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February 2007
‘Ballyhoo’ wields skewer with love
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
Alfred Uhry’s “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” may have been written in 1996 for the Olympic Arts Festival. But it feels like a ’40s masterpiece, as if the Atlanta-born playwright were channeling the ghosts of Tennessee Williams and Clifford Odets.
When Brooklyn newcomer Joe Farkas steps into a Habersham Road mansion all decorated for Christmas, he can barely believe that its inhabitants are Jewish. It’s 1939. Hitler is marching on Germany. But the only thing on the mind of Scarlett O’Hara wannabe Lala Levy is getting a glimpse of the world premiere of “Gone With the Wind” — and a date for the Jewish society ball called Ballyhoo.
The genius of this play, which Georgia Ensemble Theatre has revived in all its magnificence, is Uhry’s delicate blending of two of the great traditions of American literature.
With the one hand, he stacks all the elements of an outsize Southern Gothic tale: hysterical females, gentleman callers and ghosts of dearly departed husbands and fathers. With the other, he quietly introduces an Arthur Miller-style Yankee liberal who will expose the anti-Semitism that festers in this clan of German Jews.
It takes a master to stitch such a raucously colorful quilt on such a solid moral warp. It also helps that director Robert J. Farley and his team have immersed themselves so fully and joyfully in the details. Farley, in case you don’t recall, is the guy who brought “Driving Miss Daisy” to the Alliance Theatre, where it ran for almost two years in the ’90s, so he has a connection with Uhry that’s deep and historic.
Though this Roswell theater often feels too much like a municipal auditorium, Jamie Bullins designs his scenery on such a scale that it fools you. The house, and some of Erik Teague’s costumes, almost threaten to become characters.
As for the cast, Mary Lynn Owen is fantastic as the much-agitated Boo Levy, who lives with her social outcast daughter, Lala (Cara Mantella); her brother, Adolph (Mark Kincaid); and widowed sister-in-law, Reba (Marianne Fraulo). As high-strung Lala, Mantella is wildly, over-the-top expressive. How in the world does she make her pretty face so horsey and lugubrious? So arch? Mantella is a bigger presence, even, than the bubbly Megan Hayes, who plays Lala’s rival cousin, Sunny Freitag.
At one point, Lala accuses Sunny of stealing the spotlight at her father’s wake. “That was supposed to be my tragedy,” she huffs. As funny as that is, it speaks volumes about this family’s essential sadness, born of so many years of pettiness, insecurity and ineffectuality.
But the darkest stain on this lot is their disdain for “the other kind” — that’s code for Orthodox, Eastern-European Jews. Because Farkas can never be a member of their club, tension escalates.
As Farkas, Tony Larkin cuts an elegant figure, but his Brooklyn accent and posturing feel outmoded and noirish. Fortunately, Eric Mendenhall finds comedic gold in Lala’s love interest, Peachy Weil. After so much meddling, Boo and Lala get what they deserve: red hair, obnoxious jokes and all.
In “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” Uhry continues his love affair with a city whose complex manners, now and then, are often concealed by eccentric characters and ridiculous behavior. For all their foibles, the Freitags and Levys wield considerable charm. By the end of the night, they are redeemed by laughter and love.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; 4 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. March 7. Through March 11. $17-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, get.org.
THE VERDICT: A terrific twist on the Southern Gothic comedy.
August Wilson monologue winners are in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As far as I’m concerned, all 15 finalists at the August Wilson Monologue Competition last night were winners. Some of them were nearly as good as the Broadway actors who showed up to run a few scenes from Wilson’s “Radio Golf,” which True Colors Theatre artistic director Kenny Leon is taking to Broadway in May.
Ultimately, the top honor — and a $500 scholarship — went to Joaquina Kalukango of Tri-Cities High School, who gave a heartfelt speech as the character Tonya from “King Hedley II.” The second place winner was Pebblebrook High student Jawona Roberts, who portrayed Rena from “Jitney.” Coming in third was Tri-Cities’ Charles Bennett, who played Bynum from “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
“Keep August alive and well among your generation,” Leon said as he handed out copies of a volume of Wilson plays to all the contestants, who were lined up on the front row of Theatrical Outfit’s Balzer Theater at Herren’s for True Colors’ first annual competition.
The choices and juxtapositions of material were fascinating. T.J. Colby Hall, the only white kid in the group, gave a naturalistic reading of Bynum, which ran back to back with Bennett’s take. Both Stefond Johnson and Christopher Linsey did Levee’s searing speech from “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and both had something to say. Three performers, including the excellent Christina Carter, stepped into the world of Tonya. (For the record, Broadway actors John Earl Jelks and James Williams were no slouches, either.)
Leon’s point is that Wilson isn’t just a playwright for black actors, and he envisions a day when young Asian and Latino actors will step up to the competition.
