Home > Theater Reviews > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
Wendell’s Weekend Picks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Critic Wendell Brock’s most memorable shows for the weekend:
1. “Gee’s Bend” / Grade: A-
Playwright Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder turns back the covers to reveal the complicated inner lives of the famous Alabama community of quilters. “Gee’s Bend” gets a lovingly detailed, emotionally riveting Atlanta premiere that’s 100 percent true to the heart. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s. Through Sunday. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org.
2. “Christmas at Sweet Apple” / Grade: B-
Celestine Sibley and her zany circle find that the joy of Christmas is brief, bittersweet —- and often quite ridiculous. Theatre in the Square, Marietta. Extended through Jan. 6. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com.
3. “Curvy Widow” / Grade: D
Some shows demand to be seen for their historic awfulness. Broadway’s “Moose Murders” comes to mind (it ran for one performance back in 1983). Years from now, Atlanta theatergoers will be able to tell their grandkids about the time they saw Cybill Shepherd flub her lines in Bobby Goldman’s one-woman play about Internet dating. Can you say “colonoscopy”? Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage. Through Dec. 16. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
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‘Lion King’ tickets — and freebies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tickets go on sale Saturday for Disney’s “The Lion King,” which next year makes its second visit to Atlanta’s Boisfeuillet Jones Civic Center.
Show up at the Civic Center from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday, and you can get primo seats and save money. After 10 a.m., tickets for director Julie Taymor’s spectacular musical will be on sale via Ticketmaster (404-817-8700, www.ticketmaster.com).
Early birds - make that: the first 200 people in line - will get a free “Lion King” Christmas ornament. Bring a new, unwrapped toy, and Broadway Across America—Atlanta will give you a “Lion King” CD sampler and donate your gift to Toys for Tots. A dance group from Ghana will provide live entertainment, and there’ll be drinks, breakfast items and a drawing for door prizes.
“It’s a chance to secure tickets before the general public,” says Broadway Across America executive Stephanie Parker, “resulting in better seats, better choice of performance dates and times and no service fees.”
The show runs April 3-May 4.
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‘Curvy Widow’ @ Alliance Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: D
In Bobby Goldman’s “Curvy Widow,” Cybill Shepherd is so immaculately coiffed that it looks like every one of her lovely blonde curls has its own personal stylist. (Come to think of it, perhaps it does.)
The point is, the 57-year-old former beauty queen and world- famous film star looks fantastic.
If only she could wield as much control over the text of this one-woman show as she does those golden locks.
The problem with Goldman’s rambling, 90-minute one act on Internet dating, which had its world premiere Sunday night at the Alliance Theatre, is that it has so darn many words, and Shepherd can’t get them out of mouth without flubbing them.
Perhaps it was opening night jitters. But in my six years of reviewing theater for this newspaper, I have never seen a performance as embarrassing and painful to watch as this.
Shepherd’s unfortunate performance brings to mind Julia Roberts’ unhappy Broadway debut last year, and an infamous stock production of “The Women” in which former glamour queen Gloria Swanson kept forgetting her lines.
Bashing film stars who dare to trod the boards has become the contemporary world’s answer to gladiator sports. It’s the easy way out, and I’m not interested in going there. All that said, you’d have to be a sadist to take pleasure in “Curvy Widow.”
Though Shepherd tried to recover from her first lapse by turning up the megawatt smile and ditzy charm, she also drew attention to her panic by snapping out of character.
All this made me wonder if a better actress could redeem Goldman’s autobiographical play. Maybe someone who could give the words natural inflection, instead of sounding as if she were reading from a teleprompter.
Like her character, Goldman married a man more than 20 years her senior and became a widow in her mid-’50s. She also ran a successful business and had trouble finding love because men found her to be so smart, quirky and intimidating.
Dating 65 guys in four months is laden with comic potential. It’s also a well-trod storytelling device that’s provided the grist for everything from Helen Gurley Brown’s “Sex and the Single Girl” to Theresa Rebeck’s “Bad Dates.”
