Edwards charms in 'Woman Before a Glass'

By D. A. Blackburn

I've said it before, and I will surely say it again: Adapting history to the stage can be a very delicate affair. This is never more true than when it's presented in the form of a one-man (or woman) bio-play. Such works require an engaging, intriguing, colorful character, and a performer capable of holding an audience firmly, with an intense intimacy. With their production of Lanie Robertson's Woman Before a Glass, Performance Network Theatre certainly provides this latter element with Broadway star Naz Edwards and much more, but the script comes up a little short.

Woman is a portrait of heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, a woman deeply affected by history, romance and, most importantly, modern art. She was, after all, a Jew living in Europe during the rise of the Nazis, daughter of a man dead before his time for the sinking of the Titanic, a twice-married seductress known for her promiscuity, and a prodigious collector and champion of artists and artistic styles on the cutting edge. She ran in exciting circles (at least, now, they seem exciting), lived in enchanting places (Paris, Venice, New York), surrounded herself with beauty and worked diligently to leave the world a legacy wholly her own.

This sounds like the makings of an engaging bio-play, you say? Well, you're right — to a point. The problem is that Robertson's single act script is a drag — essentially, an hour-and-20-minute crawl, focused heavily on artistic name-dropping and not nearly enough on the emotion created by the monumental events of Guggenheim's life. While they are discussed, they aren't relived on the stage. And if you think that the intrigue this character provides is enough to overcome a pedantic script, I suggest you speak with the woman in the row behind me, who took to snoring about 20 minutes in on opening night.

But with all that said, there is a lot to applaud in the Network's production.

Edwards, particularly, deserves credit for a fantastic performance. Her voicing of the character — a haughty European English which cleverly slides into rough and brash New Yorker at just the right moments — is a delight. So too is her ability to navigate the Italian and French, thrown in for color, with the ease of a linguist. She's also very capable of delivering the humor of the work, and in the few moments when real, heart-wrenching emotion does boil up to the surface, Edwards' performance is potent.

Malcolm Tulip's direction makes good use of the stage and does much to keep the work moving forward despite Robertson's lumbering script.

Moreover, the company has done an excellent job with the show's design elements.

Monika Essen's sets have an interesting modern art appeal to them. They are simple, but eye catching. The stage's raised floor takes on the appearance of abstract sculpture. The structures crafted to display paintings have unique lines, and Essen's reproductions of paintings, themselves, are a feast for the eye. Her costumes and properties, too, are a nice fit to the production.

Suzi Regan's sound design and Mary Cole's lighting also serve the work well.

Performance Network has made the most of Woman Before a Glass, but sadly, it fails to draw an audience in. Or perhaps, it's just that the play is truly like its most prominent theme, modern art: an artistic expression not bound by the usual conventions.

SHOW DETAILS:

Performance Network Theatre, 120 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. Thursday-Sunday through Sept. 5. Tickets: $25-$41. For information: 734-663-0681 or www.performancenetwork.org.

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OTHER VOICES - REVIEWS: Woman Before a Glass - Performance Network Theatre

Read ANGIE LAI's review in the Heritage Newspapers (Aug. 23, 2010)

Read RONELLE GRIER's review in the The Oakland Press (Aug. 21, 2010)

Read CAROLYN HAYES' review in the Rogue Critic (Aug. 19, 2010)

Read DANIEL SKORA's review from the New Monitor (Aug. 19, 2010)

Read JOHN MONAGHAN's review in the Detroit Free Press (Aug. 19, 2010)

Read PATTY NOLAN's review in the Detroit Theater Examiner (Aug. 14, 2010)

Read JENN MCKEE's review on AnnArbor.com (Aug. 14, 2010)

Laughs come out loud at The Ringwald

By Jenn McKee

In Douglas Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed, now being staged by Who Wants Cake? at Ferndale's Ringwald Theatre, a closeted movie actor named Mitchell (Vince Kelley) scoffs at the chest-thumping notion that "in America, you can be whatever you want to be."