“I know August is smiling tonight,” Leon told the crowd. “This has really hit me.”
New Alliance season — and website!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HEY, EVERYBODY: This is running Sunday, but I wanted to give you an advance look. Also, check out the Alliance’s new web site: alliancetheatre.org
Alliance Theatre artistic director Susan V. Booth has been planning her company’s seasons for six years now, and one thing she’s learned about audiences is that they love “musicals with complex stories.”
Broadway’s “The Color Purple,” which opened at the city’s largest playhouse in 2004 and went on to win the backing of producer Oprah Winfrey, is one example. Next fall, Booth’s theater will stage the world premiere of yet another one, which also happens to be an Oprah-related property: “The Women of Brewster Place,” based on the Gloria Naylor novel that was made into a 1989 TV film starring the popular talk-show host.
New York writer Tim Acito — author of the gay fairy tale “Zanna, Don’t!” — will pen the music, lyrics and book for Naylor’s story about a group of African-American women living in an urban housing project. “It’s very much about resilience and women who survive and the strength that comes from a community of friends,” Booth says of the musical-in-the-making.
“Brewster Place,” the Alliance opener, is a co-production with Washington’s Arena Stage, where it will open in October. Arena artistic director Molly Smith will direct.
Also during the 2007-2008 season, the Alliance is producing two shows related to the Louvre exhibits at the High Museum next door: “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” to be directed by Booth in a cabaret setting on the Hertz Stage, and “Degas’ Little Dancer,” about the relationship between the great impressionist artist and his terpsichorean muse.
“Degas’ Little Dancer,” a children’s theater show to be directed by Rosemary Newcott on the main stage, is likely to appeal to families looking for a theatrical component to their Louvre Atlanta experience.
“It’s kind of a cool thing that we have this arts campus,” Booth says of the Woodruff Arts Center, where the High is in the midst of a three-year venture that brings Louvre treasures to Atlanta. “So how can we find programs that speak to our mission and our audience but also resonate with what’s going on in the larger campus?”
In another exciting project, Georgia Shakespeare producing artistic director Richard Garner will direct Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” on the Hertz, a co-production that will allow the Oglethorpe University-based classical ensemble to work on a more intimate scale.
Booth says she was impressed with Garner’s take on Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” last summer, and “Eurydice” “seemed like a perfect partnership.” In Ruhl’s contemporary take on the Greek myth of lost love, Booth explains, “Orpheus is of course a rock star, and Eurydice is a smart girl who lives in her head.”
Though the Alliance is still firming up dates, here’s a look at the 2007-2008 season and approximate schedules:
ALLIANCE STAGE
“The Women of Brewster Place.” September-October.
“Sleuth.” Associate artistic director Kent Gash directs the Anthony Shaffer classic. October-November.
Musical (to be determined). January-February 2008.
“Doubt.” Booth directs John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner. April-May 2008.
“A Christmas Carol.” The Dickens classic returns. November-December.
HERTZ STAGE
“Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well.” September-October.
“In the Red and Brown Water.” Tarell Alvin McCraney’s world premiere is the winner of the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. February 2008.
“Eurydice.” March-April 2008.
FAMILY SERIES
“Degas’s Little Dancer.” October-November.
“Seussical.” Rosemary Newcott directs the Dr. Seuss tales. February-March 2008.
Information: 404-733-4600; alliancetheatre.org
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August Wilson monologue competition: I love this idea!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kenny Leon may be a high-profile national director, but he’s not too busy to invest in the future.
On Monday, his True Colors Theatre will stage the first August Wilson Monologue Competition, with juniors and seniors from three Atlanta-area high schools competing for scholarships, T-shirts and hardbound copies of a Wilson play.
Leon, who takes Wilson’s “Radio Golf” to Broadway in May, says he’ll include a Washington, D.C., version of the monologue competition as part of his complete run of Wilson’s 10-play cycle at the Kennedy Center next year. “And then in a couple of years,” Leon says, “our goal is to have this be national and be all around the country in the school systems.”
Adding a little glitz to Monday night’s competition, Broadway-bound actors John Earl Jelks and James Williams will perform a scene from “Radio Golf.” Leon hosts the event, and judges include Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage and WSB-TV’s Monica Pearson.
The competitors are from Tri-Cities and Pebblebrook high schools and the DeKalb School of the Arts. Next year, juniors and seniors from all Atlanta high schools will be eligible.
Information: 8 p.m. Monday. Free. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-588-0308; truecolorstheatrecompany.com.
Please check back Tuesday morning. I will be blogging the winners.
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‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’ finds the Grail: Laugh a lot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
The message of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” is as sweet and affirming as a puppy licking your nose: Always look on the bright side of life.
Helping us look on the bright side, however, requires glitter codpieces, smiley-face umbrellas, a menorah, a can of Spam, a shovel, a rubber chicken and a malfunctioning chandelier — a tiny portion of the sublimely ridiculous prop list for this sublimely ridiculous musical.
