St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Tiny Beautiful Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Tiny Beautiful Things

through August 8

Grandel

3610 Grandel Square

maxandlouie.com

Smokey Joe's Cafe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Smokey Joe’s Cafe

through August 1

The Muny

1 Theatre Drive

Forest Park

muny.org

Roadrunner:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

The Midnight Company

through July 25

The Chapel

6238 Alexander Drive, 63105

MidnightCompany.com

Feast

What becomes a legend most?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Feast

through June 27

The Tesseract Theatre Company

.ZACK Theatre

3224 Locust St.

https://www.tesseracttheatre.com/

Highway 1, U.S.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Highway 1, U.S.A.

through June 17

Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Webster University campus

opera-stl.org

Mlima's Tale

 Aaaaand...we’re off!!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ninety minutes, no intermission.

 

Mlima’s Tale

through July 11

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

Berges Theater at COCA

6880 Washington Ave, University City

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

Food and Music: The Great Combination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Website

Hello From Bertha

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Hello From Bertha

until September 4, 2020

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

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

This Property is Condemned

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

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

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

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

This Property is Condemned

through August 7

listen here

Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis  with more about the series

 

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

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

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

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

 

MOSCOW!

ERA: Equally Represented Arts

eratheatre.org

 

Awards!

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

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

 

Awards!

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

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

 

Annapurna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Annapurna

through March 1, 2020

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

Gaslight Theater

360 N. Boyle

314-458-2978

stlas.org

The Mystery of Irma Vep - A Penny Dreadful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Mystery of Irma Vep – A Penny Dreadful

through March 8

Mainstage

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Dress the Part

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Dress the Part

through February 15

The Ready Room

4195 Manchester Ave.

sfstl.com

Wildfire

Because of my own life, I've long been fascinated by the question of nature versus nurture. Upstream Theater looks at just that as it presents the American premiere of Wildfire by Quebecois author David Pacquet, the English translation by Leanna Brodie. Phillip Boehm’s company has never hesitated to present the new and different, and here we have a surreal look at how the heredity/environment thing shakes out.

We begin with adult triplets, Claudette, Claudine and Claudia, played by Jane Paradise, Nancy Bell and Tom Wethington. They are all three...well, a lay person might say crazy. Let’s call the girls dysfunctional, each in their own way. Reality is particularly removed from this first part of the show, a clear signal that we’re in for an off-road adventure.

The three actors play other characters in the second and third parts of the 75-minute, no-intermission work, two shy people who meet and hesitantly hit it off, and a woman who explains why there’s a hammer in her television set. All this carefully, slowly, pulls things together in the exposition but still manages to leave us gasping.

It’s certainly a black comedy, but nevertheless deserves the name comedy. Paradise and Wethington are particularly poignant as the hesitant couple, and Bell’s monologue in the third part is a remarkable piece of salacious pathology. Interesting, seemingly simple sets from Michael Heil with Steve Carmichael’s lights let us focus on the characters. The use of red and black are highlighted by Laura Hanson’s costumes. And I very much enjoyed the music from Anthony Barilla, who’s credited as composer/sound design, a nice contrast to the warped experience we faced.

Phillip Boehm directed, and is probably happy when audiences walk out shaking their heads at the whole experience. It’s fascinating, like watching a train crash in slow motion. Of course, we’re all left to our own interpretations of how much of this is genetic and how much is how we were raised.

 

Wildfire

through February 9

Upstream Theater

The Marcelle

3310 Samuel Shepherd Drive

upstreamtheater.org

Songs for Nobodies

If there’s anyone around who doubts the level of our local talent, here’s – another – fine example. Debbie Lennon gives us a one-woman show, Songs for Nobodies, and pretty much knocks it out of the park.

The show’s premise is that five great women singers are shown via their encounters with ordinary women. The show was written by Joanna Murray-Smith. It’s a good look at the human side of idols, and a real workout for Lennon who plays all ten characters in settings that go all the way from Kansas City to a yacht on the Mediterranean.

Beatrice Ethel Appleton opens the show. She’s the powder room attendant at the Plaza Athenee Hotel in New York when Judy Garland arrives with her hem slightly ripped. And so we’re off, meeting along the way, an usher, a librarian, a cub reporter and a nanny, all in individual vignettes Those women lead us into Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Maria Callas. (It may affect the way you view photos of Aristotle Onassis for the foreseeable future, by the way.)

