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March 2007
Naughty puppets in ‘Avenue Q’ set a date for Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
IF YOU GO: Broadway Across America-Atlanta: 2007-2008 Season
$94-$376, for season packages. Single tickets typically go on sale six to eight weeks before opening. 1-800-278-4447, broadwayacrossamerica.com
After winning the 2004 Tony Award for best musical, the producers of the zany and irreverent puppet show “Avenue Q” opted out of the national touring route in favor of an exclusive sit-down version in Las Vegas. It was not a smart gamble.
The 90-minute Vegas version closed last May after a piddling five-month run, and now “Avenue Q” has hit the touring circuit after all. The naughty, completely unauthorized “Sesame Street” sendup will stop at the Fox Theatre next March as part of Broadway Across America-Atlanta’s exciting 2007-08 lineup, which also includes “The Drowsy Chaperone,” John Doyle’s streamlined “Sweeney Todd” and the Tony-nominated ’80s show “The Wedding Singer.”
In a city that loves puppets, Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez’s “Avenue Q” should be a highlight of the upcoming season, which was to be announced today by Broadway Across America-Atlanta.
“After they closed in Las Vegas, they came back to the presenters and said, ‘We want to do a national tour,’ ” said Stephanie Parker, regional vice president of Broadway Across America-Atlanta. “So immediately a bunch of us jumped at the chance, because it’s a fabulous show.”
Parker warns parents, however, that “Avenue Q” — which contains simulated puppet sex, references to Internet porn and gay material — is “for mature audiences only.”
Also next year, the Broadway presenter will participate in the inaugural season of the $145 million Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, opening in September. The offering is “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in March, and Parker says the new, 2,750-seat venue looks promising as a destination for shows that aren’t likely to fill the Fox’s nearly 4,500 seats.
But she hesitated to say that the Cobb center would compete with the Fox — in terms of her offerings, at least. “I don’t know honestly how much we will do out there,” Parker says. “We kind of want to see how well things go and how the city responds” before making a further commitment.
Meanwhile, the crowd-pleasing Disney spectacle “The Lion King” returns next year for a four-week engagement at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. Parker says “The Lion King” sold out its 2003 run at the Civic Center, and the choice of venue is a function of the show’s size. “The Fox is not large enough. … The show won’t fit in the theater.”
Looking ahead to 2008-2009, Parker says “The Wizard of Oz” back story “Wicked” will blow back into the Fox. Apparently, it’s never too early for a sales pitch.
Subscribe to the upcoming season, Parker says, and “you have a better chance of making 100 percent sure that you have tickets for ‘Wicked.’ ”
Shows and scheduled dates for Broadway Across America-Atlanta’s 2007-2008 season:
• “The Rat Pack — Live at the Sands” (Sept. 25-30)
• “The Wedding Singer” (Oct. 16-21)
• “The Drowsy Chaperone” (Jan. 22-27)
• “Avenue Q” (March 25-30)
• “The Lion King” (April 3-May 4, 2008)
• “Sweeney Todd” (May 27-June 1, 2008)
Season extras: “Riverdance” (May 13-18, 2008) and “Mamma Mia!” (June 10-15, 2008), both at the Fox Theatre; “Jesus Christ Superstar” (March 4-9, 2008), Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
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‘Trailer Park Musical’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C -
Jeannie’s got agoraphobia so bad she can barely stick her toe outside her trailer. Norbert has a hankering for the pole dancer who’s rented the place next door. Wise-cracking Lin has a husband on Florida’s death row, and cute li’l Pickles is prone to hysterical pregnancies.
Welcome to Armadillo Acres, home of “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,” a place where the ladies sun themselves with tinfoil reflectors, subscribe to Mobile Homes & Gardens, and are well-versed in the joys and heartaches of standing by your man — or, to quote one typically nonsensical gag, your flan.
Composer David Nehls and playwright Betsy Kelso’s double-wide dose of silliness enjoyed a brief off-Broadway run in 2004 and now parks its trash-talking self at Actor’s Express. Sending up everything from big hair and ’80s kitsch to Jerry Springer and roadkill, the relentlessly tasteless schlock-rock musical manages to get by on its own empty-calorie humor and occasional kernel of cornball truth. It even has a few pretty good songs.
