Come Into the Garden

Review of Escaped Alone, Yale Repertory Theatre

Much like Samuel Beckett before her, Caryl Churchill’s plays are anything but naturalistic dramas. Their theatricality is generally provocative, compelling, and oftentimes comical or at least quizzical. Such is the case with Escaped Alone, directed by Liz Diamond at Yale Repertory Theatre through March 30.

Vi (Mary Lou Rosato), Sally (Sandra Shipley), Lena (Rita Wolf), Mrs, Jarrett (LaTonya Borsay) in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

The cast consists of four women who have attained senior citizen status; Sally (Sandra Shipley), Vi (Mary Lou Rosato), and Lena (Rita Wolf) are visiting together in Sally’s garden when Mrs. Jarrett (LaTonya Borsay), a local women whom the others recognize but don’t really know, happens by. Mrs. Jarrett opens the play by addressing the audience and will close it the same way; her abrupt departure seeming to illustrate the play’s title phrase (a quotation from the Bible’s Book of Job that Herman Melville famously pressed into service in Moby-Dick): “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

In Job, the statement is made four times by four different messengers who tell Job of great calamities that have befallen his family and his livestock and his servants. In Churchill’s play, Mrs. Jarrett, suddenly separate from the rest, at regular intervals proclaims a litany of crisis and devastation that the playbill calls “graphic descriptions of human and environmental apocalypse." They are that, but they are also grotesque and carnivalesque and absurdist descriptions: “The hunger began when eighty percent of food was diverted to TV programmes” [. . .] “Only when cooking shows were overtaken by sex with football teams did ingredients trickle back to the shops and rice was airlifted again.” What we hear is a welter of emergency scenarios that, it may well be, we are poised more readily to take seriously than when Churchill’s play first debuted in 2016.

Mrs. Jarrett (LaTonya Borsay) in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Each time we step out of that quiet, very English garden into Mrs. Jarrett’s flights (whether of fantasy or witness or prophecy we are never altogether sure) we are met first with a booming sound and blinding lights illuminating the audience. The device certainly creates tension, but undermines what I feel certain are meant to be comical elements in Mrs. Jarrett’s speeches. In Diamond’s production, LaTonya Borsay’s delivery has an almost unvarying pitch of barely suppressed panic. But even panic can become monotonous, and that may well be why the paucity of our imaginations is nowhere more pertinent than in the previsioning of apocalyptic scenarios. Churchill’s are richer than the norm but you’ll really have to concentrate to perceive her throughlines.

Within the garden, conversation moves agreeably amidst a range of topics, mostly small talk that serves to orient Mrs. Jarrett within the longstanding rapport of the other three, which allows them to speak in half-phrases and asides and addendums. The orchestration of the dialogue is brilliantly handled throughout. The play runs for under an hour, but you may find you would like to visit with these amiable women for much longer.

There are comments about grandchildren, former occupations, getting out of the house (or not), and acute observations (such as how neighboring countries are more likely to be antagonistic). The interplay of topics can sometimes put one or another on the spot, as when Sally talks about her testimony on behalf of Vi, when the latter was accused of murdering her husband. Such matters crop up with a comical matter-of-factness that is also speculative, as if the settled nature of these routine lives can be quite easily disrupted by a word or two too wide or too pointed.

And that of course is how these cursory topics relate to Mrs. Jarrett’s speeches, Churchill providing a verbal barrage that shows how we chatter upon a precipice and how hard it is to make speech work for us as more than directed sounds, as Lena puts it: “why move your mouth and do talking?”

Sally (Sandra Shipley) in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Each character gets a telling spotlit moment, seated in her chair and letting us into her inner thought. For Lena, it’s how she easily withdraws from social expectations; for Vi, how she can’t bear a kitchen since that’s where her husband died; for Sally, a phobia about cats that mounts into a panicked need for someone who can make the fear go away; for Mrs. Jarrett, the single phrase “terrible rage” that—with Mrs. Jarrett played by a Black actress in this production—lands with more force than perhaps Churchill envisioned.

The resiliency of the quartet is nowhere better expressed than when they sing and dance together through a rendition of Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road, Jack,” a familiar, catchy tune that expresses an exuberance, not of escape but of assertion, as an “old woman” is addressed who is throwing a man out. It’s the most together these neighbors get and the musical number brings with it a sense of joyous renewal, as if their lives are still their own despite everything.

Vi (Mary Lou Rosato), Sally (Sandra Shipley), Lena (Rita Wolf), Mrs, Jarrett (LaTonya Borsay) in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lia Tubiana’s set suggests a placid world of green things bathed in Stephen Strawbridge’s day-bright lighting. Behind this garden scene stretch two huge screens that swirl and pulse with Shawn Lovell-Boyle’s projections—fire, lava, crepuscular life—during Mrs. Jarrett’s solo speeches, and depict clouds as if a time-lapse film later in the play. Costumes by Yu-Jung Shen are relaxed and colorful, with sneakers or sandals and cardigans. If at first we feel we’re calling with Mrs. Jarrett on a group of homebodies passing time, by the end we might feel we’ve stumbled on the Three Fates, speaking of “what’s past or passing or to come.”

Escaped Alone
By Caryl Churchill
Directed by Liz Diamond

Scenic Designer: Lia Tubiana; Costume Designer: Yu-Jung Shen; Lighting Designer: Stephen Strawbridge; Sound Designer: Sinan Refik Zafar; Projection Designer: Shawn Lovell-Boyle; Music Director: Liam Bellman-Sharpe; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Production Dramaturgs: Catherine Sheehy, Karoline Vielemeyer; Technical Director: Keira Jacobs; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Julie Foh; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Charlie Lovejoy

Cast: LaTonya Borsay, Mary Lou Rosato, Sandra Shipley, Rita Wolf

Yale Repertory Theatre
March 8-30, 2024
  

If You Can't Stand the Heat. . .

Review of The Hot Wing King, Hartford Stage

Cooking is a lot like theater: you need the right mix of the right ingredients. Katori Hall’s Pulitzer-winning play The Hot Wing King offers light, sassy dialogue among a joshing group of gay men, a splash of impromptu musical numbers, a deep soak of caring and confrontational talk, and an infusion of spicey issues of gender, race, and sexuality. Directed by Christopher D. Betts, the play is a study in how friendship and erotic relations and family obligations can all simmer together, involving us all in the way they play out. It’s a heady mix that drew enthusiastic responses from the matinee crowd Sunday at Hartford Stage where it plays through March 24.

Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) has left behind a wife and sons in St. Louis to move in with his lover Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson) in Memphis. Dwayne is a hotel manager with a nice house where Cordell, as yet unemployed, feels his second-class status. Cordell’s chief way of asserting himself as the action opens is in concocting recipes for hot chicken wings and entering his creations in a local contest. To that end, Dwayne and two of their friends, Isom (Israel Erron Ford) and Big Charles (Postell Pringle) are pressed into service to help—whether it’s dismembering chickens or stirring a huge vat of sauce counter-clockwise for five hours or soaking wood chips. Cordell is a man with a mission and much of the first half hour or so is mostly the gossiping, joking, preening and one-upping of this colorful group of friends and lovers.

Big Charles (Postell Pringle), Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson), EJ (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), Isom (Israel Erron Ford, seated), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Plot points begin to surface when we learn that Dwayne has guilty feelings for having called the police to help his distraught sister, who had mental troubles and addiction problems, and was killed in the confrontation. His sister’s son, “EJ” (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), eventually shows up seeking asylum from a makeshift household with his father TJ (Alphonso Walker Jr.), a hustler viewed as “a thug” by the genteel types in Dwayne’s home.

TJ (Alphonso Walker Jr) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Tensions percolate aplenty: besides Cordell’s feeling that Dwayne makes all his own decisions as though they are not in a relationship, there’s also Cordell’s feeling that he can’t take on helping out Dwayne’s nephew when his own sons won’t even speak to him for abandoning their mother. Meanwhile whatever Big Charles and Isom have going has its own prickly edges, and EJ, who has been known to pilfer in the past, has possible behavioral issues. TJ has his own issues with his son spending so much time around gay men.

Isom (Israel Erron Ford), Big Charles (Postell Pringle), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty), Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The verbal hectoring and ribbing can sometimes run a bit thick, and I suspect that Dialect and Voice Coach Cynthis Santos DeCure had quite a job keeping everyone on point for the local accent which, coupled with the slang and street phrases, can make one wish for subtitles at times. Then too this is a physically busy play, with well-orchestrated use of space and body language, and lots of movement throughout Emmie Finckel’s well-appointed two-level set, including a side basketball patio where some of the more intense dialogues take place. Jahise LeBouef’s costumes sport vibrant colors, and there are interludes at a piano and jokey song performances with cooking implements as microphones. Shortly before the break there’s an “oh no” moment that earns gasps, setting up comic repercussions in the second half.

As we settle in after intermission it’s easy to feel at home with these folks, and we want to see how their ad hoc household is going to work out its snags. To that end, there are great moments from both Marcus Gladney, Jr., as EJ, who finally has to dump on his uncle for not respecting him; and from Alphonso Walker Jr. who gives TJ a deeply thoughtful portrayal, quite welcome for its gravitas. Anything but grave, Israel Erron Ford’s Isom is the live-wire, life-of-the-party type with the accessories and attitudes to match; he’s also got moves and a voice that convince us he might be more than all show. Postell Pringle’s Big Charles is the kind of guy who is generally taxed with “keeping it real,” a sports-watching couch potato who gives a regular Joe feel to the group.

Everett “EJ” (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty, foreground) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As the sparring couple trying to make things work, Cordell and Dwayne can both feel a bit immature, but also familiar enough in their uncertainty about to how to cope with what they feel. There’s an intimate moment between them at one point that goes a long way to help us see that their bond is real, even if their day-to-day situation has them doubting it. And both Bjorn DuPaty and Calvin M. Thompson walk well the throughlines of high comedy and the deep dives of feeling that their roles require.

Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lively and colorful like a party you were glad you got invited to, The Hot Wing Kings also feels at times like an insular gathering where you’ve got to bring a certain spirit—and not just an enthusiasm for wings—in order to gain admittance. Even at its most carefree, the tone seems aimed to prove something, such as the way these lives matter and the way they have to find—even within a certain amount of sit-com trappings—a valid way to represent truth.

 

The Hot Wing King
By Katori Hall
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Scenic Design: Emmie Finckel; Costume Design: Jahise LeBouef; Lighting Design: Adam Honoré; Sound Design: Kathy Ruvuna; Dialect and Voice Coach: Cynthis Santos DeCure; Casting: Aliane Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Bernita Robinson; Assistant Stage Manager: Makayla Beckles; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Bjorn DuPaty, Israel Erron Ford, Marcus Gladney Jr., Postell Pringle, Calvin M. Thompson, Alphonso Walker Jr.

 

Hartford Stage
February 29-March 24, 2024

And Baby Makes Three

Review of Cry It Out, New Haven Theater Company

A play that looks at the expectations that drive and surround motherhood, Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry It Out is funny and touching, and thought-provoking. The story focuses on two new mothers inhabiting different social levels but sharing a joyful preoccupation with their newfound roles. Both are on maternity leave from work, but Lina (Deena Nicol-Blifford), a cheery and earthy medical worker, already knows when her time will be up. Jessie (Jenny Schuck), a lawyer who may be up for partnership, is wrestling with her desire to remain a fulltime mom and not return to the workforce, despite the plans of her husband, Nate (never seen).

The play’s action takes place in the adjacent backyards of the women’s homes where the duo relax during nap times with coffee and confidences. We learn a lot about how these women see themselves and the issues and joys of parenthood, and their rapport is heartening and entertaining. Lina, while she can take potshots aplenty at the tastes and assumptions of her friend (“Whole Foods? The nightmare is complete.”), seeks mainly to put Jessie at ease and to find and be a genuine friend. Her life is fraught with a mother and a stepmother who each in her way is a trial, and she knows that without her continued income the family will sink. Jessie, who has more options in life, has to wrestle with Nate’s longing for a home in Montauk next to his well-heeled parents, and her own traumatic memories of a birth that nearly didn’t happen.

Into this inviting give-and-take intrudes Mitchell (Ruben Ortiz), an awkward visitor from the much fancier neighborhood on the hill that overlooks the backyard (literally overlooks, as Mitchell has a telescope for watching the cozy coffee klatch). His reason? He is worried about his wife Adrienne and, in his view, her problems with new motherhood. His solution? To get her to mix with these fiercely fun moms and learn the ropes.

Lina (Deena Nicol-Blifford), Jessie (Jenny Schuck), Adrienne (Melissa Anderson) in New Haven Theater Company’s production of Cry It Out

Jessie’s OK to that plan is the first rift between the friends, though Lina tries to put a good face on it (while not for a minute swallowing her ill will or disbelief). Nicol-Blifford’s Lina can be depended on to indicate all her feelings and to laugh off, mostly, what can’t be helped. She’s a hearty, engaging character that could have been written for this actress, so naturally does Nicol-Blifford seem to grasp her mannerisms and speech rhythms. Shuck’s Jessie is more tightly wound and careworn. She seems to get through life by not expressing her real feelings and so her ability to voice profanity with Lina is the kind of license to be herself that she’s long been seeking. But it’s a given that Adrienne will be more like her than like Lina.

Adrienne (Melissa Anderson), it turns out, isn’t much like either. She has no problem expressing her utter disdain, asserting her professional status—as a jewelry designer soon to be carried by Barney’s—and denying any maternal anxiety such as her husband fears; in any case, unlike the other two, she has a support staff to help her. In fact, the other two women have already met Adrienne’s daughter’s nanny and the little girl herself, a telling indication of the social norms of child-raising in this zip code.