Lennon is remarkable, switching characters and accents. And she sounds fabulous. Nicholas Valdez, on piano, is the music director, with, on the night I was there, Blake Mickens on bass and Keith Bowman on percussion. They surely add to the fun. Dunsi Dai’s scenery, including some wonderful black and white photographs, set the mood well, as does Tony Anselmo’s lighting.

Dazzling work from Lennon, and lots of bang for the audience’s buck in this 90-minute, no-intermission little jewel from Max & Louie Productions that’s in the black box at the Kranzberg Arts Center.

 

Songs for Nobodies

through February 2

Max & Louie Productions

Kranzberg Arts Center

North Grand & Olive

maxandlouie.com/

 

The Thanksgiving Play

In a world that’s grown increasingly uptight, there’s little that’s as edgy-funny as universal offensiveness. That’s what the Rep Studio’s version of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play brings us. Amelia Acosta Powell, the Rep’s associate artistic director directs this story of How Not To Do It.

FastHorse, who is from the Sicangu Lakota Nation of Native Americans, loves Thanksgiving. But, she says, she’s really tired of how history is so often wrong, being written by the winners, and how strongly people cling to the errors despite information to the contrary. Her attempt to set things straight on the subject of Thanksgiving, rather than a this-is-what-really-happened line, is a comedy to remind us to think more about the real story of Thanksgiving, and, by inference, a lot of other things.

Thanksgiving plays were, and probably still are, a staple of childhood education in many places. Of necessity with kids, it’s boiled down to what (we think are) basic elements. The Thanksgiving Play sets us up with a high school drama teacher, Logan (Shayna Blass) trying to create a modern and more accurate version with her sort-of-significant-other Jaxton (Adam Flores), and a history teacher named Caden (Jonathan Spivey). Because she’s gotten a grant to help fund this, she’s also hired Alicia, a Native American actress to come in from Los Angeles (Ani Djirdjirian) and work with them so they can create a politically correct play.

Logan’s extreeeeeemly concerned about correct portrayals, hurt feelings, a higher level of consciousness – and keeping the school board happy. Being high-strung to begin with, this is all very stressful. Jaxton, who explains he’s a professional actor because he works at the local farmers market performing on the subject of recycling, is all in on this and the improv-style brainstorming Logan insists on. Caden, the history teacher and unpublished playwright, comes in with a written script that begins 4,000 years ago.

And then there’s Alicia. So Hollywood, so lovely, so un-woke – and so not Native American.

The fast-moving satire is punctuated by entre-acte bits depicting possible children’s plays about Thanksgiving and quotes from real teachers’ lesson plans and Pinterest boards. Reality, as usual, can be as funny as anything authors can create.

It’s a wonderful acting ensemble. As the sincere-but-fragile drama teacher, it seems Blass’ head may blow apart at times. Flores’ wide-eyed Jaxton follows his own logic down rabbit holes that dead end. Jonathan Spivey is less driven by correctness but more by his love of history and his perpetually thwarted efforts to see his own work performed – his thrill at hearing actors use his lines is touching.

Ani Djirdjirian, though, almost steals the show as the not-Native American whose looks let her audition for many so-called ethnic parts. (Logan hired her from her photograph.) The annoyance at this discovery lets us gradually discover Alicia isn’t quite as Betty Boop-y as she seems. When challenged on inauthentic casting, she says, having worked at a Disney park, “After all, Lumiere isn’t really a candlestick!” Alicia is just as over the top as Logan; Djirdjirian is utterly irresistible with the eye-rolls, the flouncing and the much-vaunted hair flip.

For those who disdain political correctness, there’s obvious delight here. But for those who understand it, we quickly see just how goofy extremes are. And that’s the point. In addition, we’d point out that theater is often at its funniest when it looks at itself. There’s considerable poking of fun there as well – where else do you hear a joke about dramaturgs?

Great fun, considerable laughter, and ninety minutes with no intermission.

 

The Thanksgiving Play

through February 9

Studio Theatre

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles

Is Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles a dream or a nightmare? Luis Alvarez’ play, directed by Rebecca Martinez, uses Euripides’ classic Greek tragedy as a base for a story about life in Los Angeles barrio (and has been adapted to being localized in New York and Chicago productions). It seems to have some hints of magical realism about it, opening with a ritualistic sort of dance.

