CRT’s "Abraham Lincolns Big Gay Dance Party" entertaining education
STORRS — Was Abraham Lincoln a homosexual? That question, supported by historical fact, is one part of the premise of the inquisitive, entertaining, and educational musical play “Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party,” running through Sunday, Nov. 8 at the intimate studio theatre at the University of Connecticut.
What better time to show this political farcical play than during election season?
The play, which starts out as a Christmas pageant in an elementary school in the “fly-over country” of Illinois has a third grader playing Lincoln saying that Lincoln and a merchant, Joshua Speed, were lovers, and that’s okay.
From there the teacher, Harmony, played by Alison Barton, is fired from her job and a trial that is hyped as “The Trial of the Century” commences.
The play, thoughtfully directed by Kristen Wold, is more of an allegory, engaging the audience to vote on whose perspective to view the play from first, the defendant’s, the prosecutor’s, or the reporter’s.
The sets, designed by Jennifer Corcoran, are as clever as can be, with bright, cartoon colors, like folded origami, which are moved about on wheels by the actors to show the courtroom, a restaurant, and a cornfield.
The dialog is smart, sharp, and delivered with conviction, and, as the title implies, there’s plenty of dancing, by the energetic ensemble, with fine choreography by Christine Gambardella, and excellent dancing, particularly by Rachel Leigh Rosado as the Cuban exile Esmerelda.
There’s some pretty graphic sexual dialog and actions, making this show for adults only.
Songs from Brooks and Dunn to Crosby Stills Nash and Young, disco numbers, movie songs such as “Footloose,” and the television theme song to “The Andy Griffith Show,” are woven throughout the show, providing a lift to sometimes talk heavy dialog, with sound design by Jack Nardi.
Showing the same plot from three different perspectives, which this play does, becomes confusing at times. A gunshot is heard over the phone by the Republican defense attorney who wants to be the first black governor of Illinois, Regina, play by Tiffany Vinters.
But it is hard to connect the dots when it is told from the perspective of Tom, the older prosecutor, an arch-conservative Republican who is also running for governor, played by Tom Foran, who evidently shot the gun.
In fact, I’m not really sure how the trial turns out except that what really is on trial here, as one of the characters says at the end, is the United States versus themselves.
Noah Weintraub is convincing as the famous New York Times Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, a gay man bent on destroying Tom’s career.
Also fine is Harrison Greene as the smarmy political operator who is hell-bent on manipulating everyone in his path for political gain.
Barton is excellent too as the wide-eyed, devoted teacher, Harmony, and the older mom hobbling ably with a cane.
Quotes from Lincoln, including his statement that “Those who deny freedom to others do not deserve it themselves,” and debates about the meaning of the word liberty, are laced throughout this challenging show.
It presented with all the energy, commitment, and thoughtfulness that I have come to expect from UConn’s theater department.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIG GAY DANCE PARTY
3 Stars
Theater: Connecticut Repertory Theatre
Location: Studio Theater, 802 Bolton Rd., Storrs
Production: Written by Aaron Loeb. Directed by Kristin Wold. Scenic design by Jennifer Corcoran. Costume design by Cassandra Beaver. Lighting design by Matthew Daurio. Sound design by Jack Nardi. Choreography by Christine Gambardella. Music consultant Ken Clark. Technical direction by Alez Colodner. Production stage manager Carmen Torres.
Running time: 2 ½ hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. through Nov. 8.
Tickets: General admission $11 to $29. Call 860-486-4266 or visit their website at www.crt.uconn.edu.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Alison Barton … Mom, Harmony, Abe
Scott Cooke … Jerry, Bailiff, Abe
Tom Foran … Tom, Walter, Abe
Harrison Greene … Lloyd, Timmy, Abe
Seth Koproski … Sparky, Principal, Abe
Sarah Murdoch … Tina, Violet, Jefferson, Abe
Rachel Leigh Rosado … Esmerelda, Abe
Tiffany Vinters … Regina, Washington, Abe
Noah Weintraub … Anton, Judge, Abe
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Goodspeed’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” a gaggle of giggles
EAST HADDAM — “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at the Goodspeed, is a delightfully hysterical, witty and pun-filled night of entertainment that offers “something for everyone — it’s comedy tonight.”
Set in ancient Rome, a savvy slave, Pseudolus, (Adam Heller) promises his young master, Hero, (Sam Pinkleton) that he will hook Hero up with his courtesan love, Philia, (Emily Thompson) in exchange for his freedom.
Comedy is all about timing and good casting, and these actors have it all.
Complications ensue when it is learned that Philia has been sold to Capt. Miles Gloriosus (Nat Chandler) and the Philia mistakes Hero’s father, Senex (David Wohl) for the Captain.
The head slave of the household, Hysterium (John Scherer) does his best to go along with the hoax, eventually pretending to be the virgin Philia. Scherer has a face that is a study in comic expressions that changes on a dime. Scherer and Heller are a great team and work together seamlessly.
Each actor is perfectly cast for his or her role, and they all clearly are having a terrific time, expending an enormous amount of energy, with spot on comic timing. Heller’s quick thinking and talking Pseudolus leads the proceedings and is the mayor of all good times.
From the get-go Pseudolus speaks directly to the audience, and this works well to get everyone along for the bumpy, farcical musical.
Wohl, who looks like a younger W.C. Fields, is adorable with a sweet lisp as the pudgy father Senex, whose mind is willing to fool around with the lovely Philia, but whose flesh isn’t quite up to the task.
His frustrated and fanatical wife, Domina, played by Mary Gutzi, is a powerhouse of determination, with good reason to be suspicious of her husband.
The opening number, “Comedy Tonight” with all songs and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is the catchiest tune in the show that features actors as living cartoons which is a good thing, on the way to the forum.
Directed and choreographed by Ted Pappas, this show picks up speed as it goes, particularly in the second act when the actors all start running and slamming doors, chasing each other down, and having a grand time.
Nat Chandler is sufficiently self-impressed as the Captain, while Ron Wisniski who plays the brothel-owner, Marcus Lycus has a rubber face of expressions and is amusingly high-strung.
The men-folk in the audience will love the gorgeous courtesans dressed in the tiniest of bikinis, with costume design by Martha Bromelmeier, while the men’s costumes, which were mostly wide-striped pajamas, covered imperfections nicely, but look sloppy and aren’t up to the usual Goodspeed standard.
Mark Baker as Erronious, who lives in one of the three houses on the stage, returns from a voyage around the world trying to find his children who were stolen by pirates. This plot point, that seems totally unrelated, helps tie up the story in a neat deus ex machina at the end.
Part slapstick, part farce, with some cornball humor thrown in, plus some Romeo and Juliet magic potions that go awry, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” is a goofy ride that tickles all kinds of funny-bones.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
3 Stars
Location: Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam
Production: Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Directed and choreographed by Ted Pappas. Musical direction by Michael O’Flaherty. Scenic design by James Noone. Costume design by Martha Bromelmeier. Lighting design by Kirk Bookman. Sound by Jay Hilton.
Running time: 2 hours, with one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (select performances at 2 p.m.); Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.; and Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., with Sunday evening performance at 6:30 p.m. through Nov. 29. Call for Thanksgiving week schedule.
Tickets: $27.50 — $69.50. Call the box office at 860-873-8668 or visit their Web site at www.goodspeed.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Adam Heller … Pseudolus
Sam Pinkleton … Hero
Emily Thompson … Philia
David Wohl … Senex
Mary Gutzi … Domina
John Scherer … Hysterium
Ron Wisniski … Marcus Lycus
Stephanie Lynn Nelson … Tintinabula
Semhar Ghebremichael … Panecea
Abby O’Brien, Krista Saab … Geminae
Laura Keller … Gymnasia
Mark Baker …Erronius
Nat Chanderler … Miles Gloriosus
EAST HADDAM — “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at the Goodspeed, is a delightfully hysterical, witty and pun-filled night of entertainment that offers “something for everyone — it’s comedy tonight.”
Set in ancient Rome, a savvy slave, Pseudolus, (Adam Heller) promises his young master, Hero, (Sam Pinkleton) that he will hook Hero up with his courtesan love, Philia, (Emily Thompson) in exchange for his freedom.
Comedy is all about timing and good casting, and these actors have it all.
Complications ensue when it is learned that Philia has been sold to Capt. Miles Gloriosus (Nat Chandler) and the Philia mistakes Hero’s father, Senex (David Wohl) for the Captain.
The head slave of the household, Hysterium (John Scherer) does his best to go along with the hoax, eventually pretending to be the virgin Philia. Scherer has a face that is a study in comic expressions that changes on a dime. Scherer and Heller are a great team and work together seamlessly.
Each actor is perfectly cast for his or her role, and they all clearly are having a terrific time, expending an enormous amount of energy, with spot on comic timing. Heller’s quick thinking and talking Pseudolus leads the proceedings and is the mayor of all good times.
From the get-go Pseudolus speaks directly to the audience, and this works well to get everyone along for the bumpy, farcical musical.
Wohl, who looks like a younger W.C. Fields, is adorable with a sweet lisp as the pudgy father Senex, whose mind is willing to fool around with the lovely Philia, but whose flesh isn’t quite up to the task.
His frustrated and fanatical wife, Domina, played by Mary Gutzi, is a powerhouse of determination, with good reason to be suspicious of her husband.
The opening number, “Comedy Tonight” with all songs and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is the catchiest tune in the show that features actors as living cartoons which is a good thing, on the way to the forum.
Directed and choreographed by Ted Pappas, this show picks up speed as it goes, particularly in the second act when the actors all start running and slamming doors, chasing each other down, and having a grand time.
Nat Chandler is sufficiently self-impressed as the Captain, while Ron Wisniski who plays the brothel-owner, Marcus Lycus has a rubber face of expressions and is amusingly high-strung.
The men-folk in the audience will love the gorgeous courtesans dressed in the tiniest of bikinis, with costume design by Martha Bromelmeier, while the men’s costumes, which were mostly wide-striped pajamas, covered imperfections nicely, but look sloppy and aren’t up to the usual Goodspeed standard.
Mark Baker as Erronious, who lives in one of the three houses on the stage, returns from a voyage around the world trying to find his children who were stolen by pirates. This plot point, that seems totally unrelated, helps tie up the story in a neat deus ex machina at the end.
Part slapstick, part farce, with some cornball humor thrown in, plus some Romeo and Juliet magic potions that go awry, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” is a goofy ride that tickles all kinds of funny-bones.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM
3 Stars
Location: Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam
Production: Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Directed and choreographed by Ted Pappas. Musical direction by Michael O’Flaherty. Scenic design by James Noone. Costume design by Martha Bromelmeier. Lighting design by Kirk Bookman. Sound by Jay Hilton.
Running time: 2 hours, with one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (select performances at 2 p.m.); Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.; and Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., with Sunday evening performance at 6:30 p.m. through Nov. 29. Call for Thanksgiving week schedule.
Tickets: $27.50 — $69.50. Call the box office at 860-873-8668 or visit their Web site at www.goodspeed.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Adam Heller … Pseudolus
Sam Pinkleton … Hero
Emily Thompson … Philia
David Wohl … Senex
Mary Gutzi … Domina
John Scherer … Hysterium
Ron Wisniski … Marcus Lycus
Stephanie Lynn Nelson … Tintinabula
Semhar Ghebremichael … Panecea
Abby O’Brien, Krista Saab … Geminae
Laura Keller … Gymnasia
Mark Baker …Erronius
Nat Chanderler … Miles Gloriosus
Monday, October 19, 2009
Suffield Players production of “The Foreigner” is dark humor at it’s best
SUFFIELD — Hidden in the hills of Suffield is a community theater that consistently produces off beat dark comedies time and time again.
“The Foreigner” written by Larry Shue, continues their tradition of thoughtful, dark farcical plays, here with a little slapstick thrown in for good measure.
The play is set in a rundown fishing resort in Georgia. A British sergeant, Froggy LeSueur, played by Mark Proulx, with a pronounced Australian accent, brings his English friend, Charlie Baker, with him to the lodge.
Baker, played by Dale T. Facey, has a morbid fear of meeting and speaking with new people, so LeSueur concocts a story that Charlie is from an exotic country and knows no English.
Charlie’s wife, who has cheated on him extensively, is in a hospital back in England and has six months to live. Still she insisted Charlie go with LeSueur to the U.S., mostly because she doesn’t like him very much. Charlie tells this all matter-of-factly, saying he understands because he has no personality and is boring.
In comes the resort owner, the bawdy, loud, jovial Betty Meeks, played with exuberance by Cynthia Lee Andersen, followed by former debutant and reluctant fiancée Catherine Simms (Brianna Stronk) and her beau, the smarmy Reverend David Marshall Lee. The reverend is played with creepy dark intent by Christopher Berrien, who takes literally the saying, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”
Catherine has a dim-witted but good-hearted brother, Ellard Simms, played with child-like enthusiasm by Brian Rucci, whom the conniving reverend is trying to cheat out of his share of the $1 million family inheritance.
Good-old-boy Owen Musser, played by James L. Frank-Saraceni, is the straight-forward mean old biggot and Ku Klux Klan member who is working in cahoots with the reverend to condemn Meek’s resort in order to buy it on the cheap and make it their Klan headquarters.
Facey is great as Baker, who goes from a terrified, timid bore, to a creative, witty, and brave hero in the course of the play that has some really surprisingly scary parts and some unexpected twists and turns.
While all the actors do a terrific job with their roles, Frank-Saraceni’s Owen is the most authentic redneck of the bunch. He reacts more than acts, and his responses, particularly when he is forced to try to pronounce a foreign, albeit made up, language, is sharp and real.
The first act is a bit long in exposition and talking heads, and as tightly directed as it is by Robert Lunde, it drags on and isn’t that funny. But the second act is the payoff for hanging in there, with twists and turns and witty situations, all orchestrated by Charlie Baker.
The set by Lunde and Konrad Rogowski is meticulously detailed right down to the fishing tackle and the tacky singing fish on the wall that they turn on once during a set change, which is a nice touch.
Shue sadly died in a commuter plane crash in 1985 at 39 at the beginning of what would surely have been a stellar career, and it’s a shame to think of all the plays he could have created had he lived.
Still, the Suffield Players’ production of Shue’s “The Foreigner” is a intelligent, funny black comedy and a great night out.
THE FOREIGNER
3 Stars
Location: Mapleton Hall, 1305 Mapleton Ave. Suffield.
Production: Written by Larry Shue. Directed by Robert Lunde. Stage manager Karen Balaska. Assistant stage manager Bob Williams. Backstage crew Beth Moriarty. Technical director and lighting design by Jerry Zalewski. Production manager Konrad Rogowski. Special costume design and constructin by Bev Sikes. Set design by Lunde and Rogowski. Sound design by Joe Soucy.
Running time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermissions.
Show Times: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. through Oct. 24.
Tickets: $17, $15 for seniors and students. Call 1-800-289-6148 of visit their website at www.suffieldplayers.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Mark Proulx … Staff Sgt. Froggy LeSueur
Dale T. Facey … Charlie Baker
Cynthia Lee Andersen … Betty Meeks
Christopher Berrien … Rev. David Marshall Lee
Brianna Stronk … Catherine Simms
James L. Frank-Saraceni … Owen Musser
Brian Rucci … Ellard Simms
Gwen Moriarty, Sadie Moriarty … Klansmen
SUFFIELD — Hidden in the hills of Suffield is a community theater that consistently produces off beat dark comedies time and time again.
“The Foreigner” written by Larry Shue, continues their tradition of thoughtful, dark farcical plays, here with a little slapstick thrown in for good measure.
The play is set in a rundown fishing resort in Georgia. A British sergeant, Froggy LeSueur, played by Mark Proulx, with a pronounced Australian accent, brings his English friend, Charlie Baker, with him to the lodge.
Baker, played by Dale T. Facey, has a morbid fear of meeting and speaking with new people, so LeSueur concocts a story that Charlie is from an exotic country and knows no English.
Charlie’s wife, who has cheated on him extensively, is in a hospital back in England and has six months to live. Still she insisted Charlie go with LeSueur to the U.S., mostly because she doesn’t like him very much. Charlie tells this all matter-of-factly, saying he understands because he has no personality and is boring.
In comes the resort owner, the bawdy, loud, jovial Betty Meeks, played with exuberance by Cynthia Lee Andersen, followed by former debutant and reluctant fiancée Catherine Simms (Brianna Stronk) and her beau, the smarmy Reverend David Marshall Lee. The reverend is played with creepy dark intent by Christopher Berrien, who takes literally the saying, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”
Catherine has a dim-witted but good-hearted brother, Ellard Simms, played with child-like enthusiasm by Brian Rucci, whom the conniving reverend is trying to cheat out of his share of the $1 million family inheritance.
Good-old-boy Owen Musser, played by James L. Frank-Saraceni, is the straight-forward mean old biggot and Ku Klux Klan member who is working in cahoots with the reverend to condemn Meek’s resort in order to buy it on the cheap and make it their Klan headquarters.
