, on the west coast of Wales, as the eldest generation is aging. “Aging in place” is the current description; certainly there are enough home-care options in the British health care system that it’s easier almost anywhere in that country than it is in the U.S. without paying for it oneself.

Twin sisters Iola (Donna Weinsting) and Anest (Sally Edmundson) live together as Iola is slipping into dementia. It’s not just “good days” and “bad days”, just as it happens in real life. Things can shift very quickly. They’re as close as one expects twins to be. Indeed, in the opening scene, they are frolicking in a puddle of green light both holding a rope, and the image of twins in utero with a shared umbilical cord is inescapable. But in their home, Anest’s daughter Menna (Amy Loui) has discovered neither sister is there. She apparently has just arrived, her visit caused by a letter from Iola that has frightened her. She has no idea where they are and is near-hysterical, despite the efforts of the constable Gareth (Eric Dean White), who she’s known for years, to calm her.

It looks as though they’re moving – there are boxes everywhere, and we discover that much of the furniture has been taken away. There’s a vague mention of a facility of some sort, since Iola has refused to allow any of the carers from “the Council”, i.e., people who come in to assist with housekeeping and personal hygiene under the National Health scheme, to visit. Menna wants to return to this place where she grew up and take care of them, and is adamant that they do something rather than doddle along as they have been, especially when she discovers that recently Iola hit Anest with a fireplace poker. That, of course, is a pretty reasonable response to what she’s finding at her mother’s home. Nevertheless, make no mistake: Menna is not in such great shape herself. She’s angry, impulsive, and compulsive, wearing latex gloves, scrubbing floors, and slowly revealing the bones of her marriage.

It turns out that Iola, in her lucid moments, has decided she’s had enough of this and wants to end it all. That’s what was in the letter. Anest understands. Menna doesn’t.

The picture of life with dementia is graphically accurate, and Weinstock is excellent, slipping in and out of rationality. It’s a demanding role and she nails it. As the supportive sister, Edmundson leans more toward Iola than to her daughter Menna, probably not surprising since she’s now Iona’s caregiver, not Menna’s. It’s a performance of restrained emotion except when the sisters are interacting. The sisters often seem to lapse into speaking Welsh, although it’s easy to think perhaps it’s one of the twin languages one hears about. The foreign tongue doesn’t seem to impair our understanding, although for a while, the audience surely wonders.

The Houston side of the production shows itself admirably. The show’s director is Kenn McLaughlin, the artistic director for the Houston group. Sally Edmundson, the actress playing Anest works out of Houston. The impressive sound, including some interesting original music, is from Anthony Barilla, based in Houston. Lighting, too, is from Texas, courtesy of Steve Carmichael, whose work is important to the story. And the set is courtesy of Michael Heil, giving us land and sea in the space of the Kranzberg’s black box. McLaughlin has sewn it all together nicely.

The show runs about 100 minutes without intermission. One wishes more might have been made of the mother-daughter relationship, but all in all it works well and gives a fine showcase for some outstanding talent.

 

Salt, Root, and Roe

through May 12

Upstream Theater

Kranzberg Arts Center

501 N. Grand

314-669-6382

website

True West

It’s hard to imagine anyone being comfortable watching a Sam Shepherd play. His onstage world is a bleak one, no matter the setting. But of course that’s the way the world is; just because it’s a household with a paid-off mortgage and nice clothing doesn’t mean the occupants are happy, or even functional. True West takes place in a far ‘burb of Los Angeles, far from surfboards and closer to the desert. It’s dry there, emotionally dry, raw and scraping and unlubricated.

Nevertheless, True West, like all Shepherd plays, is fascinating, quickly drawing the viewer in and then sliding into seat-squirming uncomfortableness. Soon comes an evolving into what’s happening here?, the balance shifting to leave everyone, both the characters and the audience, unsettled.