Reality, though, immediately follows as we meet Tita (Alma Martinez), who is, among other things, a housekeeper, curandera (a folk healer), functional “auntie” and – a rather shocking word in the contemporary time frame in which this is set – slave. Tita gives us backstory on the household of Jason (Peter Mendoza), Medea (Cheryl Umana) and their son Acan (Cole Sanchez). The family came from Michoacan, Mexico, and crossed illegally. They’re not doing badly – Jason has a job working on apartment buildings, and Medea, to whom Tita has caught cuanderia skills, is a gifted seamstress, although working for very little money out of their apartment.

Medea is a loving mother and partner, although her health seems a little iffy, and we come to realize she’s fragile. She doesn’t want to leave her home, even to go out with Jason and Acan, doesn’t have any friends. Jason, on the other hand, is downright exuberant over the opportunities he’s finding in their new neighborhood and is eager to assimilate, to the point of encouraging Acan to call him Dad and not Papi. The outside world, though, presents itself to Medea first in the form of Josefina (Guadalis Del Carmen), who Tita has met. “Josey”, as she’s been re-named by the hipsters who are gentrifying things, vends her baked goods from a cart but she regards them with a realistic eye; she’d really like to charge them more for her pan dulce than she charges her paisanos who are regular customers.

Jason gets a couple of promotions, and his boss asks him to bring Medea to dinner. That won’t work, but the boss comes to their home, and we realize that the boss is a woman, Armida (Maggie Bofill). Moreover, it turns out that Jason has told bosslady that he and Medea aren’t actually married. It was sort of optional where they were, and we get more details on the circumstances of their departure from Mexico. Amida is the opposite of Medea. She’s shiny, slinky and driven – you can’t be modest and make it in America, she tells Medea, who’s traditional in dress and attitude. Amida has obviously impressed Jason. She turns out to be the monkey wrench we’ve been expecting in the works and the nightmare part begins.

Umana, as Medea, evidences the struggle that her character has with life in this strange place. When she agreed to come to the United States, she was rather a different person, but events have wrung her out. Playing Jason, Mendoza obviously loves Medea but wants more from the new life than she does, and is willing to do quite a bit to achieve success in caring for his family, or so he thinks for a while. The physical relationship between the actors shows the affection and the hesitation of each. Cole Sanchez’s Acan is right on the mark, a warm charmer who’s more than just a body showing off his parents’ individual clothing preferences for him. But it’s Tita, Alma Martinez, that draws me with her strength and her warmth. It’s a fine performance, and her backstory, I daresay, could make for another play.

Mariana Sanchez’ set turns out to be part of the unsettling final minutes of the play, and Maria-Cristina Fuste’s lighting smooths things throughout the show. Carolyn Mazuca takes on the job of designing a seamstress’ clothes and showing both modern and lovely traditional frocks that fascinate. Original music and sound design by David R Molina carry us along.

Plays like this, that originate in very old, traditional stories – Euripides, you know, didn’t come up with these characters on his own; these are from the stories of the Greek gods – don’t really need to be measured against the originals. There surely are similarities here, but this story sets its own standards. My only serious complaint is that the ending, unless you do have some idea of the original story, comes with no foreboding at all, leaving some audience in shock. And there’s nothing wrong with that, even if it’s not the classical tradition.

 

 

Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles

through February 2

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

 

Fully Committed

Have you noticed the sun’s setting around 4.30 these days? It’s getting colder. Everyone is getting ready for the holidays – or listening to other people complain about getting ready for the holidays. When is it going to snow, and have you forgotten that there seemed to be a hole in one of your boots?

Yes, it’s a discouraging time of year. Instead of thinking about misplaced gloves and hat hair, hie thyself to The New Jewish Theatre and into a seat for Fully Committed. In fact, you may want to buy a ticket online beforehand, because I suspect this lovely little folly will sell like hotcakes.

Fully Committed is a one-man, forty-person show about life at a hothothot New York restaurant. More specifically, it’s about a guy in the basement who answers the phone and takes, or doesn’t take, reservations. Most people never think about those folks until they want to go to the most happening place in town at the height of the dinner hour on Saturday night and find the restaurant is – wait for it – fully committed. (The chef-owner prefers that phrase to “booked up” or “an ice cube’s chance in helll”.)

It’s a wretched job, poorly paid, usually no fringe benefits, dealing with demanding customers and even more demanding bosses. Just the thing, then, for a struggling actor like Sam, juggling schedules with the other reservationist so he can do an audition at Lincoln Center, being nice to big shots, placating the irate, remembering what the current set of rules from the chef-owner is, wondering why the other reservationist hasn’t shown up...it’s just another day in the world of Zagat ratings and Bon Appetit photographers cooling their heels for several hours in the lounge.