Alas, director Freddie Ashley’s production seems to run out of gas before it even gets out of the parking lot. Just because “Trailer Park Musical” builds its velocity from the cheap and cheesy doesn’t mean its producers have to prop up the jalopy with a pre-recorded soundtrack or fill up the ensemble with low-rev singers. After a year of mostly top-notch endeavors, this low-budget clunker disappoints.
As the hopelessly house-bound Jeannie, Wendy Melkonian leads the cast with solid singing and a memorably woozy comic scene involving beer cans and a PAM spray can. Atlanta favorite Libby Whittemore is fun to watch but seems vaguely tired in the secondary role as Betty, the first lady of Armadillo Acres. Newcomer Claci Miller appears to be running on autopilot at first, but she ultimately nails the part of stripper-on-the-run Pippi.
If Dolph Amick is a letdown as Jeannie’s husband, Norbert, it’s probably because the hard-working actor is not the strongest singer in the world. And while Sharon Zoe Litzky (Pickles) and Jeremy Aggers (Duke) turn in wholly likable performances, Christy Baggett (Lin) seems to rely too much on her one-sided smirk.
With its unapologetic stinkiness, garish design (by Jonathan Williamson) and “Ugly Betty” fashion sense (by Jamie Bullins), “Trailer Park” will probably build a fan base in the same happy campers who’ve supported “Della’s Diner” and “Peachtree Battle” all these years.
These days, it’s not necessary for musical entertainment to have a highfalutin recipe. (Just look at “Sister Act” and “High School Musical.”) You just don’t want to get sloppy with the execution, or use cheap ingredients. Otherwise you might end up like Duke after he discovers Costco.
‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ @ Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C +
“Glengarry Glen Ross” — David Mamet’s play about a bunch of sleazy, low-level real estate agents who act out their own little Watergate — leaves me cold.
There’s no doubt that the 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner is a virtuosic piece of writing and a showcase for the kind of piston-popping, crash-and-burn style of acting that has established the play’s robust mythology. But too much testosterone and scabrous language can come off as empty, shrill and devoid of humor, which is exactly what happens in the overcrafted, overcalibrated new production at the Alliance Theatre.
Piled high with profanity and bigotry, Mamet’s jokey little send-up of American greed has never been for the squeamish. But the payoff is in the sheer absurdity of the oversize egos and emotion — five small-time hustlers hawking dubious Florida real estate in the name of winning a brand-new Cadillac car.
Director BJ Jones’ seven-man ensemble — including top-tier Atlanta actors Chris Kayser, Larry Larson and David de Vries — certainly can’t be faulted for lacking talent. But with rare exceptions, the energy is so intense that the patina of felt life gets blow-torched.
The first words out of the mouth of Kayser, who plays the desperate and despairing Levene, feel awkward and self-conscious, and though Kayser will eventually connect with his character’s inner Willy Loman, the performance is wildly uneven. As Williamson, the guy in charge of tossing “leads” to the hungry pack of wolves, Joe Knezevich is all clenched jaw and penetrating stare.
While Larson is watchable enough as the gullible Aaronow, de Vries’ Moss exudes an oleaginous authenticity that’s as smart as it is slick. In the much smaller role of Lingk, Brik Berkes does a nice job of capturing his character’s low self-esteem and shrinking persona: Lingk is so uncomfortable that he almost disappears inside his own shirt collar.
But the man to watch here is Neal A. Ghant as Roma, the con artist who seduces Lingk and turns into the human equivalent of a paper shredder. Unlike other members of this company of overachievers, Ghant doesn’t let the Mamet sneer steal all the fun. This devil in a double-breasted suit is by turns beguiling and belligerent, but even as his character rages, Ghant is fully in control of the irony in his front pocket. In a room full of scaredy cats, Roma is the preening king.