Facey is great as Baker, who goes from a terrified, timid bore, to a creative, witty, and brave hero in the course of the play that has some really surprisingly scary parts and some unexpected twists and turns.
While all the actors do a terrific job with their roles, Frank-Saraceni’s Owen is the most authentic redneck of the bunch. He reacts more than acts, and his responses, particularly when he is forced to try to pronounce a foreign, albeit made up, language, is sharp and real.
The first act is a bit long in exposition and talking heads, and as tightly directed as it is by Robert Lunde, it drags on and isn’t that funny. But the second act is the payoff for hanging in there, with twists and turns and witty situations, all orchestrated by Charlie Baker.
The set by Lunde and Konrad Rogowski is meticulously detailed right down to the fishing tackle and the tacky singing fish on the wall that they turn on once during a set change, which is a nice touch.
Shue sadly died in a commuter plane crash in 1985 at 39 at the beginning of what would surely have been a stellar career, and it’s a shame to think of all the plays he could have created had he lived.
Still, the Suffield Players’ production of Shue’s “The Foreigner” is a intelligent, funny black comedy and a great night out.
THE FOREIGNER
3 Stars
Location: Mapleton Hall, 1305 Mapleton Ave. Suffield.
Production: Written by Larry Shue. Directed by Robert Lunde. Stage manager Karen Balaska. Assistant stage manager Bob Williams. Backstage crew Beth Moriarty. Technical director and lighting design by Jerry Zalewski. Production manager Konrad Rogowski. Special costume design and constructin by Bev Sikes. Set design by Lunde and Rogowski. Sound design by Joe Soucy.
Running time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermissions.
Show Times: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. through Oct. 24.
Tickets: $17, $15 for seniors and students. Call 1-800-289-6148 of visit their website at www.suffieldplayers.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Mark Proulx … Staff Sgt. Froggy LeSueur
Dale T. Facey … Charlie Baker
Cynthia Lee Andersen … Betty Meeks
Christopher Berrien … Rev. David Marshall Lee
Brianna Stronk … Catherine Simms
James L. Frank-Saraceni … Owen Musser
Brian Rucci … Ellard Simms
Gwen Moriarty, Sadie Moriarty … Klansmen
Near perfect production of dated “The Fantasticks” at Long Wharf
NEW HAVEN — Here’s a conundrum for you. The Long Wharf Theatre’s nearly perfect production of “The Fantasticks” is still about an allegorical show that I don’t like.
I’m surprised that I had never seen a show that is a staple of the regional and community theater scene, to say nothing of its fame as the longest running Off-Broadway shows in history, having run for 42 years before closing in 2002.
Unfortunately the nature of allegory is that it is representative of archetypes rather than intimate characters and therefore any emotional connection to the audience is consciously sacrificed for the over-arching theme, here the nature of romantic love and maturing through pain.
A 16-year-old girl, Luisa, (Jessica Grove) is goofy in love with the 20-year-old next door neighbor, Matt (David Nathan Perlow) and he with her. Their fathers, Bellomy (the adorable Ray DeMattis) and Hucklebee (Dan Sharkey) use reverse psychology and pretend they hate the match, but only because they really want them to get together.
The narrator and bandit, El Gallo (Michael Sharon) is hired by the fathers to up the ante and pretends to abduct Luisa, with the aid of two hapless minstrels, Henry (William Perry) and Mortimer (Joseph Tisa).
Their children find out about the manipulation, are understandably furious, with Matt running away and Luisa seeking the attentions of her bad-boy abductor, El Gallo.
Near the end El Gallo observes, “A curious paradox no one can explain …why we all must die a bit before we grow again.”
True enough, but for the life of me I don’t see what the endless appeal of this musical is. It’s not very kind to women (hello — statutory rape anyone?), nor are the songs very catchy tunes. The show opens with the terrific song “Try to Remember,” but from then on the tunes, by Harvey Schmidt, are not memorable.
The set by Eugene Lee, of an old, run down amusement park, is the perfect backdrop to this show, and the actors are all as good as they could possibly be.
Sharon is dashing and dangerous as El Gallo, Grove is everything one could ask for in the role of the naïve and hyper romantic ingenue, while Perlow’s Matt is all youth and buoyancy, with a fine, strong voice.
The respective fathers too are fabulous, with the tall Sharkey and the diminutive DeMattis making a delightful duo, doing the old soft-shoe like the old pros they clearly are.
Perry’s Henry, the down-and-out thespian, sings his words with gorgeous over-theatricality, where Mortimer does his death scenes, his particular shtick, amusingly bad.
Jonathan Randell Silver plays El Gallo’s silent sidekick Mute with magical artistry and grace.
Evidently “The Fantasticks” is often performed with minimal staging, which makes this a popular show for the low-budget high school productions, but not here.
Part commedia dell’arte, part mime show, part magic act, the production elements of this musical, directed by Amanda Dehnert, are second to none. The magic, with the swords in the box and the disappearing acts, and the old-fashioned slight of hand bits are truly a wonder to behold, with help from magic consultants Jim Steinmeyer and Jeff Grow.
But all the bells and whistles in the world can’t disguise a dated allegory whose hay day has come and gone.
THE FANTASTICS
2 Stars
Location: 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven
Production: Books and lyrics by Tom Jones. Music by Harvey Schmidt. Directed by Amanda Dehnert. Choreographed by Sharon Jenkins. Musical direction by Bill Corcoran. Set design by Eugene Lee. Costume design by Jessica Ford. Lighting design by Nancy Schertler. Sound design by David Budries. Magic consultants Jim Steinmeyer and Jeff Grow. Fight director Craig Handel.
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays at 7 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. and Saturday matinees at 3 p.m. through Nov. 1.
Tickets: $30 to $70. For more information call their box office at 203-787-4282, or visit their Web site at www.longwharf.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Michael Sharon … El Gallo
Jonathan Randell Silver … The Mute
Jessica Grove … Luisa
David Nathan Perlow … Matt
Ray DeMattis … Bellomy
William Parry … Henry
Dan Sharkey … Hucklebee
Joseph Tisa … Mortimer
NEW HAVEN — Here’s a conundrum for you. The Long Wharf Theatre’s nearly perfect production of “The Fantasticks” is still about an allegorical show that I don’t like.
I’m surprised that I had never seen a show that is a staple of the regional and community theater scene, to say nothing of its fame as the longest running Off-Broadway shows in history, having run for 42 years before closing in 2002.
Unfortunately the nature of allegory is that it is representative of archetypes rather than intimate characters and therefore any emotional connection to the audience is consciously sacrificed for the over-arching theme, here the nature of romantic love and maturing through pain.
A 16-year-old girl, Luisa, (Jessica Grove) is goofy in love with the 20-year-old next door neighbor, Matt (David Nathan Perlow) and he with her. Their fathers, Bellomy (the adorable Ray DeMattis) and Hucklebee (Dan Sharkey) use reverse psychology and pretend they hate the match, but only because they really want them to get together.
The narrator and bandit, El Gallo (Michael Sharon) is hired by the fathers to up the ante and pretends to abduct Luisa, with the aid of two hapless minstrels, Henry (William Perry) and Mortimer (Joseph Tisa).
Their children find out about the manipulation, are understandably furious, with Matt running away and Luisa seeking the attentions of her bad-boy abductor, El Gallo.
Near the end El Gallo observes, “A curious paradox no one can explain …why we all must die a bit before we grow again.”
True enough, but for the life of me I don’t see what the endless appeal of this musical is. It’s not very kind to women (hello — statutory rape anyone?), nor are the songs very catchy tunes. The show opens with the terrific song “Try to Remember,” but from then on the tunes, by Harvey Schmidt, are not memorable.
The set by Eugene Lee, of an old, run down amusement park, is the perfect backdrop to this show, and the actors are all as good as they could possibly be.
Sharon is dashing and dangerous as El Gallo, Grove is everything one could ask for in the role of the naïve and hyper romantic ingenue, while Perlow’s Matt is all youth and buoyancy, with a fine, strong voice.
The respective fathers too are fabulous, with the tall Sharkey and the diminutive DeMattis making a delightful duo, doing the old soft-shoe like the old pros they clearly are.
Perry’s Henry, the down-and-out thespian, sings his words with gorgeous over-theatricality, where Mortimer does his death scenes, his particular shtick, amusingly bad.
Jonathan Randell Silver plays El Gallo’s silent sidekick Mute with magical artistry and grace.
Evidently “The Fantasticks” is often performed with minimal staging, which makes this a popular show for the low-budget high school productions, but not here.
Part commedia dell’arte, part mime show, part magic act, the production elements of this musical, directed by Amanda Dehnert, are second to none. The magic, with the swords in the box and the disappearing acts, and the old-fashioned slight of hand bits are truly a wonder to behold, with help from magic consultants Jim Steinmeyer and Jeff Grow.
But all the bells and whistles in the world can’t disguise a dated allegory whose hay day has come and gone.
THE FANTASTICS
2 Stars
Location: 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven
Production: Books and lyrics by Tom Jones. Music by Harvey Schmidt. Directed by Amanda Dehnert. Choreographed by Sharon Jenkins. Musical direction by Bill Corcoran. Set design by Eugene Lee. Costume design by Jessica Ford. Lighting design by Nancy Schertler. Sound design by David Budries. Magic consultants Jim Steinmeyer and Jeff Grow. Fight director Craig Handel.
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays at 7 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. and Saturday matinees at 3 p.m. through Nov. 1.
Tickets: $30 to $70. For more information call their box office at 203-787-4282, or visit their Web site at www.longwharf.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Michael Sharon … El Gallo
Jonathan Randell Silver … The Mute
Jessica Grove … Luisa
David Nathan Perlow … Matt
Ray DeMattis … Bellomy
William Parry … Henry
Dan Sharkey … Hucklebee
Joseph Tisa … Mortimer
Friday, October 16, 2009
“The Orphans’ Home Cycle Part 3” fitting completion to an epic triology
HARTFORD — Horton Foote’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle,” “Part 3: The Story of Family” concludes his epic posthumous trilogy at the Hartford Stage Company.
The play starts dimly lit with somber violin music and rain falling. The actors walk stately beneath umbrellas across the stage.
Their elegiac pace sets a somber, slow-paced rhythm that is a nice transition from the hectic outside world into the space and time of the slower paced, evolving world of Texas in the early 1900s, with inspired, assured direction by Michael Wilson.
The saga continues where it left off in Part 2, with Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) and his bride Elizabeth (Maggie Lacey) setting up home and business in fictional Harrison, Texas in 1918 — a year of World War and the flu pandemic that killed more than 100 million people around the world (No better advertisement to get a flu shot soon.)
Even if you haven’t seen the other two plays in the trilogy you can still fully enjoy Part 3 on its own, but having seen the first two adds a depth to the experience.
World War I is over, but there are few jobs to be had, so they keep holding parades, so much that Mr. Vaughn says exasperatedly, “If the poor devils could find work they wouldn’t have time to parade.”
This segment feels more melodramatic than the previous two, with deaths followed immediately by another birth, then a operation, tough times in the depressed south, and then more death — this time the patriarch of the family, Mr. Vaughn, played by the robust and expansive James DeMarse.
Heck as Robedaux continues to be the good and hard-working provider, here finally buying that tombstone for his father’s grave that he had been determined to purchase since he was 12 years old.
Foote, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, really knew many of these times and these people, having grown up in Texas, and basing the main character, Horace Robedaux, on the life of his own father.
It was a simpler time, when the anesthesia used was ether, there were few telephones, and doctors made house calls, but underneath that nostalgic simplicity lies complex human relations and emotions, which makes this story so watchable and compelling.
Robedaux’s 12-year-old son, Horace Jr., is played by the thoroughly engaging and earnest Dylan Riley Snyder who more than holds his own with all the adults surrounding him. He has a bookish curiosity, plus a real sponge-like interest in how grown ups behave and what they say that makes their words almost resonate twice.
And some of the adults who never grow up, like Brother Vaughn, (Bryce Pinkham) do behave badly indeed, and are enabled again and again by family, particularly his mother, played by the playwright’s daughter, the fine and flinty Hallie Foote.
The actors dropped a few lines and their timing was off some on Thursday, but overall the performances were true, and the slow smooth story unfolded comfortably enough.
“The Orphans’ Home Cycle; Part 3” is a slice of southern life about normal, well-meaning, and good people that is beautifully written and a pleasure to experience.
THE OPHANS' HOME CYCLE: PART 3
three stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 24, with the three-play marathon performances on Saturday, Oct. 17 and 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux
Maggie Lacey … Elizabeth Robedaux
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Vaughn, Lola Reeves
Bryce Pinkham … Brother Vaughn
James DeMarse … Mr. Vaughn
Virginia Kull … Minnie Curtis, Bessie Stillman
Jenny Dare Paulin … Lily Dale Kidder
Devon Abner … Pete Davenport
Dylan Riley Snyder … Horace Jr.
Annalee Jefferies … Corella Davenport
Steven Plunkett … Monty Reeves
HARTFORD — Horton Foote’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle,” “Part 3: The Story of Family” concludes his epic posthumous trilogy at the Hartford Stage Company.
The play starts dimly lit with somber violin music and rain falling. The actors walk stately beneath umbrellas across the stage.
Their elegiac pace sets a somber, slow-paced rhythm that is a nice transition from the hectic outside world into the space and time of the slower paced, evolving world of Texas in the early 1900s, with inspired, assured direction by Michael Wilson.
The saga continues where it left off in Part 2, with Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) and his bride Elizabeth (Maggie Lacey) setting up home and business in fictional Harrison, Texas in 1918 — a year of World War and the flu pandemic that killed more than 100 million people around the world (No better advertisement to get a flu shot soon.)
Even if you haven’t seen the other two plays in the trilogy you can still fully enjoy Part 3 on its own, but having seen the first two adds a depth to the experience.
World War I is over, but there are few jobs to be had, so they keep holding parades, so much that Mr. Vaughn says exasperatedly, “If the poor devils could find work they wouldn’t have time to parade.”
This segment feels more melodramatic than the previous two, with deaths followed immediately by another birth, then a operation, tough times in the depressed south, and then more death — this time the patriarch of the family, Mr. Vaughn, played by the robust and expansive James DeMarse.
Heck as Robedaux continues to be the good and hard-working provider, here finally buying that tombstone for his father’s grave that he had been determined to purchase since he was 12 years old.
Foote, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, really knew many of these times and these people, having grown up in Texas, and basing the main character, Horace Robedaux, on the life of his own father.
It was a simpler time, when the anesthesia used was ether, there were few telephones, and doctors made house calls, but underneath that nostalgic simplicity lies complex human relations and emotions, which makes this story so watchable and compelling.
Robedaux’s 12-year-old son, Horace Jr., is played by the thoroughly engaging and earnest Dylan Riley Snyder who more than holds his own with all the adults surrounding him. He has a bookish curiosity, plus a real sponge-like interest in how grown ups behave and what they say that makes their words almost resonate twice.
And some of the adults who never grow up, like Brother Vaughn, (Bryce Pinkham) do behave badly indeed, and are enabled again and again by family, particularly his mother, played by the playwright’s daughter, the fine and flinty Hallie Foote.
The actors dropped a few lines and their timing was off some on Thursday, but overall the performances were true, and the slow smooth story unfolded comfortably enough.
“The Orphans’ Home Cycle; Part 3” is a slice of southern life about normal, well-meaning, and good people that is beautifully written and a pleasure to experience.
THE OPHANS' HOME CYCLE: PART 3
three stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 24, with the three-play marathon performances on Saturday, Oct. 17 and 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux
Maggie Lacey … Elizabeth Robedaux
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Vaughn, Lola Reeves
Bryce Pinkham … Brother Vaughn
James DeMarse … Mr. Vaughn
Virginia Kull … Minnie Curtis, Bessie Stillman
Jenny Dare Paulin … Lily Dale Kidder
Devon Abner … Pete Davenport
Dylan Riley Snyder … Horace Jr.
Annalee Jefferies … Corella Davenport
Steven Plunkett … Monty Reeves
Monday, October 12, 2009
“The Exonerated” exposes our justice system’s failures
STORRS — There’s no law against being poor in the United States, unless of course, you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then, nothing but money, and lots of it, is going to help.
That’s just one of the lessons in “The Exonerated,” at Connecticut Repertory Theater — the true story of six people wrongfully accused of murder and convicted on death row in Texas and Florida.
The story, mostly taken from court and legal transcripts, needed no additional theatrics. The stage, backdrop, and ceiling were all unfinished wood, by Michael Anania — a fine simple backdrop for each of the now freed but forever altered individuals to tell their horrid, almost unbelievable stories.
Let’s just say this show probably isn’t getting a whole lot of play in Texas and Florida theaters, since that is where these travesty of justice all occurred.
It follows the lives of innocent victimized people with diverse backgrounds, who were literally railroaded by the justice system. None had a lawyer with them from the beginning and all had appointed lawyers.
