Home > Theater Reviews > Archives > 2007 > January
January 2007
‘Gee’s Bend’ @ Alabama Shakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B +
Montgomery, Ala. — Since the discovery of their striking geometric quilts, the women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., have been embraced, even objectified, as quaint grandmas from a nearly forgotten place and time — as sweet and homespun, perhaps, as their miraculous fabric inventions.
But what of the hard work, the poverty and social struggle, the joys and sorrows of marriage and family and the inevitable handing down of their fragile traditions?
In “Gee’s Bend,” Alabama playwright Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder turns back the sheets to reveal an intimate glimpse of the complicated lives behind the handmade objects.
Commissioned and developed by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival as part of its Southern Writers’ Project, Wilder’s enthusiastically received world premiere is a glorious piece of theatrical handiwork that uses the civil rights movement as thread for stitching together the rich emotional material of a close-knit family of quilters. With echoes of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” “Gee’s Bend” has the rare distinction of being a lovely work of art and a bona fide crowd-pleaser.
Loosely based on the author’s conversations with residents of the isolated, river-locked community, the story takes us into the modest home of Alice Pettway (Maura Gale) and her squabbling siblings, Sadie (Roslyn Ruff) and Nella (Atlanta’s Margo Moorer).
While Nella forswears men and quilts, Sadie marries young and sews out of necessity. To the horror of Sadie’s abusive husband, Macon (Billy Eugene Jones), she also chooses the path of political independence: darting off to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preach, drink from a whites-only fountain and march across Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge.
Though the results are devastating, Sadie eventually wins her emancipation (in more ways than one), while Nella recedes into the childlike world of her imagination and old age.
Ruff -— familiar to Alliance Theatre audiences for her performances in “Intimate Apparel” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” — gives another heartbreaking turn as a vulnerable figure reminted by self-sacrifice and courage. Moorer, for her part, provides a blast of comic relief as the impetuous and meddling Nella; and yet, at the end of the day, Nella is sad, lonely and bereft as she waits by the river for the ferry that stopped coming years ago.
Director Janet Cleveland and musical director-sound designer Brett Rominger heighten the play’s spiritual tone by introducing segments of traditional gospel music, mournfully sung by the cast. As Macon, Jones is by turns seductive and brutal, and Gale does a fine job of reinventing herself as Sadie’s ambivalent daughter, Asia.
Michael Schweikardt’s simple, rough-hewn set and Rosa M. Lazaro’s authentic costumes keep the focus plainly on the drama. (Schweikardt also designed the quilts, which are stylistically faithful to the originals but not exact replicas.)
By nature and design, quilts are tailor-made metaphors for shelter, comfort and love. As evinced by Wilder’s characters, the ladies of Gee’s Bend are natural nesters and nurturers, but the paradox of every matriarchal culture is its strength.
With its rivers and thresholds, Gee’s Bend is a mythic, time-swept place, populated by human monuments of grace and endurance. Far more than just accidental combinations of cotton and cloth, its quilts are smeared with blood, sweat, tears and the ocher-colored dirt of Alabama.
THE 411: Through Feb. 11. $15-$22. Alabama Shakespeare Festival, 1 Festival Drive, Montgomery. 1-800-841-4273, www.asf.net.
THE VERDICT: Like the quilts, 100 percent pure.
‘Sister Act’ @ the Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
If you groaned when you heard that “Sister Act” was being turned into a musical, that’s because you were remembering how dumb Hollywood can be.
Fear not, oh, ye of little faith. The creators of “Sister Act: The Musical” have found divine inspiration in the flat-footed 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg as a lounge singer-turned-nun on the run.
A world premiere co-production by California’s Pasadena Playhouse and Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, where it opened Wednesday night, the show is a buoyant reminder of the forgiving nature of musical theater. If its guiding prayer is “Hail Mary, full of bad taste,” therein lies its perpetual charm.
As imagined by composer Alan Menken, lyricist Glenn Slater and book writers Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, the musical is a shamelessly referential ’70s homage-podge that mixes the cloistered quietude of a Catholic order with the trashy vocabulary of blaxploitation, the Day-Glo colors of disco and the groovy sounds of funk, soul and R&B.