“Glengarry Glen Ross” has made a lasting impact on the culture of venality, empowering writers of all stripes to think lean and mean. Just look at the black comedies of Neil LaBute, or the Ari Gold character on HBO’s “Entourage.” Perhaps writing dark is the best revenge. But even in the vilest of characters, we look for glimmers of truth and insight. In the Alliance production of “Glengarry,” such grace notes are few and far between.
‘All the King’s Men’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A -
Somewhere, Robert Penn Warren must be sipping whiskey with literary cronies and laughing in his old Southern way.
“Red,” as Warren’s friends called him, would no doubt fill glasses all around and raise a toast to Theatre in the Square’s rousing version of “All the King’s Men,” based on Warren’s stage version of his 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Unlike a recent disappointing movie, the performance, directed by August Straub, achieves dramatic intensity from Warren’s dark stew of lurid sex, political melodrama, extravagant philosophizing and archetypal characters.
A professor at LSU in the 1930s during Huey Long’s era, Warren used the Louisiana “Kingfish’s” rise from populist hero to assassinated dictator as the basis for the Dixie-fried Greek tragedy of Willie Stark. Warren makes Willie an idealistic bumpkin who slowly — under the tutelage of the voluptuous political doyenne Sadie Burke (Kate Donadio) — turns into a Long-like boss.
Despite the greatness of Warren’s conception of Willie and the character’s storytelling assistant Jack Burden, the play is hampered by bookish, sometimes wooden dialogue, political theorizing, and a convoluted, melodramatic plot. The work, though, contains deep insight into political forces, the desire for power and to do good, and physical and spiritual love.
As Willie, David Milford possesses authenticity, intuitively grasping the Southern male’s rough, slap-on-the-back humor that can instantly change into the threat of humiliation or violence. During the long but constantly intriguing performance, Milford peels away the layers of Willie’s complex personality, a mixture of idealism and cynicism, ruthlessness and tenderness, philosophical seriousness and political bombast.
His relationship with Jack, portrayed by Hugh Adams, is the driving dynamic of the play. A former historian turned newspaperman turned political operative, Jack is a cynical observer reluctant to plunge into life, a Southern aristocrat who betrays his class to work for Willie, the vulgar champion of Southern farmers and workers.
Adams softens Jack, making him more of a wounded puppy than the edgy, world-weary nihilist of Warren’s book. Adams’ portrayal of Jack as a lost gentleman with the possibility of redemption makes him strongly sympathetic, even as he carries out Willie’s darkest orders. Adams deftly charts Burden’s growth from boyish dilettante into a fully mature man capable of love and compassion. We imagine him turning into a serious writer, Warren’s alter ego.
While at times abstract and verbose, “All the King’s Men” reaches a Shakespearean eloquence. It returns to the excitement of characters expressed through ideas. Theatre in the Square deserves praise for bringing an American classic to glorious life.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays; through April 22. $22-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, www.theatreinthesquare.com.
THE VERDICT: A classic novel makes for great theater.
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Atlanta takes Humana
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When playwright Ken Weitzman was kicking around ideas for a new play, he started thinking about diseases with fancy names and elusive meanings. Things like chronic fatigue syndrome and Alzheimer’s.
Working on his master’s at the University of California in San Diego, he sent a group of actors out to do interviews and create monologues on the topic of health and healing. And then his wife told him about the Hebrew myth of the Lamed- vavniks, which contends that there are 36 people on Earth whose job it is to carry the pain and suffering of the rest of the world.
“If any one of them is lacking,” Weitzman says, “then the world is in trouble.”
All of this material, plus other ideas about science and spirituality, became the grist for his new play, “The As If Body Loop,” which is getting its world premiere at the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky.
As fortune would have it, the Long Island, N.Y., native and his wife, Amy Cook, moved to Atlanta last August, both to teach at Emory University. And when Humana artistic director Marc Masterson decided to produce “Body Loop,” he sent it to Susan V. Booth, artistic director of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre. Booth was so impressed that she replaced herself as director of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” (on the Alliance’s Hertz Stage through April 8) and got on a plane to Louisville.