What weaves the stories elegantly together is the bluesy original songs by Cedric H. Turner, who plays Delbert and serves as the play’s narrator. Delbert was convicted of murder and rape in Florida solely because he was black, they couldn’t find anyone else, and he was a stranger in town.
All their stories are remarkably horrific, but Sunny (Christina Greer) the vegetarian hippie with two children and her husband has to be one of the most appalling. She and her partner were basically the fall guys in a plea bargain by the real murderer in 1976. He later recanted in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1992, over 16 years later, that she was released and then only under a plea deal that did not expunge her record.
Her children’s father wasn’t so lucky and was electrocuted in 1990 in a spectacularly botched barbarous death that took over 12 minutes at one point with flames shooting out of his ears.
Also unbelievable is the story of Kerry, sensitively played by Phil Korth, because it took him over 21 years to get out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. During his trial he was publicly accused of being gay, making his life in prison a living tortuous daily Hell.
The only problem with the actors isn’t really their fault, but only Turner is close to the real age of the Delbert, while all the other actors are just too youthful and healthy to play people for whom the justice system has totally fallen apart.
The actors are all believable in their performances, with convincing southern accents, but it takes a suspension of disbelief by the audience to overcome the age discrepancy.
THE EXONERATED
Three Stars
Theater: Connecticut Repertory Theatre
Location: Nafe Katter Theater, 802 Bolton Rd., Storrs
Production: Written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. Directed by Dale AJ Rose. Scenic design by Michael Anania. Costume design by Jeanette Drake. Lighting design by Mike Billings. Sound design by Jack Nardi. Technical direction by Ed Weingart. Production stage manager Mary P. Costello. Original music and arrangements by Cedric H. Turner.
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. through Oct. 18.
Tickets: General admission $11 to $29. Call 860-486-4266 or visit their website at www.crt.uconn.edu.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Cedric H. Turner … Delbert
Christina Greer … Sunny
Brooks Brantley … Robert
Brittany Green … Georgia
Kevin Coubal … Gary
Phil Korth … Kerry
Philip AJ Smithey … David
Gretchen Goode … Sandra, Sue
STORRS — There’s no law against being poor in the United States, unless of course, you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then, nothing but money, and lots of it, is going to help.
That’s just one of the lessons in “The Exonerated,” at Connecticut Repertory Theater — the true story of six people wrongfully accused of murder and convicted on death row in Texas and Florida.
The story, mostly taken from court and legal transcripts, needed no additional theatrics. The stage, backdrop, and ceiling were all unfinished wood, by Michael Anania — a fine simple backdrop for each of the now freed but forever altered individuals to tell their horrid, almost unbelievable stories.
Let’s just say this show probably isn’t getting a whole lot of play in Texas and Florida theaters, since that is where these travesty of justice all occurred.
It follows the lives of innocent victimized people with diverse backgrounds, who were literally railroaded by the justice system. None had a lawyer with them from the beginning and all had appointed lawyers.
What weaves the stories elegantly together is the bluesy original songs by Cedric H. Turner, who plays Delbert and serves as the play’s narrator. Delbert was convicted of murder and rape in Florida solely because he was black, they couldn’t find anyone else, and he was a stranger in town.
All their stories are remarkably horrific, but Sunny (Christina Greer) the vegetarian hippie with two children and her husband has to be one of the most appalling. She and her partner were basically the fall guys in a plea bargain by the real murderer in 1976. He later recanted in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1992, over 16 years later, that she was released and then only under a plea deal that did not expunge her record.
Her children’s father wasn’t so lucky and was electrocuted in 1990 in a spectacularly botched barbarous death that took over 12 minutes at one point with flames shooting out of his ears.
Also unbelievable is the story of Kerry, sensitively played by Phil Korth, because it took him over 21 years to get out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. During his trial he was publicly accused of being gay, making his life in prison a living tortuous daily Hell.
The only problem with the actors isn’t really their fault, but only Turner is close to the real age of the Delbert, while all the other actors are just too youthful and healthy to play people for whom the justice system has totally fallen apart.
The actors are all believable in their performances, with convincing southern accents, but it takes a suspension of disbelief by the audience to overcome the age discrepancy.
THE EXONERATED
Three Stars
Theater: Connecticut Repertory Theatre
Location: Nafe Katter Theater, 802 Bolton Rd., Storrs
Production: Written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. Directed by Dale AJ Rose. Scenic design by Michael Anania. Costume design by Jeanette Drake. Lighting design by Mike Billings. Sound design by Jack Nardi. Technical direction by Ed Weingart. Production stage manager Mary P. Costello. Original music and arrangements by Cedric H. Turner.
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. through Oct. 18.
Tickets: General admission $11 to $29. Call 860-486-4266 or visit their website at www.crt.uconn.edu.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Cedric H. Turner … Delbert
Christina Greer … Sunny
Brooks Brantley … Robert
Brittany Green … Georgia
Kevin Coubal … Gary
Phil Korth … Kerry
Philip AJ Smithey … David
Gretchen Goode … Sandra, Sue
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
“Young Frankenstein” is vaudvillian schmalt
HARTFORD — Schmaltz, schmaltz, and a touch of that old vaudevillian razzle-dazzle is what you can expect with Mel Brook’s “Young Frankenstein” at the Bushnell Memorial Theater through Sunday.
Very much like the popular 1974 movie by the same name, and pretty much like any Mel Brooks vehicle one can imagine, it is the tried and true comedy formula that has made Brooks the comic legend that he is today.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, young Frankenstein, played by Roger Bart, is a doctor in New York in 1934 who has inherited his deceased grandfather’s castle in Transylvania. He goes to see the castle and decides to continue in the family business, eventually realizing that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the spooky family tree.
He brings a monster (Shuler Hensley) with a somewhat compromised brain, to life, and then does his best to help the poor creature fit in.
It’s a pretty simple premise stretched into two acts and plenty of clever and witty songs written by Brooks.
Both Bart and Hensley played their same roles on Broadway, and are doing a decent job keeping their characters alive on the road. Hensley’s singing voice is so excellent, it’s a shame it isn’t really heard until almost the end of the show.
The supporting cast is fine, including Frau Blucher, (neighing horses not withstanding) played by Joanna Glushak, who practically channels Gloria Swanson from the film “Sunset Boulevard,” and sings the torch song “He Vas My Boyfriend” like nobody’s business.
The other two woman, the mad cap Elizabeth, (Beth Curry) and flirty assistant Inga, played by Anne Horak, also are fine, hamming it up with the best of them.
The song “The Brain” was a feisty perky tune, that is pretty representative of the rest of show with the lines, “Though your genitalia are apt to fail ya, you can always depend on the brain.”
The best song of all wasn’t written by Brooks, but Irving Berlin’s “Puttin on the Ritz,” which they milk for all it’s worth — Nothing like seeing a green monster in tucs and tails with a top hat in a chorus line.
Cory English is appropriately goofy as the hunchback with a moveable hunch, Igor, with the requisite limp and plenty of mugging.
Also solid is Brad Oscar as the silly Inspector Kemp and the Blind Hermit.
The supporting chorus does a dandy job of dancing and singing. The men in particular are such excellent dancers that they feel woefully under-utilized in the show, with choreography and direction by Susan Stroman.
They did a nice and inventive turn during the dream sequence of incorporating a gigantic moving monster puppet, a la Julie Taymor.
Rocket science this isn’t, but there is plenty of sexual innuendo and naughty, naughty jokes along with some profanity, making this show unsuitable for kids.
It feels kind of like a guy’s comedy, with lots of bright lights, Tesla-like electrical coils and thunder and lightning sounds, along with plenty of long, long legs and oodles of ample bosoms prominently displayed.
The costumes, of which there were many, were exquisitely made, particularly for the women, with detailed, well-constructed German frocks and beautiful sequin gowns, by William Ivey Long.
But oh, just one more night of technical rehearsal would have been a good idea. The show started 20 minutes late and two times during the performance it was delayed because the large set pieces, particularly on stage right, just would not budge. Another time the screen wouldn’t drop and the stage crew were clearly seen along with the actors.
The actors made a joke of it, but really that shouldn’t happen and hopefully won’t in future performances.
Other than the technical glitches, there are no surprises in the predictable performances, but there’s a certain comfort in getting what you expect from a Mel Brooks show.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
3 Stars
Theater: The William H. Mortensen Hall at the Bushnell Memorial Center
Location: 166 Capitol Ave. Hartford
Production: Written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan. Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks. Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Scenic design by Robin Wagner. Costume design by William Ivey Long. Lighting design by Peter Kaczorowski. Sound design by Jonathan Deans.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes with one 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., through Oct. 11.
Tickets: From $15 to $82. Call 860-987-5900 or visit their website at www.bushnell.org. Adult language and situations, for mature audiences only.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Roger Bart … Dr. Frederick Frankenstein
Shuler Hensley … The Monster
Cory English … Igor
Brad Oscar … Inspector Kemp, Blind Hermit
Beth Curry … Elizabeth
Joanna Glushak … Frau Blucher
Anne Horak … Inga
HARTFORD — Schmaltz, schmaltz, and a touch of that old vaudevillian razzle-dazzle is what you can expect with Mel Brook’s “Young Frankenstein” at the Bushnell Memorial Theater through Sunday.
Very much like the popular 1974 movie by the same name, and pretty much like any Mel Brooks vehicle one can imagine, it is the tried and true comedy formula that has made Brooks the comic legend that he is today.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, young Frankenstein, played by Roger Bart, is a doctor in New York in 1934 who has inherited his deceased grandfather’s castle in Transylvania. He goes to see the castle and decides to continue in the family business, eventually realizing that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the spooky family tree.
He brings a monster (Shuler Hensley) with a somewhat compromised brain, to life, and then does his best to help the poor creature fit in.
It’s a pretty simple premise stretched into two acts and plenty of clever and witty songs written by Brooks.
Both Bart and Hensley played their same roles on Broadway, and are doing a decent job keeping their characters alive on the road. Hensley’s singing voice is so excellent, it’s a shame it isn’t really heard until almost the end of the show.
The supporting cast is fine, including Frau Blucher, (neighing horses not withstanding) played by Joanna Glushak, who practically channels Gloria Swanson from the film “Sunset Boulevard,” and sings the torch song “He Vas My Boyfriend” like nobody’s business.
The other two woman, the mad cap Elizabeth, (Beth Curry) and flirty assistant Inga, played by Anne Horak, also are fine, hamming it up with the best of them.
The song “The Brain” was a feisty perky tune, that is pretty representative of the rest of show with the lines, “Though your genitalia are apt to fail ya, you can always depend on the brain.”
The best song of all wasn’t written by Brooks, but Irving Berlin’s “Puttin on the Ritz,” which they milk for all it’s worth — Nothing like seeing a green monster in tucs and tails with a top hat in a chorus line.
Cory English is appropriately goofy as the hunchback with a moveable hunch, Igor, with the requisite limp and plenty of mugging.
Also solid is Brad Oscar as the silly Inspector Kemp and the Blind Hermit.
The supporting chorus does a dandy job of dancing and singing. The men in particular are such excellent dancers that they feel woefully under-utilized in the show, with choreography and direction by Susan Stroman.
They did a nice and inventive turn during the dream sequence of incorporating a gigantic moving monster puppet, a la Julie Taymor.
Rocket science this isn’t, but there is plenty of sexual innuendo and naughty, naughty jokes along with some profanity, making this show unsuitable for kids.
It feels kind of like a guy’s comedy, with lots of bright lights, Tesla-like electrical coils and thunder and lightning sounds, along with plenty of long, long legs and oodles of ample bosoms prominently displayed.
The costumes, of which there were many, were exquisitely made, particularly for the women, with detailed, well-constructed German frocks and beautiful sequin gowns, by William Ivey Long.
But oh, just one more night of technical rehearsal would have been a good idea. The show started 20 minutes late and two times during the performance it was delayed because the large set pieces, particularly on stage right, just would not budge. Another time the screen wouldn’t drop and the stage crew were clearly seen along with the actors.
The actors made a joke of it, but really that shouldn’t happen and hopefully won’t in future performances.
Other than the technical glitches, there are no surprises in the predictable performances, but there’s a certain comfort in getting what you expect from a Mel Brooks show.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
3 Stars
Theater: The William H. Mortensen Hall at the Bushnell Memorial Center
Location: 166 Capitol Ave. Hartford
Production: Written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan. Music and lyrics by Mel Brooks. Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Scenic design by Robin Wagner. Costume design by William Ivey Long. Lighting design by Peter Kaczorowski. Sound design by Jonathan Deans.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes with one 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., through Oct. 11.
Tickets: From $15 to $82. Call 860-987-5900 or visit their website at www.bushnell.org. Adult language and situations, for mature audiences only.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Roger Bart … Dr. Frederick Frankenstein
Shuler Hensley … The Monster
Cory English … Igor
Brad Oscar … Inspector Kemp, Blind Hermit
Beth Curry … Elizabeth
Joanna Glushak … Frau Blucher
Anne Horak … Inga
Monday, October 05, 2009
Somers Village Players’ “Dearly Departed” ‘delightful’
SOMERS — Corndogs, Holy rollers, and Dairy Queen Dilly bars have rarely been so funny as they are in the uproarious, tear-inducing white-trash comedy about death in “Dearly Departed,” by The Village Players.
In this dinner-theater production at Joanna’s Café and Banquet facility, a family patriarch, Bud, kicks the bucket suddenly, and the extended and colorful family comes together to pay their last respects.
Not normally what one would think of as fodder for laughter, but this play, written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones, sets the riotously funny tone right out of the gate.
Rayelle, played by the incomparable Betty Domer, reads a letter to her soon to be dead husband, Bud, from her sister-in-law, Marguerite, complaining of her friend, stating, “I am pleased to report that she’s not so uppity since her nephew went to the electric chair,” adding, “She says she gets choked up every time she pays the electric bill.”
Marguerite, played by Joan Perkins-Smith, is the Bible-quoting, God-fearing sister to her dead brother Bud who gets some of the best lines in the show.
She has a near-do-well son, Royce, played by Tyler Anderson, who just got laid off from working at the sewage plant, and has goals of getting married and having a baby so he can live on welfare.
As soon as Marguerite hears about her brother’s death, she says, “Bud’s not going to keep long in this heat.” And when he is in the casket she comments, “He looks like Miss Kitty on ‘Gunsmoke.’”
When Suzanne (Dorrie Mitchell) finds out that down-and-out Junior, (John McKone) is having an affair, Marguerite bluntly tells her to snap out of her self-pity, saying, “I got a son in the pen-A-tent-U-ary, and you don’t see me wallering on the floor."
This play could easily have deteriorated into mean and unkind stereotypes, but the actors all invest their roles with such pathos and compassion that they come across as real, believable characters doing the best they can with what little they have materially and intellectually.
Rarely is there a play where the backstage crew spend almost as much time on stage as the actors, but there are so many scene changes in “Dearly Departed” — in the first act and 8 in the second — that the crew and stage manager Gus Rousseau deserve special credit for doing so many quick changes so seamlessly.
Credit too goes to stage manager Franc Aguas and his crew, who made those two fine and comic cars that brings a smile to my face just thinking of them.
The southern rock music piped in during the numerous blackouts also helps the transitions fly by. After a while it feels like an episode of the old “Hee Haw” comedy hour, which is part of the show’s strength and the source of its weakness.
There are a couple of mini-scenes, like the wheelchair scene and the celebrity named children scene, which are funny enough on their own, but are out of context with the rest of the play and feel extraneous.
The dialog is priceless and the comic-time superb, but the one who says the least almost steals the show. Delightful, played by Sue Moak, never says more than a couple of words, but she is hysterically funny and perfectly sweet at the same time. The attentive way she eats her potato chips and then her M&Ms, with a little flourish of the hand after each M, makes it difficult at times to pay attention to anything else on the stage.
What makes these characters so consistently funny is that their humor is based on their characters and not on stereotypical one-liners, although there are a number of those.
Most of the actors in The Village Players have been in shows together for years, making them already a family of sorts, and they exude that familiar feeling of intimacy.
The fine basic meal at Joanna’s before the show of salad, roast beef, new potatoes, green beans, and pasta, along with dessert and coffee, is a great way to start the “Delightful” evening.
DEARLY DEPARTED
3 stars
Theater: The Village Players
Location: Joanna’s Café and Banquet House, 145 Main Street, Somers
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Friday and Saturday. Social hour starting at 6 p.m. Dinner at 7 p.m. Show at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $33, including dinner, with cash bar. Call 860-749-0245 for reservations.
Production: Written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones. Directed by Mark Depathy. Technical direction by Justin Taylor. Stage Manager Gus Rousseau. Set design and décor by Franc Aguas. Props and set props by Diane Preble. Costumes by Joyce Benson and Franc Aguas. Stage crew Stacy Baral, Ben Bugden, Steven Stoyer, Trish Urso, David Crowell, and Wendy Peterson.