As played with a coiled bitterness by Anderson, Adrienne is a welcome riposte to the easy assumptions about home and husbands shared by the other two. Because we meet Mitchell without seeing the spouses of the other two women, we are privy (as are they) to the “he said/she said” nature of relations between Mitchell and Adrienne. And when Adrienne turns up again, she has a read on the situation that completely offsets Mitchell’s as well as Jessie’s diagnosis. That’s when the glass houses nature of these relations becomes fraught for all, and for us as we look on at the privacy of parenting made public.

As usual, NHTC, in this lively production directed by Marty Tucker (in his directing debut with the troupe), plays to its strengths. A single set, two main characters and two ancillary characters—all fully inhabited and easy to confuse with the actors themselves, the performances feel so natural—and a swift run-time of 90 minutes with no intermission.

There are many blackouts for quick changes, during which some kind of kid-friendly sing-song plays, the sort of thing I would mock incessantly to my own daughter, but that’s just me. My only cavil about the production is that Mitchell seems to collapse in tears before a stranger a bit too readily for the type he seems to be. But his renovation in the last scene is handled very capably by Ortiz, so much so that we might expect to see Cry It Out 2: Daddy’s Home, where working moms leave the little ones in the newly aware care of stay-at-home dads.

Comic and thoughtful and closely observed, NHTC’s Cry It Out cries out to be seen. Two additional shows have been added to the initial run.

 

Cry It Out
By Molly Smith Metzler
Directed by Marty Tucker

Cast: Melissa Anderson, Deena Nicol-Blifford, Ruben Ortiz, Jenny Schuck

New Haven Theater Company
February 22, 23, 24, 29; March 1, 2, 8, 9, 2024

Cry It Out Comes to New Haven Theater Company

Preview of Cry It Out, New Haven Theater Company

This coming week the New Haven Theater Company returns with a spirited production of Molly Smith Metzler’s popular play, Cry It Out. You might think the title refers directly to the parenting philosophy which advocates leaving a child to “self-soothe” by crying until the child learns to settle into sleep. In fact, the “cry” in “cry it out” has more to do with what Jessie and Lina, two mothers of small children, are feeling as they try to navigate motherhood and working careers.

Marty Tucker has acted with New Haven Theater Company before—most notably in their production of Marjorie Prime in 2019 and in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit last year—but this show will be his debut as a director with NHTC, though he has directed many other shows (mostly Shakespeare). He said that he had been planning to direct a different play for NHTC, but the play required a larger cast than was readily available. In the NHTC method, any member can suggest a play for the company, who then all read it and discuss what might work best. Cry It Out came up for consideration and Tucker immediately loved it.

“I was laughing as I read it,” he said, and felt certain he could find the right actors for the roles.  Besides the two friends—from different backgrounds, with different paygrades in their working lives—there is an additional woman, Adrienne, a neighbor who visits, goaded by her husband, Mitchell, who feels his wife needs a sort of motherhood support group. A four-character play is familiar territory for NHTC, which has also mounted several classic two-handers, such as Zoo Story and The Dumb Waiter.

Marty Tucker directs Jenny Schuck as Jessie and Deena Nicol-Blifford as Lina in Cry It Out at New Haven Theater Company

Tucker knew he wanted NHTC member Deena Nicol-Blifford for Lina, so much so that her participation was key to his taking on the play. Jenny Schuck, who has played in some of NHTC’s larger cast productions, such as Almost, Maine in 2013 and Rumors in 2018, as well as taking on one night of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, plays Jessie, the principal role. “Jenny as Jessie, Deena as Lina . . . it had to be,” Tucker joked. Melissa Anderson, who played Walt Disney’s daughter in Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay on the Death of Walt Disney at NHTC in 2017, takes on what Tucker called “the difficult role” of Adrienne, and, in another NHTC debut, Ruben Ortiz, the Artistic Director of New Haven’s A Broken Umbrella Theater, plays Mitchell.

“The cast is so good together,” Tucker enthused, “there is camaraderie, bantering, and they are so very generous.” He also complimented his cast’s work ethic: even though rehearsals have had to be restricted to weekends for the most part, the cast clearly works over material when not together. “Any suggestions I make are already incorporated the next time we meet,” he said with a kind of awe, “there is a lot of rapport and that helps to make the characters likeable. Because if they’re not likeable, you’re in trouble.”

“This one is going to be special,” Tucker said, “I’m thrilled” that the very entertaining play is being fully realized by this talented team. He noted how, when he first read the text, he was still thinking about it three days later. “At some point you go ‘wow,’ and think how awful and poignant” the characters’ situations are. It’s a play that offers much to think about, but with much heart, compassion, and laughter.

In terms of set, the play also works to NHTC strengths: a good all-purpose space that has considerable intimacy. The action takes place in Jessie’s backyard, but, Tucker said, the floorboards of the NHTC stage wouldn’t be convincing. They put down Astroturf only to have a very fake-looking lawn. NHTC member Trevor Williams then painted the turf, giving the set “the look of the kinds of winter lawns you see around here” (or until the recent snow covered them).

A play about parenting that, in NHTC’s words, “takes an honest look at the absurdities of being home with a baby, the power of female friendship, the dilemma of going back to work, and the effect class has on parenthood in America.” Cry It Out is a play about coping, and might help us cope with winter in Connecticut, providing a welcome warmth.

 

Cry It Out
By Molly Smith Metzler
Directed by Marty Tucker

New Haven Theater Company
February 22, 23, 24, 29 (sold out); March 1 (sold out), March 2
Note: February 22 and 29 at 7:30 p.m.; all other shows at 8 p.m.

For tickets: Cry It Out

The New Haven Theater Company is: Melissa Andersen, Ralph Buonocore, Sara Courtemanche, Drew Gray, Erich Greene, George Kulp, Susan Kulp, Margaret Mann, Deena Nicol-Blifford, Sandra Rodriguez, Steve Scarpa, Jenny Schuck, J. Kevin Smith, Aleta Staton, John Strano, Marty Tucker, John Watson, Jodi Williams, and Trevor Williams

The Treasures in Trash

Review of The Garbologists, TheaterWorks, Hartford

Collecting garbage, or, to use the more dignified name, sanitation, may be the quintessential thankless task. Not only do many people not respect it as a livelihood, but many more don’t really want to think about it. They just want trash, garbage, waste, to disappear, no questions asked.

Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists, playing this month at TheaterWorks directed by Artistic Director Rob Ruggiero, gives us a bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of trash hauling. Even more, it asks us to consider the complexities of workers’ collaboration and of the empathy and enmity that can happen on the job. And when it’s a manifestly dirty job, the stakes are more fraught. The play centers on the relation between two sanitation workers or, as they jokingly refer to themselves at one point, “garbologists”: Danny (Jeff Brooks), a talky, mansplaining white guy who is an outgoing, knowledgeable veteran of the route, and Marlowe (Bebe Nicole Simpson), a somewhat withdrawn woman of color who is a newbie to the job. The two actors are perfectly cast and bring rewarding personality to the roles.

Marlowe (Bebe Nichole Simpson), Danny (Jeff Brooks) in The Garbologists at TheaterWorks, Hartford

Staged with great ingenuity by Ruggiero and his team—Marcelo Martínez García, Set Design; Joseph Shrope, Costume Design; John Lasiter, Lighting Design; Germán Martínez, Sound Design—The Garbologists gives us realism and a certain rugged romanticism. The truck’s cab, where much of the interaction takes place, provides an arena for fluctuating communications; the hopper of the trash truck figures prominently in a few scenes, as do the bags of trash to be collected, along with, at times, more surprising finds; a cozy bar is conjured up quickly for that afterwork drink that will either bring Danny and Marlowe closer or give them ample reason to resent one another more. And in the midst of what Marlowe (and we) learn about trash collecting, there is plenty they learn about each other.

As a series of vignettes driven by dialogue, The Garbologists is a welcome and entertaining reminder that, as fiction-writer Elizabeth Bowen once said, “dialogue is what characters do to each other.” There is action in the play, but most of what happens acts as an occasion for response, for discussion, for argument, and for reminiscence. Both can be snarky and temperamental, both have back stories that contribute to their day-to-day whys and wherefores, and there are certain mysteries to be understood, such as why Marlowe, with double degrees from Columbia and parents who are professors, is working on a trash truck. And why has she been assigned to Danny? And what happened to Danny’s former partner?

Marlowe (Bebe Nicole Simpson), Danny (Jeff Brooks) in The Garbologists at TheaterWorks, Hartford

The main flaw with the play comes from one of those big reveals that is meant to make it all make sense but that actually impairs the play’s sense of reality, much as all those abounding coincidences in novels of earlier eras can make readers of today feel themselves dupes of the author’s need to tie-up all loose ends. Here, it’s more like desire for a heart-tug moment defeats the steady verisimilitude the play had been building up. It’s one thing for characters to veer about emotionally, making us catch up with what is really going on with them. It’s another to feel that a key point is not acknowledged by the characters until the plot requires it.

But that’s simply to say that the play wants to make a dramatic connection between these two unlikely companions that it hasn’t really earned. What these fine character-turns by Jeff Brooks and Bebe Nichole Simpson do earn is our attention and affection and thanks for making visible workers who, as playwright Lindsay Joelle comments in the playbill, are often treated as invisible.

As is said at one point, “there’s treasure in trash”—which does seem to come true—but there’s also treasure in observing the quirks and compassion and compromises of people dedicated to doing their jobs as best they can, in anything but optimum conditions. For its 90 minutes with no intermission, The Garbologists makes the business of garbage a pleasure to behold.

 

The Garbologists
By Lindsay Joelle
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set Design: Marcelo Martínez García; Costume Design: Joseph Shrope; Lighting Design: John Lasiter; Sound Design: Germán Martínez; Casting Director: JZ Casting: Geoff Josselson, CSA, Katja Zarolinski, CSA; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Cast: Jeff Brooks, Bebe Nicole Simpson

TheaterWorks, Hartford
February 1-25, 2024

The Woes of the Father

Review of Simona’s Search, Hartford Stage

There’s a Biblical saying (from Deuteronomy) about the sins or iniquities of the fathers being visited upon the sons unto the third or fourth generation. In Simona’s Search, a world premiere play at Hartford Stage directed by Melia Bensussen, playwright Martin Zimmerman considers the possibility of a genetic link whereby the trauma of the parent is visited upon (or inherited by) a subsequent generation. It’s an intriguing idea, and might satisfy, one suspects, the longing for a genetic explanation for melancholy, depression, and states of anxiety and discontent that must have come from somewhere.

The play presents us with a trauma event of sorts—but it’s Simona’s, not her father’s. Having been warned not to come into her father’s room while he’s asleep, Simona (Alejandra Escalante), nine, not only does that, but brings in her friends who are visiting for a birthday celebration, and if that’s not violation enough, she hops on unsuspecting pop and puts her hand over his nose and mouth. Papi’s reflex reaction is to whack her across the room. Only someone who had experienced unspeakable horrors would behave that way, apparently. At least that’s Simona’s conclusion.

Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

The father, played well with sympathetic indulgence and weary wariness by Al Rodrigo, is reticent about his past, so much so that it could be he’s covering up something terrible. Or it could be he just doesn’t like talking about life in his unnamed birth country. Because of what she reads as a teen, Simona diagnoses his problem as post-traumatic stress disorder and sees herself as a victim of transgenerational trauma. Though Papi would like her to study physics and seems to consider the questions it poses as the most significant in the world, she’s having none of it. Only what goes on in the psyche is worth her time. Their clash, though, isn’t portrayed as simply a difference in temperament or desire; instead, Simona takes the attitude that what her father seems to care about is only a smokescreen for what he won’t admit.

Corroboration comes from an experiment she reads about because Papi seemingly plants an article on genetic experiments among other clippings he saves for her about research in physics. Simona learns that second-generation lab rats were born with a fear of the smell of a certain flower blossom inculcated in their parental generation through the administering of electric shock. If that’s possible, then why not a daughter who inherits the dread of traumatic events her father experienced but never told her about?

Simona (Alejandro Escalante), Papi (Al Rodrigo) in Simona’s Search, Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Regardless of the merits of this explanation in real world terms—and the playbill provides supporting evidence—it’s a bit of dead letter, dramatically. Simona speaks and acts from a foregone conclusion, and since she narrates most of the play, we have only her version of events. Escalante gives Simona a very earnest, measured tone that makes her vulnerable moments seem like approximations for the sake of effect. Little action is directly depicted, except Simona’s reticence with a sympathetic boyfriend, Jake (Christopher Bannow). Father and daughter are mostly at loggerheads and just when you think maybe they will have a scene together that amounts to something, it dissipates into more narration.

Jake (Christopher Bannow), Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Simona remains isolated by her trauma; her attempt to seek help is handled by a very facile and uninterested doctor (Rodrigo) who views her on-again, off-again haunting by a shadowy figure in her imagination as an hallucination. For Simona, it can only be a residual image of an interrogator who brutalized her father during an inferred incarceration. In a sense, Simona’s unwavering interpretation of what is causing her suffering becomes a form of obsession. The play starts to feel like listening to a recounting of personal and familial grief at an AA meeting, without being able to intervene or ask questions or even offer solace.

Bensussen does all she can to interject visual and theatrical interest into such a heavily verbal play: Hartford Stage’s space is put to good use with lively choreography by Shura Baryshnikov and projections by Yana Biryukov that can be both lovely—the blossoms—and eerie—that shadowy figure; Yu Shibagaki’s scenic design makes the shows few props seem to have metamorphic properties, while the lighting design by Aja M. Jackson and the sound design by Aubrey Dube are superb.