Based on the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Spamalot” is a send-up of the King Arthur legend done as a send-up of a lavish Broadway musical.
It’s Camelot as Vegas, baby — Lerner and Lowbrow. Find the Grail, sure, but first, bring on the high-kicking chorus girls and a load of plague jokes in a mashup of Ye Olde clichés, modern sensibilities and poke-in-the-eye humor.
You don’t have to know anything about Monty Python to enjoy the show, although it helps. For the uninitiated, it was a British comedy troupe that revolutionized humor in the early ’70s, and there’s no one named Monty Python. But the opening night crowd was very initiated, to the point where a character would merely poke his head out, and the audience would begin cheering before he said a word. They already knew he was a French soldier who was about to start taunting Arthur with nonsequitur insults in an overripe French accent — “Go and boil your bottom, son of a silly person!”
A lot of the humor is more accessible than that, particularly the spoofs of other Broadway shows — “Fiddler on the Roof,” the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Like Mel Brooks’ musical version of “The Producers,” “Spamalot” titillates the audience by constantly flirting with bad taste — one number has some fun with Jewish stereotypes, another has a famously straight literary character announcing he’s gay — but it always stays carefully just inside the mainstream.
The language can be a bit bawdy, so if you’re taking, say, a sixth-grader, you may both have to pretend you’ve never used those words.
The show’s the star here, but the cast is uniformly enjoyable. A tip of the feather-topped helmet (lovely plumage, by the way) should go to Pia Glenn, who brings a double shot of pure Whitney Houston (the old-school version) to her character, the Lady of the Lake, then turns on a dime and lampoons her own diva-tude; and to Michael Siberry, who has to hold everything together with sputtering exasperation as Arthur, the straight man to every one else’s lunacy.
One final note: The road show of “Spamalot” likes to throw in some local references as jokes in each city it plays; that’s still a work in progress here. In a show that skewers everything it touches, they could be a little rougher on our favorite little panda, couldn’t they?
Through March 4. $22-$67. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. ticketmaster.com, 404-817-8700.
THE VERDICT: “Strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government.” But it makes for a fine night of goofy theater.
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‘I Have Before Me… ’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B +
Sonja Linden’s “I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda” takes a topic of enormous weight and brutality and turns it into a sweet and tender meditation on the healing power of writing.
The play, now getting a fine production at Theatre in the Square, looks at the Rwandan genocide of 1994 from the point of view of a young Tutsi refugee who goes to London intent on publishing a first-person account of her family’s murder. When her mentor turns out to be a voguish author with a personal crisis of his own, their awkward arrangement buds into a courtly friendship that ultimately becomes a panacea for their writerly frustrations.
Juliette (Farida Kalala) and Simon (Randy Maggiore) at first seem like the oddest couple in England.
He’s a worldly married man who’s received like a rock star at his poetry readings. She’s an exotic African girl who lives in a spartan room decorated with a Backstreet Boys poster. Her observations are sparkling, acerbic and spot-on. He’s kind and sensitive but not exactly self-aware. “I thought he would be a man of letters,” she says after their first meeting, “not a man with a spot on his trousers.”
In the tradition of “Pygmalion,” it’s she that will end up teaching him.
Simon finds inspiration in his own personal Lolita, but nothing like the psychological undoing of Nabokov’s Humbert. He gives her a lilac-colored sweater, and his poetry gets better. He takes her out into the fresh air, and her fog starts to lift.
As directed by Alan Kilpatrick, Kalala gives an adorably quirky, delightfully nuanced performance, and newcomer Maggiore is top-notch.
Linden has said her “long title is a deliberate challenge to our short attention span where Rwanda is concerned.” But if she writes from a political impulse, she is also careful to avoid scolding and lecturing.
In putting a human face on the Rwandan atrocities, the playwright instead delivers a vision of cross-cultural camaraderie that is life-affirming and true. The old notion that suffering makes us stronger has been wildly overrated. The best cure for trouble, as this tiny gem of a play so wisely points out, is kindred hearts.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 18. $15-$20. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com.
THE VERDICT: Tears of joy and hope.
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‘Peter and the Wolf (and Me)’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: Grade: D+
Ari Roth’s sequel to “Born Guilty” gets off to a lively enough start. The playwright pictures himself as a late arrival to an out-of-control talk-back for “Born Guilty,” which used real-life Jewish author Peter Sichrovsky’s book of the same name as a blueprint for studying the children of Nazis. But it’s not long before Roth’s obsession with the controversial writer puts a stranglehold on his cleverness.