Can you say, “Pimp my convent.”
In director Peter Schneider’s raucous reinvention, hard-scrabble singer Deloris Van Cartier (Dawnn Lewis) is not in bed with the Mafia: She’s slung up with a bad, “Superfly”-meets-“Shaft” hybrid named Curtis Shank (Harrison White), whose moral fiber is as dubious as his fashion decisions.
When Deloris witnesses a murder at Curtis’ Funkadelica Downtown Disco, she seeks police protection, and it turns out that the desk sergeant is her old school chum school “Sweaty Eddie” Souther (David Jennings), a proverbial nerd waiting to be transformed into a prince. As you probably know by now, Eddie’s solution is for Deloris to seek asylum in a nunnery, where she ruffles the feathers of the Mother Superior (Elizabeth Ward Land) but wins the sisters’ hearts by injecting the choir with a shot of her “Sunday Morning Fever.”
While the set-up and opening scenes struggle to find their tone — Deloris’ signature athem, “Too Much to Live For,” is more flashy than poignant but later gains power as a reprise — the show takes off the minute Lewis puts on her habit and becomes Sister Mary Clarence. With her face encased in white, every eyebrow wiggle of her sinfully rubbery mug takes on the heightened scale of comedic genius.
Land, whose presence recalls both Katharine Hepburn and Broadway’s Cherry Jones, carries herself regally and sings beautifully. Her song, “A Simple Life,” is a lovely, luminous meditation on the serenity of following the canonical hours — quite a counterpoint to Deloris’ seedy predispostion.
In this clashing world of hustlers and hallelujahs, the Steinkellners excel in sculpting vivid characters. In a wonderfully showoff-y part, Amy K. Murray is delightful as the bubbly, plus-size Sister Mary Patrick, providing evidence that nuns just wanna have fun. Audrie Neenan, who played Aunt Eller in Trevor Nunn’s “Oklahoma!” on Broadway, is superb as the croaky Sister Mary Lazarus. (Keep an eye out for her cameo turn as a jive-spouting elder rapper.) And Jennings’ Eddie, unlike his film counterpart, has a fully shaped comic personality. (Notice how his smoky, Luther Vandross-style “I Could Be That Guy” starts out intentionally stiff and turns into a soulful awakening.)
Costume designer Garry Lennon has a lot of fun yukking up the gangsta duds and glamming up Deloris’ sequins and spangles, and scenic designer David Potts contributes a simple structure of steel-framed flying buttresses and Gothic windows that fly in and out as appropriate.
But sometimes, the intense lighting (by Donald Holder) and garish costumes clash so brightly that they are hard on the eyes. Have a pair of shades ready for the final number, “Mirror Ball,” a vocal lowpoint that likens the many facets of God to that catch-all emblem of the dance-driven ’70s.
Though “Sister Act” is well over 2 1/2 hours, it’s so much fun that it doesn’t feel too long. Still, it could use some trimming: The transitions need focus, and not every song, or character, feels necessary. Right now, the creators seem so in love with the material that they can’t bear to lose a single nun pun or riff on the era.
“Sister Act” is one of those happy occasions in which the makeover is better than the original version. A fantastic premise for a musical comedy, it demonstrates how theater can get away with comedic trangressions that would be unpardonable in other genres. Like Menken’s “The Little Shop of Horrors” and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” (both based on films, incidentally), “Sister Act” proves that you can be deliberately silly — and smart, too.
If Broadway is its ultimate destination, it’s got much more than a prayer. To miss it here would be a sacrilege.
THE VERDICT: Delicious nunsense.
THE 411: Through Feb. 25. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org.
‘Miss Witherspoon’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C -
In 1981, playwright Christopher Durang turned his seething wit into a ferocious commentary on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church (“Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You”). In 1987’s “Laughing Wild,” he vented his maniacal glee on the Reagan administration and the fumbled AIDS crisis.
With his relentless targeting of pop-culture pinatas (remember Sally Jessy Raphael?) and musical theater cheese, Durang’s acidic worldview felt fresh and smart, and his success gave a generation of subversive, form-shattering theater artists permission to be raucous and irreverent.