The show’s best theatrical moment is an interlude with a romantically inclined, French-accented, human-sized lab rat (Olivera Gajic, costume design) who steals the show. As the rat, Christopher Bannow shows yet again what a versatile actor he is, always a major asset to any production he’s in (as for instance last year’s Wolf Play at MCC in New York). The scene works because of the careful choreography and because of a sense of absurdity, fun, and weirdness—the flipside, I suppose, of a traumatic visitation.

Whatever we make of such an interlude is up to us as viewers, which is a lot better than having someone onstage telling us what everything must mean. I left the play not so much impressed by Simona’s search for the truth as cautioned by her certainty.

Papi (Al Rodrigo), Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

 

Simona’s Search
By Martin Zimmerman
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Choreographer: Shura Baryshnikov; Scenic Design: Yu Shibagaki; Costume Design: Olivera Gajic; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Sound Design: Aubrey Dube; Projection Design: Yana Biryukova; Casting: Alaine Alidaffer; Dramaturgy: Kristin Leahey; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Manager: Julius Cruz; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Christopher Bannow, Alejandra Escalante, Al Rodrigo

Hartford Stage
January 18-February 11, 2024
 

Home for the Holidays

Review of A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas, Hartford Stage

Scrooge (Allen Gilmore), The Spirit of Christmas Past (Rebecka Jones), and Apparitions in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

It’s been three years since Hartford Stage last mounted its classy and classic version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and so this year’s revival might feel to some like a ghost of Christmases past. To aid that feeling, Michael Wilson, the original adapter-director of the show back in 1998, has returned to the helm. But, in the interests of a wrinkle in time that alters everything, this version casts veteran comic Shakespearean actor Allen Gilmore as the hardened miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the scourge of Christmas who comes to learn the value of being kind to his fellow creatures on this distracted globe.

Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) and passers-by (members of the youth ensemble) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

If you’ve lived in Connecticut for more than three years and haven’t ventured from the confines of your “money-changing hole” (or its equivalent) to see Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, you may be a bit of a humbug yourself, at least where Christmas and theater is concerned. The story is oft-told and has been given many fine presentations (Wilson’s adaptation shrewdly relies on the best cinematic version, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Alastair Sim, from 1951) as we follow Scrooge through a dark night of the soul that gives us living vignettes of his past and present and what may come, all with a focus on this season of the rolling year.

Mr. Marvel (Mauricio Miranda) and Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Hartford Stage staging is diverting, clever, engaging and full of nice little turns for its cast, whether players who have been in character lo these many years—such as Noble Shropshire’s memorable Marley and touching Mrs. Dilber or Rebeka Jones’s cheery and steely (as needed) Spirit of Christmas Past—or are new to the fun, such as Mauricio Miranda’s put-upon Mr. Marvel, a watchworks vendor. John-Andrew Morrison, formerly the watchworks vendor, now portrays Bert, a lively fruit-seller, and the benevolent Spirit of Christmas Present (and so on).

Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) and The Spirit of Christmas Present (John-Andrew Morrison), and angelic helpers (Akilah Hadjsalem and Logan Gordon-Gay) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The staging is by now quite venerable, what with flying ghosts adorned with black-light-lit accoutrements, and the grand props for grand set-pieces, such as the carriage the Spirit of Christmas Past (Rebeka Jones) floats in on, or the big throne on a moving platform ridden by the Spirit of Christmas Present (John-Andrew Morrison) with his two angelic helpers, or the future-punk steam cycle contraption wielded by the Spirit of Christmas Future (himself), and the familiar scenes that hold us enthralled by the repetitions and variations and the good cheer and the expectation that even those who find the past to be a nightmare from which they are trying to awake will awake on Christmas morning changed for the better.

Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

To that end, Gilmore gives us a fully engaged Scrooge, with a powerful voice and a forbidding presence, who comes to be somewhat uncertain, and eventually meek and humble before turning to robust cheer and good will. It’s a transformation well worth being on hand for, and it seemed to me, watching again for the first time in four years (my last review of the show—my fourth—was in 2018), that this year the show was particularly strong in its voices. Gilmore’s gravitas encompasses the show, reminding us that Scrooge has suffered in the past—his father was a tyrant, his sister died in childbirth, his affianced love left him because of his greed and lack of caring, and his one nominal friend, his business partner Jacob Marley, died “seven years ago this very night” and has begun to haunt him as a baleful revenant, reminding the aging miser of how his life of affluence has been an utter failure on a human level.

Marley’s Ghost (Noble Shropshire) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Watching Gilmore’s Scrooge coldly collect tokens from his debtors—on Christmas Eve—is apt to feel both reprehensible and yet comically motivated. There’s a sense in which the whole show is winking at us, enacting a set-up for the happier times to come, so that fearful apparitions like Marley’s Ghost (Noble Shropshire), can spark a smile as he sits upon empty space hanging over an open trapdoor, likewise, the little moments of charity and accord that Christmas Present sparks among antagonists landed with more force this year, while the sad bits, like the loss of Tiny Tim, occasion the brave hope of his father, Bob Cratchit (Ryan Garbayo), that our losses will draw us together more in the future.

Mrs. Cratchit (Hero Marguerite) and Mr. Cratchit (Ryan Garbayo) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As ever, Dickens’ winning combination of ghosts and the Christmas season, together with the power of reflecting upon the past for the sake of a better future good raises the spirits and makes life—even in a time lacking Peace on Earth—feel just a bit more hopeful. If Scrooge can overcome his worst features, perhaps that may one day be said of us all.

The Spirit of Christmas Future and Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

This time around, I found myself wondering what might happen if the show lost some of its Victorian trappings in favor of locutions and costuming somewhat more contemporary. Then again, I certainly wouldn’t want someone who never experienced Dickens’ language and characters in their natural habitat to be deprived of those features entirely. An idle thought in any case as this handsome and fast-moving “ghost story of Christmas” is home again at Hartford Stage for the holidays.

Mrs. Dilber (Noble Shropshire) and Scrooge (Allen Gilmore) in Hartford Stage’s A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Michael Wilson (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

 

A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens
Adapted & directed by Michael Wilson

Choreography: Hope Clarke; Scenic Design: Tony Straiges; Costume Design: Alejo Vietti; Lighting Design: Robert Wierzel; Original Music & Sound Design: John Gromada; Original Costume Design: Zack Brown; Wig Design: Brittany Hartman; Flying Effects: ZFX, Inc.; Dialect and Voice Coach: Johanna Morrison; Music Director: John Fitzpatrick; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Assistant Stage Manager: Chandalae Nyswonger

 

Cast: Erik Bloomquist, Vanessa R. Butler, Robert Hannon Davis, Ryan Garbayo, Allen Gilmore, Rebecka Jones, Sarah Killough, Hero Marguerite, Mauricio Miranda, John-Andrew Morrison, Stuart Rider, Noble Shropshire

With: Emma Billings, Gabby Braswell, Calin “Cali’ Butterfield, Jotham Burrello, Sudan Chang, Addison “Addy” Curren, Theodore "Teddy" Curren, Sophie Friedl, Emma Gerken, Norah Girard, Logan Gordon-Gay, Kendall Grenolds, Akilah Hadjsalem, Halle Jacobson, Audrey Kawecki, Eliot Lentino, Cru Lyles, Jana Manson, AJ Masiello, Avery McMahon, Riley Means, Andrew Michaels, Benjamin O’Brien, Naeem Opoku-Shinn, Aria Pierce, Aubrey Rose, Vedanth Satish, William Schloat, Jordyn E. Schmidt, Declan Smith, Carson Timmons, Ava Williams

Hartford Stage
November 24-December 24, 2023

Slings and Arrows in Chicago

Review of The Salvagers, Yale Repertory Theatre

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

It’s winter in Chicago and Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) is back home after taking a degree in theater in North Carolina and then trying his luck in New York. We’re introduced to him as he shovels snow while snow still falls on a striking set (B Entsminger, Set Design) that conjures up the beauty of winter as well as the sheer weight of tons of snow. And Boseman dances, full of energy that needs an outlet. He’s not finding it in theater—as a dreadful audition we get to witness shows us—and he mainly works in a restaurant, smokes on break with Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew), a chatty co-worker, and gets into grudge matches with his dad, Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez), a well-meaning but overbearing locksmith, and visits with his ooey-gooey mom Nedra (Toni Martin), a postal worker who feeds him pie and plays a little ritual of “so good” hugs. The Salvages are separated because—among other things—Nedra realized she’s a lesbian.

Nedra Salvage (Toni Martin), Boseman Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez), Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

In short, the main attraction of Harrison David Rivers’ The Salvagers, directed in its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre by Mikael Burke, is that we feel for Junior but realize—at 23—he’s got to grow up out of this, now, and the question is: will he, and, if so, how will he? And, if not, how bad will it be?

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

There are lots of plot points circling around that might land as a way of giving Boseman Junior direction. Maybe he will get a part in a play. Maybe he’ll get serious about Paulina—when the co-workers start to click, Junior’s mom catches on right away because her son’s mood is so improved. Maybe he’ll finally have it out with dad in some way more mature than the sullen sniping he generally indulges—and maybe Elinor Witt (McKenzie Chinn), that woman dad’s now seeing (after a cute meet when Boseman Senior opens her lock for her), will be some kind of catalyst, for bad or good. Rivers, whose intense, focused play This Bitter Earth played at TheaterWorks, Hartford, in 2022, is good at letting characters reveal themselves to us by how they pitch themselves to other characters, which works great for the two women trying to get to know Boseman Senior and Junior, respectively, but is harder for the Salvage family itself. Key to their problems is that Junior thinks he already knows all about his parents, but does he?

Nedra Salvage (Toni Martin), Boseman Salvage Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

I do wish that the answer to that question took a slightly different direction than it does, as the “big reveal” is just a bit too dramatically fraught. It does the work it has to do, plotwise, as a big “hello!” to Junior, but opens up questions the story we’re given never addresses. There’s a sense at times that the plot may veer toward soap opera catastrophe, a world in which trauma is a badge of authenticity even if it feels a bit piled on.

Boseman Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

What keeps us in the story is the fine work by this ensemble of actors. As Boseman Senior, Julian Elijah Martinez fully inhabits a part that can be a bit underwritten. He doesn’t get major speeches, but works the small, intense moments of interaction, like mocking and helping his son while the latter has trouble with his bootlaces. A great scene later in the play has Senior and Junior one-upping each other on chin-ups: it’s wonderfully indicative of how they do and don’t get along, and how much they are cut from the same cloth. As Nedra, Toni Martin has to walk a fine line: she’s encouragement itself to her son but at the same time has to be believable as a woman who is living a lie. It’s a tough sell, and we could use a few scenes that let us see her as she really is. In supporting roles as the women trying to get to know the somewhat taciturn Boseman Salvages, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew keeps us guessing about Paulina: she likes dumping on brunchers, regales Junior with lines from King Lear at will, and is able to get through Senior’s wall when necessary (and so seems like she was simply written to inhabit this play with no other purpose in life); McKenzie Chinn, as Elinor, is more upfront: she meets Senior, likes what she sees, goes for it, and then must confront the suppressed story that hangs over the family. She’s the one who, ultimately, must be won over if any good is going to be salvaged from the situation the Salvages are in.

Elinor (McKenzie Chinn), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Special mention goes to Taylor A. Blackman who makes Junior a memorable example of untapped talent, depressed ambition, callous immaturity, and—to cite his man Hamlet—“that within which passeth show.” Hamlet mourns for a dead father and a mother unfaithful to her deceased husband’s memory; Junior mourns for—maybe—some time long past when he believed in his parents as a couple, or when he thought he might actually get along nicely without them. Now, back in Chicago and at dad’s, like a certain depressed prince returned to Denmark, the best he can hope for, seemingly, is discovering how rotten things really are. Blackman makes Junior a problem to himself that we ache to see solved.

Paulina Kenton (Mikayla LaShae Batholomew), Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Director Mikael Burke, who did a great job this year with the fast-food kitchen dynamics of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks, Hartford, works the action and movement of this play to telling effect, including overlapping scenes in different locations that serve well the play’s steady forward pace. The kinetic qualities that Blackman displays so well are echoed by stage techniques—including mini-films by John Horzen and a sliding chair to simulate a subway ride—that show the kind of largess Yale Rep can bring to family drama. Kudos as well to Lighting Designer Nic Vincent for snowfalls that are poetic though not unduly sentimental. It’s not a winter wonderland feel here, but the play does make us appreciate how much we need humane warmth in a cold world.

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

 

The Salvagers
By Harrison David Rivers
Directed by Mikael Burke

Choreographer: Tislarm Bouie; Scenic Designer: B Entsminger; Costume Designer: Risa Ando; Lighting Designer: Nic Vincent; Sound Designer: Stan Mathabane; Projection Designer: John Horzen; Production Dramaturg: Eric M. Glover; Technical Director: Luke Tarnow-Bulatowicz

Cast: Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Taylor A. Blackman, McKenzie Chinn, Toni Martin, Julian Elijah Martinez

Yale Repertory Theatre
November 24-December 16, 2023

A Pride and Prejudice to be Proud of

Review of Pride and Prejudice, Hartford Stage

The 60th anniversary season of Hartford Stage is off to a crowd-pleasing start. Playwright and actress Kate Hamill specializes in lively, contemporary adaptations of classic novels. Her bright and fun take on Jane Austen’s beloved Pride and Prejudice is given a fully frenetic realization by director Tatyana-Marie Carlo. The cast is having so much fun it all feels quite infectious.