Will Bonfiglio is Sam, and all the other characters in the show who phone in. Sam’s been at this a while, and he seems like he’s good at his job, good enough to go from pulling his hair out to being sweet and cheerful to the next caller, maybe Gwyneth Paltrow’s assistant calling with yet another adjustment to the dinner party she wants to have Saturday night, just the right table, the vegan tasting menu and she needs you do something about those lights, they’re sort of harsh.

Bonfiglio doesn’t break a sweat at the frequently breakneck pace of character switches, flying back and forth between voices and faces. He’s just plain terrific. And he’s terrifically funny.

Director Ellie Schwetye keeps things moving and a high clip, just what’s needed. David Blake’s set is almost perfect, the single problem being that it’s just too roomy. I’ve been in those basement rooms, and they’re crowded, cluttered and claustrophobic. Not Blake’s fault; he’s reduced the size of the stage considerably. But other than that, it feels so right, you expect the mop bucket to slosh when Sam picks it up.

A delightful 90 minutes or so of escape from the pressures of life.

 

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

website

A Life in the Theatre

Write what you know. Teachers have been saying that for...centuries? Decades, at least. It may be one reason there are lots of plays about plays, about actors, about authors. St. Louis Actors’ Studio brings us David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre, about two actors, one considerably more experienced than the other.

William Roth and Ryan Lawson-Maeske are our actors, playing, respectively Robert, the older and John, the relative newcomer. Most of the action takes place in their dressing room, which feels very right, a little shabby and make-do, courtesy of Patrick Huber, who also did the lights. They don’t know each other very well, but there is not much feeling of wanting to move it into a friendship or at least a work variation thereof. It’s more feeling each other out, egos playing games, a fair amount of bravado from Robert along with intermittent spouting of cliches, and John not rocking the boat.

But especially for Mamet, whose work (Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna and more) we’ve seen a lot of, there’s not much there there. Roth and Lawson-Maeske do good work with their material, but there’s little to make us care one way or another about these people. We never really get to know them, although some of the fast-change sequences are interesting on their own. Even the music and sound design, from director John Contini doing extra duty, is very well chosen.

But in the end, it’s not enough to overcome the script. This is relatively early Mamet, but not up to what he has shown himself to be capable of.

 

A Life in the Theatre

through December 22

St. Louis Actors’ Studio

The Gaslight Theatre

360 N. Boyle

http://www.gaslighttheater.net/

 

Pride & Prejudice

It is a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that young ones have to be dragged to the classics. I am happy to report that The Rep’s holiday offering of Pride & Prejudice is worth the effort, both for those familiar with the work and those who give the title a blank stare.

Director Hana S. Sharif has gone for approachable rather than reverent and, like all great works (Shakespeare set in the Twenties, anyone?), P&P can take a fair amount of creative interpretation. Here, Sharif ups the tempo and goes for the fun, a nice contrast to the imaginative, seemingly very formal set from Scott Bradley. The projections of Alex Basco Koch during scene changes bring things right into the 21^st Century.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Michael James Reed and Michelle Hand) have four daughters and because of the terms of the will by which Mr. Bennet inherited their home, when he dies, the survivors will be evicted. (This is in early 19th-Century England, you understand.) The necessity of finding husbands, and perhaps more importantly, suitable husbands, for the young women is heavy upon Mrs. Bennet’s mind. Mr. Bennet is seemingly less driven, because he enjoys his girls so much.

Novels were longer in those days – attention spans were longer and there were fewer amusements in those days before electric power – so it’s unsurprising that the plot is a little complex by modern standards. Nevertheless, Christopher Baker’s adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel does well by that. The main character is the second daughter, Elizabeth Bennet (Katie Kleiger), a rather spirited (by the very restrictive standards of the day) young woman who quickly takes a dislike to elder sister Jane (Rebecca Haden)’s new swain’s best friend, Mr. Darcy (Nick Rehberger). We, of course, can see the figurative stardust falling from the sky as they meet, but it’s in a delayed-release capsule. Younger sister Lydia (Sydney Leiser) is swept away by a military company that’s barracked nearby, and eventually with one of their number, a Mr. Wickham (Stephen Michael Spencer), who does a mysteriously fast exit when the aforementioned Mr. Darcy appears. There’s also the heir to the house, Mr. Colllins (Blake Segal), who comes wife-shopping as an act of charity so that he can get a wife and perhaps save one of the girls’ situations there. It would be an act of desperation on any of the girls’ parts; Collins, a Church of England priest, is the very picture of self-satisfaction, a social snob up-sucking to his richest parishioner, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Lizan Mitchell).