Directed by Joseph Megel, “Peter” is running in repertory with “Born Guilty” at Theatre of the South. But you are a glutton for punishment if you sit through this two-and-a-half hour exercise in vanity. Long, meandering and stuffed with a confusing hodgepodge of characters, “Peter and the Wolf” takes too long to get to what’s new: that Sichrovsky has joined the party of Jorg Haider, commonly referred to as the David Duke of Austria.
As a political footnote from the mid-’90s, Sichrovsky may be a fascinating chameleon, but Roth’s backpaddling drains our interest, and his laborious approach makes for an endless and numbing theatrical experience.
Not even the admirable performances of David de Vries (as Sichrovsky) and Chris Moses (Roth) — plus the superb Joanna Daniel, Tess Malis Kincaid and Maia Knispel in supporting roles — can redeem this production.
In “I Am My Own Wife,” now at Actor’s Express, Doug Wright used himself as a character in his investigation of a Berlin transvestite — and made us feel for them both. Roth deals with the same moment in history, using the same journalistic techniques, but he finds nothing of the intelligence and equipoise of Wright. “Peter and the Wolf” (and everybody else the author can’t bear to leave out) is for hard-core students of post-Nazi Europe only.
Through March 4. Jewish Theatre of the South. 770-395-2654; jplay.org.
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‘False Creeds’ @ the Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C-
Any time you dabble in student work, you can bet results will be mixed. After a pair of strong offerings, the Alliance Theatre’s 3-year-old Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition snags a clunker in Darren Canady’s “False Creeds.”
For his first professional production, the New York University graduate paints a searing portrait of an affluent Jazz Age family shattered by the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race riots. When Jason (Warner Miller) gets a mysterious memory box from his grandmother, Amelia ( Chandra Thomas), it becomes a magical conduit for surfing backward into their tumultuous past.
Director Wendy C. Goldberg and her designers and choreographers navigate the technicalities of Canady’s time-travel saga handsomely. But “False Creeds” never finds its core of truth. Though the young playwright bases his play on a story handed down from his grandmother, his central character feels emotionally removed — a tactic that harbors insight and creates its own secrets. As grandmother Amelia succumbs to Alzheimer’s, we get a detailed account of her tragedy but little understanding of how it wormed its way into the hearts of her children and grandchildren.
Playing out like a Hollywood potboiler, Act 1 echoes, of all things, “Gone With the Wind,” down to the domestic hysteria, the sassy maid, the flames. But after the kicky beginning, Act 2 stagnates. While the family steeps in misery, the narrator attempts a personal reconciliation — with muddied results.
Through it all, Thomas gives an excellent performance, alternating between the ancient grandmother’s steeliness and the young girl’s playfulness. Also good is Joniece Abbot-Pratt as the cheeky and irreverent Fannie and Joy C. Hooper as Amelia’s high-horse mother, Lydia.
In unearthing this lost chapter of African-American history, Canady clearly has noble intentions. But he hasn’t found the right voice for articulating his passions. The results feel too much like half-baked Lynn Nottage, or a poor man’s August Wilson.
Through March 4. Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Stage. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org.
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Holliday to reprise ‘Dreamgirls’ role here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars knows a good opportunity when it sees it.
Original “Dreamgirls” star Jennifer Holliday will reprise her Tony Award-winning role as Effie White at the Fox Theatre in July, and though it won’t be the first time the Broadway diva has done the part it in Atlanta, it will be the first time she’s performed it in the wake of an Oscar-nominated film.
The story of the ’60s Motown trio has earned eight Academy Award nods, including one for Holliday’s big-screen counterpart, Jennifer Hudson. Holliday has stated publically that she thought she should have been cast in or consulted about the movie, which also features Oscar-nominated Eddie Murphy as James “Thunder” Early. The awards will be handed out Sunday night.
Holliday’s Atlanta coincides with the National Black Arts Festival, July 22-29. She was previously in Atlanta to play the overweight Effie in 2002 and 1994. She even turned up two years ago to sing her signature ballad, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” for Theater of the Stars producer Chris Manos when he was honored with the first Georgia Arts & Entertainment Legacy Award.
During that event, a slimmed-down Holliday credited Manos with rescuing her from depression when he gave her another chance to perform.
Holliday will also give a concert performance at the Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center on March 10.
For more information about the Theater of the Stars show, go to theaterofthestars.com For the Ferst Center engagement: www.ferstcenter.gatech.edu
‘A Song for Coretta’ @ Spelman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Standing outside Ebenezer Baptist Church on a drizzly winter day, a serious-looking woman in a hat is being interviewed by an amateur radio journalist. The subject is no less a figure than Coretta Scott King, who lies in repose in a casket inside the chapel.
The enterprising reporter has found her money quote: “I remember how pretty she was and how good she smelled — like a birthday cake,” the lady tells the college student, recalling her childhood memory as it were a keepsake.
Thus begins Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage’s “A Song for Coretta,” a lovely, image-soaked testament to the civil rights icon seen through the random eyes of a handful of fictional mourners who have lined up to say goodbye to the beloved Mrs. King.