“Ken’s play is on one level a comedy about a dysfunctional family,” Booth says. On a moral level, she says, it’s “about the cost of caring for another person vs. the cost of not caring.”
The title refers to a theory, developed by University of California neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, that a person who witnesses pain will have a response similar to that of the person feeling the pain. “It seemed to me in a way the scientific proof of empathy,” says the 37-year-old Weitzman, whose other plays include “Arrangements” and “Spin Moves.” Before becoming a full-time playwright, Weitzman made sports documentaries, including a history of NASCAR.
“Body Loop” — about a deathly sick social worker named Sarah and her family — has gotten good reviews at Humana, where it runs through April 7.
Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, critic Judith Egerton says: “This hopeful, frequently funny two-act play … moves with amusing snap under the kinetic direction of Susan V. Booth.” Egerton also called the play “one of the more polished works of the festival.”
The other full-length world premieres at this year’s Humana are Craig Wright’s “The Unseen,” Carlos Murillo’s “Dark Play or Stories for Boys,” Naomi Iizuka’s “Strike-Slip” and Sherry Kramer’s “When Something Wonderful Ends” — plus “Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle,” a collaborative effort by Alice Tuan, Whit MacLaughlin and New Paradise Laboratories.
More information about the Humana Festival can be found online at www.actorstheatre.org or by calling 1-800-428-5849.
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‘Sweet Charity’ @ the Fox Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Casting former teen queen Molly Ringwald as the titular dance hall girl with the heart of gold in “Sweet Charity” isn’t as odd as it may sound.
In the Cy Coleman classic that opened Tuesday night at the Fox Theatre, Ringwald packages her incandescent personality and superb technical vocabulary to dazzling effect as the sweetly naive, haplessly romantic Charity Hope Valentine.
A brash, bouncy and inventive physical comedian, Ringwald will by evening’s end allow her character to crack wide open, exposing a vulnerable side that is sad and moving.
Stuck in a career that involves giving vicarious thrills to the patrons of the steamy Fandango Ballroom, where the theme song is “Big Spender,” Charity has gotten to know what she calls “the fickle finger of fate.”
She makes bad investments in men, becomes infatuated with a flamboyant Italian film star who catches her on the split-second rebound, then returns again and again to report her rosy version of reality to her cynical cohorts. In trying so hard to catch Mr. Right, Charity is perhaps making sure that she doesn’t. But when she gets stuck in an elevator with a twitchy claustrophobic named Oscar Lindquist (the excellent Guy Adkins), things start to look up.
Sort of.
Though “Sweet Charity” is just a little too long and convoluted for its own good, it doesn’t hurt one bit that it can claim a first-rate ensemble of hams and hoofers; the full-out, adrenalin-soaked choreography of Wayne Cilento (“Wicked,” “Aida”) and scandalous costumes by William Ivey Long (“Hairspray,” “The Producers”).
While Scott Faris technically assumes the mantle of director, you detect the louche, sexy imprint of Walter Bobbie, who directed this 2005 Broadway revival and is responsible for the New York run of “Chicago,” which is now going on 11.
Judging by the wiggy dance number “Rich Man’s Frug,” Edie Sedgewick and Andy Warhol would be right at home inside the psychedelic Club Pompeii, were fashionistas slither like lizards and Charity encounters the Latin lothario Vittorio Vidal (nicely played by Aaron Ramey). In the next scene, designer Scott Pask gets in a few laughs with his design of Vittorio’s molto mod bachelor pad, featuring an endless red couch reminiscent of an errogenous zone. This is the set-up for Charity’s “If My Friends Could See Me Now.”
As the daft heroine’s saucy sidekicks, Amanda Watkins (who played Eliza Doolittle at the Alliance Theatre in 2004) makes for a wonderfully sparky, brutally honest Nickie, and Francesca Harper’s Helene is a tall glass of attitude in a skimpy negligee. While Ramey delights in the pencil-thin stereotypes of his character, Jessica Leigh Brown, as Vittorio’s paramour Ursula, brings to mind the hauture of Maria Callas and Sophia Loren. What a pair.