In having her character hopscotch from homes in New York and Vero Beach, Fla., and trade her pink Chanel for black Armani, Goldman strings together a bunch of zingy one liners (“Maybe golf removes the penis”) but offers precious little insight on the themes of modern love and self-reliance.
And neither director Scott Schwartz (Broadway’s “Golda’s Balcony”) nor his New York-based creative team can smooth out the rough spots with their technological gimmickry. Though David C. Woolard’s set and costumes are elegant, Sten Severson and Mark Bennett’s sound design is tired and predictable, and Michael Clark’s projections provide the nifty trick of zipping us from one scene to the next - yet often to garish effect.
It should be pointed out that though the Alliance provided a home for this show and helped its commercial producers get it up and running, it’s not a part of the theater’s regular season.
“Curvy Widow” is a vanity project which proves that if you throw enough money at something, you can get it produced. For the right price, you can also get a big name star. But if she can’t say the words, why bother?
THE 411: Through Dec. 16. $50-$75. Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St., Midtown. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
BOTTOM LINE: Shepherd is hopelessly lost in this mediocre play.
Mitchell-Leon shows signs of improvement
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, there is good news on the condition of Carol Mitchell-Leon, the beloved Atlanta actress who recently suffered a heart attack during surgery.
“She is up and breathing on her own,” says Dee Bell, writing on the Internet CarePage established by Mitchell-Leon’s friends.
“The official update is that she is stable on her own.”
“We are very optimistic at this time,” family friend Andrea Frye said in an interview Friday morning.
Mitchell-Leon had previously been on life support. According to several sources in the Atlanta theater community, she suffered a heart attack during a surgical procedure, and doctors were concerned about her level of brain activity.
“She is moving her limbs and when I came in the room this morning she recognized me and whispered, ‘Deee, Deee,” says Bell.
The news of Mitchell-Leon’s improvement was posted on the site on Thanksgiving afternoon, and by this morning, well-wishers were chiming in about miracles and answered prayers.
“We were very worried that her condition was grave,” Frye said. “But then there was a massive prayer effort. And I do mean massive. …
“If there’s anything that has had an effect, it’s the power of those prayers. The doctors themselves say they haven’t done anything.”
Frye stressed Mitchell-Leon’s insistence on privacy. She said the hospital had been flooded with visitors, but at Mitchell-Leon’s request, guests are not allowed to see her.
The outpouring of love and support for Mitchell-Leon — on this blog and on the actress’ CarePage — has been remarkable.
Students of the Clark Atlanta University professor have written lovely tributes from as far away as Chicago, Houston and Hong Kong — calling her Mama, Mama C and Mama Leon. Moving, joyful testimonials about the lives she has touched.
Those messages are read to her daily.
Here’s a nice selection of photos from her career.
Actress Carol Mitchell-Leon said to be gravely ill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friends of Atlanta actress Carol Mitchell-Leon, who recently suffered a heart attack while undergoing a surgical procedure, are rallying around her and praying for her recovery.
By all accounts, Mitchell-Leon’s condition is grave and her prognosis is unclear. According to several sources, Mitchell-Leon’s heart stopped beating for several minutes before she could be resuscitated during surgery, and her brain may have been affected. She is on life support and in intensive care.
While e-mails circle the city about Mitchell-Leon’s illness, those who know her well say that she is a private person who would not want a fuss.
And yet Mitchell-Leon’s acquaintances have established a “CarePage” for her on a public Web site. An update late Wednesday afternoon said:
“Ms. Leon/Carol is still stable and comfortable, but there is not much change to her condition. Your continuous prayers are needed. Take time as you observe Thanksgiving to pray for our beloved Ms. Leon/Carol.”
Widely acknowledged as one of the city’s finest actors, Mitchell-Leon teaches at Clark Atlanta University and has acted on virtually every professional stage in town. In recent years, she has increasingly found work as a director. Among her latest acting credits are “The Bluest Eye” at Horizon Theatre and “Miss Witherspoon” at Theatre in the Square. She appeared in the recent feature film “Randy and the Mob.” Click here to read my 2003 interview with her.