"Because the unspeakable truth of it is, no. The only ones who can be whatever they want are white, upper middle class, straight, conservative, Protestant men. ... So if you grew up, as I did, with the whole above checklist intact, you know the world is waiting for you."

For this reason, Mitchell plays a role off-screen as well as on – that of a talented, up-and-coming young heterosexual heartthrob. But while in New York City for an award ceremony, Mitchell hires a rent boy, Alex (Matthew Turner Shelton), to come to his hotel room. And a funny thing happens as Mitchell protests that he's not really gay, and Alex confesses he's straight, with a girlfriend: The two develop a level of closeness and intimacy that surprises them both.

Yet because Mitchell and his force-of-nature agent Diane (Suzan M. Jacokes) are in delicate negotiations for a film adaptation of a play about a gay relationship, and because Alex's girlfriend-of-convenience Ellen (Crystal Rhoney) is in crisis, the three are pulled between who they actually are and who they need to be.

Though I'd seen a production of Little Dog before, director Joe Bailey's slick staging provided me with a greater appreciation for the ways in which Beane's script playfully and smartly dissects itself while also telling an intriguing story.

For example, at the play's start, we hear Diane wax rhapsodic about the loveliness of Breakfast at Tiffany's' opening scene; and indeed, Ellen – who just lost the monetary support of an elderly British man who liked her platonic company – is a kind of darker, low-rent Holly Golightly.

In addition, later in Little Dog, we hear Diane grapple with the gay playwright while she dismantles his play, piece by piece, in order to make the film adaptation multiplex-friendly; similarly, she does this on a personal level when she repeatedly warns Mitchell away from Alex, insisting that Mitchell remain closeted.

And while some pretty serious questions are explored, Little Dog is ultimately a showcase for Beane's sly, biting wit, and Bailey's ensemble runs with every comic opportunity they get.

This is particularly true for Jacokes. Diane gets the lion's share of hysterical lines, of course, but Jocokes' priceless delivery, in many instances, makes them even funnier (no small feat). So although she suffered a couple of minor hiccups on opening night, her overall performance was terrific – show-biz embodied in one overwhelming, fearless, loud person.

Shelton, meanwhile, has the broadest emotional landscape to cover, and somehow, he makes it look effortless. Perhaps just as impressively, Rhoney made me have far more sympathy for Ellen than I've previously felt. During a scene in which Ellen talks about returning to her childhood home, she broke my heart and won me over for what remained of the show.

As the movie star, Kelley is polished and funny, but I wondered if his version of Mitchell would really be able to "pass" as straight in the mainstream. The stakes for Mitchell's potential coming out are high precisely because he's supposed to be one of Hollywood's all-American, boy-next-door types, and Kelley's Mitchell seems more sexually ambiguous than that, even when selling himself at a power lunch.

Michael Reeves' set design primarily features Mitchell's hotel room, where most of the action takes place, and Bailey uses smaller pockets of the stage for scenes that happen in other locales – a nightclub, a restaurant, Diane's L.A. office, etc. Kelley costumes the characters well, though Shelton once had difficulty getting his pants off. (Did I mention the brief nudity?) And Bailey and Joe Plambeck's lighting design thoughtfully sets the tone for each scene and balances the play's funny and serious moments.

All these elements combine to ensure that not only will you think about Beane's play long after it ends, but also that the Little Dog is only one of many who laughed, and laughed hard.

SHOW DETAILS:

Who Wants Cake? at The Ringwald, 22742 Woodward Ave., Ferndale. Saturday-Monday through Aug. 30; no performance Aug. 21. Tickets: $10-$20. For information: 248-545-5545 or www.whowantscaketheatre.com.

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OTHER VOICES - REVIEWS: The Little Dog Laughed - The Ringwald

Read CAROLYN HAYES' review in the Rogue Critic (Aug. 14, 2010)

A summer’s tale: ‘Tis a lovely season at Stratford

By Martin F. Kohn

In its better seasons, and this one certainly qualifies, Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival lives up to its name: It's Shakespearean and it's festive. From the glorious froth that is John Doyle's production of Kiss Me, Kate, to Gary Griffin's largely familiar but surprisingly gripping realization of Evita, to Des McAnuff's visually dazzling As You Like It, to Marti Maraden's lucid staging of The Winter's Tale, Stratford 2010 delivers big-time.