But 20 years later, Durang seems as stuck in a rut as his titular “Miss Witherspoon,” who is so dismayed by the state of the universe that she keeps committing suicide, then stubbornly resisting reincarnation in the afterlife. Though director Joe Gfaller’s indefatigable Theatre in the Square ensemble is game for anything the satirist throws at them in his neurotic dissection of mankind’s rotting soul, their nice performances can’t gloss over the fact that Durang has lost his edge.
Miss Witherspoon is really the nursery rhyme nickname of a woman named Veronica (Shelly McCook), who killed herself because she was afraid of the plunge of Skylab. “But at least I got to miss 9/11,” Veronica deadpans in her opening monologue, before dancing off into the cosmos. “If I couldn’t stand Skylab, I definitely couldn’t stand the sight of people jumping out of windows, and then letters with anthrax postmarked from Trenton.”
It’s a chilling beginning to what soon turns into a turgid meditation on world religions, the demise of the nuclear family and the apocalypse. With his trademark theatricality, Durang leavens the despair with endless riffs on Rex Harrison and “My Fair Lady,” Gandalf and Gandhi. Jesus Christ even makes an appearance as an African-American woman in a purple suit and hat (Carol Mitchell-Leon).
While Veronica’s “brown tweed” aura and bad karma doom her to get bounced back to Earth over and over again, what she really desires is the endless sleep of “Jewish heaven,” the “general anesthesia” of nothingness. Given the device of reincarnation, Durang works it to the point of tediousness. Though you wish that he’d put a finer bead on Veronica’s journey — why not focus on one incarnation instead of a handful? — the moment at which the play itself starts to have a nervous breakdown is kind of brilliant. Is Veronica just dreaming, or does she really get the chance to redo her lost opportunities on Earth?
McCook is quite good at toggling between the role of Veronica the narrator and her various incarnations (bonnet-clad baby, abused child, barking dog) — often with split-second timing. Along the way, we are treated to fine performances by Suehyla El-Attar (as Veronica’s sari-clad spiritual guide) — and Robin Bloodworth and Mary Emily O’Bradovich (playing an endless parade of parents and other characters). Though she’s not onstage that much, Mitchell-Leon is terrific as Veronica’s exasperated teacher — and the sassy Christ figure.
In play after play, Durang poses the same question: If God is so loving, why is the world so messed up? That is one of life’s abiding mysteries. Knowing there’s no solution, he suggests that love and forgiveness are the answers. No problem with that. What’s exasperating is that we have to wade through such a convoluted metaphysical mess to get there.
THE VERDICT: Strong acting can’t redeem this messy, undisciplined play.
Permalink | |
‘High School Musical’ @ Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B.
Go ahead. Call me a freak. I’m a 46-year-old theater critic for a major metropolitan newspaper, and I’m feeling the pure bubble-gum joy of Disney’s “High School Musical.”
In spirit, I’m right up there with the vibrating balcony of cheering tween-agers who rocked the Fox Theatre last night, as Atlanta witnessed the unveiling of the first professional stage treatment of the unstoppable pop phenomenon.
As directed by Jeff Calhoun for Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars, the tale of East High School’s colliding cliques of basketball players, thespians and brainiacs may not be a slam dunk, Broadway-ready, A+ production. (We’ll get to the demerits in just a sec.) But it’s a strongly acted, brightly designed, adrenalin-soaked celebration of the triumph of all things good and true.
And for a story based on such thread-bare plot material, stitched together by so much light-weight musical thread, it’s a surprisingly moving experience.
After Troy Bolton (John Jeffrey Martin) and Gabriella Montez (Arielle Jacobs) have a last-minute karaoke encounter during the final moments of their summer vacation (“Start of Something New”), fate brings them together again when Gabriella’s family moves to Troy’s hometown of Albuquerque. Before you can say “star-crossed lovers,” they find themselves reluctantly trying out for their high-school musical, “Juliet and Romeo.”