Ringwald, who appears to have moved from the “16 Candles” to the “16 cakes” phase of her career, has a good time with the sandwich-chomping, beer-guzzling scene in Vittorio’s closet. In a form-fitting red Valentine of a dress, Ringwald often looks like a sweaty, kewpie-doll cross between Melanie Griffith and Shirley Temple. But she’s a terrific sport about it — and a seriously good singer and actress.
Likewise, we can’t say enough good things about Adkins, who turns the elevator scene into a spastic meltdown in which Oscar forgets his name and literally climbs the walls. It’s here that book writer Neil Simon’s comedic flourish gets its proper workout.
Charity: “What do you for a living, Oscar?”
Oscar: “I try to breathe.”
That reminds us. As you convulse with laughter over this delightful romp, don’t forget to take care of those lungs. Breathe deeply, and behold the unsinkable Molly Ringwald.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday.Through Sunday. $19-$56. Broadway Across America - Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-817-8700; ticketmaster.com
THE VERDICT: Spend a little time with Molly.
‘Go, Dog. Go!’ @ Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B. Through March 25.
Photographer Elliott Erwitt’s doggy portraiture has made him a witty observer of canine culture. Along the same leashes, author P.D. Eastman’s 46-year-old classic of kiddie literature —“Go, Dog. Go!” — imagines that pooch psychology and human behavior bear the same wily paw print.
Adapted for the stage by Allison Gregory and Steven Dietz and now romping out of control on the Alliance Theatre’s mainstage, the playfully palatable family offering runs like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. With its preening pink poodle, happy yellow dog, mop-eared fiddler and buffoonish ringmeister, this highly physical carnival of barkers should appeal to everyone from toddlers in la-la land to aficionados of superb clowning.
Dogs on skates and dogs in cars.
Dogs at work and dogs at play.
Dogs in hats and dogs that dance.
The intermissionless, 55-minute performance operates as a series of sketches announced with dry drollery by a master of ceremonies character called McDog (Chris Ensweiler) — and choreographed down to the last whisker and paw by Hylan Scott. There’s not much of a narrative and plenty of foolishness. Yet there’s also a beguiling sense of painterly order and composition that seems to try to reference Sondheim as much as Seuss. (Music is by Michael Koerner, Clint Thornton and a few vintage composers.)
Part of the success of this sophisticated low comedy lies in Rosemary Newcott’s stylish direction, part of it in Kat Conley’s modular landscape and part of it in Sydney Roberts’ color-saturated costumes, whose body-clinging designs make the actors seem more like humans than stuffed animals.
Along with plucking some of the city’s finest comedians (Courtney Patterson, Tim Stoltenberg and Ensweiler), Newcott also brings in up-and-comers Enoch King (Yellow Dog) and Ayesha Ngaujah (Red Dog) — and wag-of-all-trades Scott E. DePoy, who plays violin and also rattles, bangs and winds up a variety of percussive instruments. (The salt shaker routine, by the way, is terrific.)
A scene in which two canines try to build a doghouse with an architectural drawing and a single board is good yippy slapstick, and the construction-worker sequence is a blast, thanks to Stoltenberg’s runaway jackhammer. Come lunchtime, the hardhat-wearing mutts put out a picnic blanket and a tiny vase of flowers and listen to DePoy’s “La Vie en Rose.” But soon, the civilities break down into a sandwich-slinging fracas and a chain-saw gag. In what seems to have become an Atlanta children’s theater tradition, there’s even an aquatic ballet — only this time, it’s dog paddlers. It’s cute, but the bubblewrap dance finale feels a little lame.
In this hour of shameless dog-foolery, the pièce de résistance is Patterson’s Hattie, who keeps wandering through the play in her pink pompoms and fur-trimmed everything. Each time, there’s a different chapeau and that old Marx Brothers riff: “Do you like my hat?”