Original music for the show has been composed by Nathan A. Roberts and Charles Coes, with choreography from Ron Todorowsky. The latter is certainly a take on the dance of the time, while the music is often more contemporary, a nice and unexpected update.

There’s excellent ensemble work from all, including some superb adlibbing from Michelle Hand as a sofa collapsed under her during opening night’s first act. Watching Kleiger and Rehberger’s verbal fencing is a pleasure, and if we are going for broader work than Austin’s always admirable sense of irony, we can revel in Segal’s Collins and his revered patroness, Lizan Mitchel.

A good time is had by all. Except, perhaps, by that sofa – which had recovered by the second act, quick work by the professionals backstage. A number of young, perhaps first-time, theater-goers in attendance seemed to have had a good time as well. May their number increase.

 

Pride & Prejudice

through December 29

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

Disenchanted!

How on earth can anyone expect me, of all people, to resist a show with a number called “All I Wanna Do Is Eat”? Stray Dog Theatre’s holiday offering, Disenchanted!, brings us plenty of familiar famous fantasy women. It’s totally off-kilter, to the point where more than one audience member found herself wondering what it would have been like if those fairy tales had been written by the Sisters Grimm.

And that’s the fun of it. It’s not just those bad Grimm boys that take a few whacks here, the Great Mouse of Anaheim gets a fair share of the annoyance, too. “These are not your grandmother’s princesses,” notes the program. Boy, are they right.

Snow White is Kelly Slawson, one of several actors making their Stray Dog debuts. Her background is opera, but it’s clear that she’s got the chops to handle musical comedy. Cinderella’s Sarah Gene Dowling, having a whale of a good time, and the third of the trio that are our primary guides to this zaniness is Sleeping Beauty, Dawn Schmidt. They introduce us to seven other characters we’ve heard of before, even if we don’t know their names, like The Princess Who Kissed the Frog (Selena Steed) and Princess Badroulbadour (Eleanor Humphrey), whose named got changed to Jasmine by the Great Mouse.

The smaller roles gave some fine moments, too. I would like to have heard more from Steed, for instance. Erika Cockerham’s Rapunzel was quite a piece of work, and Pocahontas, courtesy of Gitana Mims, a delight. The Little Mermaid, from Stephanie Merritt, seemed straight from Texas, a great twist – made me think of Molly Ivins, no small compliment.

Even the band, I finally realized, was entirely women. Good stuff and a tip of the black felt hat with ears to SDT and director Justin Been.

Maybe not quite the greatest script, but very funny, quite R-rated, a good contrast to the holly and eggnog-sweet traditional productions this time of year.

 

Disenchanted!

Through December 21

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

straydogtheatre.org

Big News

Big news: The Rep is extending the run of "Feeding Beatrice an extra week! Tickets now available through Sunday, November 24 matinee. Tickets available at repstl.org or by calling the box office at 314-9680-5925.

The Women of Lockerbie

There is easy theatre – big happy musicals, carefully drawn comedies, those shows people hear about and decide to go see at some large, well-known place with numerous parking spaces.

And then there’s the other kind. The longer I go to theatre, the more I find myself looking forward to plays I haven’t ever seen. Those are nearly always in smaller venues. At least once a year, Google Maps gets me to a new, usually non-traditional place and group. More often than not, these are rewarding experiences.

Right now, for those who are ready for something new, there’s an absolutely must-see show. From SATE Ensemble Theatre at the end of their current “Season of Ritual”, we have The Women of Lockerbie. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, in 1988, a Pan Am flight traveling from London to New York was blown up in mid-air. All 259 on board died, and so did eleven people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, where the remains of the plane fell to earth.

The play is, quite simply, the most accurate, complete picture of grief I’ve ever seen onstage. I know grief. Grief is a friend, and a colleague, of mine. I was an oncology nurse for many years. I’ve studied it, read about it, written papers on it. I still grieve for my beloved husband seven years later. By coincidence, that happens to be the amount of time between the crash and when this play takes place.

Terrible sadness, yes, of course. And yet, and yet...it’s beautiful. It’s emotionally moving, it’s exceptionally well-acted, and it makes an audience appreciate what they are seeing.