Lydia (Zoë Kim), Mary (Madeleine Barker, back), Mrs. Bennet (Lana Young), Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The plot, as you may already know, is about those Bennet sisters (here four instead of Austen’s five) residing in Regency era England. Not badly off, the young ladies are doomed to penury whenever their aloof, paper-reading pater (Anne Scurria) kicks off. A cousin—the daffy curate Mr. Collins (Sergio Mauritz Ang)—will inherit. And so Mrs. Bennet, played to the hilt and then some by Lana Young, urges upon her daughters any suitor likely to remain smitten long enough to reach the altar. Besides Collins, there’s also the very well-to-do Bingley (also Ang), and the perhaps not all he should be Wickham (also Ang), a mere lieutenant with whom Mr. Darcy (Carman Lacivita) has had disagreeable dealings. Darcy himself, the only potential suitor not played by the versatile and quite comic Ang, is given all the priggish airs you might expect in Lacivita’s icy performance. Watching him thaw despite himself is much of the fun.

Lizzy (Renata Eastlick), Jane (María Gabriela González) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As the sisters, María Gabriela González is a lovely Jane, the one deemed a catch due to her looks, and she’s also able to twerk on beat; as Lizzy, the main heroine, Renata Eastlick is sensible and likeable, her intelligence and ease of manner making her the best Lizzy I’ve seen (this is the third version of Hamill’s play I’ve reviewed); as Lydia, the youngest, Zoë Kim somehow manages to be a credible fourteen year old, crazily spirited with a feisty naivete that Lydia would like to think precocious; then there’s Mary, whom Madeleine Barker plays as a cross between the Addams family’s Morticia and that girl that crawls out of the TV set in The Ring—a kind of funny, frightening and striking character that has to be seen to be believed (and enjoyed).

Miss Bingley (Madeleine Barker), Mr. Darcy (Carman Lacivita) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Other characters played by this energetic cast include: Madeleine Barker’s supercilious turn as turbaned Miss Bingley, sister of Bingley—who tends to approach romance as would an affectionate pet; Anne Scurria scurrying between wearing Mr. Bennet’s pants and neighboring would-be bride Charlotte Lucas’s skirts; Zoë Kim, moving effortlessly between Lydia pouting and preening to the imperious mien of Lady Catherine de Bourgh (deep fanfare!); and last but not least, María Gabriela González’s hilariously unearthly sounds as Miss de Bourgh, a neurasthenic shambles swaddled like a mummy and, in Lady Catherine’s view, the perfect match for perfectly detached and unattached Mr. Darcy.

Miss de Bourgh (María Gabriela González, back), Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Zoë Kim) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The show opens with one of those mannered dances dear to the period, a signal that Carlo’s take is not going to foreground the gamesmanship that Hamill herself underscores via Lizzy’s comments on marriage as a contest with winners and losers; rather, the Hartford Stage production seems rather to concern itself with ritual and theatrics, seeing in the mating game the setting for so much of our ideas of how to act, look, dress, speak, move and so forth. Watching the varied displays of this busy staging is to glimpse what it’s like to live in a culture where someone is always watching, where public events—like balls (and how Mrs. Bennet loves balls!)—are occasions as deliberate as putting on a play. It’s all show-biz? Yes, and then some.

Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lizzy, famously, is having none of it, until . . .  As her doting dad says on two occasions, “ask not for whom the bell tolls.” When Lizzy has to confront her own feelings she has to do so without the kinds of pretense that serve so well the game or ritual or manner of this comedy of manners. Did anyone ever get so great a reaction from setting a sheet of paper in front of a sodden suitor?

Mr. Darcy ( Carman Lacivita), Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Such are some of the many delights enacted here. Prepared to be tickled by things like Mr. Bennet brandishing a wig atop a stick draped with tatters of fabric to stand in for Mary (Barker then onstage as Miss Bingley), or the many times a little bell is rung to precede a visitor/suitor or other perhaps game-changing announcement, or the many times a cast member must react with surprise, shock or horror at the sudden appearance of Mary—as well as matters a bit more subtle, such as the way Lydia precipitates herself into wedlock not thinking that in “winning” (by being the first daughter married) she has lost something she might only begin to understand now; or the way Charlotte finds a way to live with Mr. Collins, as he crows offstage about his garden growths; or the way Mr. Bennet imagines it is just possible he may outlive his dutiful wife, who is always so concerned with how the family will manage without him.

The cast of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Such matters used to be called “the war between the sexes,” but Austen and Hamill know it’s not an outright war so much as an ongoing negotiation that both sides engage in for the thrill of it all. Otherwise, what is there to do?  That question can’t honestly be asked in a culture where women cannot inherit and must marry so as to survive, where work, as such, is beneath everyone at this level of society, and so ladies must hitch their star to a man who has property or who is likely to rise socially. Sinecures are nice as well. While Austen’s novels tread this terrain with a knowing wink or grimace at all the subterfuges needed to achieve secure ends, Hamill can let it all hang out, placing the skirmish front and center with a kind of “on your mark, get set, go” urgency.

The cast of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The matches made are the same but the spectacle they make is the fun. Ably supported by Hartford Stage’s large open playing space—making a drawing room or garden or ballroom very much a playground—decorated with Scenic Designer Sara Brown’s sense of how to create visual interest (early on, there aren’t enough chairs to go around so Lizzy must push a cushion to center stage), the show also benefits from Shura Baryshnikov’s varied Choreography, Aja M. Jackson’s subtle Lighting Design, original music and sound design by Daniel Baker & Co (there are also a few popular songs that anachronistically surface for comic effect), and, particularly, Haydee Zelideth’s fantasies of era Costumes, the colors tend to be rich—like Lizzy’s true blue Plain Jane gown—and patterns abundant, and where, as was true to the time, the flouncier your skirt the higher you stood in status so that Lady Catherine wears clothes that might well swallow a lesser being. Meanwhile, Sergio Mauritz Ang gets to appear as curate, soldier, and affable love-smitten coxcomb by turns, switching costumes and mannerisms as needed. It’s dizzying.

Mr. Bennet (Anne Scurria, back), Mary Bennet (Madeleine Barker) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Mary—ever ready to announce an apothegm scored from the manners on display around her—at one point points out the difference between pride and vanity. No one listens, but we hear her, and her comment serves well the entire production. To be vain is to be concerned with what others think of you; to be proud is to esteem yourself for your own virtues. Tatyana-Marie Carlo’s version of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice, from Jane Austen’s novel, at Hartford Stage through November 5, has much to be proud of.

Pride and Prejudice
By Kate Hamill
Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo

Choreographer: Shura Baryshnikov; Scenic Design: Sara Brown; Costume Design: Haydee Zelideth; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Original Music & Sound Design: Daniel Baker & Co.; Wig Design: Earon Nealey; Vocal & Dialect Coach: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer; Fight Director: Teniece Divya Johnson; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Anaïs Bustos; Assistant Stage Manager: Theresa Stark; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Sergio Mauritz Ang, Madeline Barker, Renata Eastlick, Maria Gabriela González, Zoë Kim, Carman Lacivita, Anne Scurria, Lana Young

 

Hartford Stage
October 12-November 5, 2023

Lizzie, Get Your Axe

Review of Lizzie, TheaterWorks, Hartford

In Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892, Lizzie Andrew Borden, 32, was accused of killing her father and stepmother, both brutally murdered, then acquitted. As the presumed murderer, Lizzie Borden became the stuff of legend and folksongs, of movies and novels and other dramatizations, such as Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt, now playing at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Lainie Sakakura with musical direction by Erika R. Gamez.

With such a famous story—even in its own day it made the papers in a sensationalist manner—it's hard to say exactly what the fascination is: one element is the unsolved crime aspect: if not Lizzie than whom and how? Another is the crime that goes unpunished: if Lizzie did it, she got away with it and lived—happily or not—until age 66, dying with a considerable fortune and no deathbed confession. Then there’s the angle that seems to appeal most over the years: she did it, and got away with it, but why and how? And those questions let us be sleuths, to devise “what really happened,” and pop psychologists of persons we never met, to find out motives “beneath the skin.” Irresistible, right?

Sydney Shepherd as Lizzie in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Lainie Sakakura (photo by Mike Marques)

As Lainie Sakakura’s director statement puts it: “Lizzie delves into the mysterious mind of Lizzie Borden and speculates about her possible motivations: loss of inheritance, sexual oppression, abuse . . . madness.” Or: why stop with one motive when you can try ’em all? And yet motives have a way of not supporting one another. Caring about being cheated out of your inheritance isn’t madness, neither is retribution for sexual abuse; madness would be thinking such things were happening when they weren’t.

The show might make for a more macabre-fun Halloween evening if it threw out motives and simply made Lizzie a cold-blooded killer as might belong in an Alice Cooper song or a murder ballad. But the plot-driven lyrics tend to ask us to connect the dots and arrive at a reading of Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd) as a full-blooded and bloody heroine. The authors want her guilty but more sinned-against than sinning, her broken axe maybe even a righteous sword in the fight against oppression. Her parents are not characters in the show and so we only have inference about who they were.

Brigid (Nora Schell), Emma (Courtney Bassett), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd), Alice (Kim Onah) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Not really a “rock concert,” then, which may have a structure but not usually a plot. The first part of Lizzie is enacted in period costume with a lot of projections on and flanking a wall of doors. Camilla Tassi’s projections have to convey mood and setting, as Brian Prather’s set is otherwise mostly bare stage with a riser, and the projections have a lot of presence that make for visually busy scenery, often having to do with birds, which are identified with Lizzie’s emotions. Settings include different parts of “The House of Borden,” and a loft in the barn where Lizzie bonds with pigeons her dad later kills, either because he’s disgusted by the birds or by what Lizzie and her lovestruck neighbor Alice Russell (Kim Onah) do up there. In the later going, when the band is revealed and Saawan Tawari’s costumes go for Goth-Noir, there is still a lot of story to get through, including the trial and its aftermath.

Emma (Courtney Bassett), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd), Brigid (Nora Schell) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

The other two characters onstage in this four-woman show are Lizzie’s older sister Emma (Courtney Bassett) who mainly stirs the cauldron that is Lizzie’s seething nerves, and Brigid (Nora Schell), aka Maggie, the Irish tell-all servant who keeps an eye on everyone and has her own view of what’s really going on. She’s a bit of a Greek chorus but, as such, her role could be more developed as a consistent perspective on the events is what the show lacks. Brigid could be a welcome touch of realism to act as foil to the authors’ Lizzie fantasies.

As with most rock operas worthy of the name—such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy—there are songs that are plot devices and there are songs that can detach from the story and stand on their own, more or less. Here, standout instances of the former would be “Why Are All These Heads Off” or “What the Fuck, Lizzie?" while of the latter would be the rocker "Sweet Little Sister,” with Emma as lead, and Alice’s plaintive but lovely “Will You Stay?”. All four performers in the show are distinctive and entertaining and fun to listen to—as is that rocking band, with particular mention for drummer Molly Plaisted. Onah puts a lot of soul in her singing which helps considerably as do Schell’s upper range blasts. Shepherd brings the requisite rock star wail to her sound which—if you’re of a certain age—may have you reliving some of those Heart fantasies you had as a teen. Meanwhile, Bassett—in the show’s latter going—fully rocks her couture, looking the type of woman David Bowie may have wished he was on occasion.

An unexpected high point is the choral song “Watchmen for the Morning” which at least points to a higher common cause for the Borden sisters; the song lets us stand for a moment in that space where one’s legal guilt or innocence is a matter of what others determine, and where—maybe—one’s existential guilt or innocence can be left to the Lord’s plan.

All in all, it’s an entertaining show, though its details could be considered a bit harrowing and it’s not “all in fun.” Real people really died in the house of Borden, and Lizzie either had real grievances that drove her to murder, or else imagined ones, or else . . . she didn’t do it at all. But Lizzie’s Lizzie, who has grievances and a lover and a sister and motives and opportunity, is still claiming she didn’t do it—in the play—while asserting—rock concert-style—she sure did, fuck yeah. Uplifting? Maybe. Uplifted, at least—like an axe to grind.

Alice (Kim Onah), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

 

Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks
Music by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt
Lyrics by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt
Book by Tim Maner
Directed by Lainie Sakakura
Music Director Erika R. Gamez

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Saawan Tiwari; Lighting Design: Rob Denton; Sound Design: Megan Culley; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Hair & Make-up Design: Ashley Rae Callahan; Dialect Coach: Johann Morrison; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Conductor/Keyboard 1: Erika R. Gamez; Guitar 1: Billy Bivona; Guitar 2/Keyboard 2: Jeff Carlson; Bass: Christie Echols; Cello: Esther Benjamin; Drums: Molly Plaisted

Cast: Courtney Bassett; Kim Onah; Nora Schell; Sydney Shepherd

 

TheaterWorks, Hartford
October 6-29, 2023

SHOWTIMES:
Tuesdays – Thursdays  |  7:30pm
Fridays |  8:00pm
Saturdays |  2:30pm & 8:00pm
Sundays |  2:30pm

Making It Work

Review of Clyde’s, TheaterWorks Hartford

Lynn Nottage, two-time Pulitzer-winner for her plays, keeps it lighter than usual—and shorter!—in Clyde’s, more or less a sit-com with some serious overtones, now playing at TheaterWorks. The show, at 95 minutes, is more condensed than well-known Nottage plays like Sweat and Intimate Apparel, but, like them, explores a particular working world with great fidelity to the kind of lives lived there. In this case, it’s a greasy spoon called Clyde’s, a favorite with truckers, where Clyde (Latonia Phipps) lords it over a crack kitchen staff who have all served time in prison and who all dream of better things.