McDog almost always turns up his schnoz. But on the morning I saw the show with a bunch of schoolkids, inevitably someone would shout back reassuringly, “I like your hat.” Whether the headdress was an impossibly long nightcap or an assemblage that would do Marie Antoinette proud, we liked it, too. In a world of primary colors, pastel Hattie is as refreshing as strawberry sorbet.
Ruff, ruff. Hooray.
THE VERDICT: Children’s theater goes delightfully to the dogs.
THE 411: 1 and 3 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through March 25. $15-$20. Alliance Theatre, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
‘Our Town’ invaded @ Dad’s Garage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Something creepy is happening in Grover’s Corners, N.H. —- that mythic swatch of Americana immortalized by Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”
It’s May 7, 1901, and next-door neighbors George Gibbs and Emily Webb are about to fall in love. But thanks to Dad’s Garage’s extreme makeover, “Invasion: Our Town —- The Unknown, Uncensored, Unscripted Tales of Grover’s Corners” won’t be the play you remember from high school. And if you see it more than once, it may not be the same play you remember from last time.
Playwright Travis Sharp —- creator of last year’s supremely silly “Lawrenceburg” —- liberates the vintage script from its hallowed sanctum by inviting Dad’s resident improvisers to spew naughty, inappropriate talk all over the squeaky-clean original.
So when the women in long dresses and hats start to cluck about their domestic affairs, they are likely to say something outrageous and giddy and from the hip —- like when Dr. Gibbs’ wife (Leslie Sharp) comments on her husband’s workday by deadpanning: “Those babies came out as easily as kittens wrapped in lard.”
But the real coup de theatre, designed to change every night of the run, is the arrival of an interloper, the so-called “invader,” whose job it is to chase the Grover’s Corners residents to their graves —- and beyond. According to director Scott Warren, each mystery character is a closely guarded secret until the minute he (or she) appears; and while it would be perfectly within the rules for the player to be an angel of light, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?
And so it was that on opening night a sinister and salacious traveling salesman named Professor Orel Hanks (Z Gillispie) came to purvey his potions and powders and unleash a plague of sickness and foul behavior upon the town.
In the name of comic nonsense, Editor Webb (Matt Horgan) turned into a blithering drug addict, Dr. Gibbs (Matt Myers) got a little too touchy-feely with his own son, and Mrs. Webb (Megan Leahy) became infatuated with Orel’s slimy brand of seduction.
It’s a testament to the nimbleness of the Dad’s improvisers that they can maintain the illusion of a studiously rehearsed piece while responding to the moment with hair-trigger timing. It’s also a testament to Gillispie’s comedic skills that his character turned out to be the most perversely watchable personality in the group. When Orel is heckled as a snake-oil salesman, he responds: “A snake can only sweat and defecate, and I have both of those in my bag.”
Yet as funny as the production I saw turned out to be, it had such a darkly metaphorical twist that it left me with a nagging sense of queasiness and despair.
The idea that mankind is slowly poisoning itself to death —- or that too many parents are failing their children, if not out-and-out abusing them —- should seem achingly resonant to anyone who follows the news. Even Joel Abbott’s improvised keyboard strummings had the makings of some weird anesthesia, like a bossa nova for the undead.
Of course, Wilder himself was preoccupied with nothing less than the inevitable specter of mortality, and our lack of gratitude for the here and now. So it’s fitting that there’s more than just throwaway laughter at play here. The final irony of Dad’s Garage’s strange invasion is that the ensemble gets more than one chance to tweak the script —- just like Emily Webb. Let the anxiety and mirth begin.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Through March 24. $9-$24. Dad’s Garage, 280 Elizabeth St., Inman Park. 404-523-3141, dadsgarage.com.
THE VERDICT: Thinking man’s improv.
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LAST CHANCE: ‘Irma Vep’ @ ART Station
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful” is a delicious romp through a rummage kit of Gothic cliches. Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff and Catherine have nothing on Lady Enid and Lord Edgar Hillcrest, who must overcome werewolves, Egyptian mummies and bleeding portraiture before they glimpse love eternal.