And let us not forget this year's brochure cover boy, Christopher Plummer, mingling humor with humanity as Prospero in McAnuff's production of The Tempest.

That's not the whole season, of course, but there are only so many plays you (or at least I) can see in a weekend. Based on that substantial sampling, though, one is tempted to declare this the year of the designer at Stratford. Rarely have the costumes been more colorful or expressive, the scenery more inventive, the sounds more a part of the action and, in the plays, the music more than background.

What about the acting? As that estimable thespian Sparky Anderson has theorized: Once you've chosen your lineup your work is pretty much done. Happily, Stratford's lineup is strong up the middle, at the corners, even on the bench: Understudies filled in seamlessly in two or three of the five performances I saw last weekend.

As for themes — again, based on just five of the eight shows currently running — the idea of power, its uses, misuses and abuses, seems common to all, even a kind of personal power where Kiss Me, Kate incorporates The Taming of the Shrew.

With a lot of summer still before us and the folks at Stratford offering deals on tickets, it may be time to consider a jaunt up the road. Don't forget your passport (or enhanced driver’s license).

Now, the reviews.

Evita

Not exactly a new Argentina, neither is Stratford's Evita the same old one. Directed by Gary Griffin (Broadway's The Color Purple), Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's sung-through rumination on demagoguery (among other things) seems freshly relevant in a political season when all sorts of folks claim to represent the voiceless and powerless.

While hewing to the conventions of Evitas past (would anyone ever stage it without the armpit scene?), Griffin introduces a few innovations, the best of which occurs in The Art of the Possible as members of Argentina's military junta vie for supremacy. Usually staged as a literal game of musical chairs, Griffin re-imagines it as a poker game, with the winning hands projected card-by-card above the stage.

Voiceful and powerful is Chilina Kennedy in the title role, convincingly playing Eva Peron's transitions from ravenously ambitious teenager to idolized first lady to critically ill husk of a woman.

Josh Young is a perfect counterweight as Che, who tells the story with all the cynicism the real Che Guevara (born and raised in Argentina) might have mustered. Juan Chioran plays dictator Juan Peron with the authoritative confidence that could well fool all of the people some of the time.

The Tempest

Christopher Plummer may put audiences in the seats, but he's not the only reason to remain there. An engaging, contemplative Prospero, he projects a wizard-like aura as the old sorcerer, aided by some spiffy special effects (the playbill credits a magic coach), but his greater accomplishment is presenting Prospero in all his human complexity.

In a neat trick of her own, Julyana Soelistyo nearly steals the show as the spirit Ariel. A limber, diminutive woman, she seems otherworldly, zooming about the stage dispensing benevolent mischief, propelled by her own energy and, sometimes, by wires a la Peter Pan. Soelistyo also has a superbly impish laugh.

Otherworldly from the opposite direction is Dion Johnstone as Prospero's island's other native, the earthbound Caliban. Not until Caliban's reformation, near the very end of the play, does Johnstone ever get to stand upright.

Trish Lindstrom and Gareth Potter make more than the usual cardboard cutouts out of the young lovers: Prospero's daughter, Miranda, and the shipwrecked prince, Ferdinand.

Bruce Dow and Geraint Wyn Davies provide the funniest scenes as Trinculo and Stephano; Wyn Davies with a funny Scottish accent and Dow playing his character somewhere between the Cowardly Lion and Curly from the Three Stooges.

Kiss Me, Kate

The opening scene, Another Op'nin', Another Show, features laundry baskets big enough to hide a person, and on wheels, no less. This augurs well. It does indeed, although nobody ever hides in a laundry basket in John Doyle's staging of Cole Porter's best musical.

Who needs people in laundry baskets when you have Shakespeare as a co-author (The Taming of the Shrew is the play within the play) and such great Porter songs as Too Darn Hot, So In Love, Always True To You in My Fashion and Brush Up Your Shakespeare?