‘Seasons Greetings’ @ Georgia Ensemble
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B +
Georgia Ensemble Theatre serves up a confectionary trifle with its production of Alan Ayckbourn’s farce “Season’s Greetings.” Like the English yuletide dessert of custard, sponge cake and jam, the British comedy is light, sweet and amusing. There’s not a lot of substance to it but just enough to satisfy.
London-born playwright Ayckbourn has enjoyed a long, prolific career gently satirizing domestic situations and social class. “Season’s Greetings” is no different.
Although it’s not clear how they’re connected, a clan of relations has gathered at the home of successful, upper-middle-class Neville (Mark Pitt) and Belinda (Dori Garziano) on Christmas Eve. Among the houseguests are Pattie (Megan Hayes) and Eddie (Scott Warren), a young, financially strapped couple expecting a baby; Bernard (Bill Murphey) and Phyllis (Shelly McCook), a dotty older couple barely tolerated by the others; Harvey (Peter Thomasson), an elderly blowhard set to go off any minute; and Rachel (Kristi Casey), Belinda’s brooding sister.
It’s only a matter of time before a stranger enters to stir things up. In this case, it’s Rachel’s colleague and secret crush, Clive (Chris Ensweiler), a handsome charmer who’s been invited to the festivities. As happens when extended families are thrown together over the holidays, tensions build, but they really amp up when Clive and Belinda fall in lust at first sight.
Directed by Shannon Eubanks, the production suffers from an early sluggish pace that threatens to sap the fun out of the action. But there are enough delightful moments along the way to hold interest until the explosive end of the first act. The cast is slam-dunk solid, making it difficult to single out any one performance. McCook makes the most of her small role, eliciting laughs by merely tottering across the stage. Murphey manages to convey both pomposity and pathos. Thomasson is equal parts funny and frightening.
And that’s what makes “Season’s Greetings” work. Not just the outstanding cast, but the way it illuminates the contradictions and inconsistencies of human nature. Neville might ignore his wife, but let someone interfere with their marital complacency and they’ll live to regret it. Rachel puts on a big show of hard edges and self-sufficiency, but beneath it she’s an insecure, lovesick girl.
While those revelations strike a chord, they are suitably fleeting —- this is a farce, after all. It’s all about the laugh. And isn’t that what we really want this time of year —- a light little trifle to pass the time and cheer us up? Otherwise, fruitcake would be all the rage.
THE 411: 7:30 tonight; 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. $23-$33. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, www.get.org.
BOTTOM LINE: A light and amusing comedy that satirizes family togetherness over the holidays.
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‘Christmas at Sweet Apple’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. B-
Celestine Sibley interviewed Hollywood royalty, hobnobbed with poet laureates and counted Ralph McGill and Margaret Mitchell as peers.
But her heart belonged to the common folk — the scruffy jailbirds, drunks and lonelyhearts she encountered on the streets of downtown Atlanta, where she worked as a reporter and columnist for The Journal-Constitution from 1944 until her death in 1999.
Sibley’s endless generosity made her a hopeless seeker of the spirit of Christmas. Every year, the tall lady with the Southern drawl gave bags of groceries and toys to the needy, then dragged them off to her Sweet Apple cabin to sip punch and talk turkey.
With the world premiere of Theatre in the Square’s “Christmas at Sweet Apple,” playwright Phillip DePoy imagines Sibley’s circuitous quest for what she called a “Christmas moment.” It’s 1959, and before Santa can hoist himself down the chimney, Sibley will pen a feature story about a crusty apple farmer named Patience, spring a jewel thief out of the pokey and invite a couple of not-very-merry Peachtree stragglers over for Christmas cheer.
As Sibley (Erin Considine) hustles and bustles, her zany hangers-on relate their holiday memories in flashback form. It’s kind of a miracle the way DePoy strings the disparate stories onto a single thread that’s as precious and bumpy as an old chinaberry necklace.
Jumping back and forth between the real time of the story and the characters’ reveries can be a little abrupt and confusing at times. But director Jay Freer and his company of hams revel so in the ridiculousness of the situations that “Christmas at Sweet Apple” sometimes feels like an Amy and David Sedaris skit, as seen through the eyes of Celestine Sibley and Phillip DePoy.