A New Jersey couple, Maddy Livingston (Margeau Baue Steinau) and her husband Bill (David Wassilak) have come to Lockerbie for an anniversary service, their first visit after the death of their son on the plann. Maddie roams the hills above the town, looking for something of her son, his spirit, his bones, because he must be there. Bill tells Olive Allison (Leslie Wobbe), a local woman, that his wife is still deep in her grief, crying near-constantly and inconsolable. He doesn’t know how to help her move on. She is, we can see, almost a wild animal.

Allison is accompanied by three women of the town (Sarajane Alverson, Kim Furlow and Jennifer Theby-Quinn) who add to our information. Director Pamela Reckamp talks about the Greek structure of the play and one certainly can acknowledge the three as, in effect, a Greek chorus. But I was reminded of the witches in Macbeth, talking among themselves to our benefit, not malevolent, but with a higher understanding of events than, say, the Livingstons. (It’s a little disconcerting, though, to hear the women singing music that rather sounds like Catholic mass in the very Presbyterian/Church of Scotland home country of John Knox.)

There’s a time crunch working here. George Jones, a State Department representative from the United States has come to oversee the destruction of the personal belongings of the victims. “They’re contaminated. They have jet fuel and blood and…other things on them. They have to be destroyed. That’s the law.” Jones (Michael Cassidy Flynn) is almost frantic, chasing around after the villagers as he hitches up his pants, trying to get them to give up their proposal to wash the items and return them to the victims’ families. Hattie (Teresa Doggett), a local the Americans have hired to clean the warehouse where all this is kept, has a gift for dumb-like-a-fox when dealing with Jones. She makes a fine addition to the Scottish-Greek chorus when push comes to shoving Jones.

Wassilak’s performance is stunning, and Steinau is right there with him. In addition, the seemingly quiet and controlled Wobbe turns in some fine work. Indeed, the whole ensemble is beautifully cast by director Pamela Reckamp, who gives us a fine evening of very serious theatre.

There is nothing wrong with crying. It’s a show that evokes tears, for the characters and for our own losses. Our Anglo Saxon reserve, whether genetic or learned, shouldn’t keep us from honest emotion, and goodness knows plenty of the audience had wet cheeks after the house lights came up. Catharsis is something those old Greek dramatists understood through and through. We probably need it more these days.

A remarkable, stunning show. Go.

 

The Women of Lockerbie

through November 23

SATE Ensemble Theatre

The Chapel

6238 Alexander Drive

slightlyoff.org

Feeding Beatrice

Our Halloween present from the Rep arrived a day late. Feeding Beatrice opened November 1 in the Studio Theatre, giving us a world premiere from Kirsten Greenidge, the playwright whose work Milk Like Sugar was done by the Black Rep earlier this year. It’s a self-described Gothic tale, although it’s surely the only one of that genre that opens with boffing in the bathtub.

June and Lurie Walker have just bought a large, elderly house ripe for rehab. It’s in a nice neighborhood in a good school district. They’ve had to work hard to accumulate the money for the house. June’s beyond eager to get the place shipshape because they want to make sure the neighbors understand they’re the right sort of people – and because there’s a social worker coming to assess them for adopting a child. Lurie is the financial realist and thinks that they don’t need, for instance, new towels for a bathroom that visitors aren’t apt to visit. The floor, however, in this self-same bathroom with the (aforementioned) large tub, which they’ve moved, does need some repair for broken tiles. Maybe his brother, who’s a plumber, can help with that when he comes to work on the tub’s pipes. But for now, what’s that they’re finding under the loose tiles?

The Walkers are black. She’s a bank manager, formerly a dance teacher, and he works at a television station, doing simultaneous closed caption writing. They’re determined to do better than their hard-working parents and are conscious that there aren’t very many African-Americans in the suburb to which they’ve moved. So when there’s a knock at the door and a young girl who says she’s a neighbor has come to visit, they’re happy to see her. That’s Beatrice, who’s a tad strange, immediately asking for some milk and then talking about watching American Bandstand and how she thinks Dick Clark is dreamy. Somehow, June becomes almost captivated by her. Lurie? A skeptic, a real skeptic. That’s just the beginning of what happens when a white teenager from the Sixties comes into a black household in the right now.