Directed by Mikael Burke with wonderful economy of movement on a small set, one of the show’s great attractions is how this deft ensemble maneuvers the very detailed and well-though-out kitchen area designed by Collette Pollard. It’s great theater and it’s a delight to experience the kitchen staff’s efforts to satisfy the churlish Clyde while also working through all their various issues.

Letitia (Ayanna Bria Bakari), Rafael (Samuel María Gómez), Jason (David T. Patterson) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford, directed by Mikael Burke (photo by Mike Marques)

There may be a romance blooming between romantic Rafael (Samuel María Gómez)—at least if he has his way—and more down-to-earth Letitia (Kashayna Johnson, filling in for Ayanna Bria Bakari the night I saw the show); new employee Jason (David T. Patterson), replete with White Supremacist tattoos apt to aggravate this non-white staff, has to find his footing and, though by his own admission prone to violence, becomes something of a placid devotee of Montrellous (Michael Chenevert). The eldest, Montrellous, a kind of guru of the sandwich board, is out to prove that freedom is a question of the right choices, which extends from how one lives to what one eats: the right bread, the right ingredients, the right condiments. Indeed, much of the dialogue will be enough to make any foodie’s mouth water (my advice, have at least a decent snack before you see the show). Montrellous’ philosophy is the basis for a kind of holistic approach to work and eating that may allow his fellow workers to rise above Clyde’s ongoing disparagement.

Rafael (Samuel Maria Gomez), Jason (David T. Patterson), Montrellous (Michael Chenevert) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Having said all that, there’s not a lot more to say, in terms of story. Which is why I mentioned “sit-com”: the predominant feeling is that we are spending time with these characters, getting to know them as they get to know each other and (as in your favorite workplace comedy) what we learn will be sometimes amusing—as for instance, Rafael’s BB gun bank hold-up—and sometimes wrenching, as for instance Montrellous’ tale of a bad decision followed by a real act of sacrifice. The main plot point, I’d say, is whether or not Clyde will relent and actually try one of Montrellous’s unique sandwich productions.

Clyde constantly puts down the crew—individually and collectively—and won’t entertain any notion that they are earning respect (not even after a newspaper write-up designates the kitchen’s productions as “sublime”) nor that any of them should have any feeling but a squalid sort of humble gratitude to her for giving them jobs and keeping them on. She’s a bully and an asshole and she loves it. Latonia Phipps luxuriates in the part but I have to say it got a bit one-note. It may be the point that Clyde doesn’t soften or sympathize (“I don’t do pity,” she boasts), but that only means we—like her employees—get sick of her that much quicker. In the words of that Nobel Laureate: “I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes: you’d know what a drag it is to see you.” (The only thing that makes us glad to see Clyde again? the costume changes! Alexis Carrie, Costumes.)

Clyde (Latonia Phipps) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

But aren’t bosses often a drag? I can attest it’s so, and so it is here. Do we like the other characters? Yes, and it’s fun seeing/hearing who gets feedback—as cheers, laughs, applause—from the live audience. That “you are there” element works to great effect in TheaterWorks’ small theater and small but very lively stage. I’ll say my favorite character the night I saw the show was Kashayna Johnson’s Letitia (wonderfully filing in as an understudy); she has the best vantage on her co-workers, seeming to have the insight to grasp who they really are and who they’re trying to become, even as she herself is working to be better. She’s the soul of the place even more than Montrellous. As the latter, Chenevert has the requisite thoughtfulness and measured movements of a man who could’ve been so much more and might yet be, but his detachment doesn’t make him as sympathetic. Gómez's Rafael is winning and outgoing, and his outbursts of feeling do a lot to drive up the drama. As Jason, Patterson broods well but also has a great sense of comic timing, making Jason’s arc of change the most fun to watch.

But don’t take my word for it: get into TheaterWorks and spend some time watching this crew for yourself—if you can tear yourself away from the latest from Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig. Anyway, those films will likely be here for weeks. Clyde’s has been extended but only has one more week left!

 

Clyde’s
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Mikael Burke

Set Design: Collette Pollard; Costume Design: Alexis Carrie; Lighting Design: Eric Watkins; Sound Design: Christie Chiles Twillie; Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Associate Set Design: Delena Bradley; Intimacy Coordinator: Marie C. Percy; Casting Director: TBD Casting/ Stephanie Yankwitt, CSA

Cast: Ayanna Bria Bakari, Michael Chenevert, Samuel María Gómez, Kashayna Johnson, David T. Patterson, Latonia Phipps

TheaterWorks Hartford

July 7-30, 2023, extended run to August 5th

Murder Will Out

Review of Dial M for Murder, Westport Country Playhouse

Mark Lamos’s final production as Artistic Director at Westport Country Playhouse aims to be a crowd-pleaser. As such, it’s a rich example of what WCP has done well under his direction. Dial M for Murder is an old-fashioned play—as written by Frederick Knott and adapted famously into a 1954 film with Grace Kelly, directed by Alfred Hitchcock—that’s been recently revamped by Jeffrey Hatcher so that it’s alternately tense and entertaining and always smart. And “smart” is what Alexander Dodge’s set—a fifties Maida Vale setting—and Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s costumes are as well. So what we’re looking at—especially with Emma Deane’s choice lighting effects—is always a treat for the eyes. The dialogue, though it doesn’t always sparkle (and having to sound somewhat British tends to make some deliveries a trifle stilted), is full of little flourishes that let us revel in the fact that everyone in the play, at some point, is trying to take someone in. The levels of betrayal on view, with plenty of recriminations and incriminations, make for a lovely evening of seeing who’s worse than whom.

Margot (Kate Abbruzzese), Maxine (Krystel Lucas), Tony (Patrick Andrews), Inspector Hubbard (Kate Burton) in Dial M for Murder at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Which is to say that it’s not really a murder mystery—in the sense of a whodunit—but rather a “what happens next”? and “can they get away with it”? Plotted gracefully and unfolding like a classic game of cat and mouse, Dial M for Murder takes us back to theater that has no great ax to grind nor points to make. Like the "thriller genre” that author Maxine (Krystel Lucas) earns her bread writing and Tony Wendice (Patrick Andrews), husband of her friend Margot Wendice (Kate Abbruzzese), earns his promoting, the play insists that people killing other people is always interesting, at least, and may sometimes involve various motives (we’re told there are five key motives for murder), sundry complications, and who knows what sort of surprises, pleasant and unpleasant.

Someone has info about Margot that she’d rather Tony not know, but will she pay to get it back—it’s a letter that exposes facts about Margot and Maxine and so would topple the arranged world of the well-off Wendices (it’s Margot’s money), to say nothing of Tony and Maxine’s professional standing. Further complication arrives when a person from Tony’s past is enlisted to do away with Margot in an overly ingenious plan that could go wrong any number of ways. Of course it does but I won’t say just how and then the question becomes what happens next . . . and will they get away with it?

Margot Wendice (Kate Abbruzzese) in Dial M for Murder at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sprawling across two Acts (each under an hour), Hatcher’s Dial M works like a well-oiled machine, one that’s been remodeled in ways that should appeal to modern audiences. Indeed, it’s hard to overlook the switch in sexual politics: in the original, Margot is almost a “fall gal” and the ease with which she’s made out to be a villain is surprising, but for the fact that as a woman in the Fifties she has little voice or status when the males—Tony and the writer (male originally)—seem to team up against her along with the male inspector. In Hatcher’s version, only Tony and his former schoolmate, a ne’er-do-well now known as Lesgate (Denver Milord, grand as blandly malevolent and agreeably unpredictable) are male; the three women unite, sort of, in trying to snare the perpetrator in their complex web of timing and switched latch keys, and the way he tries to match their machinations is most of the fun.

Lesgate (Denver Milord), Tony Wendice (Patrick Andrews) in Dial M for Murder at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos (photo by Carol Rosegg)

As Tony, Patrick Andrews has a wonderful jauntiness and a coldly calculating air that is both winning and chilling. He has a practiced way of breaking the fourth wall ever so slightly, clueing us into his inner workings with a look or a gesture that is only for us to read. As Inspector Hubbard, Kate Burton follows suit, somewhat, pointing us to places where alibis and evidence don’t add up. Kate Abbruzzese’s Margot emotes high stress, puts up with a lot, and comes out looking great and ready to address the matter at hand with convincing aplomb—one senses Tony is no match for her at all but she mostly lies low so he won’t notice, until it’s too late? The one note in the cast I question is Krystel Lucas’ Maxine: twice Margot, no fool, suggests—even if only teasing—that she suspects Maxine might be the one trying to blackmail her or even trying to have her killed. If there’s to be any force behind the suggestion, Maxine should seem at least potentially malevolent or mercurial enough to make us believe anything. As played, Lucas’s Maxine seems very upright and the person most likely to save the day.

Maxine (Krystel Lucas), Margot (Kate Abbruzzese) in Dial M for Murder at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos (photo by Carol Rosegg)

A minor point perhaps, and the only wrinkle I observed in this silky smooth production, full of murderous charm and an arch acceptance of that line that used to haunt us on the old “Inner Sanctum” film series: “Yes, even you could commit . . . MURDER!” All it takes is motive and opportunity, seemingly.

 And now you should have motive enough to take this opportunity to see long-serving and much admired theater artist Mark Lamos’ final production as Artistic Director of Westport Country Playhouse.

 

Dial M for Murder
Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
From the Original by Frederick Knott
Directed by Mark Lamos

Scenic Design: Alexander Dodge; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: Emma Deane; Sound Design: Kate Marvin; Wig, Hair & Make-Up Design: J. Jared Janas; Fight Director/Intimacy Coach: Michael Rossmy; Dialect Coach: Shane Ann Younts; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Production Stage Manager: Matthew Melchiorre; Assistant Stage Manager: Kevin Jinghong Zhu

Cast: Kate Abbruzzese, Patrick Andrews, Kate Burton, Krystel Lucas, Denver Milord

 Westport Country Playhouse
July 11-30, 2023

A Troubling Trouble in Mind

Review of Trouble in Mind, Hartford Stage

The purpose of theater in both addressing a public and creating a viable theatrical space in which talent is showcased and convincing dramatic or comic roles are enacted is under scrutiny in Alice Childress’ complex, satiric, and politically motivated play from 1957, Trouble in Mind. Within this exploration of the rigors of a professional production—we’re supposedly watching the rehearsals for an upcoming Broadway show, Chaos in Belleville—there is plenty of room for Childress to examine the plight of theater in her day, which turns out to be not very different from the concerns of our day. The plight of trying to do truth while at the same time shackling a play’s messages and meanings to holdover clichés, stereotypes, or to whatever new theatrical mannerisms (in this case Method Acting) have arisen to christen a new era looms large. In our day, the question of diversity on all fronts has all but ended any notion of theatrical unity; in Childress’ time, the process of chipping away at the Great White Edifice on the Great White Way was just getting underway.

The cast of Trouble in Mind at Hartford Stage, directed by Christopher D. Betts (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Childress, who spent a long time as an actress herself, knew the lingo, knew the backstage chat and sparring, and had observed and experienced the little indignities and the overweening egoism of actors’ lives. What helps sustain our interest in this collection of actors--Wiletta Mayer (Heather Alicia Simms), Sheldon Forrester (Michael Rodgers), Bill O’Wray (James Joseph O’Neil), Judy Sears (Sarah Lyddan), Millie Davis (Chelsea Lee Williams), and John Nevins (Sideeq Heard)—is the way they play with the parts in the Belleville play and play their own roles in the process of creating theater. So, while Judy might seem at first a perky airhead, that’s partly because her ingenue role expects it of her; meanwhile, a practiced dissembler like Sheldon Forrester—the elder in the company—knows how to act “the darkie” in a way that puts white egos at ease, while also asserting himself—via voice and histrionic presence—as an actor in the grand manner. Bill O’Wray, a soap opera star, treats every role as a job he pretty much plays the same way, not interested in interacting with the cast or exploring method; Millie Davis shows off gaudy jewelry to convince her colleagues she doesn’t really need to act, so well-off is her husband, and so maintains a certain aloofness; John Nevins is the newbie, earnest and ingratiating but his ambition—to use the play as a vehicle to launch his career—is as real as anything. Then there’s Wiletta Mayer, who reluctantly emerges as the conscience of the cast, a role for which she hasn’t fully explored all the implications.

We first meet Wiletta as she arrives earliest to rehearsal. This gives her the opportunity to interact with Henry, an aging theater-hand who remembers a grand theatrical moment in her past career—for which he designed the lighting. With that exchange, Childress stresses her sense of theater: it’s ephemeral even at its best, and yet—as an experience—it can create a longstanding awareness shared by these two who achieved something together even if only meeting for the first time. The tension between who they are at their best—in the theater—and who they are otherwise (just folks) is clear from the start. That contrast inspires mostly comic deliveries, but Betts downplays Childress’ satire as though the target of playing at playing is too easy and too readily assessed. What does emerge is that “Tomming”—assuaging white egos by playing up to them, like an “Uncle Tom”—is key to success for black actors but that some version of such dissembling (kissing-ass) is an element generally present wherever hierarchies preside. So that Eddie (Adam Langdon), the white put-upon assistant to the white director Al Manners (John Bambery) is pretty much always “Tomming,” as is Henry.