Guitar-playing, whiskey-sipping Dave (Rob Lawhon) had a snake handler for a mother (Holly Stevenson), and the memories of his youth still sting. Beth (Abby Parker) — who is married to no-good PeeWee (Lawhon) — was raised by her grandfather (Allen O’Reilly) on Snout Island, and nearly hauled off by a couple of snoopy interlopers who were shocked to discover the young girl’s illiteracy. Celestine’s friend Oliver Reeves (O’Reilly) is the poet laureate of Georgia, but he has a nagging inferiority complex about Conrad Aiken.
Considine captures Celestine’s matronly, authoritative air — and hints at the sadness underneath the gayety. Lawhon and O’Reilly are “tolerable clever” in a variety of male roles. But it’s rubber-jawed Stevenson who steals every scene she’s in. Her Patience is puckered like an old apple. Her Mrs. Jarvis is a delightful caricature of the nosey-neighbor stock character from the Golden Age of TV. And her snake-handling Flossie is wonderfully over-the-top.
Because Sibley is remembered for her homespun musings, “Christmas at Sweet Apple” has a tone that may surprise you. The overall flavor is more like hard cider than bubbly champagne, more digressively absurd than straightforwardly corny.
Sibley believed that Christmas could be expressed in humble gifts: a bite of cheese toast, a branch of pine needles, a pithy insight that flickers momentarily, then fades away. Sometimes you don’t know you’ve had it until it’s gone. That’s the sweet-tart essence of a Sweet Apple Christmas.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $25-$35. Theater in the Square, Alley Stage, 11 Whitlock Ave, Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
BOTTOM LINE: Celestine Sibley and her zany circle find that the joy of Christmas is brief, bittersweet — and often quite ridiculous.
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‘Gee’s Bend’ @ Theatrical Outfit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A -
Before the quilts of Gee’s Bend became celebrated by the art world, they were mere objects of necessity and love, stitched by a group of Alabama women who were trying to live off the land and care for their families the only way they knew how: through hard work and nimble spirits.
When playwright Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder set about researching her Alabama Shakespeare Festival commission “Gee’s Bend,” she traveled to the isolated riverside community near her hometown of Mobile and listened to the ladies’ stories. Employing the quilter’s composite technique, she created a piercingly original play that is loosely based on the scraps of lore, memory and anecdote she collected.
“Gee’s Bend,” as Wilder points out in her notes for Theatrical Outfit’s new production, is not about quilts, but about the rips and tears in the lives of their creators, who struggled with issues of family and marriage, even as the Civil Rights movement raged around them.
Though envisioned as an intimate, intermissionless 90-minute play, “Gee’s Bend” has been re-situated here by director Gary Yates as a two-act saga, so that the tale of sisters Sadie and Nella gets an airing that feels richly textured and timeswept — more like a flowing symphony than a tightly knit chamber piece.
It’s a smart programming choice from a theater that uses Southern storytelling to frame its mission and operates out of a former restaurant that made history by voluntarily desegregating during the turbulent ’60s.
Remarkably acted and handsomely designed, “Gee’s Bend” ought to be required theater-going for students of the South’s vanishing traditions. It’s a moving testament to the human impulse to find safety, warmth and strength in the cold, dark corners of the night.
Sadie (Michele McCullough) gets pregnant and marries young, and her husband, Macon (Eric J. Little), makes it hard for her to balance her homemaking duties with her political conscience. After Sadie ventures out to hear Martin Luther King Jr., march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge and drink water from a whites-only fountain, Macon slams the door in her face.
Cheeky, irreverent Nella (Shontelle Thrash) takes a different approach, never cottoning to quilt-making and never finding a man. Eventually, time takes a toll on Nella that is heartbreaking, and Thrash nearly stops the show with her portrayal of the shuffling old woman. Donna Biscoe gets to play the bookended roles of the mother, Alice, and Sadie’s daughter, Asia, a character who is losing touch with the old ways.
One of my few quibbles with the show was that Biscoe at first seemed to invest granddaughter Asia with a few too many of grandma Alice’s old-lady mannerisms. If the very first scene felt a little chirpy and self-conscious on opening night, the actresses soon settled comfortably into themselves, and the arrival of Little’s Macon was a welcome shot of adrenalin.