Directed by Crystal A. Dickinson, the Spelman College world premiere celebrates this monumental spirit by putting forth the kind of characters who would have inspired her care and concern: a grieving New Orleans evacuee who sleeps in her car; a soldier traumatized by the horrors of Iraq; and a bright-eyed go-getter possessed of a dream — among others.
Though the play verges on unnecessary pathos near the end, it’s a momentary slip in an otherwise warm and infectious comedy that brims with wit, personality and life-affirming energy.
While the irrepressible Andrea Frye gets to strut her stuff here as matriarchal know-it-all Helen Richards, the actor has fierce competition in the wonderful Deandrea Crawford, who plays ridiculous street brat Keisha Cameron, a.k.a. “Li’l Bit.”
After all of Helen’s reverential Coretta memories, deftly extracted by wannabe NPR reporter Zora Evans (the delightfully perky Nishanthi Bailey), Keisha stirs the pot by suggesting that Mrs. King may not really be dead — just like Tupac (!). So much for gravitas. Once this stroller-pushing, potato chip-smacking calamity arrives on the scene, there’s no turning back. As Zora puts it, “I don’t know if NPR is ready for Keisha.”
Displaced by Katrina, Mona Lisa Martin (Jade Lambert-Smith) has taken to swigging bourbon and drawing caricatures for $5 a pop — $2 if you qualify for the “hurricane price.” It’s all pretty good fun until Mona Lisa and Gwen Johnson (a neighborhood kid who’s home from Iraq) start comparing war stories. Their shared experiences — signified by spoken-word-style catch phrases uttered in unison— feel overwrought and politically heavy-handed. (It’s also a little jolting to see Gwen make an 11th-hour entrance, just when you think the one act is nearing its end.)
For the most part, Dickinson gets solid performances from her mix of student and professional actors. But some of the technical aspects of the production, like the slides and text projected on either side of the auditorium during the opening sequence, feel a bit precious — as does the umbrella choreography at the top of the show.
These are small complaints, however.
The big news is that Cleage has created a joyful and affectionate tribute to one of the great women of our time — out of a single sliver of her biography. Coretta may be the guiding presence of this effort, but too much of her would be overwhelming. How generous and wise of Cleage to let these real characters have a say.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Saturday. 3 p.m. Sunday. $5-$10. Spelman College, Baldwin Burroughs Theatre, 350 Spelman Lane, Atlanta. 404-270-5488, www.spelman.edu.
THE VERDICT: Get in line.
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‘Shiloh Rules’ @ Theatrical Outfit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B-
Our first impression of Doris Baizley’s “Shiloh Rules” makes us think it’s a Civil War period piece. Two women in 19th-century dress are clucking about their duty as battlefield nurses. When the talk turns to smelling salts, Meg tells Clara she left them in the Subaru.
Uh-oh.
Turns out that Baizley’s comedy is really about a group of female Civil War re-enactors, who are so obsessed with authenticity that they dye their clothes with berry juice and speak in the homespun cadences of a bygone era.
First produced as part of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers’ Project and now getting a nicely acted treatment at Theatrical Outfit, “Shiloh Rules” is a fascinating look at America’s lingering obsession with its complicated past.
Though director Jessica Phelps West and her game ensemble succeed in delivering a likable evening of theater, the playwright’s scattershot approach to character, form and politics makes for a piece that’s more superficially entertaining than engaging.
“Shiloh Rules” unfolds in the time-honored tradition of war dramas — with quick snippets from the opposing sides and a decisive battle scene to create suspense and excitement.
A lot of the humor comes from the way hard-core Yankee nurse Clara (Kathleen Wattis) and fanatical Confederate belle Cecilia (Judy Leavell) refuse to suffer the foolishness of neophytes Meg (Jennifer Akin) and Lucy Gale (Katie Kneeland). Add to that a less-than-amused African-American park attendant (Shontelle Thrash) and a dingbat organizer called the Widow Beckwith (Jill Jane Clements) and you have the makings of a hysterical hen fight.
But as the ghosts of Shiloh hover in the mist and the past blends into the present, the rules of fair play start to break down.
In a disturbing and bloody sequence that feels like an unfortunate case of stereotyping, Thrash’s Officer Wilson crosses the line of fantasy and role-playing to unleash her inner hostility on the cowering Lucy Gale. Is this payback time for slavery, or what?
The major failing of “Shiloh Rules” is that we never get a chance to know the real women behind the masks, or their personal motivations. By the end of this meditation on the meaning of courage and cowardice, the women seem to have achieved a better sense of community and compassion, but Baizley leaves it up to us to decide who wins and who loses.
“Shiloh Rules” is more victorious as comedy than social critique.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 11. $15-$30. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org.
THE VERDICT: Misses the mark.