William Humphrey is Austin, whom we meet sitting at a kitchen table with a typewriter. He’s a writer trying to sell a screenplay, and it’s his mom’s house – she’s off on a trip to Alaska and offered it to him so he could work near the producer who’s interested. His older brother Lee, played by Isaiah Di Lorenzo, is on hand as well. They couldn’t be more different. Lee’s a drifter, angry and confrontational and doing all he can to disrupt Austin’s work. He’s also a superb manipulator, as we discover when Austin’s producer (William Roth) shows up as planned to work the screenplay deal out and Lee returns quasi-unexpectedly from some errands.

The tension throughout the play is broken, sometimes frequently, with Shepherd’s dark humor – it’s surprising how much laughter is heard during the performances. That, too, contributes to the balance of the experience, the back and forth between Austin and Lee, and the third factor created by the arrival of the producer. It’s like a pinball machine.

The vibes between Humphrey and Di Lorenzo are powerful – the relationship dance is beautifully drawn. Humphrey’s careful, hopeful Austin, such a contrast to the seemingly half-crazy Lee of Di Lorenzo, begins to change, or, more likely, revert. Di Lorenzo shows us not just the menace of Lee but exhibits a real gift for physical comedy made even more vivid by the circumstances of the story.

This is William Whitaker’s first time directing at St. Louis Actors’ Studio and he’s done a fine job, including part of the sound design, a credit shared with Jeff Roberts. Patrick Huber’s set, a turquoise kitchen that looks only slightly newer than Austin’s manual typewriter – and which may have to be replaced for each show, all things considered – is right in the groove for things.

A carefully created rendition of an excellent play.

 

True West

through April 28

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theater

360 N. Boyle

314-458-2978

stlas.org

Fefu and Her Friends

Perhaps the main purpose of art is to make us think. And while my general approach to reviewing theatre has been described – without malice – as being like the guy on the next bar stool, the more experimental shows always intrigue me. One doesn’t listen to Phillip Glass because of his hummable melodies, or see Joan Miro paintings because the work is a beautiful version of your own landscape. Personally, I need Gershwin and da Vinci in my life more than either of those artists. And yet there’s always the need to explore.

And so we have Fefu and Her Friends from Theatre Nuevo. Staged in a private home in south St. Louis, it ranges between dreamlike and vivid. A group of women gather to plan some future event. Fefu, the hostess, is strong and rather strange. Seven guests appear and we learn parts of their stories. Scene 1 is in the living room, where everyone, cast and audience gathers. Scene 2 occurs simultaneously in four different places as the audience breaks into groups and the scene is repeated four times, sometimes with dialogue overlapping. Scene 3 brings everyone back to the living room to round things off.

There are strong performances here, despite the feeling that they are puzzle pieces that may not fit any specific part of the tale, not surprising in this sort of theatre. CeCe Hill’s Fefu is indeed the leader of the pack, almost manicky in her energy and her enthusiasm for what clearly seems like self-loathing. Jamie Mckittrick has a marvelous monologue that she delivers climbing in and out of a window (on a rainy opening night, no less) that’s hard to resist. Louise, who’s in a wheelchair after a hunting accident a year previously, is Sophia Brown, who has the chops to handle the most tormented role of the eight, and she’s splendid.

Maria Irene Fornes wrote this play, Fornes being an iconoclastic figure in experimental theatre. There’s been a fair amount of academic analysis of the symbolism and feminism of the play, but the thing to do is to just let it flow and take it in. Quite fascinating.

Nevertheless, don’t plan on showing up and buying a ticket. The address won’t be revealed until tickets are purchased – and the size of the audience, not surprisingly, is limited. Overall, something different and challenging for the adventurous playgoer.

 

Fefu and her Friends

through April 20

Theatre Nuevo

Website

Dreamgirls

People still argue over whether Dreamgirls is or isn’t about the Supremes and Diana Ross. The story only has some parallels, and there was an abundance of girl groups in the years before and during Motown’s golden era. But it really makes no difference. Go see Dreamgirls at Stray Dog Theatre because it sounds glorious.