Set designer R. Paul Thomason uses little more than wood to sketch the elegant austerity of an Alabama country house. Joanna Schmink’s costumes are lovely to look at, but perhaps a tad too pretty for the characters’ humble circumstances.
In “Gee’s Bend,” Wilder embroiders a gloriously textured account of a little known swatch of Americana. She listened to what the real-life women of Gee’s Bend had to say, then wove it into an imaginatively crafted piece of literary handiwork — finely spun and 100 percent true to the human heart.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $25. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Downtown. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org
BOTTOM LINE: A play that’s as emotionally arresting as the famous Alabama quilts.
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Out of Hand’s ‘Meds’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B+
Warning: A toxicology report has revealed that “Meds,” Out of Hand Theatre’s vicious little satire of the nation’s pharmaceutical industry, is laden with manic physical comedy that may cause laughter.
It should also be noted that “Meds” can prompt such side effects such as anxiety, claustrophia, heavy sweating, sleeplessness and fear of death or injury. Viewers may be at risk for audience participation; not recommended for patrons with nervous disorders or those suffering from chronic giggle fatigue syndrome.
Now that you’ve read the fine print, we should confess that it’s not necessary to consult a physician before securing a ticket to this gonzo piece of ensemble-generated comedy, from the producers of the popular motivational spoof “HELP!” and Steve Yockey’s “Cartoon,” which used highlight markers to underscore the violent tendencies of comic strips.
Operating in the same vein (as it were), “Meds” is an unapologetic rant against America’s legal drug trade. The show starts out by seating audience members in a hyper-realistic, stuffy white doctor’s office, then sends them on a hallucinogenic trip to a place called Pharmaland, where clowning and cheerleading are showcased side-by-side with chemical experimentation and simulated surgeries. Strange place, that Pharmaland.
Directed with clinical precision by Maia Knispel, the intermissionless 90-minute show is a marathon mood swing that riffs on everything from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and sci-fi flicks to the anesthetised tone of infomercials and self-help gurus. We don’t want to spoil the surprise, so let’s just say that Oz Dillman’s set is very, very cool and leave it at that.
Lorded over by a bling-wearing pimp daddy (Geoff “Googie” Uterhardt) in plush purple fur, Pharmaland has a self-congratulatory corporate structure that salutes the R&D department “for their creative work on restless syndrome” — but takes a deep collective breath when it comes to AIDS. “We’re still working on AIDS,” the group sighs. But, of course. Why cure a disease that’s generating so much profit in drug sales?
The story of Phil the Pill, sketched out in erasable marker like an old Romper Room skit, has overtones of Harry Potter and British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro’s twisted organ-transplant saga, “Never Let Me Go.” And everytime the residents of Phamarland get too comfortable, along comes an invisible force called “the menace.”
Dressed in a white cape and speaking in ghoulish tones, Pharmaland’s resident doctor (Matt Huff) makes Faustian bargains with Pharmaland’s inhabitants, all eager to sell their souls for a taste of pharmaceutical nirvana. The drug du jour is Ease-a, a cocktail of several anti-depressants that some theater-goers may have in their purses. Ease-a promises to be a panacea for all that troubles you. Never mind that it’s addictive — and corrosive to body and soul.
As everyone from speed-addicted, weight-watching ’50s housewives to suicidal rock ’n’ rollers have proven over the years, the downside to such fantastic highs are the horrific lows.
This wildly inventive piece of social satire may go down like a big old silly pill. But after the madness and mayhem, “Meds” leaves an acidic aftertaste. Perhaps there’s a cost to allowing prescription drugs to be as readily available as Halloween candy. Just consider the demons, ghosts, zombies and cadavers that walk the earth, night and day.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays.10:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 18. $15-$45. Out of Hand Theater, Push-Push Theater, 121 New St., Decatur. 404-522-6194, outofhandtheater.com
BOTTOM LINE: A prescription for laughter — with troubling side effects.
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‘White Christmas’ @ The Fox Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: D+
“White Christmas” — the new musical comedy adapted from the 1954 romantic caper with snow — is so busy it hurts my contact lenses.