In my view, the biggest problem with the Hartford Stage production of this intriguing play is John Bambery’s Al Manners. Having seen a very nuanced rendering of this character in another production, I have a hard time getting a read on why Manners is so incessantly tiresome. Bambery approaches his lines as if hacking away at blocks of ice, whereas the character—as a director who feels he’s actually progressive while having to deal with indignities on all sides (from an ex-wife, from his producers, from his cast, and his underlings)—has a trajectory to run: from seeming to know how this works to not having a definite conviction any longer. It’s worth mentioning the weak point of the production because it seems to me that the strength of the real director’s approach is Christopher Betts’ willingness to push this play until “not having a definite conviction” is a state of affairs that can’t really be improved and can only be endured.

Early on, Manners tries to lord it over Wiletta, after she sings a song in the play with the kind of subdued, spiritualist fervor she knows he wants. Not content, he eggs her on with “word association” and other Method techniques to make her question and “justify” her choices. The next rendition has a different register, much closer to “we shall overcome,” a rallying cry. Manners rejects the innovation at once and so the cast (and us) see that he’s all bluster, not really wanting to find new possibilities in trite material. It’s a fully present moment, convincingly played.

John Nevins (Sideeq Heard), Sheldon Forrester (Michael Rodgers), Al Manners (John Bambery), Eddie (Adam Langdon), Judy (Sarah Lyddan), Wiletta (Heather Alicia Simms) in the Hartford Stage production of Trouble in Mind (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

More questionable is a key moment in Act Two: the play—Chaos in Belleville—is an “anti-lynching” play in which a young black man gets lynched (though other outcomes might be possible). Someone says that none present have ever seen a lynching and that’s when Sheldon Forrester speaks up. He has, and proceeds to describe what he saw. In Rodgers’ delivery as Forrester, the tale takes on a rhapsodic feel, working against the excruciating detail of what he tells. It’s as if Betts has chosen to let Forrester—a thoroughly theatrical presence—turn actual oppression into aria (as theater will do again and again). The point is that Childress’s play, in openly questioning, through Wiletta Mayer, all the givens of a play like Chaos in Belleville, with its crowd-pleasing and guilt-assuaging BS, also questions how to render the theatrical reality of her own play, a question that Betts’ production worries to the end.

According to Arminda Thomas’ account in the show’s playbill, the play’s ending continued to be an issue. When the play was bound for Broadway, Childress baulked at the suggested ending (the actors all agree with Wiletta against Manners) and the play was not produced; as late as 1992, for a London production, Childress reworked the ending. The problem of the ending, we could say, is that the play can’t solve it. No actor, no director hired to put on a particular play can really change it to make it their own play. What is needed is a black female playwright able to write a better play than Chaos in Belleville, and—while she knows she is that playwright—Childress chooses to write a play that dramatizes that need rather than resolving it. At play’s end, it’s not Wiletta we have to believe in but in Childress, in Lorraine Hansberry, in Adrienne Kennedy, in Suzan-Lori Parks. We know they are coming, but they’re not there yet (in the play).

By restaging this early confrontational play, Betts lets us work through the problems that won’t go away: How to authentically enact what you never experienced when so many want to own a particular history? The cast becomes more and more convinced that they don’t know how the play should be rendered, as if in a proto “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation…” (which Betts directed while a graduate student), and Childress knows there is real drama in that realization. Or: How to put audiences on the hook and then let them off the hook so that they go away feeling vindicated for their sensitivity? That element—which we can say is still the earmark of the successful play able to enact uplift from suffering—is already questioned by Wiletta’s different renderings of a song, or by her choice at the end of making a speech where the principal of radical theater requires her not to do it “in character,” but however she happens to feel right now, as we conclude. And how we feel about that is all about whether or not we are with her as she grapples with the constraints and the freedoms her playwright and her director (Childress and Betts) put upon her.

The “trouble” of Trouble in Mind is that it’s purpose is to trouble the waters, not resolve the issues. Our task is to watch the agitation and think through its implications. To keep all that trouble in mind, until it does someone some good.

 

Trouble in Mind
By Alice Childress
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Scenic Design: Baron E. Pugh; Costume Design: Jahise LeBouef; Lighting Design: Emma Deane; Sound Design: Kathy Ruvuna; Wig Design: Carissa Thorlakson; Dramaturg: Arminda Thomas; Casting Alaine Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Avery James Evans; Assistant Stage Manager: Anaïs Bustos

Cast: John Bambery, Sideeq Heard, Richmond Hoxie, Adam Langdon, Sarah Lyddan, James Joseph O’Neil, Michael Rodgers, Heather Alicia Simms, Chelsea Lee Williams

Hartford Stage
May 25-June 18, 2023

Getting to Be a Rabbit With Me

Review of White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, New Haven Theater Company

Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit isn’t a play so much as a theatrical event, one that requires a new actor each night who has not seen the script or read about the play. It also requires audience participation, and, with no director, the show is apt to be enacted quite differently each time it’s done. There’s suspense, laughs, and the kind of unexpected turns that only live theater can provide.

New Haven Theater Company has elected to put on the play for six performances this month. The first three—with Marty Tucker, Jenny Schuck, Steve Scarpa, respectively—have already played. The remaining three—with Deena Nicol-Blifford, Trevor Williams, George Kulp, respectively—are next weekend. Note, the Thursday performance, on the 18th at 7:30, is sold out. For tickets for the 19th or 20th, go here.

Audiences can expect to be more interactive than is the norm, and there’s a lot of uncertainty, as the Actor has to just go with what the script asks, reading it aloud totally cold. Much of the interest comes from the quirkiness of Soleimanpour, who speaks in the script in his own voice, describing his situation (in 2010) when he could not leave Iran because he refused to perform military service. His play traveled the globe in his stead. What’s more, the problem of how to reach distant audiences is answered, sort of, by making them interact with his play. And so much of his play is about the theatrics themselves, making the space we inhabit during the play potentially very lively.

Themes do surface, such as: who’s in charge here? Is it incumbent upon the audience to do whatever the Actor voicing the script asks? Does the Actor have to do whatever the script says? Are participants allowed to ad lib? Soleimanpour gives out his email address during the play and wants the audience to keep their phones on (though not to take calls!) so that they can send him updates if they choose.

Much of what concerns the play has to do with the element of risk in theater, but also a further contextual risk that Soleimanpour feels as a citizen without full freedom of movement or speech. Soleimanpour spends a lot of time telling us about experiments in which white rabbits come to accept the convention of attacking, first, a rabbit who gets dyed red for climbing a ladder to get a carrot, and, later, any rabbit that climbs the ladder.

Soleimanpour, we see, spends a lot of time thinking about who gets singled out for attack.

He also spends time thinking about how a play can be like a gun, aimed to bring about a certain outcome, by coercion, by threat, but also a prop you can play Russian Roulette with. And that’s an important element in the play’s conclusion.

That much is safe to say, but to go into any more particulars about the play I’d have to put in a Spoiler Alert. Mind you, there’s no particular reason why you (as potential audience member) should know as little about the play as the Actor does, but it does make for a more interesting evening. I can say that because I saw a production of the play at Yale Cabaret over a decade ago, when the play was new, and seeing it again, with New Haven Theater Company, I didn’t feel the same uneasy “where is this going?” feeling that is perhaps key to what makes this such an interesting night of theater. If you know where it’s going and what questions it turns on, it’s much easier to just sit back and watch what happens.

But the play, with all its unpredictable audience participation, works to generate a feeling that what is happening is happening right now and might not happen again. At least not with the particular Actor (who might just die!) and the particular audience (which may or may not find that daring) of any particular performance.

Steve Scarpa, the night I saw the show, was a good-natured stand-in for us. That’s how I felt about it. Like we were all in this together: he had the task of reading the script to us and doing some daffy things, and also bringing members of the audience up and getting them to do some minimal or questionable things, and we had the task of cheering him on. And some of us were asked to do certain things on cue. (I liked the guy with a cane who seemed to be ready to just ad lib the thing away from Scarpa’s patient master of ceremonies.) I have to admit, too, that I took over the role of the final “red rabbit” who reads the script aloud after the Actor is told to relinquish it. That part, I should think, will play very differently each night, depending on how the Actor reacts to what’s asked of him or her at the end.

When I saw it before, in an atmosphere fostered by late night theater among a lot of students, the feeling was lighter, with the audience glad to have opportunities to intervene. At NHTC on Saturday night, that interventionist element was absent and there was a much more casual feeling, at least until  Scarpa’s very serious demeanor after he went “off book.” At that point the silence of the Actor is striking as he becomes what some audience members have been at times: someone asked to do something on cue. Each Actor will have to play the last scene in their own way.

What will it be like with the remaining three Actors? Head down to New Haven Theater Company and get in the act.

 

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
By Nassim Soleimanpour
New Haven Theater Company
May 11-20, 2023

Troubled Waters

Review of the ripple, the wave that carried me home, Yale Repertory Theatre

Think of swimming pools, those oases of exclusion. Do you “belong” to the pool? That’s the question I remember from back there in my suburban Sixties. If you “belong,” you can swim. If not, not. And in segregated communities it was clear at once who belonged and who didn’t. That state of affairs—from her parents’ childhood and her own—is what has come back to haunt Janice (Jennean Farmer), an African American woman who left behind her father’s hometown of Beacon, KS, a long time ago. The agent of memory: Young Chipper Ambitious Black Woman (Adrienne S. Wells), a relentless voice—indeed, very chipper—leaving messages on her machine, in an effort to have Janice come back for a tribute to her dad, who fought for desegregated access and for pools for Blacks, and the dedication of a pool in his name.

Gayle (Adrienne S. Wells), Helen (Chalia La Tour), Edwin (Marcus Henderson), Janice (Jennean Farmer) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Christina Anderson’s evocative memory play, the ripple, the wave that carried me home is long on exposition, layering in a lots of details across a range of eras to give context and political implication to much of what Janice, who speaks directly to the audience a good deal of the time, wants to impart to us. Jennean Farmer presents Janice in a forthright, engaging way but we might sometimes wonder why she’s telling us all this; that question is effectively offset by the fact that Janice herself is not altogether sure. She’s navigating her past, looking for where the flow of memory snags, as it were. Farmer is particularly adept at rendering the very fluid ages in which we see Janice and their different contexts.

The scenic elements of the play—most involving her parents Edwin (Marcus Henderson) and Helen (Chalia La Tour) and Aunt Gayle (Adrienne S. Wells)—play as enacted recollections which lends them a kind of detachment that, as the play goes on, even begins to supply a certain element of wish fulfillment. Janice is trying to figure out the past, to find a relation to her father and mother that lives up to the truth but which also lets her find meaning she can value. And that’s the throughline that holds us: because there are some rough patches Janice has to cope with and how they register will say much about their ultimate status in her sense of herself. The way “who we were when” tends to.

Janice (Jennean Farmer), Edwin (Marcus Henderson) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Early on, Edwin tells his young daughter a funny story of how he and some friends crashed a segregated pool—the story, in Henderson’s spirited delivery, is told for laughs, to hear how audacious the boys were and how appalled all the white folks were. The trespassers were never identified and so got away with it. Then comes the punchline and it’s a punch in the gut: the pool was closed so that it could be fully drained and refilled, as if it had been “infected.”

Helen (Chalia La Tour), Janice (Jennean Farmer) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

So, while Janice is proud of her parents and their activism, there are a lot of sore points that resurface in those waves of memory. Another, much more harrowing, involves her mother and escalating humiliations and affronts that ultimately have Janice rethinking which of her parents should be getting the tribute. That question—while never overstated—remains present throughout. While Henderson’s Edward is mostly a likeable figure (check out that dance!), there’s a sense in which the ethos of the dominant male requires more than interrogation: it must be supplemented if not supplanted entirely. In a wonderfully modulated performance, Chalia La Tour’s Helen captures a particular woman at very particular moments in her life, with a dignity that is unshakeable. She’s a woman with a “life plan” who has so many hopes checked by strategies of bigotry and exclusion, and yet her strength is unyielding. The look on her face in the final pool exercise routine is priceless, such measured joy barely contained.

Janice (Jennean Farmer), Gayle (Adrienne S. Wells) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Likewise Adrienne S. Wells’ Aunt Gayle at times made me want to watch an alternative play: the Aunt Gayle Story. For Janice is one of those over-earnest narrators for whom each incident must be milked for all possible trauma or joy, whereas Gayle is someone with a much more even sense of life; her reactions to the trial of the LA policemen who beat Rodney King help create a context of low expectations and ongoing outrage. Wells says so much with how she holds her head or moves, she’s a great asset to this production.

Woodward’s cast moves in and out of times and scenes seamlessly, able to signal the emphases that Janice finds while reliving these stories for us. While the production’s efforts to enact the particulars of this particular past are laudable, it’s not a play that ignites into great passions the way a less mediated presentation might. All along we’re aware that Janice is fine, and narrating, and that the harrowing past—with its confrontations, triumphs, setbacks, joys and sorrows—is only there if she wants to revisit, to find again what lessons can be learned. The King repercussions create a moment when even Janice—apt to feel superior to Chipper—can hug her “like strangers, like family, like sisters, like aliens traumatized by our time on this dysfunctional planet.”

Janice (Jennean Farmer), Young Chipper Ambitious Black Woman (Adrienne S. Wells) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Ultimately, we gain a sense of how fraught is the business of dramatizing the past, a factor that a searching playwright like Christina Anderson is willing to make thematic to the task of playwriting itself. The characters and their presentation are motivated by the need to tell stories that have both communal and personal resonance. If the ripple, the wave that carried me home may be a bit too overt in its effort to present the confluence of the personal and political, it also is unafraid to attest that, as Edwin says, “this country is built on selective memory.”

If so, a different selection might build a different country.