And the story, book by Sam And Bella Spewack, isn't bad either. It's the out-of-town opening of a musical based on Shrew, starring ex-spouses Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi who are, you guessed it, still in love but only one of them realizes it. Another couple in the company, Bill Calhoun and Lois Lane, also have a stormy relationship. Add to the mix a pair of gangsters come to collect a gambling debt and things get interesting.

One of the particular joys at Stratford is the opportunity to see the same actor in two, or more, shows. So here is Juan Chioran, no longer a dour fascist but a lusty and genial Fred (and Shakespeare's Petruchio). Monique Lund, blending in with the rest of the company in Evita stands out as Lilli (and the Shrew) in a terrific performance combining a glorious voice with a flair for physical comedy. Note the original way she slinks off the Festival Theatre stage.

For real aficionados of one actor/two performances, the biggest reward is Chilina Kennedy, yesterday's Eva Peron, today's Noo Yawk-accented Lois (and Shakespeare's Bianca). If you didn't see her name in both programs you wouldn't believe she's the same person.

As You Like It

Rosalind is a painter; Touchstone, the fool, wears a three-piece suit; Orlando, the dispossessed aristocrat, is attired like Tom Joad in the movie The Grapes of Wrath.

And that's just the beginning of Des McAnuff's production of As You Like It, set in an era when both fascism and surrealism are ascending. The fascism is certainly in the text. The rightful duke has been overthrown by his brother and has taken refuge in the Forest of Arden. Easygoing, kindly Orlando has been evicted by his bully of a brother and goes off to join the free spirits in the forest.

Incidentally, Paul Nolan, as Orlando, conjures the late William Hutt, not in voice or appearance but in the way speaks Shakespeare's language as if it were conversational, comprehensible English.

Brent Carver makes sardonic Jaques truly melancholy and delivers the Seven Ages of Man speech as if he were making it up on the spot. Andrea Runge captures all the apprehension adventurousness of Rosalind who flees to the forest dressed as a man, and Cara Ricketts is quite nicely more apprehensive and less adventurous as Rosalind's friend and companion, Celia.

If the actors weren't serving Shakespeare so well, it would be tempting to call the production over-designed. The old duke's merry band in the forest includes an actual jazz band to accompany the many songs in the play and the lively Charleston at the finale. And it's difficult to take your eyes off the floor, a beautiful abstraction that lights up from below, sort of kaleidoscope meets disco floor.

The Winter's Tale

If they know it at all, most people know The Winter's Tale for the most famous stage direction in all of Shakespeare: "Exit, pursued by a bear." The play has more to recommend it than ursine pursuit, and Marti Maraden's staging makes one of Shakespeare's less-frequently performed plays comprehensible and compelling.

It tells the story of King Leontes of Sicily who unjustly accuses his pregnant wife, Hermione, of sleeping with his best friend, the King of Bohemia, who has been visiting for the past nine months. Leontes also believes the baby is not his. As judge, jury and executioner, not only does the enraged Leontes condemn his wife, he orders that her baby daughter be carried off to some remote and deserted place and left there to fate. By the time he realizes how wrong he's been, it's too late. Or so he thinks.

Fast forward 16 years, as Shakespeare does, and there's a lot more story to be told. For one thing, guess who's grown up.

As Leontes, Ben Carlson is the glue that holds the story together, but neither his rage nor his repentance is completely convincing. Faring better is Seana McKenna as Paulina, who stands up to Leontes in defense of her best friend, Hermione; like Paul Nolan in As You Like It, McKenna proves adept at conversational Shakespeare. Yanna McIntosh, as Hermione; Brian Tree and Mike Shara, as the shepherds who find the baby; and Tom Rooney as an itinerant balladeer and pickpocket, add brightness to the proceedings.

Shakespeare has a big surprise in store, which will not be revealed here even if it is 399 years old. And director Maraden has one of her own. Let's just say that in this production, "Time flies" is no mere adage.