Running at the Fox Theatre through Sunday, “White Christmas” is a pretty flakey excuse for dusting off the timeless Irving Berlin songs immortalized by Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney in the familiar post-World War II movie chestnut.
Playwrights David Ives and Paul Blake have embellished the story of club-crooning former soliders Bob Wallace (Tom Galantich) and Phil Davis (David Engel) so that they now spend nearly three hours pursuing sister act Betty and Judy Haynes (Marla Schaffel and Kristen Beth Williams, respectively).
Repeat: That’s three hours.
On the plus side, the writers flesh out the plotline about General Harry Waverly (George McDaniel), blessing his Vermont inn with an adorable granddaughter (the delightful Hannah Misera) and an invincible battleship of a housekeeper named Martha Watson (Karen Murphy).
But they make a troublesome misstep in structuring the musical as if it were being shot as a movie, with each new “take” signaled by a clanging bell. The film-making conceit just crowds the musical with unnecessary complications. And scenery. Lots of scenery. (Hmm, let’s see. We’re watching a musical about performers who put on amateur theatricals, sing in clubs and make TV appearances, and it’s all being filmed. But why? And for whom? And for whom does that bell toll? Oh, never mind.)
Anyway, I’m glad that Murphy, who recalls a dynamic combination of Ethel Merman and Carol Burnett in a sideways wig, is around to liven things up with her outsize, old-school mannerisms. She’s a hoot. And that wig! Galantich (in Crosby’s role) and Schaffel (in Clooney’s) are solid pros with lovely singing voices. Let’s count our blessings for that.
Alas, director Jeff Calhoun (“Disney’s High School Musical” national tour and ice show) can’t shovel the company out of the chaos and clutter. We want — oh, gosh, how we want — “White Christmas” to be a gossamer confection to compare with “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.” But it just ain’t happening. It’s a snow job.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday. $20-$64. Theater of the Stars, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com
BOTTOM LINE: Berlin deserves better.
‘Color Purple’ will play Atlanta again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The Color Purple” is headed back South, where it all began.
Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars has confirmed that the national tour of the Oprah Winfrey-backed musical, based on the novel by Georgia-born Alice Walker, is coming to the Fox Theatre in summer 2008.
You may recall that “The Color Purple” had its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in 2004 and moved to Broadway in 2005. Its Atlanta homecoming, July 15 through Aug. 3, will coincide with the National Black Arts Festival.
Tickets go on sale Nov. 18. (404-817-8700, www.ticketmaster.com)
After garnering mixed notices from the national press corps, “The Color Purple” was nominated for 11 Tony Awards. Ultimately, it won only one Tony, for lead actress LaChanze, who plays Walker’s downtrodden but ultimately triumphant heroine, Celie.
Atlanta casting is pending. It’s worth noting that “American Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino has been playing Celie on Broadway to tremendous crowd appeal.
Interestingly, the press release from the producer’s office in New York does not mention the show’s world premiere at the Alliance.
We’ll keep you posted.
‘White Christmas’ hits a snag, check back Thursday for review
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Theater of the Stars’ “White Christmas” has gotten off to a bumpy start.
According to press agent Karen Hatchett, the set had a rough ride from its previous engagement in Savannah. When the trucks arrived at the Fox Theatre on Monday morning, the crew “realized that there are one or two pieces of the set that are damaged,” Hatchett reported.
The scenery is being repaired, but may not be ready in time for Tuesday night’s first performance.
Theater of the Stars has requested that reviewers wait until Wednesday night to see this all-new production based on 1954 film featuring the music of Irving Berlin. The show is directed by Jeff Calhoun, who staged last week’s “Disney’s High School Musical: The Ice Tour” at Philips Arena and also directed Theater of the Stars’ world premiere production of “High School Musical” at the Fox earlier this year.
The AJC review of “White Christmas” will be posted online Thursday and run in Friday’s papers.