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‘Thom Pain’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
Thom Pain’s obsessed by a few things: fear, anxiety, childhood trauma, a failed love affair, the uncaring universe. Perhaps that’s why he’s such a hilariously funny guy.
Chris Kayser, in a brilliant solo performance in the Actor’s Express production of Will Eno’s “Thom Pain (Based on Nothing),” hits every tic, self-pitying whine, hostile joke and brilliant verbal jag in the hypersensitive, word-drunk character’s repertoire.
Pain cajoles, berates and regales the audience. He’s an intellectual hipster, a crank with poetic storytelling power, and an acrobatic, wounded comedian. In black coat, black tie, black jeans, thick black glasses and belt with large cowboy buckle, Kayser saunters and struts with a jazzy rhythm and talks with a cosmopolitan voice from nowhere. But there are echoes in his speech of an escaped history —- Western cadences, the patter of carnival pitchmen, the smooth tones of 1950s television hosts. He combines a professor’s pedantry with a con man’s blarney.
Based on nothing? Eno’s work certainly is full of dazzlingly original language and ingenious stagecraft. But echoes of Beckett and references to writers like Lord Byron and Shakespeare keep rising. Thom, who one moment acts like a recluse who wants to be left alone, then turns into a gregarious host, is deeply cut from the American anti-hero grain.
Kayser, longtime stalwart at Georgia Shakespeare, paints pictures with his expressive hands, giving visual resonance to Pain’s disturbing, spellbinding, possibly untrue stories. Kayser jangles around the stage with a jazz dancer’s rhythm and the great clown’s timing and physical poise.
The play, directed by Alliance Theatre artistic director Susan V. Booth in her first venture outside the Alliance, is finely polished, with each word and motion vital and significant. Booth and Kayser, two representatives of the highest-ranking Atlanta theater companies, achieve a collaboration of finely calibrated intelligence.
While Kayser is the only actor, there are other characters —- members of the audience. Eno’s work dissolves the barrier between audience and stage, then re-establishes it, with unsettling, funny effect. Pain continuously brings members of the audience into the performance, then casts them out. It’s exciting to watch Kayser control it all.
Pain employs the language of the Romantics and Elizabethans, but it constantly breaks down, exposing a vanished faith in nature’s traditional solace. Moments of eloquence and vulnerability are torpedoed by Pain’s sarcastic cracks and the sardonic irony everyone thought dead after Sept. 11. Throughout the play, Pain swings in consciousness from Shakespeare to “Seinfeld.”
At end of the performance, Pain swerves from despair to life acceptance. It’s uncertain whether this is just another pose.
THE 411: $16-$27. 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays; 9:30 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays through March 3 (running in tandem with “I Am My Own Wife”). Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St., Atlanta. 404-607-7469, www.actorsexpress.com.
THE VERDICT: A virtuoso solo performance.
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‘Skin’ @ Dad’s Garage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: Grade: B+
At one point in “Skin,” a meticulously made-up and coiffed young wife in a slinky satin negligee stands upright at a chopping block, wielding a large knife, and staring out at the audience with a deadpan smile.
Absently slicing through a footlong English cucumber, she launches into a brisk monologue about the sexual foibles of her marriage —- then, becoming more and more agitated, begins hacking away bigger and bigger pieces of the flesh.
As it turns out, that fierce bit of symbolic humor is actually one of the least explicit episodes in this dark comedy by Steve Yockey —- which concerns the covert desires of two couples and a freewheeling single woman who collide physically while lacerating one another emotionally.
The Dad’s Garage Top Shelf Theater production, directed by Kate Warner (the company’s artistic director), moves swiftly through a series of vignettes that shift around the blurry edges of love and lust. The cast, featuring veterans of several of Yockey’s earlier, edgy Dad’s plays, dives into the material with the kind of naughty camaraderie required of actors who will spend an hour and 15 minutes in various stages of undress —- including some full frontal nudity.
Kate Donadio is particularly good getting laughs as Julie, the beautiful, nasty spouse of philandering Smith, played by hunky Theroun Patterson. Joe Sykes is slightly neurotic everyman Martin, who longs to spice things up with his controlling girlfriend Laura, perky Angelyn Pass. Atlanta alternative theater stalwart Alison Hastings revels in her role as tattooed love doll Kyle, who tells a suddenly bewildered Smith, “I have good sex with everyone.”
The provocatively spare set consists of a bedroom with a king-size bed —- sometimes neatly made, other times wildly unraveled by the goings-on. As the five actors intertwine and detach, over, under and around the sheets, the action sometimes has the animated effect of quickly flipping through the pages of the Kama Sutra.
As with most effective fiction, the characters do undergo changes over the course of the play —- or more correctly, perhaps, their true natures are unmasked. But despite the promise in some ominous, unexplained power surges (conveyed deus ex machina with flashing lights and grinding sounds), there are no real revelations in “Skin.”