Actor …. Character
Betty Domer … Raynelle
Doug Stoyer … Ray Bud, Bud
Joan Perkins-Smith … Marguerite
Tyler Anderson … Royce
Darlene LaPointe … Lucille
John McKone … Junior
Dorrie Mitchell … Suzanne
Ron Blanchette … Rev. Hooker, Norval, Clyde
Sue Moak … Delightful, Nadine
Cheryl Samborski … Juanita, Veda
SOMERS — Corndogs, Holy rollers, and Dairy Queen Dilly bars have rarely been so funny as they are in the uproarious, tear-inducing white-trash comedy about death in “Dearly Departed,” by The Village Players.
In this dinner-theater production at Joanna’s Café and Banquet facility, a family patriarch, Bud, kicks the bucket suddenly, and the extended and colorful family comes together to pay their last respects.
Not normally what one would think of as fodder for laughter, but this play, written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones, sets the riotously funny tone right out of the gate.
Rayelle, played by the incomparable Betty Domer, reads a letter to her soon to be dead husband, Bud, from her sister-in-law, Marguerite, complaining of her friend, stating, “I am pleased to report that she’s not so uppity since her nephew went to the electric chair,” adding, “She says she gets choked up every time she pays the electric bill.”
Marguerite, played by Joan Perkins-Smith, is the Bible-quoting, God-fearing sister to her dead brother Bud who gets some of the best lines in the show.
She has a near-do-well son, Royce, played by Tyler Anderson, who just got laid off from working at the sewage plant, and has goals of getting married and having a baby so he can live on welfare.
As soon as Marguerite hears about her brother’s death, she says, “Bud’s not going to keep long in this heat.” And when he is in the casket she comments, “He looks like Miss Kitty on ‘Gunsmoke.’”
When Suzanne (Dorrie Mitchell) finds out that down-and-out Junior, (John McKone) is having an affair, Marguerite bluntly tells her to snap out of her self-pity, saying, “I got a son in the pen-A-tent-U-ary, and you don’t see me wallering on the floor."
This play could easily have deteriorated into mean and unkind stereotypes, but the actors all invest their roles with such pathos and compassion that they come across as real, believable characters doing the best they can with what little they have materially and intellectually.
Rarely is there a play where the backstage crew spend almost as much time on stage as the actors, but there are so many scene changes in “Dearly Departed” — in the first act and 8 in the second — that the crew and stage manager Gus Rousseau deserve special credit for doing so many quick changes so seamlessly.
Credit too goes to stage manager Franc Aguas and his crew, who made those two fine and comic cars that brings a smile to my face just thinking of them.
The southern rock music piped in during the numerous blackouts also helps the transitions fly by. After a while it feels like an episode of the old “Hee Haw” comedy hour, which is part of the show’s strength and the source of its weakness.
There are a couple of mini-scenes, like the wheelchair scene and the celebrity named children scene, which are funny enough on their own, but are out of context with the rest of the play and feel extraneous.
The dialog is priceless and the comic-time superb, but the one who says the least almost steals the show. Delightful, played by Sue Moak, never says more than a couple of words, but she is hysterically funny and perfectly sweet at the same time. The attentive way she eats her potato chips and then her M&Ms, with a little flourish of the hand after each M, makes it difficult at times to pay attention to anything else on the stage.
What makes these characters so consistently funny is that their humor is based on their characters and not on stereotypical one-liners, although there are a number of those.
Most of the actors in The Village Players have been in shows together for years, making them already a family of sorts, and they exude that familiar feeling of intimacy.
The fine basic meal at Joanna’s before the show of salad, roast beef, new potatoes, green beans, and pasta, along with dessert and coffee, is a great way to start the “Delightful” evening.
DEARLY DEPARTED
3 stars
Theater: The Village Players
Location: Joanna’s Café and Banquet House, 145 Main Street, Somers
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Show Times: Friday and Saturday. Social hour starting at 6 p.m. Dinner at 7 p.m. Show at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $33, including dinner, with cash bar. Call 860-749-0245 for reservations.
Production: Written by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones. Directed by Mark Depathy. Technical direction by Justin Taylor. Stage Manager Gus Rousseau. Set design and décor by Franc Aguas. Props and set props by Diane Preble. Costumes by Joyce Benson and Franc Aguas. Stage crew Stacy Baral, Ben Bugden, Steven Stoyer, Trish Urso, David Crowell, and Wendy Peterson.
Actor …. Character
Betty Domer … Raynelle
Doug Stoyer … Ray Bud, Bud
Joan Perkins-Smith … Marguerite
Tyler Anderson … Royce
Darlene LaPointe … Lucille
John McKone … Junior
Dorrie Mitchell … Suzanne
Ron Blanchette … Rev. Hooker, Norval, Clyde
Sue Moak … Delightful, Nadine
Cheryl Samborski … Juanita, Veda
Monday, September 28, 2009
“Nanny 911” meets the 1800s in Ivorton Playhouse’s “The Miracle Worker”
IVORYTON — “The Miracle Worker” at the Ivoryton Playhouse, is a moving, surprisingly physical, and special show, lovingly produced, and well acted.
Most are familiar with Helen Keller’s story. While an infant she became deaf and blind after a severe illness that almost killed her. Helen’s well-to-do southern family were loving but unable to help her. They hired an untrained young teacher, half-blind herself, Anne Sullivan, who had a vision that language was the key to unlocking Helen’s mind.
Originally written for television in 1957 by William Gibson, it was latter adapted into a play and then a film starring Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen.
It is fitting that “The Miracle Worker” began it’s life on television, because in many ways it is the precursor to television shows such as “Nanny 911” and “Supernanny,” where tough love, consistency, and discipline from the adults are crucial in all children’s development.
Set in Alabama in the late 1800’s during a time when the Civil War was a recent experience, the Kellers hire Sullivan (Andrea Maulella) to try to help 12-year-old Helen (Jenilee Simons Marques) who is bright but terribly spoiled.
The whole family treats her like a pet, much to the dismay of Sullivan who realizes that there is no possible way to reach Helen with all the well-meant indulgence.
As usual Ivoryton Playhouse does a fine job of weaving professional and local amateur actors together, here directed by Ivoryton Playhouse Executive Director Jacqueline Hubbard.
Maulella is totally believable as Sullivan, even if she is a little old for the part, where so much emphasis is given to her age and inexperience. At times she rushes her lines and the comments, often amusing, get lost.
She is a scrappy gal though, and up to the challenge of physically wrestling with Helen — a lot. So much so that the play could just as easily have been called “The Miracle Workout,” and had a fight choreographer, Carrie Brewer, to coordinate all the action.
Marques is inspired as Helen. Born to two deaf parents and deaf since birth herself, she is completely engaging, natural, and compelling in the role.
The set, designed by Cully Long, gave the indication of a Victorian home, and cleverly transformed into a garden house in the second act.
The costumes by Pam Puente were lovely, particularly the exquisitely detailed and numerous gowns for Helen’s mother, Kate, played by Elizabeth Erwin.
Helen’s half-brother, James, is played with a heavy dose of sarcasm as called for, by Michael Raver, while Bif Carrington plays Helen’s father with the right amount of Southern male privilege.
“Have some pity on her for being who she is,” the father says. All he wants from his daughter is obedience, but her teacher has higher expectations for her charge, saying, “Giving up is my idea of original sin.”
This is an excellent show for both adults and children, showing that many seemingly insurmountable achievements can be accomplished with perseverance and stubborn determination.
THE MIRACLE WORKER
3½ Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main St., Ivoryton, Conn.
Production: Written by William Gibson. Directed by Jacqueline Hubbard. Set design by Doug Harry. Sound design by Tate Burmeister. Costume design by Pam Puente.
Running time: 2 hours with one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Oct. 11.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Jenilee Simons Marques … Helen Keller
Andrea Maulella … Anne Sullivan
Elizabeth Erwin … Kate Keller
Bif Carrington … Capt. Keller
Michael Raver … James
Maggie McGlone-Jennings … Aunt Ev
IVORYTON — “The Miracle Worker” at the Ivoryton Playhouse, is a moving, surprisingly physical, and special show, lovingly produced, and well acted.
Most are familiar with Helen Keller’s story. While an infant she became deaf and blind after a severe illness that almost killed her. Helen’s well-to-do southern family were loving but unable to help her. They hired an untrained young teacher, half-blind herself, Anne Sullivan, who had a vision that language was the key to unlocking Helen’s mind.
Originally written for television in 1957 by William Gibson, it was latter adapted into a play and then a film starring Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen.
It is fitting that “The Miracle Worker” began it’s life on television, because in many ways it is the precursor to television shows such as “Nanny 911” and “Supernanny,” where tough love, consistency, and discipline from the adults are crucial in all children’s development.
Set in Alabama in the late 1800’s during a time when the Civil War was a recent experience, the Kellers hire Sullivan (Andrea Maulella) to try to help 12-year-old Helen (Jenilee Simons Marques) who is bright but terribly spoiled.
The whole family treats her like a pet, much to the dismay of Sullivan who realizes that there is no possible way to reach Helen with all the well-meant indulgence.
As usual Ivoryton Playhouse does a fine job of weaving professional and local amateur actors together, here directed by Ivoryton Playhouse Executive Director Jacqueline Hubbard.
Maulella is totally believable as Sullivan, even if she is a little old for the part, where so much emphasis is given to her age and inexperience. At times she rushes her lines and the comments, often amusing, get lost.
She is a scrappy gal though, and up to the challenge of physically wrestling with Helen — a lot. So much so that the play could just as easily have been called “The Miracle Workout,” and had a fight choreographer, Carrie Brewer, to coordinate all the action.
Marques is inspired as Helen. Born to two deaf parents and deaf since birth herself, she is completely engaging, natural, and compelling in the role.
The set, designed by Cully Long, gave the indication of a Victorian home, and cleverly transformed into a garden house in the second act.
The costumes by Pam Puente were lovely, particularly the exquisitely detailed and numerous gowns for Helen’s mother, Kate, played by Elizabeth Erwin.
Helen’s half-brother, James, is played with a heavy dose of sarcasm as called for, by Michael Raver, while Bif Carrington plays Helen’s father with the right amount of Southern male privilege.
“Have some pity on her for being who she is,” the father says. All he wants from his daughter is obedience, but her teacher has higher expectations for her charge, saying, “Giving up is my idea of original sin.”
This is an excellent show for both adults and children, showing that many seemingly insurmountable achievements can be accomplished with perseverance and stubborn determination.
THE MIRACLE WORKER
3½ Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main St., Ivoryton, Conn.
Production: Written by William Gibson. Directed by Jacqueline Hubbard. Set design by Doug Harry. Sound design by Tate Burmeister. Costume design by Pam Puente.
Running time: 2 hours with one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Oct. 11.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Jenilee Simons Marques … Helen Keller
Andrea Maulella … Anne Sullivan
Elizabeth Erwin … Kate Keller
Bif Carrington … Capt. Keller
Michael Raver … James
Maggie McGlone-Jennings … Aunt Ev
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Graceful saga continues in HSC’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle: Part 2
HARTFORD — Part 2 of the three-part play “The Orphans’ Home Cycle: The Story of a Marriage,” by the inimitable Horton Foote at the Hartford Stage Company can be seen on it’s own, or as part of a whole.
Horton Foote’s award winning plays and screenplays aren’t overly dramatic or grandiose and they require a certain degree of patience from the audience.
They are complex human comedies that slowly and carefully develop and evolve. Either the characters remember their past vividly, or they choose to ignore it, but they are all very human, fragile, and touching.
Part 1 of the cycle traced the life of Foote’s father starting from his childhood in 1902 in a fictitious town called Wharton, Texas.
Part 2 picks up with 20-year-old Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) trying to find his way in the world without much education or support from his family.
Heck is well cast as the sensitive, kind, and ambitious lead character.
Robedaux courts a young widow, Claire Ratcliff, played by Virginia Kull, who has numerous suitors and two precocious children Molly and Buddy, played by the earnest and adorable Georgi James and Dylan Riley Snyder.
Kull’s Claire has suitors buzzing around her like bees and wants to marry soon, but Robedaux isn’t financially able to take on a family and leaves for business school in Houston instead.
While in Houston he meets Elizabeth Vaughn, played by Maggie Lacey, who comes from a wealthy family, and whose strict parents, played by Hallie Foote and James DeMarse, don’t approve of the match.
It takes a while but the father begins to change his mind about his new son-in-law and at one point, in a moving scene, he gives a set of Robedaux’s dead father’s books to the young man.
Near the end, DeMarse’s Mr. Vaughn says to his daughter and son-in-law, “There’s peace in this room, and contentment,” adding, “they don’t have much but they do have contentment.” A gift he acknowledges money can’t buy.
The leads are all strong, but what gives this series its depth are the excellent, well wrought secondary characters.
There’s the menacing Val Stanton, played by Lucas Caleb Rooney, Kull again playing the childlike Bessie Stillman, Devon Abner as the alcoholic son of the boarding house owner, Bobby Pate, with amusing turns by Annalee Jefferies as the matriarch Lucy (Vaughn) Stewart and Pamela Payton-Wright as Sarah Vaughn.
The set’s frame is the same as it was in the first play, with a quilted muslin that has scenic lighting, such as trees and homes superimposed upon it to good effect.
The costumes, especially the women’s gowns, are meticulous and lovely, by David Woolard.
Horton Foote, who died this spring at 90, has been called old-fashioned and his quiet and graceful plays were out of style for a time, but thankfully he never stopped writing and sticking to his perspective.
His memories and stories are a testament to perseverance and are a loving legacy to the importance of family.
THE ORPHAN'S HOME CYCLE: PART 2
3½ stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 4, with the three play marathon performances on Saturday, Oct. 17 and 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux
Maggie Lacey … Elizabeth Vaughn
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Vaughn
James DeMarse … Mr. Vaughn
Virginia Kull … Claire Ratcliff, Bessie Stillman
Jenny Dare Paulin … Laura Vaughn
Devon Abner … Bobby Pate, Roger Culpepper
Dylan Riley Snyder … Buddy
Georgi James … Molly
HARTFORD — Part 2 of the three-part play “The Orphans’ Home Cycle: The Story of a Marriage,” by the inimitable Horton Foote at the Hartford Stage Company can be seen on it’s own, or as part of a whole.
Horton Foote’s award winning plays and screenplays aren’t overly dramatic or grandiose and they require a certain degree of patience from the audience.
They are complex human comedies that slowly and carefully develop and evolve. Either the characters remember their past vividly, or they choose to ignore it, but they are all very human, fragile, and touching.
Part 1 of the cycle traced the life of Foote’s father starting from his childhood in 1902 in a fictitious town called Wharton, Texas.
Part 2 picks up with 20-year-old Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) trying to find his way in the world without much education or support from his family.
Heck is well cast as the sensitive, kind, and ambitious lead character.
Robedaux courts a young widow, Claire Ratcliff, played by Virginia Kull, who has numerous suitors and two precocious children Molly and Buddy, played by the earnest and adorable Georgi James and Dylan Riley Snyder.
Kull’s Claire has suitors buzzing around her like bees and wants to marry soon, but Robedaux isn’t financially able to take on a family and leaves for business school in Houston instead.
While in Houston he meets Elizabeth Vaughn, played by Maggie Lacey, who comes from a wealthy family, and whose strict parents, played by Hallie Foote and James DeMarse, don’t approve of the match.
It takes a while but the father begins to change his mind about his new son-in-law and at one point, in a moving scene, he gives a set of Robedaux’s dead father’s books to the young man.
Near the end, DeMarse’s Mr. Vaughn says to his daughter and son-in-law, “There’s peace in this room, and contentment,” adding, “they don’t have much but they do have contentment.” A gift he acknowledges money can’t buy.
The leads are all strong, but what gives this series its depth are the excellent, well wrought secondary characters.
There’s the menacing Val Stanton, played by Lucas Caleb Rooney, Kull again playing the childlike Bessie Stillman, Devon Abner as the alcoholic son of the boarding house owner, Bobby Pate, with amusing turns by Annalee Jefferies as the matriarch Lucy (Vaughn) Stewart and Pamela Payton-Wright as Sarah Vaughn.
The set’s frame is the same as it was in the first play, with a quilted muslin that has scenic lighting, such as trees and homes superimposed upon it to good effect.
The costumes, especially the women’s gowns, are meticulous and lovely, by David Woolard.
Horton Foote, who died this spring at 90, has been called old-fashioned and his quiet and graceful plays were out of style for a time, but thankfully he never stopped writing and sticking to his perspective.
His memories and stories are a testament to perseverance and are a loving legacy to the importance of family.
THE ORPHAN'S HOME CYCLE: PART 2
3½ stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 4, with the three play marathon performances on Saturday, Oct. 17 and 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux
Maggie Lacey … Elizabeth Vaughn
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Vaughn
James DeMarse … Mr. Vaughn
Virginia Kull … Claire Ratcliff, Bessie Stillman
Jenny Dare Paulin … Laura Vaughn
Devon Abner … Bobby Pate, Roger Culpepper
Dylan Riley Snyder … Buddy
Georgi James … Molly
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mamet's "American Buffalo" delivers goods at TheaterWorks
HARTFORD- Unlike TheaterWorks usually minimalist sets, the stage in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” is strewn with junk that makes the set of the television show “Sanford and Son” look like a church.