Theatre in the Square sweeps Suzis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The 2007 Suzi Bass Awards were handed out at a swanky, dressed-to-the-nines ceremony tonight at the Fox Theatre’s Egyptian Ballroom, and the big winner was Marietta’s Theatre in the Square, which stacked up an impressive eight awards: four each for playwright Phillip DePoy’s Celestine Sibley memoir, “Turned Funny,” and four for the musical “Mount Pleasant Homecoming.”
Jeff McKerley was the only Atlanta theater artist who captured two Suzis - winning for his choreography of the New American Shakespeare Tavern’s “Cabaret” and for lead actor in a musical for that same show, in which he played the Emcee.
“I want to tell a good story. I want to change people’s lives. I want to do it with people I love working with,” McKerley said, picking up his second silver star of the night.
The Suzis, named for a beloved Atlanta actress who died of melanoma a few years ago, are the city’s answer to the Tony Awards. After two years at the 14th Street Playhouse, the event moved to the Fox ballroom, where some 300 people people donned black ties and sequins for a classy party under the room’s monumental vaulted ceiling.
Everyone looked great, but the most heartfelt segment of the Suzis was the presentation of the Spirit of Suzi Bass Award to Jerry’s Habima Theatre, a program for disabled actors run by the Marcus Jewish Community Center. The entire ensemble took the stage to watch a delightful video introduction and listen to a trio of speeches by the theater leadership.
“ ‘Habima’ is the Hebrew word for the stage,” said founding artistic director Kim Goodfriend. But “in the Atlanta theater community,” she continued later, “Habima means love, and Habima means heart and Habima means courage.”
Among other notable achievements at Monday night’s Suzis:
*Synchronicity Performance Group won four Suzis. The revival of the company’s “A Year With Frog and Toad” won for best musical, best musical director (Clint Thornton) and costume design (Katherine Aurora Callahan). Synchronicity also won for Lisa Johnson’s scenic design for “Voices Underwater.”
*The legendary Atlanta writing duo of Larry Larson and Eddie Levi Lee won the Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award for “Charm School,” which was produced by Horizon Theatre. Larson accepted with a long and cumbersome speech charting the play’s development.
*In the same year that the Alliance Theatre won the regional Tony Award for sustained excellence, it received three Suzis - in the categories of lighting design (William H. Grant III for “Eliot, A Soldier’s Fugue”) and sound design (Clay Benning and Kendall Simpson for “False Creeds”) - plus a much deserved featured-actor-in-a-play award for Neal A. Ghant (“Glengarry Glen Ross”).
*The night’s best blooper award went to presenter Faith Gibson, publicist for Theatrical Outfit, who said “Cabernet” for “Cabaret” - twice. Think she’d had a sip or two? Second runner-up was Doyle Reynolds, who won for lead actor in a play for “I Am My Own Wife.” Toward the end of an eloquent speech, Reynolds thanked his director, Freddie Chappell. Oops, make that Freddie Ashley, although Fred Chappell was named best director of a play for “Turned Funny.”
(Hey, I couldn’t do what these guys do.)
*The evening’s funniest acceptance speech was by Mary Lynn Owen, accepting for Linda Stephens, who played Sibley in “Turned Funny.” Also nominated in the same category, Owen help up a sheet of paper and said, “This is was my speech. I’m just turning it over.”
“Actually, [Stephens] is accepting an award for me tonight in Milwaukee,” she joked. “So it all works out.”
Maybe Owen should run the show next year.
Congratulations, everyone. It’s been a fantastic year.
Here’s the complete list of winners.
Featured actress, play: Jill Jane Clements, “Turned Funny,” Theatre in the Square.
Featured actor, play: Neal A. Ghant, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Alliance Theatre.
Featured actress, musical: Jennifer Akin, “Mount Pleasant Homecoming,” Theatre in the Square.
Featured actor, musical: Alan Kilpatrick, “Mount Pleasant Homecoming,” Theatre in the Square.
Choreography: Jeff McKerley, “Cabaret,” New American Shakespeare Tavern.
Music direction: Michael Monroe, “Mount Pleasant Homecoming,” Theatre in the Square.
Scenic design: Lisa Johnson, “Voices Underwater,” Synchronicity Performance Group.