SHOW DETAILS:

Evita runs until Nov. 6 at the Avon Theatre.
The Tempest runs until Sept. 12 at the Festival Theatre.
Kiss Me, Kate runs until Nov. 6 at the Festival Theatre.
As You Like It runs until Oct. 31 at the Festival Theatre.
The Winter's Tale runs until Sept. 25 at the Tom Patterson Theatre.
For tickets, contact the Stratford Shakespeare Festival box office at 1-800-567-1600 or visit www.stratfordshakespearefestival.com.

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High-flying farce at The Purple Rose

By Martin F. Kohn

While airplanes are critical to its plot, the early 1960s farce Boeing-Boeing must pack sufficient boing! or neither play nor title will realize its humorous potential. And yes, the title was the same in the original French.

Marc Camoletti's comedy, said to be the most frequently produced French play in the world (rub your nose in that, Cyrano de Bergerac), begins with suave Bernard (Jeff Thomakos), an architect who lives in a Paris apartment with six doors and has three girlfriends — one American, one Italian, one German — who don't know about each other. Each is a flight attendant for a different airline and they are never in Paris at the same time.

So far.

Everyone knows that at some point all those women and all those doors are going to be in motion simultaneously. Boing!

Happily, Nathan Mitchell's Purple Rose Theatre staging goes for the fast, the frenetic and the funny. One highlight: When Matthew David, in a star-is-born performance as Bernard's unassuming pal, Robert, spies an object that would expose Bernard's infidelity, he grabs a beanbag chair and launches himself toward the incriminating item with the heroic desperation of a soldier falling on a hand grenade to save his platoon.

For all his loyalty to Bernard, though, timid Robert discovers he is not above a bit of flirtation himself, especially when Bernard's German girlfriend, Gretchen (Charlyn Swarthout), kisses him by, as she would call it, "mishtake."

Swarthout, Stacie Hadgikosti as the American girlfriend Gloria, and Rhiannon Ragland as Italian girlfriend Gabriella play their characters as distinct individuals, which Bernard seems unaware of. What he does know, subconsciously, is that all his juggling and shuffling are making him a nervous wreck; Thomakos lets us know this right away when Bernard, as he tells Robert about his ingenious arrangement, gets louder with every word.

Michelle Mountain brings worn-out, comic rage (in two languages) to her portrayal of much put-upon maid Berthe, Bernard's de facto accomplice; it's not what Berthe signed up for, but a job is a job.

Bartley H. Bauer's set, Bernard's uncluttered (his life is cluttered enough), elegant split-level apartment is tailor-made for farce, allowing for maximum movement, especially with its two sets of short stairs between the hall and the living room. Not seen right away is a set piece whose appearance comes as a terrific surprise and in whose creation lighting designer Reid G. Johnson must have had a hand.

Christianne Myers' costumes are well suited to the characters: The French maid uniform is a given, but Bernard is debonair in his black turtleneck under his jacket, and Robert's hangdog expression is complemented by his dowdy brown suit. Each flight attendant wears a uniform of a different color and cut; same goes for their lingerie. Ooh la la.

SHOW DETAILS:

The Purple Rose Theatre Company, 137 Park St., Chelsea. Wednesday-Sunday through Sept. 11. Tickets: $25-$38. For information: 734-433-7673 or www.purplerosetheatre.org}.

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OTHER VOICES - REVIEWS: Boeing-Boeing - The Purple Rose Theatre Company

Read SALLY MITANI's review in the Ann Arbor Observer (Aug. 5, 2010)

Read JOHN MONAGHAN's review in the Detroit Free Press (July 8, 2010)

Read CAROLYN HAYES' review in the Rogue Critic (July 2, 2010)

Read SEAN DALTON's review in the Heritage Newspapers (June 30, 2010)

Read ROBERT DELANEY's review from the New Monitor (July 1, 2010)

Read JENN MCKEE's review on AnnArbor.com (June 27, 2010)

Read PATTY NOLAN's review in the Detroit Theater Examiner (June 25, 2010)

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