Janice (Jennean Farmer), Helen (Chalia La Tour), Gayle (Adrienne S. Wells) in the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

 

the ripple, the wave that carried me home
by Christina Anderson
directed by Tamilla Woodward

Scenic Designer: Emmie Finckel; Costume Designer: Aidan Griffiths; Lighting Designer: Alan C. Edwards; Projection Designer: Henry Rodriguez; Sound Designer: Evdoxia Ragkou; Hair and Makeup Designers: Hannah Fennell Gellman, Eric M. Glover; Technical Director: Nate Angrick; Vocal Coach: Julie Foh; Intimacy and Fight Director: Kelsey Rainwater; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Andrew Petrick

Cast: Jennean Farmer, Marcus Henderson, Chalia La Tour, Adrienne S. Wells

Yale Repertory Theatre
April 28-May 20, 2023

Touch and Go

Review of The Rembrandt, TheaterWorks Hartford

The question of how one reacts to a work of art concerns Jessica Dickey’s The Rembrandt, now playing at TheaterWorks Hartford. It’s a play that also addresses themes of mortality and care, and questions of philosophy and poetry and what we leave behind. It may sound awfully heavy, but Dickey’s play, directed by Maria Mileaf with an excellent cast, strives to put such matters in the everyday environments of work and domesticity, to make art and all it entails a part of life.

It's a goal only partly achieved because something gets in the way, more than a little. And that’s the art of theater as a way of staging incidents and events so that we believe them or question them, go with it or work against it. Dickey, we could say, courts a certain amount of resistance to how she navigates her four slightly heterogeneous segments. But we can also say that the disjunctions sometimes seem more like dysfunctions.

We begin in a nicely appointed museum space (Neil Patel, Set Design) where Henry (Michael Chenevert), a slightly pretentious but likeable guard interacts with Jonny (Brandon Espinoz), a less educated and more forthright armed guard. The patter illuminates certain things about Henry: his male partner has a terminal illness, and he hasn’t been maybe the caliber of caregiver that Jonny expects; also, that Henry finds being on the job—he arrives early so he can be in the dark with the art—a kind of satori or special space that Jonny, for whom this is just a job primarily, doesn’t quite share.

Enter a “copyist” named Madeline (Amber Reauchean Williams) who is there to try to render a copy of Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer” (which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) and who has recently experienced the loss of her grandmother, the kind of “patron of the arts” that Henry has evoked, in a comical but on-the-money commentary very apropos to the dwindling “Old School” resources of theaters and museums and other arts institutions.

So, two characters enthralled by art; another less so but a conscientious worker. Enter a new employee: Dodger (Ephraim Birney), whose mohawk is supposed to suggest, perhaps, a kind of non-conformity that might be meaningful. It is, but how successful and motivated his challenge is is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

The unexpected element then intrudes: after a well-played scene that acts as something of a coup de théâtre, we travel through time to the world of Rembrandt (Chenevert), his former servant now mistress Henny (Williams), and Titus (Birney, playing a child without really making that clear), son of the artist and his deceased wife, Saskia.  Why we’re there, but for an impressive set change, feels whimsical at best, though the idea seems to be that treating art objects as cult items undermines human access. That may have something to do with it, arguably.

Even less clear is why Titus’s contact with the bust of Homer brings in a soliloquy from Homer (Michael Bryan French) wherein philosophy and poetry are pondered as human artifacts that may have personal meaning but that aspire to something more universal. And that seems to be the note that draws us back to Henry’s story as he finally chooses to spend what time is left with the dying Simon (French), also a poet and the one character who actually has some comical things to say—the bit about the pistachio pudding is a high point.

While Dickey’s throughlines can be a bit oblique, the good news is that the play keeps us guessing and maybe wondering along with it. Give it credit for not being predictable even if unpredictability in itself is no great aesthetic achievement. Also give credit to the cast. One reason I might be so dissatisfied with the Rembrandt portion is that I was so impressed by how well Chenevert and Williams enacted Henry and Madeline as characters with some common ground and maybe things to learn about one another. Instead: an earthy patriarch and his doting familiars, some rambling by an alleged “father of poetry,” and, finally, more of Henry, now abetted by his spirited lover, nearing the grave.

Through it all, what emerges best is probably Dickey’s main concern: how do we say we care—about other humans, about art, about the things that we collectively and sometimes personally value? Art is important here because it plays different roles for different people for different reasons, and yet it is something we can participate in collectively—like theater.

 

The Rembrandt
By Jessica Dickey
Directed by Maria Mileaf

Set Design: Neil Patel; Costume Design: Katherine Roth; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Bart Fasbender; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Cast: Ephriam Birney; Michael Chenevert; Michael Bryan French; Brandon Espinoza; Amber Reauchean Williams

TheaterWorks, Hartford
April 21-May 14, 2023

Time Well Spent at Hartford Stage

Review of The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage

What better to do on William Shakespeare Day (April 23—date of the Bard’s death and, traditionally, date of his birth) than to see a Shakespeare play? Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen has mounted the first Shakespeare production at the theater since the shutdowns of 2020. It’s a welcome return and an interesting choice of play.

The Winter’s Tale presents a heady mix that incorporates tragic conflict, dramatic shifts and reversals, antic songs, stressed lovers, comic interactions and magical reconciliation. Bensussen’s direction is straightforward and aimed to help viewers focus on the action. There is little of the lengthy speechifying that is so key in many of Shakespeare’s plays; here, there is much more interaction than introspection. Nor is there much of the anachronism that directors often like to visit upon Shakespeare so as to “bring him up to date.” Bensussen’s approach suggests that the play is intriguing enough to be mounted in its unique spirit of theatrical variation.

Polixenes (Omar Robinson), Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero); background: Leontes (Nathan Darrow), Mamillius (Jotham Burrello) in The Winter’s Tale at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The story concerns Leontes, King of Sicilia (Nathan Darrow), and his friendship with, and sudden passionate jealousy of, Polixenes, King of Bohemia (Omar Robinson). They’ve been friends since boyhood, but, during Polixenes’ protracted visit to Sicilia, Leontes takes it into his head that Polixenes has been lover to Queen Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero), insisting that the child she is pregnant with was sired by Polixenes rather than himself. Leontes is even a little doubtful about his beloved son Mamillius (Jotham Burrello). Leontes is so far gone, he plots his friend’s death, the death of Hermione’s child, newborn, and scorns an oracle from Apollo that tells him he’s completely wrong about everything. His courtiers try to dissuade him, and Paulina (Lana Young), Hermione’s staunch defender, gets into a fierce argument with Leontes, to—seemingly—no avail.

Paulina (Lana Young) and Leontes (Nathan Darrow) in The Winter’s Tale, at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The jealousy plot occupies the first two Acts which move at considerable speed because what might have filled an entire tragedy is here simply the set-up for the second half of the play—most of which takes place in Bohemia, sixteen years later. The Sicilian segments are ably played by Nathan Darrow, as a truculent, tormented Leontes; Jamie Ann Romero as a winningly girlish Hermione who transforms into a figure of great dignity and stoicism; Omar Robinson as a benign friend who has to swerve into hasty self-preservation; Lana Young as a feisty Paulina who speaks with the most moral force in the play; and, in a role easy to overlook, Carmen Lacivita as Camillo, a “king’s man” who switches which king he serves and is a model of probity in one of those radical shifts otherwise known as a Shakespearean plot; only Jeremy Webb’s Antigonus seems a bit more colorless than required—but that may be due to a deliberate differentiation from Webb’s turn as the much more broadly played Shepherd in Bohemia who finds Perdita (Delfin Gökhan Meehan), the abandoned child of Leontes and Hermione.

The cast of The Winter’s Tale, in Bohemia, at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Bohemia segments switch into a somewhat overstated comic tone to underline the fact that the mood of the play has changed drastically. It works for Webb’s Shepherd and son—called “Clown” in the list of characters—enacted by John Maddaloni with great energy and spirit. It works less well for our lovers, Perdita and Florizel (Daniel Davila Jr.), the latter trying to give too much contemporary swagger to his sound. The lovers are young, yes, but that doesn’t mean they are our youthful contemporaries. That element hovers about Perdita as well, so that her main scene feels pitched to score more mirth than it contains.

Clown/Shepherd’s Son (John Maddaloni), Autolycus (Pearl Rhein) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

No matter, the winning figure of the Bohemia segments is Pearl Rhein’s memorable Autolycus. Rhein has the full measure of this engaging, theatrical, slippery pick-pocket, so that the Bohemia segments have not only the requisite comic feel but also the welcome musicality—as Autolycus is a tuneful rogue (applause to Pornchanok Kanchanabanca’s music and sound design and music director Liam Bellman-Sharpe). The lightness of the stage business, including a song of rivals Mopsa (Ama Laura Santana) and Dorcas (Hannah Moore), shows as it should Shakespeare’s way with comic timing.

The play winds up in Sicilia, as it must, to come full circle and right as many wrongs as possible. But Shakespeare’s idea was to let some major moments of melodrama happen offstage, narrated by comic figures who keep saying “words fail to describe,” even as they try to. It works on the page and could work onstage with enough comic wit to bring it off. Bensussen instead uses a neat device wherein the characters whose actions are being narrated do the narrating—which helps greatly those viewers for whom some of the names and relations might otherwise prove slippery.

Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero), Leontes (Nathan Darrow) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The great reveal scene also comes off well, helped by staging that sets the statue of Hermione in a special space behind and above the main playing area. Otherwise, Cameron Anderson’s set design is sparse and open, with a tall leafless tree that later lowers and flowers. If quibble I must, I’ll direct my discontent at Whitney Locher’s costumes: there’s a handsome Edwardian cast to it all that makes these characters seem to belong in a Merchant-Ivory production, with Paulina looking a bit the schoolmarm; one might say that any play that gives credence to the ancient god Apollo might be best set a bit more pre-modern. And Autolycus in long underwear?

Perdita (Delfin Gökhan Meehan), Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Those visual disconnects (in my eyes anyway) aside, this is a vibrant, near textbook-perfect run at one of those plays that delights, dismays, confuses and convinces as only a playwright confident he can do as he likes would try to bring off. In the space between Act 2 and Act 3, Pearl Rhein, as Time, puts it succinctly: allow the liberties taken if you’ve ever spent time worse than this; if you never have, “he wishes earnestly you never may.” You could indeed spend your time much worse, and no doubt have. Shakespeare’s ghost need not worry: Hartford Stage’s production of The Winter’s Tale spends its time well.

 

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Choreography: Misha Shields; Scenic Design: Cameron Anderson; Costume Design: Whitney Locher; Lighting Design: Evan Anderson; Original Music & Sound Design: Pornchanok Kanchanabanca; Music Director: Liam Bellman-Sharpe; Wig Design: Carissa Thorlakso; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Voice & Text Coach: Julie Foh; Dramaturg: Victoria Abrash; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Manager: Theresa Stark

Cast: Andrew Black, Jotham Burrello, Nathan Darrow, Daniel Davila Jr., Carmen Lacivita, John Maddaloni, Delfin Gökhan Meehan, Hannah Moore, Pearl Rhein, Omar Robinson, Jamie Ann Romero, Ana Laura Santana, Carson Timmons, Jeremy Webb, Lana Young

Hartford Stage
April 13-May 7, 2023

A Joyful Noise

Review of Ain’t Misbehavin’, Westport Country Playhouse

“We’re about to make a joyful noise,” said Mark Lamos, Artistic Director of Westport Country Playhouse, kicking off the opening night performance of Ain’t Misbehavin’, a showcase of Fats Waller’s music conceived by Richard Maltby Jr. and Murray Horwitz. The production was slated to appear pre-pandemic and is now having its moment, in a co-production with Barrington Stage and Geva Theatre Center. And the joy of finally staging this production of energetic and vibrant versions of some of the best from legendary pianist / performer / composer Waller’s songbook is this show’s main strength.

The cast and the band of Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Jeffrey L. Page (photo by Ron Heerkens, Jr.)

In 2022, director and choreographer Jeffrey L. Page reconceived the musical, first produced in 1978, so that it engages with aspects of Black American identity as both performance and protest. While the musical artistry of Waller’s songs are never in question—and hearing a live band play them is a delight that increases as the night goes on—the role of the singer of a Waller song, particularly on a dramatic stage, is more open to debate. Musical it must be, but the performance also has to enact both the song’s lyrics and something of its context. While the performances are enthusiastic, the show’s dramatic artistry registers more strongly in the second act. The first act primarily acquaints us with the performers, but since there is no overarching story to convey, each song is more or less it’s own thing, bound together by the delights of Waller’s stride piano. The choreography impresses most on the big numbers, like “The Jitterbug Waltz,” a highpoint of Act 1, with its overlapping vocals and dancing couples. In the early going the show’s ambiance would’ve benefited from a bit more saloon, less Broadway revue. The aura of a  late night joint became more prevalent in the second half.

Judith Franklin, Paris Bennett, Miya Bass in Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Ron Heerkens, Jr.)

Throughout there are foot-tapping set pieces aplenty—from the big production numbers, like the opening title song, or “The Joint is Jumpin’,” where cast members imitate musical instruments, or, early in the second Act, the brightly arch “Lounging at the Waldorf,” where the cast sports a costume change that has them stepping out, dressed to the hilt.

The cast of Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Jeffrey L. Page (photo by Ron Heerkens, Jr.)