Ice skates, lamp shades, typewriters, sewing machines, and old books litter the junk shop set and compete with the three actors for space.
This is a world of dog-eat-dog questionable business, where three losers, each with their own special brand of glaring dysfunction, take a possible robbery and turn it into a mess. Let’s just say, “Ocean’s 11” this isn’t.
The first play that put Mamet on the map, produced in 1975, “American Buffalo” is set in Chicago, where three men hatch a desperate plan to steal a coin collection from customer.
John Ahlin plays the shops’ owner, Donny Dubrow, as a walrus-eyed, spastically gesturing elder, who in his own way is endeavoring to impart his business acumen on the simple younger Bobby, Zachary Spicer, a greasy-haired, slow but sweet kid.
Ahlin gracefully transitions from lecturing Bobby about eating breakfast “the most important meal of the day” to coldly dismissing him, when he is persuaded to drop him from his poorly planned fiasco.
In pops the hyperbolic, quixotic, sleazy, and slick Walter Cole, nicknamed Teach, played by Andrew Benator, in what has to be one of the most audacious entrances ever, he launches into a relentless and amusing diatribe about a slight just he received for eating someone else’s piece of toast.
Working himself into a frenzy of fury, the kinetic Teach finally blurting out, “The only way to teach these people is to kill them.” He then just as quickly tells Donny he wants bacon and doesn’t eat cantaloupe because it gives him the runs.
The play percolates along with only occasionally self-conscious staging but overall solid directing by Steve Campo.
As in most of their productions, Campo, TheaterWorks executive director gives a dry and witty introduction before the start of the play each night.
True to form Before this play he warned audiences if they wished not to hear profanity they should have the audience member behind them put their hands over their ears for the entire show.
This warning is no exaggeration — with every third word or so a swear of one kind or another, making this show clearly not for children.
In act two the play immediately escalates into a much more high-stakes game as tensions mount and the heist is on, sort-of. Set in a time of the rotary phone, one forgets what tensions those painfully slow dials could create.
The quick, sparing dialog of “Mamet-speak” is like a relentless shot of adrenaline. At one point after Teach throws a temper-tantrum and trashes his business, Ahlin’s Donny says to Teach in calm exasperation “You tire me out, Walt.” A feeling at this point in the play we can all relate to.
Mamet’s masterful play requires a high level of theatrical dexterity and continuity to deliver the goods, a requirement that the stellar cast of “American Buffalo” achieves.
If you see anything on the stage you might want, TheaterWorks is going to hold auction on Sunday, Oct. 25 after the matinee show at about 7:30 p.m. Everything on the set is going to go, including some nice items.
Local radio and columnist Colin McEnroe will be hosting the event. Admission is $24.
3 1/2 Stars
Theater: TheaterWorks
Location: 233 Pearl St. Hartford.
Production: Written by David Mamet. Directed by Steve Campo. Set design by Adrian W. Jones. Lighting Design by Matthew Richards.
Running time: 2 hour, 30 minutes, plus a 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays — 8 p.m. Matinees on Saturdays and Sundays — 2:30 p.m. Extra Sunday evening shows — 7:30 p.m. The show will run through Oct. 25.
Tickets: Unassigned seating is $38; $48 on Friday and Saturday nights. Center reserved seats $12 extra. $12 student rush tickets at showtime with valid ID (subject to availability). For tickets call 860-527-7838 or visit their website at www.theaterworks.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
John Ahlin … Donny Dubrow
Zachary Spicer … Bobby
Andrew Benator … Walter Cole (Teacher)
HARTFORD- Unlike TheaterWorks usually minimalist sets, the stage in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” is strewn with junk that makes the set of the television show “Sanford and Son” look like a church.
Ice skates, lamp shades, typewriters, sewing machines, and old books litter the junk shop set and compete with the three actors for space.
This is a world of dog-eat-dog questionable business, where three losers, each with their own special brand of glaring dysfunction, take a possible robbery and turn it into a mess. Let’s just say, “Ocean’s 11” this isn’t.
The first play that put Mamet on the map, produced in 1975, “American Buffalo” is set in Chicago, where three men hatch a desperate plan to steal a coin collection from customer.
John Ahlin plays the shops’ owner, Donny Dubrow, as a walrus-eyed, spastically gesturing elder, who in his own way is endeavoring to impart his business acumen on the simple younger Bobby, Zachary Spicer, a greasy-haired, slow but sweet kid.
Ahlin gracefully transitions from lecturing Bobby about eating breakfast “the most important meal of the day” to coldly dismissing him, when he is persuaded to drop him from his poorly planned fiasco.
In pops the hyperbolic, quixotic, sleazy, and slick Walter Cole, nicknamed Teach, played by Andrew Benator, in what has to be one of the most audacious entrances ever, he launches into a relentless and amusing diatribe about a slight just he received for eating someone else’s piece of toast.
Working himself into a frenzy of fury, the kinetic Teach finally blurting out, “The only way to teach these people is to kill them.” He then just as quickly tells Donny he wants bacon and doesn’t eat cantaloupe because it gives him the runs.
The play percolates along with only occasionally self-conscious staging but overall solid directing by Steve Campo.
As in most of their productions, Campo, TheaterWorks executive director gives a dry and witty introduction before the start of the play each night.
True to form Before this play he warned audiences if they wished not to hear profanity they should have the audience member behind them put their hands over their ears for the entire show.
This warning is no exaggeration — with every third word or so a swear of one kind or another, making this show clearly not for children.
In act two the play immediately escalates into a much more high-stakes game as tensions mount and the heist is on, sort-of. Set in a time of the rotary phone, one forgets what tensions those painfully slow dials could create.
The quick, sparing dialog of “Mamet-speak” is like a relentless shot of adrenaline. At one point after Teach throws a temper-tantrum and trashes his business, Ahlin’s Donny says to Teach in calm exasperation “You tire me out, Walt.” A feeling at this point in the play we can all relate to.
Mamet’s masterful play requires a high level of theatrical dexterity and continuity to deliver the goods, a requirement that the stellar cast of “American Buffalo” achieves.
If you see anything on the stage you might want, TheaterWorks is going to hold auction on Sunday, Oct. 25 after the matinee show at about 7:30 p.m. Everything on the set is going to go, including some nice items.
Local radio and columnist Colin McEnroe will be hosting the event. Admission is $24.
3 1/2 Stars
Theater: TheaterWorks
Location: 233 Pearl St. Hartford.
Production: Written by David Mamet. Directed by Steve Campo. Set design by Adrian W. Jones. Lighting Design by Matthew Richards.
Running time: 2 hour, 30 minutes, plus a 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays — 8 p.m. Matinees on Saturdays and Sundays — 2:30 p.m. Extra Sunday evening shows — 7:30 p.m. The show will run through Oct. 25.
Tickets: Unassigned seating is $38; $48 on Friday and Saturday nights. Center reserved seats $12 extra. $12 student rush tickets at showtime with valid ID (subject to availability). For tickets call 860-527-7838 or visit their website at www.theaterworks.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
John Ahlin … Donny Dubrow
Zachary Spicer … Bobby
Andrew Benator … Walter Cole (Teacher)
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
HSC three-part “Orphans’ Home Cycle” by Horton Foote one complex production schedule
1) Photographs: on their Web site
By Kory Loucks
Journal Inquirer
HARTFORD — Horton Foote’s epic three-part production of his “Orphans’ Home Cycle” running at the Hartford Stage Company through Oct. 24 was a huge undertaking in scheduling too.
“It was a very complex puzzle,” Paul Marte, public relations director at the Hartford Stage Company, said.
The schedule was created to accommodate Hartford Stage Company subscribers.
“It’s very confusing,” Marte acknowledged, explaining that subscribers were given a choice of seeing two of the three plays in the cycle as part of their subscription package.
“They could either see part 1 and part 2 or part 2 and part 3,” Marte said.
The two marathon productions, which include all three of the “Orphan Home Cycle” plays, are scheduled for consecutive Saturdays, Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m.
Subscribers who choose to see either of the 12-hour marathon productions, rather than individually, can do so at an additional cost, Marte said.
For non-subscribers the marathon production tickets range from $99 and $189. They are also offering a $55 meal package at the Hartford Hilton for the two meal breaks during the all day show.
Individual ticket sales for the two “Ophans’ Home Cycle” marathons are going very well, Marte said.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 1; The Story of a Childhood” is running on it’s own through Sunday, with additional individual performances on Friday, Oct. 16 and Tuesday, Oct. 20.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2; The Story of a Marriage” is opening 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17 and running through Sunday, Oct. 4, with an additional performance on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 3; The Story of a Family” is opening 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8 until the end of the run, except for Oct. 16, 20, and 21.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evening performances all start at 7 p.m., with individual evening performances on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 7:30 p.m.
Individual matinee performances are running on selected Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tickets for the individual shows start at $33.
For more information, contact their box office at 860-527-5151, or visit their website at www.hartfordstage.org
1) Photographs: on their Web site
By Kory Loucks
Journal Inquirer
HARTFORD — Horton Foote’s epic three-part production of his “Orphans’ Home Cycle” running at the Hartford Stage Company through Oct. 24 was a huge undertaking in scheduling too.
“It was a very complex puzzle,” Paul Marte, public relations director at the Hartford Stage Company, said.
The schedule was created to accommodate Hartford Stage Company subscribers.
“It’s very confusing,” Marte acknowledged, explaining that subscribers were given a choice of seeing two of the three plays in the cycle as part of their subscription package.
“They could either see part 1 and part 2 or part 2 and part 3,” Marte said.
The two marathon productions, which include all three of the “Orphan Home Cycle” plays, are scheduled for consecutive Saturdays, Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m.
Subscribers who choose to see either of the 12-hour marathon productions, rather than individually, can do so at an additional cost, Marte said.
For non-subscribers the marathon production tickets range from $99 and $189. They are also offering a $55 meal package at the Hartford Hilton for the two meal breaks during the all day show.
Individual ticket sales for the two “Ophans’ Home Cycle” marathons are going very well, Marte said.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 1; The Story of a Childhood” is running on it’s own through Sunday, with additional individual performances on Friday, Oct. 16 and Tuesday, Oct. 20.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 2; The Story of a Marriage” is opening 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17 and running through Sunday, Oct. 4, with an additional performance on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
The “Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part 3; The Story of a Family” is opening 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8 until the end of the run, except for Oct. 16, 20, and 21.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evening performances all start at 7 p.m., with individual evening performances on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 7:30 p.m.
Individual matinee performances are running on selected Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tickets for the individual shows start at $33.
For more information, contact their box office at 860-527-5151, or visit their website at www.hartfordstage.org
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Part One of Foote’s “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” epic journey at HSC
HARTFORD — Like a long cool glass of iced tea on a humid summer day, “Part One — The Story of Childhood” of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” by Horton Foote, is made to be savored slowly, rather than gulped down fast at the Hartford Stage Company.
It’s a daring idea in an age of instant gratification, but for those with patience and perseverance, it is well worth it. With 22 actors eventually playing 70 parts in the whole of the three-part trilogy, it takes a while to figure out who everyone is.
Set in Texas in the early 1900s, Part One is a three-act story of the young Horace Robedaux from the time he is 12, played by Dylan Riley Snyder, to 14, played by Henry Hodges, and then at 20, played by Bill Heck.
Based on Foote’s father’s life, Robedaux has some pretty bad luck, with his dad dying and his mom abandoning him with relatives to go live with a man without vices, who for some unexplained reason hates the young lad.
Robedaux next goes to work on a horrid plantation where convicts are forced to work to death, and then visits his mother, where he falls ill as a young adult and has to stay too long where he isn’t welcome.
All three Horaces are excellent. The youngest, Snyder, beautifully portrays the polite honesty and heartbreaking sadness of innocence squashed, while Hodges transitions seamlessly as the misfortunate 14-year-old. Today we would call family services for all the abuse and neglect the child experiences.
There are some wild and funny characters mixed into the saga, including the paranoid alcoholic, Soll Gautier, played by James DeMarse, and the alcoholic wealthy Asa Vaughn, played by Hallie Foote, Horton Foote’s daughter.
Leon Addison Brown feels natural and unaffected as Jackson Hall, the convict turned protector of Soll. All of the actors feel real and believable as people rather than stereotypes.
The set design, by Jeff Cowie and David Barber, is simple and inspired. Especially fine is the quilted looking frame around the stage that has multiple layers, and changes with lighting by Rui Rita to alternatively look like roof-tops, swamp land, and a sunset.
The play began interestingly enough with the child standing in a field that looked like an Andrew Wyeth painting, and then transitioned to the 14-year-old and then the 20-year-old Robedaux.
I would have preferred that director Michael Wilson did not feel the need to broadcast on the backdrop the name the trilogy and each of the acts. They are already clearly marked in the program.
The first part of the trilogy feels somewhat reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia” trilogy performed at Lincoln Center in 2006 in its pacing and tempo.
Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for “The Trip to Bountiful” (1985), “Of Mice and Men,” (1992), and won Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” (1961), is in full command of his talent in this world premiere.
Part One of the trilogy is a massive and impressive undertaking that could have easily have become tiresome, but instead feels important and magnificent.
Horton Foote died in March at 92 before he could get a chance to see this massive undertaking come to fruition, which is too bad. He would have enjoyed how well the actors and Wilson nurtured this epic to life.
Each of the three-part cycle will be performed individually, with marathon performances of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” performed on Saturday, Oct. 17 and Saturday, Oct. 24.
THE ORPHAN'S HOME CYCLE, PART ONE
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux, Paul Horace Robedaux
Dylan Riley Snyder … Horace Robedaux, age 12
Henry Hodges … Horace Robedaux, age 14
Devon Abner … John Howard, Pete Davenport
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Robedaux, Asa Vaughn
James DeMarse … Soll Gautier
Leon Addison Brown … Jackson Hall
Annalee Jefferies … Corella Davenport
Jenny Dare Paulin … Lily Dale Robedaux, Minnie Curtis, age 17
HARTFORD — Like a long cool glass of iced tea on a humid summer day, “Part One — The Story of Childhood” of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” by Horton Foote, is made to be savored slowly, rather than gulped down fast at the Hartford Stage Company.
It’s a daring idea in an age of instant gratification, but for those with patience and perseverance, it is well worth it. With 22 actors eventually playing 70 parts in the whole of the three-part trilogy, it takes a while to figure out who everyone is.
Set in Texas in the early 1900s, Part One is a three-act story of the young Horace Robedaux from the time he is 12, played by Dylan Riley Snyder, to 14, played by Henry Hodges, and then at 20, played by Bill Heck.
Based on Foote’s father’s life, Robedaux has some pretty bad luck, with his dad dying and his mom abandoning him with relatives to go live with a man without vices, who for some unexplained reason hates the young lad.
Robedaux next goes to work on a horrid plantation where convicts are forced to work to death, and then visits his mother, where he falls ill as a young adult and has to stay too long where he isn’t welcome.
All three Horaces are excellent. The youngest, Snyder, beautifully portrays the polite honesty and heartbreaking sadness of innocence squashed, while Hodges transitions seamlessly as the misfortunate 14-year-old. Today we would call family services for all the abuse and neglect the child experiences.
There are some wild and funny characters mixed into the saga, including the paranoid alcoholic, Soll Gautier, played by James DeMarse, and the alcoholic wealthy Asa Vaughn, played by Hallie Foote, Horton Foote’s daughter.
Leon Addison Brown feels natural and unaffected as Jackson Hall, the convict turned protector of Soll. All of the actors feel real and believable as people rather than stereotypes.
The set design, by Jeff Cowie and David Barber, is simple and inspired. Especially fine is the quilted looking frame around the stage that has multiple layers, and changes with lighting by Rui Rita to alternatively look like roof-tops, swamp land, and a sunset.
The play began interestingly enough with the child standing in a field that looked like an Andrew Wyeth painting, and then transitioned to the 14-year-old and then the 20-year-old Robedaux.
I would have preferred that director Michael Wilson did not feel the need to broadcast on the backdrop the name the trilogy and each of the acts. They are already clearly marked in the program.
The first part of the trilogy feels somewhat reminiscent of Tom Stoppard’s “The Coast of Utopia” trilogy performed at Lincoln Center in 2006 in its pacing and tempo.
Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for “The Trip to Bountiful” (1985), “Of Mice and Men,” (1992), and won Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” (1961), is in full command of his talent in this world premiere.
Part One of the trilogy is a massive and impressive undertaking that could have easily have become tiresome, but instead feels important and magnificent.
Horton Foote died in March at 92 before he could get a chance to see this massive undertaking come to fruition, which is too bad. He would have enjoyed how well the actors and Wilson nurtured this epic to life.
Each of the three-part cycle will be performed individually, with marathon performances of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” performed on Saturday, Oct. 17 and Saturday, Oct. 24.
THE ORPHAN'S HOME CYCLE, PART ONE
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Set designed by Jeff Cowie and David Barber. Costume design by David Woolard. Lighting design by Rui Rita. Original music and sound design by John Gromada. Choreography by Peter Pucci.