The only thing standing in their way are twin drama demons Sharpay (Patti Murin) and Ryan Evans (Bobby List), who have always gotten the lead roles and aren’t about to let these fresh-faced upstarts stand in their way. As the callbacks come down to the wire, Troy gets distracted by a big game, Gabriella gets recruited for a science competition, and arch-villainess Sharpay pulls the strings of drama teacher Ms. Darbus (Alison Fraser) to try to engineer their defeat.
Original writer Peter Barsocchini deserves low marks for the wretched plot. New librettist David Simpatico hasn’t done much to improve it. And with some 60 characters portrayed by 28 actors, a 14-member ensemble of “underclassmen” played by Atlanta youth, a marching band from Marietta’s Pope High School, a couple of Coke ads (the soft-drink giant is official sponsor) and a strained reference to Juliet’s balcony scene, the show is way too busy for it’s own good.
There are times when the stage is so full it takes a while to figure out just who is singing, and it’s a miracle that choreographer Lisa Stevens keeps the action from turning into a series of hit-and-run collisions. (I spotted at least one near-miss.) One major disappointment is that the snappy “Get’cha Head in the Game” fails to match the thumping, bass-driven hook of the movie and concert versions.
But what redeems this effort are the first-rate performances and, believe it or not, sheer catchiness of the pop, rock and soft-core hiphop tunes — written by a compendium of authors and adapted by musical director Bryan Louiselle.
The statuesque Martin is a triple threat: a sweetly likeable actor with a pure reedy tenor voice and, though he doesn’t dance much, a sense of elegant self-possession and grace. Jacobs nails the studiousness and vulnerability of Gabriella, and sings like an angel. The couple’s duet, “What I’ve Been Looking For,” will give you goosebumps. And after a lot of limp hand-holding and less-than-steamy eye contact, they finally get one big heartfelt kiss toward the end. Shocking!
One of the funniest things about “High School Musical” is that everyone has a crush on Troy, including Ryan (delightfully played by List) and Sharpay. New to this telling is an emcee character named Jack Scott (Michael Mahany), who makes up-to-the-minute dispatches over the school’s P.A. system. This velvet-toned “voice of East High” seems a little superfluous, but Mahany’s vivid, bespecacled treatment is imminently fun.
As basketball giant Zeke Baylor, who has a secret passion for baking pastries, Ben Thompson gets good mileage out of his character’s pursuit of the perfect creme brulee — and Sharpay. As Kelsi Neilsen, composer of the musical-within-a-musical “Juliet and Romeo,” Olivia Oguma is another adorably welcome addition.
One slight disappointment here is the way Murin underplays the venomous Sharpay. Murin sings gorgeously, but her demeanor is perhaps a tad too nice. This drippy-sweet show cries out for a little wickedness and outsize camp. On the other hand, Fraser’s wonderfully quirky Ms. Darbus is superb. If Fraser is going for Ruth Gordon, she gets it just right; and that, Diva Darbus, is a major compliment.
Also excellent are set designer Kenneth Foy’s bright approximations of the East High facade, locker room, cafeteria, gym, etc. — and Ken Billington’s nicely flattering lighting.
All in all, Theater of the Stars has done a knock-out job of putting this ambitious, overly complicated production into place. Should Disney ever decide to take “High School Musical” to Broadway, it has found a marvelous template. To quote one of the show’s hokey-sounding songs, “it feels so right.”
Now go ahead: Shoot me.
THE VERDICT: Good tween fun.
THE 411: $25-$66. Through Jan. 28. Fox Theatre. 404-817-8700. ticketmaster.com
Who shouldn’t be Kenny Leon’s Maggie?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Please, dear God, do not let Diddy play Brick.”
That’s the first thing we thought when we heard Kenny Leon is planning a new production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with an African-American cast.
After all, the Atlanta director is known for putting Sean “Diddy” Combs in the role of Walter Lee Younger in his Broadway revival of “Raisin in the Sun.”
So as speculation begins on who will play the famous Tennessee Williams characters of Brick and Maggie, immortalized on film by Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, we felt it important to weigh in on who should not be in the cast. In the play, the sexually frustrated Maggie rages at her alcoholic husband, Brick, to screw up his manliness — lest he lose Big Daddy’s plantation.