First produced by Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1984, “Irma Vep” has seen a few reincarnations on the windswept moors of Atlanta, including a 1990 Theatrical Outfit production starring Don Finney and David Milford and a more recent Actor’s Express howler with the excellent David Crow and Hugh Adams.
Now the quick-change vehicle for a pair of cross-dressing actors has been resurrected at Stone Mountain’s ART Station. All that seems to be missing is a director.
Brik Berkes and Geoff “Googie” Uterhardt are plenty game for the campy parlor room shtick required. Uterhardt, in particular, is in his element as the pert Lady Enid and the lugubrious Nicodemus Underwood.
But even the most frenetic farce requires a little restraint, and director David Thomas lets the actors play goose-silly from the get-go, leaving no room for the subtlety that can evince real-life shivers from the uninitiated.
It’s a mistake not to trust the script, which is funny enough without so much clutter. Still, it’s worth a trip to Mandacrest to see these two stage hysterics revel in the rapping and tapping of Ludlam’s dementia.
THE 411: Through Saturday. $19-$25. ART Station, 5384 Manor Drive, Stone Mountain Village. 770-469-1105, artstation.org.
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Alliance adds ‘Sophisticated Ladies’ to lineup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre has added the final piece to its upcoming 2007-08 season: “Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies,” a glitzy jazz musical tribute to the great composer. It will be directed by Associate Artistic Director Kent Gash, who also directed the acclaimed revival of “Jelly’s Last Jam” at the Alliance last year.
The musical, which takes place at Harlem’s famed nightclub, The Cotton Club, features such popular songs as “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and “Mood Indigo.”
The show will run in January-February 2008.
“Sophisticated Ladies” opened on Broadway in 1981 and starred actor/dancer Gregory Hines, who incidentally also played the lead in “Jelly’s Last Jam” on Broadway.
The 2007-08 Alliance recently-announced lineup includes another musical, a world premiere version of “The Women of Brewster Place,” based on the Gloria Naylor novel that was made into a 1989 TV film starring Oprah Winfrey.
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‘Almost, Maine’ @ Horizon Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C +
John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine” is almost a lot of things.
Set in a mythical place of brutal winters and brilliant displays of the aurora borealis, this series of short, interrelated plays feels a little like sketch comedy and a little like philosophy.
Directed by Jeff Adler at Horizon Theatre, it stars a quartet of actors who rotate in and out of 11 miniature plays about a community of bundled-up, lovelorn souls who appear to be falling through space and time like drifting snowflakes.
Though the midwinter night’s dream is built on physical comedy, situational punning and goofing around, it seems to believe that it has something deeper to say: That the meaning of life is accidental and mysterious, as vague and fleeting as shadows at nightfall. That pajamas can be sexy and love can feel warmer on cold, shivery nights than hot, sweaty afternoons.
But Cariani’s offbeat study of fire and ice lacks the intellectual vigor and bittersweet brilliance of David Ives’ like-minded “Time Flies,” staged so memorably by Horizon in 2004. Though the ensemble of LaLa Cochran, Shelby Hofer, Chad Martin and Jason MacDonald seems to have a good time working the shtick, the performances often lack genuine inspiration.
The material might be better served if the players were more diverse in style, physique and vocalization. Cochran and Hofer are both terrific comedians, but bound up in snow-bunny attire, they start to look and sound alike. For this sort of show to work, the performers must reinvent themselves every time they go on — not just change wigs and sweaters.
But with its “Northern Exposure”-meets-“Saturday Night Live” tone, “Almost, Maine” does have its clever touches. When Dave (MacDonald) paints Rhonda (Cochran) a picture, she can’t figure out what it represents. He tells her she can’t let it know she’s looking at it, and when we finally see the image, we understand how fickle a subject it is.
In the end, “Almost, Maine” has too many cutesy literalizations of broken hearts, lost hope and bodies falling in love. It’s playful, precious and has the emotional staying power of snowbanks in August. In so many ways, “Almost” is not quite.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Through March 25. 3 p.m. March 10. $20-$30. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave., Little Five Points. 404-584-7450, horizontheatre.com.
THE VERDICT: Goes south.
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