Running time: 3 hours with two intermissions.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through October 24.
Tickets: $33 and up. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bill Heck … Horace Robedaux, Paul Horace Robedaux
Dylan Riley Snyder … Horace Robedaux, age 12
Henry Hodges … Horace Robedaux, age 14
Devon Abner … John Howard, Pete Davenport
Hallie Foote … Mrs. Robedaux, Asa Vaughn
James DeMarse … Soll Gautier
Leon Addison Brown … Jackson Hall
Annalee Jefferies … Corella Davenport
Jenny Dare Paulin … Lily Dale Robedaux, Minnie Curtis, age 17
Monday, August 24, 2009
Hip-hop “High School Musical” top notch at Broad Brook Opera House
EAST WINDSOR — Just in case the name doesn’t give it away “High School Musical,” playing at the Broad Brook Opera House, is geared towards teenagers and their ‘tween counter-parts.
Based on a Disney television movie by the same name, this show, with lots of songs, takes a good look at the high school clique scene, pitting jocks against artists against the brains, and asks that age-old question, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
“High School Musical” is an updated “Grease,” where the two leads, the high school basketball star Troy Bolton, played by the able Keith Leonhardt, meets Gabriella Montez, played on alternate performances by Mandie Hittleman and Chelsea Sic, during summer vacation.
Gabriella, a math wiz, moves to the same town as Troy and they meet again at the high school. Conflicts ensue when they hesitantly audition for the new high school musical, “Juliet and Romeo,” to the disapproval of the manipulative Drama Club President Sharpay Evans played alternately by Erin Fitzpatrick and Emilie Ferreira, and her brother Ryan Evans, played by Michael Dikegoros.
Drama teacher Ms. Darbus, played by Marianne Hebenstreit and Coach Bolton, played by Dallas Hosmer, accentuate the conflict of arts versus sports, when Bolton’s son Troy is not only the star of the basketball team, but also has talents on the theatrical stage and is pressured to choose between the two.
Both adults are passionate about their interests, with Darbus speaking of “the timeless allure of the greasepaint.” Hebenstreit brings sarcastic humor to the character when she says to the students, “This ain’t my first rodeo, kiddies.”
The singing is fine most of the time, with the leads possessing strong solo voices, but they don’t always blend together during the duets as well as they sing on their own.
The dancing across the board is top-notch, with funky and fabulous hip-hop moves, much of which comes straight from the movie, thanks to Daniel Otero and Leonhardt, who assisted choreographer Laura Salerno with their adaptation of the film’s choreography.
There are some good, wholesome messages in the show, such as, “you can’t let people keep you from being who you are,” “anything can happen when you take a chance,” and the need for parents to listen to their kids.
The youthful cast know their parts and their dance steps and have all the energy and enthusiasm one could ask for in this fun show with a positive message just in time for the start of another school year.
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL
Three Stars
Theater: Opera House Players
Location: 107 Main Street, Broad Brook
Production: Written by David Simpatico from Disney Channel movie written by Peter Barsocchini. Songs by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil and others. Directed by Patrique Alton Hurd. Musical direction by Rebecca Francis. Choreographer Laura Salerno. Adapted film choreography by Daniel Otero and Keith Leonhardt. Stage manager Debra Caswell. Technical direction by George Fields. Lighting design and operation by Diane St. Amand.
Running time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 30.
Tickets: $20, seniors over 60 and youth under 12 pay $16. Call 860-292-6068 or visit their website at www.operahouseplayers.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Keith Leonhardt … Troy Bolton
Mandie Hittleman and Chelsea Sic … Gabriella Montez
Erin Fitzpatrick and Emilie Ferreira … Sharpay Evans
Michael Dikegoros … Ryan Evans
Daniel Otero … Chad Danforth
Lexy Curtin … Taylor McKessie
Conor Ellis … Zeke Baylor
Joshua Pare … Jason Cross
Kathryn Suzanne Strempfer … Martha Cox
Deidra Jefferson … Kratnoff
Aslynn Brown … Jackee Scott
Hailey Brinnel … Kelsi Neilson
Nicholas Leahey … Ripper
Nicole Pare … Mongo
Nichole Giantonio, Caitlin Murphy, Kasey Rousseau … Skater Chicks
Marianne Hebenstreit … Ms. Darbus
Dallas Hosmer and Mark Wantroba (8/29)… Coach Bolton
Sheila Lehmann … Susan
Kristen Mary Fitzpatrick, Erin Fields, Sarah Ingraham, Kelsey Sobestanovich … Cheerleaders
Jillian Bower … Brainiac
John Fitzpatrick … John Brown
EAST WINDSOR — Just in case the name doesn’t give it away “High School Musical,” playing at the Broad Brook Opera House, is geared towards teenagers and their ‘tween counter-parts.
Based on a Disney television movie by the same name, this show, with lots of songs, takes a good look at the high school clique scene, pitting jocks against artists against the brains, and asks that age-old question, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
“High School Musical” is an updated “Grease,” where the two leads, the high school basketball star Troy Bolton, played by the able Keith Leonhardt, meets Gabriella Montez, played on alternate performances by Mandie Hittleman and Chelsea Sic, during summer vacation.
Gabriella, a math wiz, moves to the same town as Troy and they meet again at the high school. Conflicts ensue when they hesitantly audition for the new high school musical, “Juliet and Romeo,” to the disapproval of the manipulative Drama Club President Sharpay Evans played alternately by Erin Fitzpatrick and Emilie Ferreira, and her brother Ryan Evans, played by Michael Dikegoros.
Drama teacher Ms. Darbus, played by Marianne Hebenstreit and Coach Bolton, played by Dallas Hosmer, accentuate the conflict of arts versus sports, when Bolton’s son Troy is not only the star of the basketball team, but also has talents on the theatrical stage and is pressured to choose between the two.
Both adults are passionate about their interests, with Darbus speaking of “the timeless allure of the greasepaint.” Hebenstreit brings sarcastic humor to the character when she says to the students, “This ain’t my first rodeo, kiddies.”
The singing is fine most of the time, with the leads possessing strong solo voices, but they don’t always blend together during the duets as well as they sing on their own.
The dancing across the board is top-notch, with funky and fabulous hip-hop moves, much of which comes straight from the movie, thanks to Daniel Otero and Leonhardt, who assisted choreographer Laura Salerno with their adaptation of the film’s choreography.
There are some good, wholesome messages in the show, such as, “you can’t let people keep you from being who you are,” “anything can happen when you take a chance,” and the need for parents to listen to their kids.
The youthful cast know their parts and their dance steps and have all the energy and enthusiasm one could ask for in this fun show with a positive message just in time for the start of another school year.
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL
Three Stars
Theater: Opera House Players
Location: 107 Main Street, Broad Brook
Production: Written by David Simpatico from Disney Channel movie written by Peter Barsocchini. Songs by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil and others. Directed by Patrique Alton Hurd. Musical direction by Rebecca Francis. Choreographer Laura Salerno. Adapted film choreography by Daniel Otero and Keith Leonhardt. Stage manager Debra Caswell. Technical direction by George Fields. Lighting design and operation by Diane St. Amand.
Running time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 30.
Tickets: $20, seniors over 60 and youth under 12 pay $16. Call 860-292-6068 or visit their website at www.operahouseplayers.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Keith Leonhardt … Troy Bolton
Mandie Hittleman and Chelsea Sic … Gabriella Montez
Erin Fitzpatrick and Emilie Ferreira … Sharpay Evans
Michael Dikegoros … Ryan Evans
Daniel Otero … Chad Danforth
Lexy Curtin … Taylor McKessie
Conor Ellis … Zeke Baylor
Joshua Pare … Jason Cross
Kathryn Suzanne Strempfer … Martha Cox
Deidra Jefferson … Kratnoff
Aslynn Brown … Jackee Scott
Hailey Brinnel … Kelsi Neilson
Nicholas Leahey … Ripper
Nicole Pare … Mongo
Nichole Giantonio, Caitlin Murphy, Kasey Rousseau … Skater Chicks
Marianne Hebenstreit … Ms. Darbus
Dallas Hosmer and Mark Wantroba (8/29)… Coach Bolton
Sheila Lehmann … Susan
Kristen Mary Fitzpatrick, Erin Fields, Sarah Ingraham, Kelsey Sobestanovich … Cheerleaders
Jillian Bower … Brainiac
John Fitzpatrick … John Brown
Monday, August 10, 2009
Ivoryton’s “The Odd Couple” witty fun
IVORYTON — Who’d think divorce and possible suicide could be so funny?
Evidently Neil Simon did when he wrote the witty, silly play, “The Odd Couple,” playing at the Ivoryton Playhouse.
The actors here are a combination of professional and amateur talent that consistently lend extra excitement and energy to Ivoryton Playhouse productions.
The story is set in 1966 in New York City in a hot and smelly bachelor apartment where a group of men are playing poker. They are worried about their friend, the ultra-neat gourmet food loving Felix Unger, because he hasn’t shown up for their weekly game.
The gang, including the affable cop, Murray, played by Al Mulvey, Roy the account, played by Mike Souney, the squeaky-clean Vinnie played by M. Carl Kaufman, and cigar-chomping Speed played by Brian M. Cunningham, all sit around the table drinking warm beer, Coke, and almost eat the moldy sandwiches.
Oscar’s clothes are scattered everywhere — there are even socks on a lampshade — and one of the pictures is painfully askew in the solidly constructed apartment, designed by Dan Nischan.
What would a Neil Simon comedy be without the one liners? Felix’s friends joke that he is so cautious he even wears a seatbelt at a drive-in theater. When he locks himself in Oscar’s kid’s bathroom threatening to commit suicide, Oscar says the worst he can do in there is brush his teeth to death.
When Felix has a neck spasm, Oscar tries to help, but tells him he is “the only person I know who has clenched hair.”
Oscar, a divorced sports writer, takes in the newly separated Felix as a roommate. Felix writes the news for CBS.
Which brings up the two English Pigeon sisters — Gwendolyn played by the delightful Laura Beth Wells, and her Cecily played by the equally perky Eleanor Handley.
They enter as the double dates to Oscar and Felix. At one point the giggly sisters are left alone with the depressed Felix. When he tells them he writes the news for CBS, Gwendolyn innocently asks, “where do you get your ideas?” Funny stuff.
The fast talking actors could have sped their dialog up, particularly in the beginning. There were a few awkward overlong pauses in their exchanges over the cards. Better was when they were on the move, literally and orally, chasing Felix around the apartment while screaming in rapid-fire dialog.
“The Odd Couple” proves that opposites do attract in this fun and funny production running through August 30.
THE ODD COUPLE
3 Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton
Production: Written by Neil Simon. Directed by Lawrence Thelen. Set design by Dan Nischan. Lighting and sound design by Tate R. Burmeister. Costume design by C. Delari Johnston.
Running time: 2 hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Aug. 30.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Tony Rossi … Oscar Madison
R. Bruce Connelly … Felix Unger
Laura Beth Wells … Gwendolyn Pigeon
Eleanor Handley … Cecily Pigeon
Brian M. Cunningham … Speed
M. Carl Kaufman … Vinnie
Mike Souney … Roy
IVORYTON — Who’d think divorce and possible suicide could be so funny?
Evidently Neil Simon did when he wrote the witty, silly play, “The Odd Couple,” playing at the Ivoryton Playhouse.
The actors here are a combination of professional and amateur talent that consistently lend extra excitement and energy to Ivoryton Playhouse productions.
The story is set in 1966 in New York City in a hot and smelly bachelor apartment where a group of men are playing poker. They are worried about their friend, the ultra-neat gourmet food loving Felix Unger, because he hasn’t shown up for their weekly game.
The gang, including the affable cop, Murray, played by Al Mulvey, Roy the account, played by Mike Souney, the squeaky-clean Vinnie played by M. Carl Kaufman, and cigar-chomping Speed played by Brian M. Cunningham, all sit around the table drinking warm beer, Coke, and almost eat the moldy sandwiches.
Oscar’s clothes are scattered everywhere — there are even socks on a lampshade — and one of the pictures is painfully askew in the solidly constructed apartment, designed by Dan Nischan.
What would a Neil Simon comedy be without the one liners? Felix’s friends joke that he is so cautious he even wears a seatbelt at a drive-in theater. When he locks himself in Oscar’s kid’s bathroom threatening to commit suicide, Oscar says the worst he can do in there is brush his teeth to death.
When Felix has a neck spasm, Oscar tries to help, but tells him he is “the only person I know who has clenched hair.”
Oscar, a divorced sports writer, takes in the newly separated Felix as a roommate. Felix writes the news for CBS.
Which brings up the two English Pigeon sisters — Gwendolyn played by the delightful Laura Beth Wells, and her Cecily played by the equally perky Eleanor Handley.
They enter as the double dates to Oscar and Felix. At one point the giggly sisters are left alone with the depressed Felix. When he tells them he writes the news for CBS, Gwendolyn innocently asks, “where do you get your ideas?” Funny stuff.
The fast talking actors could have sped their dialog up, particularly in the beginning. There were a few awkward overlong pauses in their exchanges over the cards. Better was when they were on the move, literally and orally, chasing Felix around the apartment while screaming in rapid-fire dialog.
“The Odd Couple” proves that opposites do attract in this fun and funny production running through August 30.
THE ODD COUPLE
3 Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton
Production: Written by Neil Simon. Directed by Lawrence Thelen. Set design by Dan Nischan. Lighting and sound design by Tate R. Burmeister. Costume design by C. Delari Johnston.
Running time: 2 hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Aug. 30.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Tony Rossi … Oscar Madison
R. Bruce Connelly … Felix Unger
Laura Beth Wells … Gwendolyn Pigeon
Eleanor Handley … Cecily Pigeon
Brian M. Cunningham … Speed
M. Carl Kaufman … Vinnie
Mike Souney … Roy
World premiere “The Remarkable Thing About Stardust” sparkles at LTM
MANCHESTER — Seeing well-worn, perennial favorites like “Mame” and “Blithe Spirit” never grow old, but there’s something about a brand new production that is daring and exciting.
“The Remarkable Thing About Stardust,” by local playwright Anne Pie and making it’s world premiere at the Little Theatre of Manchester, is not only new, it is very good — something Pie’s many fans have come to expect.
This is the prolific Pie’s fourth show at LTM — a place she calls home. Other productions were “Sing, Vergie, Sing,” in 2008, “Wild Mushrooms” in 2004, and “Front Street” in 2005.
“The Remarkable Thing About Stardust” is her latest, about true love (hence the stardust) and family. It is beautifully and articulately crafted and well performed.
The play opens in present day New York in Milton Stern’s office. His wife, Diana, has just been arrested for loitering after midnight in a cemetery, rip-roaring drunk.
She’s ordered by a judge to seek psychiatric help, which seems like not such a bad idea, considering she keeps bursting out in hysterical tears for apparently no reason.
Debi Freund as Diana Bernadette Fogerty Stern seems to have been born to play this demanding role of a Catholic married to a successful Jewish man who is sporting goods store chain owner, confidently played by Michael Forgetta.
Diana is a sarcastic and funny woman, complaining that her 20-year-old son, Jason, played by Brian Courtemanche, has a girlfriend who “makes my eyes smart” because she has so many body-piercings that in the light she looks like a colander.
She says, “I don’t want to be around her in a thunder storm.”
Her husband, Milton, is the good provider of whom she complains, “you look but you don’t see.”
Forgetta, who plays Milton, evidently had to fill in at the last minute. On opening night he read somewhat surreptitiously from a script, but despite this he did a yeoman’s job and conveyed an amusing, domineering momma’s boy who is more married to his work than his wife.
Sometimes, though, the talking heads go on a little long, despite the actors mixing it up by hitting their marks all over the stage.
Diana finally agrees to see a psychiatrist, played with assurance by Jim Powers, and as the second act unfolds, what first appears as a simple baring of the soul turns into a compelling mystery.
Pie has a real gift for pithy dialog, along with a non-judgmental understanding heart that makes her dysfunctional memorable characters come alive.
It won’t be revealed here, but suffice it to say that “The Remarkable Thing About Stardust” has a believable, unexpected, and fulfilling payoff in the end.
THE REMARKABLE THING ABOUT STARDUST
3 Stars
Location: The Little Theatre of Manchester, Inc., Cheney Hall, 177 Hartford Road, Manchester.
Production: Written by Anne Pie. Directed by Jared R. Towler. Stage manager Tom Goodin. Set design by Greg Cerosky. Lighting design by Lee Hammitt. Sound design by Jim Ryan. Produced by Sara Logan.
Running time: 2 ½ hours, with one 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. through August 16.
Tickets: $16 — $23. Seniors over 60 and students receive a discount. Call the box office at 860-647-9824, or visit their website at www.cheneyhall.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Debi Freund … Diana Stern
Michael Forgetta … Milton Stern
Jim Power … Dr. James Barlow
Brian Courtemanche … Jason Stern
MANCHESTER — Seeing well-worn, perennial favorites like “Mame” and “Blithe Spirit” never grow old, but there’s something about a brand new production that is daring and exciting.