Costume design: Katherine Aurora Callahan, “A Year With Frog and Toad,” Synchronicity Performance Group.
Lighting design: William H. Grant III, “Eliot, A Solider’s Fugue,” Alliance Theatre.
Sound design: Clay Benning/Kendall Simpson, “False Creeds,” Alliance Theatre.
Director, play: Fred Chappell, “Turned Funny,” Theatre in the Square.
Director, musical: Clint Thornton, “A Year With Frog and Toad,” Synchronicity Performance Group.
Ensemble, play: “The God Committee,” Theatrical Outfit.
Ensemble, musical: “Mount Pleasant Homecoming,” Theatre in the Square.
Lead actress, play: Linda Stephens, “Turned Funny,” Theatre in the Square.
Lead actor, play: Doyle Reynolds, “I Am My Own Wife,” Actor’s Express.
Lead actress, musical: Claci Miller, “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,” Actor’s Express.
Lead actor, musical: Jeff McKerley, “Cabaret,” New American Shakespeare Tavern.
Production, play: “Turned Funny,” Theatre in the Square.
Production, musical: “A Year With Frog and Toad,” Synchronicity Performance Group.
Special Awards:
The Spirit of Suzi Bass Award, Jerry’s Habima Theatre
The Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, Larry Larson and Eddie Levi Lee
‘The Last Five Years’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: Grade: B-
“The Last Five Years” is Jason Robert Brown’s sung-through musical about a couple’s brief eternity together. It’s a tussle of love, loss and anger mismanagement — a contemporary opera structured as a kind of a tit-for-tat for two.
The score — by the Tony Award winning composer of the Leo Frank saga “Parade” — is lush and lovely, the material is smart and comically buoyant, and the chronology is counterclockwise, so that we see the romance of successful novelist Jamie Wellerstein and his “shiksa goddess”/actress/wife Catherine Hiatt fall apart before it begins. Time, it seems, is not on their side.
Beautifully written and gorgeously sung in a new Actor’s Express production directed by Kate Warner, “The Last Five Years” falls in that handy black hole that ambivalent observers rely on when they have a mixed response to a work of art: It’s a noble failure.
But where love can’t abide in this emotional welter of insecurity and stubbornness, the performances do — for the most part.
Musical director Ann-Carol Pence elicits sumptuous sounds from the band, and Natasha Drena, who plays Catherine, makes the case that she’s the freshest breeze to blow our way in a long time.
A sure shot in the title role of Aurora Theatre’s recent “Annie Get Your Gun,” Drena reinvents herself here as a person who is equal parts adorable (“See I’m Smiling”), vulnerable (“The Next Ten Minutes”), neurotic (“Climbing Uphill”) and funny (“A Summer in Ohio”). That last song is an ode to the quirky summer-stock season in which this gypsy actress has to share a room with a “former” stripper with a pet snake named Wayne and appear onstage with a “a gay midget named Karl” who plays Tevye and Porgy. Drena matches strong and emotive vocalizing with an impressive arsenal of authentic acting details. Catherine’s joy is delightful, and her splintering love is horrifically shrill.
As Jamie, Jonathan MacQueen has a lustrous and captivating tone but seems less sure of what to do in terms of movement and shading. He’s got the goods; he just needs a director who can draw them out.
Most of the humor of “Shiksa Goddess,” for instance, never materializes; and “The Schmuel Song” — a Jacques Brel-like folk tale emphasizing the themes of time and ambition — seems endless. Much better, though a little late in the game, is Jamie’s song of betrayal, “Nobody Needs to Know.”
In the same way that Brown introduces prosaic references to Crate and Barrel, Tom Cruise and Sonny Mehta, costume designer Jamie Bullins makes sartorial decisions that inform his characters. Unlike the unfussy clothes, however, Derek Kinsler’s overdecorated set is clunky: Too much furniture for such a small space.
At the end of the day, we should be grateful to Actor’s Express artistic director Freddie Ashley for substituting his predecessor’s choice, “The Fantasticks,” with this flawed but important piece of musical literature. “The Last Five Years” sags in the middle and never quite coheres. But emotionally, this tale of the bitter aftertaste of success has considerable depth.