Director Justin Been and artistic director Gary Bell have almost outdone themselves with this show. Careful casting has given first-rate results for the eye and, more importantly, the ear. It’s a large cast, with 22 people, yet the stage never seems stuffed, probably because they take full advantage of the aisles and the temporary thrust, or stage extension, added for the show.

Effie White, the lead singer of the Dreamettes, who’ve come to Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre for their amateur contest, is always cast as a young woman of size. SDT has given us Ebony Easter, who absolutely owns the role. She rocks it. The other original members of the Dreamettes are Deena, who eventually becomes the sort-of Diana Ross, played by Eleanor Humphrey, more restrained and perhaps more elegant, and Lorrell, Tateonna Thompson. Michelle, who replaces Effie after she gets the boot, is Diamon Lester. The latter two surely hold their own performing in this good company.

The guys do well, too. Omega Jones steps up to play James “Thunder” Early, the already-popular singer who’s lost his backup singers that night in Harlem. Who knew Jones was such a fine hoofer? Sounds good, and as always a superb actor. Curtis Taylor, who becomes their manager that night at the Apollo, is Abraham Shaw. Curtis turns out to be a metaphorical snake oil salesman, and Shaw’s perfect, charming, determined and very subtle – most of the time – about his immense self-interest. I was also charmed by Don McClendon’s Marty, “Thunder” Early’s manager, calm and poised throughout the storms.

It’s a large band, too, tucked on a second level of the stage, nine members led by Jennifer Buchheit. If they aren’t having a good time, you could have fooled me, because it certainly sounds like it.

I’m always amazed when a glam show is better in a small venue than it is in a large traditional theater, and that’s the case here. The set is the work of Josh Smith and the painting of Myles Bledsoe, complimented by Tyler Duenow’s lighting. The intimacy makes a difference in a story that isn’t just a jukebox musical. It is indeed about dreams, fighting for them, realizing them and, most importantly in my opinion, having them. (Bloody Mary of South Pacific was right.)

The letdown is in the women‘s costumes. There are problems in several places and it’s most notable on the costumes for Effie, which seem thrown together, are remarkably ill-fitting and careless. A raveled, unhemmed hemline on a dress for a show, unlike the dresses for the other two members of the group, was the most obvious but the difference appears early and often.

Nevertheless, it’s a fine show, and tickets are apparently moving fast. Get your groove on.

 

Dreamgirls

through April 20

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

www.straydogtheatre.org

Popcorn Falls

Delightfully goofy. That’s The Midnight Company’s Popcorn Falls. A two-person comedy? Well, two actors. But not two characters. Way not two characters. Joe Hanrahan and Shane Signorino give us, seemingly, half the population of the small town of Popcorn Falls.

The town has been, ahem, left up the creek by a dam diverting the water source of the falls for which the burg is named. Hanrahan’s primary character is the town’s mayor, a relative newcomer to Popcorn Falls. Signorino is mainly Joe, the “executive custodian” at City Hall. The county executive built the dam and wants to build a sewage plant where Popcorn Falls is. The town’s bankrupt since tourists coming to see the falls (maybe even the spot where George Washington dined, or at least ate a picnic) have evaporated, so there’s no money to fight the crooked county exec.

But wait – there’s an arts grant that they’re entitled to! Arts? They have no theatre, no galleries. Nevertheless, they’ll do it themselves. “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show!” is brought to a new level.

Hanrahan and Signorino live up to their full potential with this script, and the black box at the Kranzberg is a fine venue for the work, which depends far more on the actors than anything else. Still the set, more complicated than the unknowing might think, is fun and workable, courtesy of Chuck Winning. Tony Anselmo’s lighting gives us a lot of help with changing scenes. Sarah Whitney, an associate director for The Midnight Company, directed.

Playwright James Hindman is, not surprisingly, also an actor, so it’s no wonder this is a piece that lets actors really throw themselves into their work. Good fun, relaxing and with a rewarding twist at the end.

About 90 minutes without an intermission.