“The Remarkable Thing About Stardust,” by local playwright Anne Pie and making it’s world premiere at the Little Theatre of Manchester, is not only new, it is very good — something Pie’s many fans have come to expect.
This is the prolific Pie’s fourth show at LTM — a place she calls home. Other productions were “Sing, Vergie, Sing,” in 2008, “Wild Mushrooms” in 2004, and “Front Street” in 2005.
“The Remarkable Thing About Stardust” is her latest, about true love (hence the stardust) and family. It is beautifully and articulately crafted and well performed.
The play opens in present day New York in Milton Stern’s office. His wife, Diana, has just been arrested for loitering after midnight in a cemetery, rip-roaring drunk.
She’s ordered by a judge to seek psychiatric help, which seems like not such a bad idea, considering she keeps bursting out in hysterical tears for apparently no reason.
Debi Freund as Diana Bernadette Fogerty Stern seems to have been born to play this demanding role of a Catholic married to a successful Jewish man who is sporting goods store chain owner, confidently played by Michael Forgetta.
Diana is a sarcastic and funny woman, complaining that her 20-year-old son, Jason, played by Brian Courtemanche, has a girlfriend who “makes my eyes smart” because she has so many body-piercings that in the light she looks like a colander.
She says, “I don’t want to be around her in a thunder storm.”
Her husband, Milton, is the good provider of whom she complains, “you look but you don’t see.”
Forgetta, who plays Milton, evidently had to fill in at the last minute. On opening night he read somewhat surreptitiously from a script, but despite this he did a yeoman’s job and conveyed an amusing, domineering momma’s boy who is more married to his work than his wife.
Sometimes, though, the talking heads go on a little long, despite the actors mixing it up by hitting their marks all over the stage.
Diana finally agrees to see a psychiatrist, played with assurance by Jim Powers, and as the second act unfolds, what first appears as a simple baring of the soul turns into a compelling mystery.
Pie has a real gift for pithy dialog, along with a non-judgmental understanding heart that makes her dysfunctional memorable characters come alive.
It won’t be revealed here, but suffice it to say that “The Remarkable Thing About Stardust” has a believable, unexpected, and fulfilling payoff in the end.
THE REMARKABLE THING ABOUT STARDUST
3 Stars
Location: The Little Theatre of Manchester, Inc., Cheney Hall, 177 Hartford Road, Manchester.
Production: Written by Anne Pie. Directed by Jared R. Towler. Stage manager Tom Goodin. Set design by Greg Cerosky. Lighting design by Lee Hammitt. Sound design by Jim Ryan. Produced by Sara Logan.
Running time: 2 ½ hours, with one 15-minute intermission
Show Times: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. through August 16.
Tickets: $16 — $23. Seniors over 60 and students receive a discount. Call the box office at 860-647-9824, or visit their website at www.cheneyhall.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Debi Freund … Diana Stern
Michael Forgetta … Milton Stern
Jim Power … Dr. James Barlow
Brian Courtemanche … Jason Stern
Friday, August 07, 2009
“Yesterday’s, an evening with Billie Holiday” is intoxicating, transporting
HARTFORD — In life Billie Holiday was only 44 when she from liver disease after years of drinking and drug abuse. At the Hartford Stage company in the third in their summer series, “Yesterday’s, an evening with Billie Holiday,” that sorry tale is brought to life by the mesmerizing jazz singer Vanessa Rubin.
Rubin doesn’t so much impersonate Holiday but embodies her sad yet exuberant personality through music. You would think after two hours you might get tired of hearing Rubin intermingle songs with the story of Holiday’s. Rather, like a friend you haven’t seen in a long time, you just want it to go on all night.
It is almost like being drugged to listen to her sing and talk, and becomes even more intoxicating as the evening progresses.
“Singing is the way I communicate,” she says. “Singing is the way I give of myself.” Some people are good at living life, and some live only on stage. Holiday fell firmly in the second category.
Raped at 10, thrown in a Catholic reform school, hanging with bad guys, becoming addicted to heroin, which filled the hole inside her she said, as sad as it is, isn’t unique. What was different was her determination and ambition to succeed as best she could despite these tragically difficult odds.
In the south in the 1930s through the 1950s blacks were treated badly frequently, not allowed to eat with her fellow white performers and worse, of which she bravely sang about in the famous and still shocking song “Strange Fruit” about black men being lynched.
The show is set on the last night of her last concert in May 1959. She died three months later. We learn that she was born Eleanora Fagan and changed her name to Billie Holiday after her father Clarence Holiday who had married her mother, Sadie, but abandoned them when she was young.
Throughout the show, which is set up like a cabaret with tables and chairs that the stage usually occupies, Rubin’s Holiday interacts a bit with the audience, but also with her fine fellow band mates, Levi Barcourt, at Hart graduate, on piano, Bernard Davis on drums, and David Jackson on bass.
Jackson doesn’t say much, while Davis sings one song, and is a surprisingly natural actor and swell drummer. Barcourt, who also is the show’s music director, has a swinging swagger about him, but really is a far better musician than he is an actor.
At one point she says, “When people applaud it is the only time I feel really loved.” It teeters on the edge of maudlin self-pity, but her feisty determination, and charisma somehow keeps her from being an object of derision and scorn, but instead, she comes across as an honest black woman doing the best she could in her time and place.
“I could only sing the way I feel,” she says, and often changed the songs others wrote to suit her, or she wrote them herself. Songs like the terrific “Good Morning Heartache,” “God Bless the Child,” “You’ve Changed,” and “Moonlight,” plus others, filled the air. In one of the many songs she sang “love lives in a lonely land, where there’s not helping hand, to understand.”
There is something oddly heartening about these terribly sad songs. For Holiday fans, it’s fun to find out how many of them sound familiar, but even if you don’t know her music, you’ll enjoy it.
One that she didn’t sing, “Glad to be Unhappy,” always reminds me of Holiday when she says, “unrequited loves a bore, and I’ve got it pretty bad. But for someone you adore, it’s a pleasure to be sad.”
Nothing about Rubin’s Holiday, or this show, is boring, however. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
YESTERDAYS, AN EVENING WITH BILLIE HOLIDAY
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Reenie Upchurch. Directed by Woodie King Jr. Music director and pianist Levi Barcourt. Lighting design by Antoinette Tynes.
Running time: 2 hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 22.
Tickets: $26 — $65. Call 527-5151 or visit their Web site at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Vanessa Rubin … Billie Holiday
Levi Barcourt … pianist
Bernard Davis … drummer and vocalist
David Jackson … bassist
HARTFORD — In life Billie Holiday was only 44 when she from liver disease after years of drinking and drug abuse. At the Hartford Stage company in the third in their summer series, “Yesterday’s, an evening with Billie Holiday,” that sorry tale is brought to life by the mesmerizing jazz singer Vanessa Rubin.
Rubin doesn’t so much impersonate Holiday but embodies her sad yet exuberant personality through music. You would think after two hours you might get tired of hearing Rubin intermingle songs with the story of Holiday’s. Rather, like a friend you haven’t seen in a long time, you just want it to go on all night.
It is almost like being drugged to listen to her sing and talk, and becomes even more intoxicating as the evening progresses.
“Singing is the way I communicate,” she says. “Singing is the way I give of myself.” Some people are good at living life, and some live only on stage. Holiday fell firmly in the second category.
Raped at 10, thrown in a Catholic reform school, hanging with bad guys, becoming addicted to heroin, which filled the hole inside her she said, as sad as it is, isn’t unique. What was different was her determination and ambition to succeed as best she could despite these tragically difficult odds.
In the south in the 1930s through the 1950s blacks were treated badly frequently, not allowed to eat with her fellow white performers and worse, of which she bravely sang about in the famous and still shocking song “Strange Fruit” about black men being lynched.
The show is set on the last night of her last concert in May 1959. She died three months later. We learn that she was born Eleanora Fagan and changed her name to Billie Holiday after her father Clarence Holiday who had married her mother, Sadie, but abandoned them when she was young.
Throughout the show, which is set up like a cabaret with tables and chairs that the stage usually occupies, Rubin’s Holiday interacts a bit with the audience, but also with her fine fellow band mates, Levi Barcourt, at Hart graduate, on piano, Bernard Davis on drums, and David Jackson on bass.
Jackson doesn’t say much, while Davis sings one song, and is a surprisingly natural actor and swell drummer. Barcourt, who also is the show’s music director, has a swinging swagger about him, but really is a far better musician than he is an actor.
At one point she says, “When people applaud it is the only time I feel really loved.” It teeters on the edge of maudlin self-pity, but her feisty determination, and charisma somehow keeps her from being an object of derision and scorn, but instead, she comes across as an honest black woman doing the best she could in her time and place.
“I could only sing the way I feel,” she says, and often changed the songs others wrote to suit her, or she wrote them herself. Songs like the terrific “Good Morning Heartache,” “God Bless the Child,” “You’ve Changed,” and “Moonlight,” plus others, filled the air. In one of the many songs she sang “love lives in a lonely land, where there’s not helping hand, to understand.”
There is something oddly heartening about these terribly sad songs. For Holiday fans, it’s fun to find out how many of them sound familiar, but even if you don’t know her music, you’ll enjoy it.
One that she didn’t sing, “Glad to be Unhappy,” always reminds me of Holiday when she says, “unrequited loves a bore, and I’ve got it pretty bad. But for someone you adore, it’s a pleasure to be sad.”
Nothing about Rubin’s Holiday, or this show, is boring, however. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
YESTERDAYS, AN EVENING WITH BILLIE HOLIDAY
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Written by Reenie Upchurch. Directed by Woodie King Jr. Music director and pianist Levi Barcourt. Lighting design by Antoinette Tynes.
Running time: 2 hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 22.
Tickets: $26 — $65. Call 527-5151 or visit their Web site at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Vanessa Rubin … Billie Holiday
Levi Barcourt … pianist
Bernard Davis … drummer and vocalist
David Jackson … bassist
Thursday, August 06, 2009
“Camelot” rules at the Goodspeed
EAST HADDAM — Step back into a spellbinding world of chivalry, magic, knights in shining armor at the round table, and grand visions of a world without war in Goodspeed Opera House’s production of “Camelot.”
First produced on Broadway in 1960 and then made into a major motion picture in 1967, this timeless musical features some of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s finest, most whimsical and heartfelt music, including the sultry “The Lusty Month of May,” where Guenevere sings that in May they can to be “proper or im,” and “wholesome or un.”
King Arthur is played by Bradley Dean with proper royal pomp and earnest striving, which occasionally reverts to an annoying whininess. Dean is so close to the greatness required of being king, but at times over-reaches. His voice is strong, fine, and clear, particularly when he sings the rousing theme song, “Camelot.”
Erin Davie plays Guenevere with appropriate haughtiness, but when confronted by the super stiff Lancelot, she misses the opportunity to really have fun as the petulant, spoiled, frivolous, young debutante that she is at first — (i.e., see Paris Hilton.) This would have given her eventual transition into a grown up serious woman who is deeply in love more gravitas.
Maxime de Toledo as Lancelot hits that character on all cylinders. Not so easy playing someone who is perfect, and he makes that self-sacrificing superior knight transition into a softer loving man believable.
Looking remarkably like the actor Rupert Everett, Toledo has the French accent and phrasing down, so that even when he is singing he still make he clearly articulates — not an easy achievement, but then he is, dare I say, perfect.
Toledo sings one of the most beautiful heartbreaking love songs ever written, “If Ever I Should Leave You,” and he sings it with heartfelt sincerity with a gorgeous, rich voice, but he seems to almost swallow some of the phrases a bit during the song.
It’s all fine and well to play the honorable hero, but the more evil the villain, the better the show, and Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son, here played by Adam Shonkwiler, is pointedly edgy and fantastic.
He’s funny too when he says that his step-father hated him so much that he gave him one of his mother’s magic youth potions that took ten years off of his life when he is nine, making him minus one.
Shonkwiler has a terrific Scottish accent that beautifully enhances his menacing, undermining, and scheming ways, giving a biting, conniving, and brittle performance that is a fine foil to Arthur’s lofty vulnerable goals of a new world order where might doesn’t make right and laws prevail. Mordred says with relish, “I cannot wait to rush in where angels fear to tread,” and you know he means it.
Mordred’s moral deficiency highlights how much more difficult it is to build up than to tear down.
Arthur struggles to create a world where “might doesn’t make right,” and “compassion is not weakness,” and establishing a world of laws and courts, and juries, rather than one where disputes are settled with bloodshed. All issues that we in our seemingly civilized world still haven’t figured out how to do.
At one point Arthur says in frustrated exasperation to Mordred, “The adage ‘blood is thicker than water’ is invented by undeserving relatives,” which received a knowing laugh from the audience. Still, he takes to heart the another adage — “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Director Rob Ruggiero does an innovative job utilizing the tiny Goodspeed stage, having the knights often entering from the aisles onto the stage — giving the show a more intense and intimate feeling.
The costumes, of which there were many, by Alejo Wietti, were period perfect, with long, flowing, colorful, low-waisted gowns from the gals and fine elegant leather bodkins and gorgeous leather boots for the men. The custom-molded armor is classy and appropriate. At first glance it looks like real pounded steel, but is most likely made from some kind of lightweight plastic polymer.
The simple, almost Japanese-like set, by Michael Schweikardt, works well on the tiny stage. Rather than have an elaborate and cumbersome castle, the palace is inferred with a great rock wall against the background that looks like an indoor rock-climber’s dream, well lit by John Lasiter.
Schweikardt also utilizing four sliding snowflake screens to fine effect, sliding them in and out to keep the stage visually interesting without being obtrusive.
There are many horns in the orchestra pit, always a danger for overpowering the singers, but here, with fine orchestrations by Dan DeLange and musical direction by Michael O’Flaherty, this is not an issue.
Come and enjoy this “fleeting wisp of glory” known as “Camelot.”
CAMELOT
3 Stars
Location: Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam
Production: Music by Frederick Lowe. Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Directed by Rob Ruggiero. Scenery design by Michael Schweikardt. Costume design by Alejo Wietti. Lighting Design by John Lasiter. Sound design by Jay Hilton. Orchestrations by Dan DeLange. Musical director Michael O’Flaherty. Choreography by Ralph Perkins.
Running time: 3 hours, with one intermission
Show Times: Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (with select performances at 2 p.m.); Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.; Saturday matinee at 3 p.m. and Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., with select Sunday evening performance at 6:30 p.m. through Sept. 19.
Tickets: $27.50 — $74.50. Call the box office at 860-873-8668 or visit their website at www.goodspeed.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bradley Dean … King Arthur
Erin Davie … Guenevere
Maxime de Toledo … Lancelot
Adam Shonkwiler … Mordred
Ronn Carroll … King Pellinore
Herman Petras … Merlyn
EAST HADDAM — Step back into a spellbinding world of chivalry, magic, knights in shining armor at the round table, and grand visions of a world without war in Goodspeed Opera House’s production of “Camelot.”
First produced on Broadway in 1960 and then made into a major motion picture in 1967, this timeless musical features some of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s finest, most whimsical and heartfelt music, including the sultry “The Lusty Month of May,” where Guenevere sings that in May they can to be “proper or im,” and “wholesome or un.”
King Arthur is played by Bradley Dean with proper royal pomp and earnest striving, which occasionally reverts to an annoying whininess. Dean is so close to the greatness required of being king, but at times over-reaches. His voice is strong, fine, and clear, particularly when he sings the rousing theme song, “Camelot.”
Erin Davie plays Guenevere with appropriate haughtiness, but when confronted by the super stiff Lancelot, she misses the opportunity to really have fun as the petulant, spoiled, frivolous, young debutante that she is at first — (i.e., see Paris Hilton.) This would have given her eventual transition into a grown up serious woman who is deeply in love more gravitas.
Maxime de Toledo as Lancelot hits that character on all cylinders. Not so easy playing someone who is perfect, and he makes that self-sacrificing superior knight transition into a softer loving man believable.
Looking remarkably like the actor Rupert Everett, Toledo has the French accent and phrasing down, so that even when he is singing he still make he clearly articulates — not an easy achievement, but then he is, dare I say, perfect.
Toledo sings one of the most beautiful heartbreaking love songs ever written, “If Ever I Should Leave You,” and he sings it with heartfelt sincerity with a gorgeous, rich voice, but he seems to almost swallow some of the phrases a bit during the song.
It’s all fine and well to play the honorable hero, but the more evil the villain, the better the show, and Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son, here played by Adam Shonkwiler, is pointedly edgy and fantastic.
He’s funny too when he says that his step-father hated him so much that he gave him one of his mother’s magic youth potions that took ten years off of his life when he is nine, making him minus one.
Shonkwiler has a terrific Scottish accent that beautifully enhances his menacing, undermining, and scheming ways, giving a biting, conniving, and brittle performance that is a fine foil to Arthur’s lofty vulnerable goals of a new world order where might doesn’t make right and laws prevail. Mordred says with relish, “I cannot wait to rush in where angels fear to tread,” and you know he means it.