Director Daniel Bryant is making his debut at the Rep, and so is all his cast. Nathan James is Lurie-the-realist, strong and nearly unflappable, a fine performance. June is played by Lorene Chesley, and it’s a role that calls for more than it seems to early in the play; Chesley nails it perfectly. Allison Winn’s Beatrice is nails-on-a-blackboard creepy, just what the playwright must have dreamed of And Lurie’s brother Leroy is Ronald Emile, clearly a charmer.

The tech work here is terrific and plays a major part in the pleasures of the evening. Lawrence E. Moten III’s two level set, Jason Lynch’s lights and David Kelepha Samba’s sound all are remarkable and fit perfectly. Heather Beal’s choreography, from tango to tap, also is a necessity and it’s impossible not to enjoy it.

It’s a fascinating and culturally very relevant story, weakened only a little by a script that might use a little judicious tightening. But overall, great fun, some social nudging, perfect for the early dusk of November.

 

Feeding Beatrice

through November 17

Repertory Theatre St. Louis

Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts

130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves

repstl.org

The Who's Tommy

I’m not sure just how it was that I never saw The Who’s Tommy until Stray Dog Theatre’s current production. So I came in as a neophyte, especially since I really wasn’t a fan of The Who back in the day. The show is a fantasy that lends itself to lots of variations and interpretations.

In fact, the official versions of it have dissimilarities, from the original double album to the film. the movie and even the earliest productions of it as a live rock opera. So the flexibility is part of the tradition. This is Stray Dog’s second production of it; the earlier one in 2011 was steampunk Goth in style.

There’s a great deal to be said for director Justin Been’s current version, starting with the scenic design of Josh Smith, modern and non-representative, all in white and tones of gray. All the better to show off Tyler Duenow’s lighting, which is quite remarkable, sometimes perfectly psychedelic and other times putting to great use color and smoke, and Been’s own projection design. Music director and keyboardist Jennifer Buchheit and the band are center stage, perfectly appropriate. I send a nod out to the appearance of a French horn in the mix. Its mellowness adds just the right touch to at least one number, and it turns out that in an earlier version, there’s actually a song about a character’s French horn.

It’s early in World War II in England. A young couple fall in love and marry. Captain Walker (Phil Leveling) goes off to war, leaving his bride (Kelly Howe, in her SDT debut) alone and pregnant. Before the child is born, she is told her husband is missing and presumed dead. After the war ends, she’s rebuilding her life with her son Tommy, and being wooed by another man. But her husband is alive and returns to their home to find her in the other man’s arms. A fight ensues in front of the little boy, escalates unexpectedly and the husband kills the boyfriend. “Don’t tell what happened,” they instruct the child, but the husband is arrested, tried and found not guilty. It’s around this time that they realize that the child – who presumably has been developing normally until then – seems to be blind, deaf and mute. They repeatedly have him assessed by various doctors, clinics and, um, alternative therapies, as we’d term them today.

Somewhere in the years of this, while in the care of his none-too-gentle cousin Kevin (Tristan Davis) and his pals at a youth club, Tommy ends up at a pinball machine. For those of us who have had “Pinball Wizard” as an ear worm ever since they started to read about the show – this is when It All Happens. It turns out he’s a whiz at pinball, indeed, a, uh, wizard. (Nobody seems to point out that this means he actually isn’t blind, apparently.) And this changes his life, he becomes a celebrity, a cult figure. At some point, his mother breaks a mirror at their home in her frustration over his still-automaton-like behavior and KA-POW!, he’s cured. This only increases his fame. He leaves home for an independent life. What he does with the fame, what he learns about himself and how he reconciles the two are the conclusion of the show.

Tommy is played by three actors as he ages. The adult Tommy, who also acts as a narrator is Kevin Corpuz, doing a bangup job. The pre-school Tommy is Alora Marguerite Walsby. Alora is, to be sure, adorable, but also manages to keep the expressionless, staring-straight-ahead-face so important to the role. Leo Taghert plays Tommy around age 10, and does a fine job, plus he sounds great. Howe and Leveling hold up their end of things well, and several of the supporting players, like Davis’ skeezy Kevin and Cory Frank as creepy Uncle Ernie stand out.

Most of the color in the show comes from the aforementioned lights and Eileen Engel’s costumes, so it’s no surprise that the pinball machine is mostly glass with a white frame and little fairy lights inside. But it’s difficult to recognize unless one is familiar with the story – or at least that song – and it’s often hidden in a huddle of actors. A few audience members I overheard were confused about the whole thing and couldn’t identify the machine onstage, regardless of how central to the story it is.