 

Popcorn Falls

through April 13

The Midnight Company

Kranzberg Black Box

501 N. Grand

metrotix.com

 

Time Stands Still

Time Stands Still was written in 2009 – although author Donald Margulies acknowledges he did some revision and tightening a few years after that. It feels all too fresh.

Two young, or at least young-ish, free-lance journalists are partners and often work together. Sarah Goodwin (Wendy Renee Greenwood) is a photojournalist of considerable ability and a reputation to match. Her long-time boyfriend James Dodds (Ben Nordstrom) writes, quite ably but isn’t the major figure that Sarah is.

When they enter their Brooklyn loft, Sarah is on crutches. They’ve both been in Iraq, but James left early after an IED blew up nearby, leaving him with human remains splattered on his face and PTSD. Sarah stayed longer. She was in a vehicle that also fell prey to an explosive device, killing, among other people, her fixer (translator and general factotum). It’s her first time in the apartment since the accident and her hospitalization, but it’s clear that she’s eager to resume her previous life. James, though, is anxious about that, and protective of her. He’s currently working on some piece about horror movies as both metaphors and catharsis.

An old friend and editor with whom they’ve frequently worked, Richard (Jerry Vogel), visits after a few days. He brings with him his new, much younger girlfriend, Mandy (Eileen Engel). She’s not a total innocent, but far more gee-whiz than the other three. Still, he’s obviously crazy about her.

Sarah wants to get back to work. James wants to think about anything but Iraq. He’s discovered he likes nesting. And speaking of nesting, Mandy and Richard found out they’re having a baby, and they marry. Maybe Sarah and James should.

But the play’s secondary theme, the horrors of war and its effect even on those who aren’t combatants or residents, is burning. Mandy asks to see Sarah’s photos. They are, of course, graphic, and when Mandy asks about the fate of a critically injured child and what Sarah did when the child was hurt, things get scalding.

Here, then, is the question: Is it the job of journalism to change things or to record them? Would things be changed more by Sarah scooping up the child and driving it to a hospital or by taking the photographs which will show the world how awful the conflict is?

And how does one negotiate change in a relationship when the basic agreements on which it began are brought into questions? When our lives sneak up on our assumptions about what we want, and about what our partners and our families want, how do you negotiate those changes?

It’s fine ensemble work, certainly. Greenwood’s subtle portrayal of Sarah shows an independent woman trying not to give in to her injury nor to ignore it completely, just as she does with James’ fretting over her. James’ anxiety over life in general is also not overplayed by Nordstrom, as it’s slowly shown to be more of a factor than first shown. Vogel’s Ehrlich is the most stable one of the group, not dull but rock-like. And the Mandy character, whom we presume to be pretty much an airhead, shows plenty of growth through the play.

It’s a fine script – Margulies knows his stuff, and his women characters show plenty of depth. John Stark’s design of their apartment is exactly what you’d expect, a combination of older appliances and furniture from a mid-range chain like Design Within Reach. Michael Sullivan’s lighting pulls us in, but the real noticeable factor from the designers is Zoe Sullivan’s music perfectly scored yet unexpected. I liked that a lot. Director Doug Finlayson has created a very worthwhile group to offer a thoughtful experience for all audiences.

 

Time Stands Still

through April 14

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

website

The Play That Goes Wrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Play That Goes Wrong

through April 7

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Beautiful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Beautiful

through March 17

Fox Theatre

527 N. Grand

www.fabulousfox.com

 

Nonsense and Beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Nonsense and Beauty

through March 24

Studio Theatre

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Buffon Glass Menajoree

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Young Liars Theatre

on line

Ten Directions Production

on line

Well

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Well

through March 17

Mustard Seed Theatre

6800 Wydown Blvd, Clayton (enter off Big Bend)

314-719-8060

www.mustardseedtheatre.com

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Woman in pursuit of a goal.

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

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

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

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

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

Who needs reality when you can have all this?

 

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

through February 17

West End Players Guild

Union Avenue Christian Church

733 Union Blvd. (enter on Enright Avenue)

www.westendplayers.org