Another Act I set piece involves staging as if for a performance during World War 2, so that the antiquated songs—"Yacht Club Swing,” “When the Nylons Bloom Again,” “Cash for Your Trash”—all register as timely songs in which Waller invigorates the era, adding swing to the straitened circumstances (Waller himself died of pneumonia while traveling during wartime). The spirit of Waller as a showman, with his tongue-in-cheek grasp of how to proclaim the special status of his own particular blues, is well served by some of his best numbers: “Lookin’ Good But Feelin’ Bad,” “’T Ain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do,” “Handful of Keys,” while others showcase the tit for tat of difficult relations: “Mean to Me,” “That Ain’t Right,” “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now,” or, one of Waller’s best, the joys of the playful torch song, “Honeysuckle Rose”—here a duet between Paris Bennett and Will Stone.

Jay Copeland and Will Stone in Ain’t Misbehavin’, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Ron Heerkens, Jr.)

In the second act, the skills of Will Stone and Jay Copeland come to the fore. Copeland slinks his way through a bravura “The Viper’s Drag/The Reefer Song” that goes a long way to both instantiate and interrogate the subtext that Waller’s music is always winking at: how to be a harmless Black for the White folks and how to be a canny showman to his Black audiences. Waller, with his incredibly mobile face and comic timing, tended to clown it up—a tradition to which Stone does full justice with his drunken lout in “Your Feet’s Too Big,” and, with Copeland, as a minstrel duo in “Fat and Greasy.” The fun of the number fades when the duo freeze as though caught in problematic roles. The next number, featuring the entire cast, is “Black and Blue,” a rare, direct confrontation of racial difference in Waller’s work. And with that, the show finally arrives at its fullest statement.

The cast of Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Jeffrey L. Page (photo by Ron Heerkens, Jr.)

The final numbers take us back to Fats Waller as the kind of showman more apt to unite audiences than divide them, his talent, skill, love of performance and sheer musical genius keep these songs alive and end the evening with high spirits.

Ain’t Misbehavin’
The Fats Waller Musical Show
Conceived by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Murray Horwitz
Directed and Choreographed by Jeffrey L. Page
A Co-production with Barrington Stage and Geva Theatre Center

Scenic Design: Raul Abrego; Costume Design: Oana Botez; Lighting Design: Philip Rosenberg; Sound Design: Leon Rosenberg; Music Director: Terry Bogart; Associate Director/Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Production Stage Manager: Alexis Nalbandian; Assistant Stage Manager: Tré Wheeler

Cast: Miya Bass, Paris Bennett, Jay Copeland, Judith Franklin, Will Stone

Musicians: Terry Bogart, piano/music director; Donavan Austin, trombone; Jason Clotter, bass; Bernell Jones II, reed 2 clarinet/tenor saxophone; Kevin Oliver, reed 1 clarinet/alto saxophone; Ryan Sands, drums; John Williams II, trumpet

Westport Country Playhouse
April 11-April 29, 2023

Tribal Values

Review of Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles, Yale Repertory Theatre

The impressive housefront onstage recalls both a temple and a mausoleum (Marcelo Martínez García, set design). The action of the play takes place before it as though in a symbolic space where what will be manifest is the tragedy of a people who do not belong anywhere, least of all in that house owned by the play’s nemesis. Indeed, the tableaux that open and close Mojada, directed by Laurie Woolery at Yale Repertory Theatre, are two of the most powerful moments in the play.  

Tita (Alma Martinez) in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, directed by Laurie Woolery (photo by Joan Marcus)

At the start, we witness Tita (Alma Martinez), an aged woman, handling two giant feathers. When clapped together, they conjure up sounds of the past, giving us a quick aural history of the storied family we’re about to meet; and at the close, a vision of a bird—the guaco, with whom Medea (Camila Moreno) has been strongly identified—rises above the house like an avenging angel. Those paired moments provide compelling theatrics to a production—adapted from the tragedy by Euripides that dramatizes the ancient Greek myth of Medea and Jason—that too often suffers from static presentation and stereotyped characters in this contemporary tale of immigrant tragedy in a scrappy barrio of Los Angeles. 

Medea (Camila Moreno) in Luis Alfaro’s Mojada at Yale Repertory Theatre, directed by Laurie Woolery (photo by Joan Marcus)

Playwright Luis Alfaro lulls us into what might seem a comic fable of a family of newcomers from Zamora, Mexico—Medea, her husband Hason (Alejandro Hernández), their son Acan (Romar Fernandez) and the family servant Tita—gradually adapting with both sorrows and joys to the new world in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles (some 1120 miles north) where they now live. The happy family segments show us how eager Hason is to assimilate—urging his son to wear U.S. soccer colors rather than Mexico’s—and how ambitiously he tries to please his female boss, Armida (Mónica Sánchez), a big mover in local real estate who owns the house they rent. On the more traditional side—or “tribal,” as a neighbor Josefina, or “Josey,” (Nancy Rodríguez) likes to say—we hear of Medea’s great skills as a seamstress and, in addition to a folkloric tale in which Hason first met her while seeking the guaco she was imitating, Medea is also identified with Mexico itself. We learn she’s too fearful to leave the house even for a daytrip to the pier. Only gradually do we hear not only the story of the family’s harrowing journey to the US but of the conditions that precipitated the family’s flight. 

The cast of the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, directed by Laurie Woolery (photo by Joan Marcus)

Which is a way of saying there’s a lot of backstory here. Much of the past is recounted in hypnotic speeches that reference acts of violence and outrage that seem to intrude from a different play. The disjuncture comes from trying to wed the character of Medea, as received from Euripides, with Camila Moreno’s much more benign and afflicted character in Alfaro’s play. Here we feel that Medea is meant to be the sympathetic heroine of the play, so that her eventual vengeance has moral force. Maybe in myth, but in realistic terms—and the play likes its naturalism—the harms Medea suffers from her husband, while vexing, are not exactly the stuff of Greek drama. The suspension of disbelief is not so easily afforded. 

The Medea of Euripides is a wronged woman from another city, transplanted by her husband, whom she has helped with sorcery, and now abandoned by him (the fate of their children is still being decided as the play takes place). She has her griefs and is willing to transform herself into an implacable Fury to achieve her revenge. Alfaro doesn’t give his Medea the space to enact such a transformation. One minute she’s listening to the fulsome blandishments of the tiresomely buoyant Josefina while making her a dress to inspire passion in a dull husband, and the next she’s sewing a witchy gown to destroy Armida, Hason’s soon-to-be new US bride (Medea and Hason were never actually married, apparently).  

Hason (Alejandro Hernandez), Medea (Camila Moreno), Armida (Monica Sanchez) in Luis Alfaro’s Mojada at the Yale Repertory Theatre, directed by Laurie Woolery (photo by Joan Marcus)

There’s a sense that Alfaro wants characters like Josefina and Armida to play as broad caricatures, but, if so, their part in the story works against outright comedy. An evil queen in a Disney movie Armida may be and her fate may be received as one of those magic realism moments that are so popular, but, even so, such touches make us wonder whose story Mojada is trying to dramatize. Medea’s act has to do, vaguely, with a blow against patriarchy. How better to undermine Hason’s machismo then attacking him through his progeny (a word that finds a joking relevance from one of Josefina’s stories)? Or might we say that Acan’s fate was sealed the minute he changed his team colors? 

Acan (Romar Fernandez) in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, directed by Laurie Woolery (photo by Joan Marcus)

In the Rep production, the play’s best feature—besides that opening and close—is Alma Martinez’s Tita. She has to be both Greek chorus and Mexican housekeeper, as well as a figure who seems, like a bit of a Tiresias, to see what it all might amount to in some big book of myth. She’s a wonderful grounding presence throughout, full of reactions, and even the tendency to make her a figure of stereotypical peasant grit is worn with a requisite irony, as in her great speech about “smiling, though I hate you.” 

About hubris the ancient Greeks were never wrong. The missteps of humanity could always be put into perspective by a tragic fate, a decree of the gods. Adapting the Greeks’ fatalistic outlook to contemporary settings commonly presents a tempting challenge for contemporary playwrights, though such attempts at times may seem acts of hubris in themselves.

 

Mojada, A Medea in Los Angeles
By Luis Alfaro
Directed by Laurie Woolery

Scenic Designer: Marcelo Martínez García; Costume Designer: Kitty Cassetti; Lighting Designer: Stephen Strawbridge; Projection Designer: Shawn Lovell-Boyle; Sound Designer: Bryn Scharenberg; Wig Designer: Krystal Balleza/Wig Associates; Production Dramaturgs: Sebastián Eddowes-Vargas, Nicholas Orvis; Technical Director: Andrew Riedermann; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Fight and Intimacy Director: Kelsey Rainwater; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Aisling Galvin

Cast: Romar Fernandez, Alejandro Hernández, Alma Martinez, Camilla Moreno, Nancy Rodriguez, Mónica Sánchez

Yale Repertory Theatre
March 10-April 1, 2023

 

The Bit About the Kid

Review of The Art of Burning, Hartford Stage

Now continuing its world premiere after a run in Boston, directed by Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning mines both the comedy and the drama of unsuccessful marriages, while giving a refreshing emphasis to a teenage daughter caught in the crossfire. Along the way the play explores what constitutes stability and sustainability—not only in relationships but in our inter-relations with others as a measure of how we choose to live in the world. At the heart of the play is the fraught question of how parents manage their priorities in life while beginning to see what’s owed the next generation. 

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Mark (Michael Kaye), Jason (Rom Barkhordar) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Poised on the New Brutalist stylings of Luciana Stecconi’s set of hard surfaces and sharp corners, with an effective lighting grid in the floor to signal scene shifts, the play opens with Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), an artist and mother, in prickly colloquy with Mark (Michael Kaye), a friend and attorney placed in the position of mediating her divorce from his friend Jason (Rom Barkhordar). Such a setup would generally bespeak a friendly dissolution of the marriage, and such may have once been expected, but things have taken a turn for the darker and more dramatic: Patricia has recently seen fit to set fire to Jason’s antique rolltop desk in the backyard, inviting their daughter Beth (Clio Contogenis) to join her in the conflagration and even to roast marshmallows in victory over Dad. Not something Jason, a very self-centered guy, is likely to take easily. The cause? Another woman, of course. 

Jason (Rom Barkhordar), Katya (Vivia Font), Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Of the six characters in The Art of Burning, three are given scenes of considerable manic intensity; the other three, while emotive—the “other woman” Katya (Vivia Font)—and blustery (the men), are mostly foils. That leaves Patricia and Beth and Mark’s wife Charlene (Laura Latreille) to up the ante, displaying Snodgrass’s gift for the escalating harangue. Contogenis’ angsty cri de coeur against the parental generation for not stewarding the world in a more forward-looking manner pushes buttons with timely panache. Charlene, when she finally gets let off the leash, is even funnier; confronted by her husband for her alleged animadversion to musicals, she asserts what we might call the carnal attraction of good plays.

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Charlene (Laura Latreille) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Then there’s Patricia. Her big turn-the-tables scene is more complex in terms of comic ingredients and doesn’t score quite as readily. In part that’s because using Medea even by way of reference (and Snodgrass likes references) creates a tension between the scene before us and something the playwright might be wanting us to understand that the characters don’t. The problem is that the possible misinterpretation (by both Mark and Jason) is improbable (guys, dried blood turns brown, red paint stays red!) and so not really funny, though Krstansky makes the most of Patricia’s exulting in their stupidity. A Pyrrhic victory, perhaps, as it’s hard to feel quite the same way about the play after that scene.

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Mark (Michael Kaye), Jason (Rom Barkhordar) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Indeed, the conflict between what works as characterization and what doesn’t nags at the play. It’s there when Beth, generally a sympathetic character, berates her well-intentioned mother for not grasping the devastating internet exposure the gaffes of her disastrous date will likely receive—but Beth’s worldly assumption of that likelihood (already knowing about such exposures) rather belies the naivete with which she approached her date. It’s as if she’s a child of the 1950s while at the movies with her date and an app-savvy child of the 2020s when reacting to her mom’s reaction. It’s not that she can’t be both, I suppose, but somehow the comedy gets skewed, in part because we can’t want to see the teen as the butt of the joke (can we?). And yet there is potential for a steely sort of comedy to work all through the play. 

Which is a way of saying that The Art of Burning isn’t working on all its burners. Comedy requires a pacing that keeps us alert to the satiric possibilities in almost any speech or action, but there’s a sense of emotional baggage weighing down Snodgrass’s sallies, as played here. I couldn’t help feeling that there might be a funnier version of this play possible, if we were permitted to see how comically clueless the entire cast is. In this version, the play aims to vindicate Patricia, as artist and mother and wronged woman who overcomes the wrong to get on with her life, and that’s fine though it also requires us to side with her less attractive manipulations. The note struck, too often, is that criticizing one’s predicament obviates having to take any blame for getting into the predicament. A sentiment all too common in retrospects on failed marriages, no doubt, but not quite as sharp as one might hope. 

Beth (Clio Contogenis), Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The ending makes us wonder more than a little why we spent so much time dwelling on the disagreements of this mostly disagreeable quintet (sparing Beth, as one hopes to spare the child and spoil the rod).  There’s a kind of catharsis in airing such griefs, I guess, but not the kind “the Greeks” (who get more than one mention) had in mind: no one in this much aggrieved collective comes close to seeing their lives as “fate.” There’s always someone else to blame, thank gods. 

 

The Art of Burning
By Kate Snodgrass
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Scenic Design: Luciana Stecconi; Costume Design: Kara Harmon; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Original Music & Sound Design: Jane Shaw; Wig & Hair Design: J. Jared Janas; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Assistant Stage Manager: Emily Pathman

Cast: Adrianne Krstansky, Michael Kaye, Rom Barkhordar, Vivia Font, Clio Contogenis, Laura Latreille

 

Hartford Stage
March 2-26, 2023