So hear us out. Then you be the judge.
Maggie the Cat. Oprah Winfrey should definitely not play the impetuous hell-cat created by Barbara Bel Geddes on Broadway. But she could play Big Mama. Four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald has a good chance in the role most recently handed to Ashley Judd on Broadway. Then there are “Dreamgirls” Beyoncé Knowles and Jennifer Hudson, Oscar winner Halle Berry and Sanaa Lathan, another Leon favorite from “Raisin.”
Brick. Ru Paul should not play the part originated by Ben Gazzara — though he could do Maggie. Combs is a no-no, but his white duds would work on Jeffrey Wright (“Angels in America”), Taye Diggs (“Rent”) or the sexy Derek Luke or Anthony Mackie. Could Jamie Foxx do it? Denzel?
Big Mama. Phylicia Rashad should not play Big Mama. Or should she? Her Mama Lena won her a Tony Award for “Raisin,” and after that, she played the 287-year-old Aunt Ester in Leon’s production of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.” Anyway, Ruby Dee is just too frail — though Atlanta’s Andrea Frye or Chandra Currelley would be terrific. Or Oprah.
Big Daddy. Gary Coleman should not play Big Daddy. But James Earl Jones might be just right. Or Danny Glover. Or possibly Leon cronies Bill Nunn or Samuel L. Jackson.
YOU DECIDE Who would you pick to play Maggie? A: Audra McDonald. B: Beyoncé Knowles. C: Halle Berry. D: Sanaa Lathan. Who would you pick to play Brick? A: Denzel Washington. B: Jeffrey Wright. C: Jamie Foxx. D: Taye Diggs. Who would you pick to play Big Mama? A: Phylicia Rashad. B: Ruby Dee. C: Oprah Winfrey. D: Lisa Gay Hamilton. Who would you pick to play Big Daddy? A: James Earl Jones. B: Danny Glover. C: Sidney Poitier. D: Samuel L. Jackson.
‘Twelve Angry Men’ @ The Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
“Boy, oh, boy, there’s always one,” says an irritated juror in the courtroom drama “Twelve Angry Men.” He’s just heard that a fellow panelist favors a not guilty verdict in what everyone thought would be an open-and-shut murder case.
Of course, the naysaying ninny would be played by Richard Thomas, the actor who will forever be known as purple-prosed pollyanna John-Boy, nucleus of the caricaturishly wholesome ’70s TV series “The Waltons.” Thomas leads the road version of the Reginald Rose relic from the 1950s, which made its belated Broadway debut two years ago, courtesy of New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company.
While Thomas acquits himself admirably in the Broadway Across America—Atlanta production that opened Tuesday at the Fox Theatre, his Juror Eight is but one in a sturdy ensemble of character actors that also includes “Cheers” star George Wendt and Alan Mandell, an old Beckett crony who has recently appeared in the films of John Cameron Mitchell.
Director Scott Ellis’s straightforward approach to the creaky script, made into a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda as Juror Eight, doesn’t even try to disguise the datedness of the loud-mouth stock types. It’s a wise choice that accentuates the humor and the timelessness of the social critique.
The faceless 16-year-old boy accused of murdering his father is a symbol of the endless continuum of defendants who become trapped in a legal quagmire because they are too poor to get a fair trial. So much for the beauty of the Constitution: Except for Juror Eight, these guys want to fry the kid and get on with the baseball game.
While Allen Moyer’s set is a perfect facsimile of a sweaty mid-century jury room, Paul Palazzo’s lighting is such that you can’t always see the performers’ emoting faces— until a crucial rainstorm scene in which the lights get switched on. With all eyes focused on Thomas’s Juror Eight as he picks the case apart, this is too bad. But a few performances are so superb that they generate their own electricity.
As the captainlike Juror One, the Humpty Dumpty-size Wendt is first-rate. And Randle Mell, as the angriest man standing, makes for a superb bully. In exposing his personal demons, it’s gratifying to see this Juror Three find a kind of 11th-hour grace.