Still, as a wise guy once said, you can fake an orgasm, but you can’t fake laughter. And for adults, this tightly written, titillatingly glimpse of contemporary sexual relations is entertaining theater.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Feb. 24. $7.50-$15. Contains full frontal nudity and adult situations. Dad’s Garage Top Shelf Theater, 280 Elizabeth St., Inman Park. 404-523-3141. dadsgarage.com.
THE VERDICT: A sharp, if not exactly novel, dark comedy for adult audiences.
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‘My Left Breast’ @ 7 Stages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C
Breast cancer. The very phrase weakens the knees, jolts the stomach. Most Americans know at least one person who has suffered the dread disease; statistics tell us it affects one in every eight women, maybe more. At one time, it was known as “the silent epidemic.”
Fortunately, in the year 2007, the epidemic is no longer silent. In the past 10 years, enormous strides have been made, medically and sociologically, and early detection can often prevent disaster. Women are no longer afraid to tell their stories; breast cancer has been outed, in pretty much every sense of the word.
Playwright Susan Miller, whose “My Left Breast” is at 7 Stages, deserves at least some of the credit for that. When this Obie Award-winning, one-woman show first opened in 1995, it was fairly revolutionary: Here was a breast cancer survivor/playwright, unafraid to say it all. “I am a one-breasted, menopausal, Jewish, bisexual, lesbian mom,” she proclaims, “and I am IN!”
Susan —- as her character is also called in the play —- was first diagnosed at the age of 36. “Everything was going great,” she tells us, until that lump in her left breast turned out to be a malignant tumor. One mastectomy and 11 months of chemotherapy later, Susan is a changed person. “My Left Breast” is the story of how she got there and where she had to come from —- emotionally, sociologically, sexually.
The play moves back and forth in time, as Susan (Stacy Melich) retrieves the memories of her ordeals, some painful, some humorous, some, frankly, a little whiny, even if artfully articulated.
Director Melissa Foulger had the idea to create two support roles and worked with the playwright to do so. (She is quick to point out, however, that this incarnation is not an adaptation; the words are still Miller’s.) Having other actors illustrate the central figure’s narrative changes the play’s character completely, but the urge to do so is perhaps understandable: Re-creating Miller’s tour de force would be well nigh impossible for all but the most seasoned actresses.
In her narrative, Susan bemoans less the loss of her left breast than she does the loss of Franny, her lesbian lover (“How will I tell someone new?”), and her first son, who died just hours after he was born. She is poignantly likable, as much for her self-deprecating humor as for her complete honesty, and Melich inhabits the role affably.
The other members of this hardworking ensemble cast are Yvonne Singh, who plays Franny and a number of other roles, while Brian Crawford takes on, mostly, Susan’s adopted son Jeremy, whose age swings between 8 and 22 over the course of the play.
Kat Conley’s set is bare, save for a large structure that is part tree trunk, part playing platform, with a spiral design to represent the shifts in time. Foulger also uses small scrims for some of the flashbacks.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. 2 p.m. Saturday. 6 p.m. Wednesday and Feb. 21. Through Feb. 25. $20, $25. 7 Stages Theatre, 1105 Euclid Ave., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.7stages.org
THE VERDICT: Dated, but an important message.
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‘Born Guilty’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B-
First produced in 1991, “Born Guilty” is playwright Ari Roth’s first dramatic exploration of the curious case of Peter Sichrovsky —- an Austrian journalist who probed the conscience of post-war Europe in a series of books and articles, then performed the traitorous act of becoming a far-right politico.
That latter episode is the subject of “Peter and the Wolf (And Me)” —- a new play from Roth that will run in repertory with “Born Guilty” at Jewish Theatre of the South beginning Feb. 10.
Those of us who’ve seen the first part of Jewish Theatre’s ambitious two-fer can’t wait to see what happens next in the life of Sichrovsky, even as we puzzle a bit over the limitations of “Born Guilty,” which delves into the fractured lives of the children of Nazis.
Adapted from Sichrovsky’s interview-based book, “Born Guilty” finds the author’s doppelganger (David de Vries) traveling around Austria and Germany —- searching for answers about Nazi involvement and its aftermath.
Along the way, he encounters all the conflicted feelings of guilt and remorse, shame and bitterness that one would expect from a people vilified for murdering 6 million Jews. But who is innocent and who is accountable? And what is the value of re-examining this moral juggernaut?
With a whopping 30 characters, Sichrovsky’s exploration gets a little muddled. The stories are interesting, the performances good, but the structure meanders and misleads.