There’s no credit given for sound design; Jane Wilson is the audio engineer. One was not blasted out of one’s pew by the sound levels, which was very appreciated. But as the evening went on the chorus’ singing was rather blurred, which may have added to the pinball confusion; it makes the story’s details much harder to grasp. Other than that, the sound was far more than satisfactory.

A very different Tommy, certainly. If a very different sort of pinball machine than those some of us remember is the only thing to kvetch about, on the whole, it’s a very positive experience.

 

The Who’s Tommy

through October 26

Stray Dog Theatre

2336 Tennessee Ave.

314-865-1995

www.straydogtheatre.org

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Even the worst of people are not totally useless, as the wag said, they can always serve as a bad example. It’s true of families, as well, n.b., Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs.

Simon’s quasi-autobiographical play is the story of the adolescent Eugene Jerome and his life in Brooklyn in the time just before America entered World War II. Simon has acknowledged that the play is far sunnier than his home life as a youth, but that he deliberately chose to build on what pleasant moments he recalled. That’s fortunate for us because the large household of the extended Jerome family gives us lots of story and plenty of laughs in its current production at the New Jewish Theatre.

The time frame is late in the Depression, and the stress of finances in the blue-collar Jeromes is a key theme in the story. Eugene, or “Euge”, as he’s often called (Jacob Flekier), is about to turn 15, in the throes of typical hormonal storm, and wants to be a New York Yankee or a writer. He’s our narrator through all this, breaking the fourth wall with ease. He shares a bedroom with his older brother Stanley (Spencer Kruse) because his mother’s widowed sister Blanche (Laurie McConnell) and her two daughters have had to move in with the family. Mom Kate (Jane Paradise) runs the house on a shrinking budget and dad Jack (Chuck Brinkley), a garment cutter who works a second job, are stretched thin, both financially and emotionally. The other members of this simmering pot of a household are Laurie (Lydia Mae Foss) and Nora (Summer Baer), Blanche’s daughters, who are, respectively, diagnosed with a heart condition and a fledgling dancer. Everybody has a problem.

Director Alan Knoll gives us a vigorously paced show, things calming down only occasionally as the Jerome house settles in for the night. Flekier’s a good, only slightly gawky adolescent, and the interplay between the brothers is first-rate. Paradise’s strong mother almost never reveals at how close she is to her real wit’s end. As the father, Brinkley is a tired rock of a guy. Widowed sister McConnell tries hard to be strong, but watch her closely to see how fragile she really is.

Pay attention, too, to how much set there is in this black box. Margery and Peter Spack have packed almost an entire house, including two bedrooms with two beds each, into it. It works very well, which means that Michael Sullivan’s lighting design has to be very complex; it’s carried off well.

This story, in other hands, could have been a serious drama. But not with Simon, and we can all relax and have a good time.

 

Brighton Beach Memoirs

through October 27

The New Jewish Theatre

Marvin & Harlene Wool Studio Theatre

Arts & Education Building

Jewish Community Center

2 Millstone Campus Drive

website

 

Equivocation

A fast tip of the cap to West End Players Guild’s Equivocation, which I was able to see only very close to the end of the run – at this writing, there’s one more show, the afternoon of October 6.

It’s a work of speculation, based on what might have happened had Robert Cecil (the second of that name who served the British throne, and progenitor of the prime minister also of the same name), chief minister to King James I, commissioned a play based on Guy Fawkes and the unsuccessful Gunpowder Plot from William “Shagspeare” of the Globe Theatre. It’s not a short play, running close to three hours. But it keeps the audience interested, complicated enough to hold attention and moving quickly enough that the time passes nicely.

Tom Kopp directed the Bill Cain play, and has pulled together a well-tuned group of players, with four of the six playing multiple characters. Shag, as the playwright we’re watching is known, is Roger Erb, easy and comfortable with the weight of such a role. I enjoyed Reginald Pierre as the more-or-less head of the Globe members and as the Jesuit provincial superior who may or may have not been in on the plot. Appearing as Robert Cecil and Nate, another member of the company was John Wolbers, doing fine work.

George Shea gives us a very useful set that comes in quite handy in the second act, and Susan Kopp’s sound design and original music were pleasing.

Hurry – Sunday, tomorrow, curtain is 2 p.m. I’m sorry I couldn’t get there sooner to urge more people to come.

 

Equivocation

through October 6

West End Players Guild

http://westendplayers.org/

Union Avenue Christian Church

(enter from Enright Avenue)