Mordred’s moral deficiency highlights how much more difficult it is to build up than to tear down.
Arthur struggles to create a world where “might doesn’t make right,” and “compassion is not weakness,” and establishing a world of laws and courts, and juries, rather than one where disputes are settled with bloodshed. All issues that we in our seemingly civilized world still haven’t figured out how to do.
At one point Arthur says in frustrated exasperation to Mordred, “The adage ‘blood is thicker than water’ is invented by undeserving relatives,” which received a knowing laugh from the audience. Still, he takes to heart the another adage — “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Director Rob Ruggiero does an innovative job utilizing the tiny Goodspeed stage, having the knights often entering from the aisles onto the stage — giving the show a more intense and intimate feeling.
The costumes, of which there were many, by Alejo Wietti, were period perfect, with long, flowing, colorful, low-waisted gowns from the gals and fine elegant leather bodkins and gorgeous leather boots for the men. The custom-molded armor is classy and appropriate. At first glance it looks like real pounded steel, but is most likely made from some kind of lightweight plastic polymer.
The simple, almost Japanese-like set, by Michael Schweikardt, works well on the tiny stage. Rather than have an elaborate and cumbersome castle, the palace is inferred with a great rock wall against the background that looks like an indoor rock-climber’s dream, well lit by John Lasiter.
Schweikardt also utilizing four sliding snowflake screens to fine effect, sliding them in and out to keep the stage visually interesting without being obtrusive.
There are many horns in the orchestra pit, always a danger for overpowering the singers, but here, with fine orchestrations by Dan DeLange and musical direction by Michael O’Flaherty, this is not an issue.
Come and enjoy this “fleeting wisp of glory” known as “Camelot.”
CAMELOT
3 Stars
Location: Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam
Production: Music by Frederick Lowe. Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Directed by Rob Ruggiero. Scenery design by Michael Schweikardt. Costume design by Alejo Wietti. Lighting Design by John Lasiter. Sound design by Jay Hilton. Orchestrations by Dan DeLange. Musical director Michael O’Flaherty. Choreography by Ralph Perkins.
Running time: 3 hours, with one intermission
Show Times: Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (with select performances at 2 p.m.); Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.; Saturday matinee at 3 p.m. and Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., with select Sunday evening performance at 6:30 p.m. through Sept. 19.
Tickets: $27.50 — $74.50. Call the box office at 860-873-8668 or visit their website at www.goodspeed.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Bradley Dean … King Arthur
Erin Davie … Guenevere
Maxime de Toledo … Lancelot
Adam Shonkwiler … Mordred
Ronn Carroll … King Pellinore
Herman Petras … Merlyn
Thursday, July 16, 2009
“THWAK!” is indescribably delicious
HARTFORD — Wacky, wild, wonderful, and full of energy and slapstick humor, the kooky, crazy, and indescribably delicious “THWAK!” is like a high-octane cabaret act shot through a canon, complete with out-of-this-world sound-effects.
Part “Three Stooges” part “Marx Brothers” with some Fred Astaire-meets-the Prairie Home Companion thrown in for good measure, the show, created, performed and directed by two cheeky Australians and want-to-be German/Austrians, David Collins (the one with hair as he likes to remind everyone) and Shane Dundas (the other one) is unquestionably one of a kind.
These two, who call themselves the Umbilical Brothers, probably because they have similar builds, accentuated by their identical gray pants and maroon tops, also possess similarly slightly off-kilter minds. They jump, roll, spin, move in slow motion, and take the willing audience on a wild roller-coaster ride of the imagination.
They have performed bits of their act on “Late Night with David Letterman Show” as well as the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and have that kind of in your face “stupid pet tricks” instant appeal those shows seek in their guests.
They both work so very hard to win you over and there’s really no reason not to like them.
They pay homage to the art of mime, while contemporaneously chide it’s sometimes smug self-importance, by doing the old “invisible rope,” “staircase,” and “invisible wall” mime moves, complete with a single clap and a little shimmy.
Then they take pantomime to a whole other level as tanks, grenades, exploding real invisible dogs (not to be confused with the make-believe invisible dogs), barbecues, cats, squished bugs, taxis, horses, robots, and even some moody crooning by Collins.
When Collins is singing Dundas does his darndest to disturb him with sweeping, vacuuming, and taking cell phone calls. It is funny, but it would be funnier still if Collins gets angry at Dundas, rather than just passively annoyed. It feels rehearsed and planned, rather than spontaneous and immediate — a missed opportunity.
While Dundas does most of the stunningly fine sound-effects, Collins is no slouch in the sound department either, but also adds a plethora of super-silly “zappity zoo” sounds all his own.
When they go behind the screen and put on the puppet show, it is a little pedestrian, but when they are behind that same screen and perform the rubber arm and contortionist leg bit, it is original and inspired.
The two have put on children’s productions, and use sock puppets in “THWAK!,” and cartoon character voices, such as Kermit the Frog, at times, but this show is definitely not for the little kids, because there is a good amount of profanity involved. Still, teenagers enjoyed the show as much as adults.
This pair of sunny, funny of Australians is an irresistible, original whirlwind pair of sound and fury that have to be experienced.
THWAK!
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Created, performed, and directed by Shane Dundas and David Collins. Original New York production directed by Philip William McKinley. Lighting designed by Josh Monroe. Show Controller Tina Oldhauser.
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through August 2.
Tickets: $19 — $50. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Shane Dundas and David Collins as the Umbilical Brothers
HARTFORD — Wacky, wild, wonderful, and full of energy and slapstick humor, the kooky, crazy, and indescribably delicious “THWAK!” is like a high-octane cabaret act shot through a canon, complete with out-of-this-world sound-effects.
Part “Three Stooges” part “Marx Brothers” with some Fred Astaire-meets-the Prairie Home Companion thrown in for good measure, the show, created, performed and directed by two cheeky Australians and want-to-be German/Austrians, David Collins (the one with hair as he likes to remind everyone) and Shane Dundas (the other one) is unquestionably one of a kind.
These two, who call themselves the Umbilical Brothers, probably because they have similar builds, accentuated by their identical gray pants and maroon tops, also possess similarly slightly off-kilter minds. They jump, roll, spin, move in slow motion, and take the willing audience on a wild roller-coaster ride of the imagination.
They have performed bits of their act on “Late Night with David Letterman Show” as well as the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and have that kind of in your face “stupid pet tricks” instant appeal those shows seek in their guests.
They both work so very hard to win you over and there’s really no reason not to like them.
They pay homage to the art of mime, while contemporaneously chide it’s sometimes smug self-importance, by doing the old “invisible rope,” “staircase,” and “invisible wall” mime moves, complete with a single clap and a little shimmy.
Then they take pantomime to a whole other level as tanks, grenades, exploding real invisible dogs (not to be confused with the make-believe invisible dogs), barbecues, cats, squished bugs, taxis, horses, robots, and even some moody crooning by Collins.
When Collins is singing Dundas does his darndest to disturb him with sweeping, vacuuming, and taking cell phone calls. It is funny, but it would be funnier still if Collins gets angry at Dundas, rather than just passively annoyed. It feels rehearsed and planned, rather than spontaneous and immediate — a missed opportunity.
While Dundas does most of the stunningly fine sound-effects, Collins is no slouch in the sound department either, but also adds a plethora of super-silly “zappity zoo” sounds all his own.
When they go behind the screen and put on the puppet show, it is a little pedestrian, but when they are behind that same screen and perform the rubber arm and contortionist leg bit, it is original and inspired.
The two have put on children’s productions, and use sock puppets in “THWAK!,” and cartoon character voices, such as Kermit the Frog, at times, but this show is definitely not for the little kids, because there is a good amount of profanity involved. Still, teenagers enjoyed the show as much as adults.
This pair of sunny, funny of Australians is an irresistible, original whirlwind pair of sound and fury that have to be experienced.
THWAK!
3 stars
Location: Hartford Stage Company, 50 Church Street, Hartford.
Production: Created, performed, and directed by Shane Dundas and David Collins. Original New York production directed by Philip William McKinley. Lighting designed by Josh Monroe. Show Controller Tina Oldhauser.
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinee performances Sundays and selected Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. through August 2.
Tickets: $19 — $50. Call 860-527-5151 or visit their website at hartfordstage.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Shane Dundas and David Collins as the Umbilical Brothers
Monday, July 06, 2009
"The Full Monty" an upbeat hope-filled musical
IVORYTON — Do they or don’t they? That’s the underlying question that won’t be answered here, in the musical “The Full Monty” playing at the Ivoryton Theatre through July 26.
Based on the 1997 English movie by the same name, playwright Terrence McNally seamlessly transferred the setting from working class Sheffield, England to Buffalo, New York.
McNally kept the blue-collar characters and situations the same as the movie, including the six out-of-work and down on their luck men who decide to imitate the Chippendale dancers to raise much need cash. They also decide to go “full monty” meaning — completely naked. But do they have the nerve?
The actors, who are a combination of amateurs and professionals, are all terrific, and when you consider they put the musical together in just two weeks, it’s pretty amazing.
Credit goes to Larry Nye, who also created the highly athletic, complex, and dynamic choreography, which the actors perform with fine precision.
The music is jazzy and bluezy, with the musicians behind the industrial set, with musical direction by John Sebastian DeNicola.
This show couldn’t be more timely either, with the current 9.5 percent unemployment rate. The musical demonstrates how demoralizing and hard it is on the self-esteem to be without a job.
In the first song, an atonal number called “Scrap,” the characters sing about “how I got to be a loser, when I used to be a man.”
Barrett Hall plays the everyman loser, Jerry Lukowski, whose wife, Pam Lukowski, (Victoria M. E. Church) has left him for another man, and whose 12-year-old son, Nathan (Carlin Morris) might be lost to him if he can’t come up with the child-support money.
All the characters are well-defined and good, including Dave Bukatinsky, played by Robert W. Schultz Jr., the plus-sized guy whose wife, the spunky Georgie, played by MaryAnne Piccolo, wants him to get a job as a Wal-Mart security guard.
Harold Nichols, the MBA manager who also gets let go, played by Peter Craig Morse, is convinced by Jerry to teach them all how to dance. Nichols pretends he is still working because he doesn’t want to let his wife, Vicki, down, played by Jackie Sidle.
John T. Lynes plays Malcolm MacGregor, the nerdy mama’s boy who attempts to kill himself.
The song “Big Ass Rock” sung by Malcolm, Jerry, and Dave is darkly absurd, hysterical, and terrific, with the guys promising to kill Malcolm rather than having him commit suicide, because that’s what friends do for friends.
There’s also the fine Mark F. Weekes who plays Noah (Horse) T. Simmons, the best dancer in the group by far. That man can move.
The song “Michael Jordan’s Ball” where the guys interpret basketball moves as dance routines is inspired and reminiscent of Gene Kelly’s athleticism.
A character who wasn’t in the movie but is an appealing addition to the musical is the crusty old piano player, Jeannette Burmeister. Judith Lenzi-Magoveny plays Jeannette who used to be on the big band circuit and has been married eight times, with a dry frankness that steals the show every time she is on the stage.
It probably goes without saying that there is a lot of sexual innuendo, a plethora of profanity, and some scantily-clothed men, making this show very unsuitable for kids.
You just can’t keep a good man down in this lively, upbeat, hope-filled musical “The Full Monty.”
THE FULL MONTY
3 Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton
Production: Directed and choreographed by Larry Nye. Lyrics and music by David Yazbek. Book by Terrance McNally. Musical direction by John Sebastian DeNicola. Set design by Cully Long. Lighting design by Tate Burmeister. Costume design by Vivianna Lamb.
Running time: 2 ½ hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through July 26.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Barrett Hall … Jerry Lukowski
Carlin Morris … Nathan Lukowski
Victoria M. E. Church … Pam Lukowski
Paul Falzone … Teddy Slaughter
Robert W. Schultz Jr. … Dave Bukatinsky
MaryAnne Piccolo … Georgie Bukatinsky
Peter Craig Morse … Harold Nichols
Jackie Sidle … Vicki Nichols
John T. Lynes … Malcolm MacGregor
Justin Boudreau … Ethan Girard
Mark F. Weeks … Noah (Horse) T. Simmons
Judith Lenzi-Magoveny … Jeanette Burmeister
Steven Hosking … Buddy (Keno) Walsh
Cole Sutton … Second stripper
Rick Farndell … Tony Giordano
Elisabeth Cernadas … Estelle Genovese
Jorie Janeway … Susan Hershey
Abby Gershuny … Dolores
Bethany Fitzgerald … Joanie Lish
IVORYTON — Do they or don’t they? That’s the underlying question that won’t be answered here, in the musical “The Full Monty” playing at the Ivoryton Theatre through July 26.
Based on the 1997 English movie by the same name, playwright Terrence McNally seamlessly transferred the setting from working class Sheffield, England to Buffalo, New York.
McNally kept the blue-collar characters and situations the same as the movie, including the six out-of-work and down on their luck men who decide to imitate the Chippendale dancers to raise much need cash. They also decide to go “full monty” meaning — completely naked. But do they have the nerve?
The actors, who are a combination of amateurs and professionals, are all terrific, and when you consider they put the musical together in just two weeks, it’s pretty amazing.
Credit goes to Larry Nye, who also created the highly athletic, complex, and dynamic choreography, which the actors perform with fine precision.
The music is jazzy and bluezy, with the musicians behind the industrial set, with musical direction by John Sebastian DeNicola.
This show couldn’t be more timely either, with the current 9.5 percent unemployment rate. The musical demonstrates how demoralizing and hard it is on the self-esteem to be without a job.
In the first song, an atonal number called “Scrap,” the characters sing about “how I got to be a loser, when I used to be a man.”
Barrett Hall plays the everyman loser, Jerry Lukowski, whose wife, Pam Lukowski, (Victoria M. E. Church) has left him for another man, and whose 12-year-old son, Nathan (Carlin Morris) might be lost to him if he can’t come up with the child-support money.
All the characters are well-defined and good, including Dave Bukatinsky, played by Robert W. Schultz Jr., the plus-sized guy whose wife, the spunky Georgie, played by MaryAnne Piccolo, wants him to get a job as a Wal-Mart security guard.
Harold Nichols, the MBA manager who also gets let go, played by Peter Craig Morse, is convinced by Jerry to teach them all how to dance. Nichols pretends he is still working because he doesn’t want to let his wife, Vicki, down, played by Jackie Sidle.
John T. Lynes plays Malcolm MacGregor, the nerdy mama’s boy who attempts to kill himself.
The song “Big Ass Rock” sung by Malcolm, Jerry, and Dave is darkly absurd, hysterical, and terrific, with the guys promising to kill Malcolm rather than having him commit suicide, because that’s what friends do for friends.
There’s also the fine Mark F. Weekes who plays Noah (Horse) T. Simmons, the best dancer in the group by far. That man can move.
The song “Michael Jordan’s Ball” where the guys interpret basketball moves as dance routines is inspired and reminiscent of Gene Kelly’s athleticism.
A character who wasn’t in the movie but is an appealing addition to the musical is the crusty old piano player, Jeannette Burmeister. Judith Lenzi-Magoveny plays Jeannette who used to be on the big band circuit and has been married eight times, with a dry frankness that steals the show every time she is on the stage.
It probably goes without saying that there is a lot of sexual innuendo, a plethora of profanity, and some scantily-clothed men, making this show very unsuitable for kids.
You just can’t keep a good man down in this lively, upbeat, hope-filled musical “The Full Monty.”
THE FULL MONTY
3 Stars
Location: Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main Street, Ivoryton
Production: Directed and choreographed by Larry Nye. Lyrics and music by David Yazbek. Book by Terrance McNally. Musical direction by John Sebastian DeNicola. Set design by Cully Long. Lighting design by Tate Burmeister. Costume design by Vivianna Lamb.
Running time: 2 ½ hours plus one 15-minute intermission.
Show Times: Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through July 26.
Tickets: $35 for adults, $30 for previews and seniors, $20 for students, and $15 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 860-767-7318, or visit their website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Barrett Hall … Jerry Lukowski
Carlin Morris … Nathan Lukowski
Victoria M. E. Church … Pam Lukowski
Paul Falzone … Teddy Slaughter
Robert W. Schultz Jr. … Dave Bukatinsky
MaryAnne Piccolo … Georgie Bukatinsky
Peter Craig Morse … Harold Nichols
Jackie Sidle … Vicki Nichols
John T. Lynes … Malcolm MacGregor
Justin Boudreau … Ethan Girard
Mark F. Weeks … Noah (Horse) T. Simmons
Judith Lenzi-Magoveny … Jeanette Burmeister
Steven Hosking … Buddy (Keno) Walsh
Cole Sutton … Second stripper
Rick Farndell … Tony Giordano
Elisabeth Cernadas … Estelle Genovese
Jorie Janeway … Susan Hershey
Abby Gershuny … Dolores
Bethany Fitzgerald … Joanie Lish
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