First you think you are in for an evening of random case studies with Sichrovsky, the interviewer, as the common thread. But about halfway through, the play begins to narrow in on the lives of Susanne (Tess Malis Kincaid); her questioning son, Dieter (Chris Moses); and her rattled old father (Barry Anbinder). Meanwhile, Sichrovsky insists on badgering Herbert Schmidt (Dolph Amick), who tries to shield his father from the journalist’s redial button and his cryptic questions.
Some of the best comedy emerges in a classroom where a couple of snarky classmates (Maia Knispel and Amick) rip into poor Dieter, who uses a class project to confess the sins of his grandfather. The behavior may be mean-spirited, but it captures the viciousness, and the sheer ennui, of German youth 50 years after the war.
While director Matt Huff does a nice job of coaxing strong performances from his eight-member cast, some actors are better at sculpting a variety of personalities than others, and accents can be problematic.
“Born Guilty” feels too much like a peek into America’s living room than a European diary. For Germans and Austrians, these people sure seem like Yanks. (Or is that intentional, given the political climate of the times?)
By the end of the night, you come away with a catalog of compelling miniature portraits. But as a whole, the play spreads itself too thin, and can’t cohere.
Plus: We are left to wonder how Sichrovsky evolves as a person as a result of his journey. Guess we’ll have to stay tuned for Part 2.
THE 411: Through March 4. In repertory with “Peter and the Wolf (And Me)”; call or check Web site for exact dates and times. $18-$35. Jewish Theatre of the South, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, jplay.org.
THE VERDICT: Too much information makes for a murky play.
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‘I Am My Own Wife’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
She is a compulsive collector who lives in a weatherbeaten stone mansion in East Berlin. A place, she says, where you will find “petroleum lamps and vases, gramophones, records, matchboxes, telephones, inkwells, Polyphones, pictures, credenzas, bureaus, and, of course, clocks.”
As Doug Wright says about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the real-life object of his obsession and source of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “I Am My Own Wife”: “She doesn’t run a museum! She is one!”
To spend an evening in the house of this 65-year-old transvestite is to tour the mind of one of the more fascinating survivors of the Weimar, Nazi and Soviet regimes. Yet this eccentric man-in-pearls is just one of more than 30 characters played by a single actor in Wright’s mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind piece of reportage posing as theater.
Now getting a stunning treatment at Actor’s Express, “I Am My Own Wife” is the city’s most essential theater ticket of the moment, and one of the season’s finest achievements. Directed by Freddie Ashley and starring Atlanta actor Doyle Reynolds in a performance that’s a lesson in virtuosity, the play is a celebration of one writer’s fascination with a subject who is detached, elusive and tricky.
As a person who has been in a sort of emotional hiding for most of her life, Charlotte, formerly known as Lothar Berfelde, has as many riveting stories in her closet as she does curios — none more striking than the one about the lesbian aunt who caught her trying on her mother’s clothes (gotcha!), her brutal father’s murder (she did it), and her escape from prison (God save the Soviets).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Charlotte gets a medal of honor from the German government for her preservation efforts. (Her museum even contains a reconstructed gay cabaret from the time of Wilhelm II.) The publicity makes her a cause célèbre, but that event is nothing compared with the release of her secret police file, which suggests she was an informant for the East German Stasi.
Was Germany’s beloved “trannie granny” a spy?
As she is tried in the court of public opinion, some say she should be stripped of her medal. The playwright — who has been traveling back and forth to Berlin to interview her for his biographical play-in-progress — doesn’t really know who to believe. Nor do we.
As a friend tells Wright, “It’s like some Cold War thriller by Armistead Maupin.”
If there’s a crack in the production, it’s in the second half, when Charlotte begins to recount her affair with Alfred Kirschner, the fellow antiques dealer she may have snitched on. At that point, the play seems to drag a bit, as it were.
But Reynolds’ skill at holding the audience’s attention for nearly two hours, and slipping in and out of a variety of personalities and accents as easily as if they were Charlotte’s attention-getting “leather shorts,” is astounding. And his sense of ironic restraint is a welcome departure from his usual approach as a Dad’s Garage cutup.
On the design side, Leslie Taylor’s facsimile of Charlotte’s elegant living room is cool and serene, and props master Elisabeth Cooper is to be commended for coming up with the miniature cupboards, busts and other arcana that are so much a part of the machinery of Charlotte’s memory. The cross-dresser’s severe black skirt, shirt and kerchief — by English Benning — is faithful to the spirit of her character. But some of the harsher components of Joseph P. Monaghan III’s sound scheme beg for the same sensitivity as his lighting.
As a study of yearning and desire sublimated as collecting and mythmaking, “I Am My Own Wife” glides with the gentle rhythm of phonograph needles on bumpy old records — or stockings purring across hardwood floors. “Each plank like an old lover,” as Charlotte says.
Haunting and masterful in every detail, it’s like the poignant hope chest of a jilted bride. History is messy and tragic. Charlotte’s answer is to love the eternal, burnished beauty of things.
