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Thursday, May 8, 2008
‘The Last Schwartz’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Don’t cry for Jewish Theatre of the South.
The 13-year-old ensemble may be shutting down at the end of the month. But it’s goodbye gift to the city ends with a howl, not a sniffle.
Deborah Zoe Laufer’s “The Last Schwartz” is a terrifically performed, raucously comic ensemble piece that plays like a softer version of Tracy Letts’ riveting portrait of family dysfunction, “August: Osage County.” With its dead patriarch, juicy female characters, dining-table roulette and ghostly metaphysics, the funny-stinging play conceals dark inner secrets under a playful blanket of sexual parlor games, sibling barbs and hissy fits.
The Schwartzes have gathered at their parents’ upstate New York home to commemorate the first anniversary of their father’s death. But as the decorum dissolves into anger and confrontation, we witness an unexpected primal grief that’s deep, all-devouring and unacknowledged: It’s the living mourning the unborn.
Sound like heavy stuff? It is. But it’s heavier on the laughs.
While brother Simon (Jeffrey C. Zwartjes), a nearly blind astronomer, gazes off into the cosmos, sister Norma (Tess Malis Kincaid) bristles at brother Herb (Jared Simon) for propping his feet on their hallowed mother’s coffee table. Herb listens to his barren wife, Bonnie (Kathleen Wattis), describe an “Oprah” segment on Siamese twins. And when little brother Gene (Chris Moses) drops in with his clueless date, Kia — aka “The Fat No More Girl” (Bethany Ann Lind) — the table is set for a twisted late-night pajama game, and an adoption scheme of such perverse proportions that it would make Jerry Springer smile.
Simon’s Herb has the Borscht Belt timing of Jackie Gleason. Moses gives a dependably good performance, though he’s perhaps a little too boyish to capture the hip slickness of a Manhattan filmmaker. Zwartjes’ Simon — a zoned-out, stargazing savant with apocalyptic visions — is, as the script requires, almost invisible.
But these men are just window dressing for the hormonally overwrought Norma and Bonnie — and the Lolita-like Kia. It’s hard to say who chews the scenery harder. But the delightfully zany Lind is a knockout.
Travis George’s scenic design is authentic to the milieu. Mimi Epstein’s elegant soundscape provides just the right mood. And Linda Patterson’s props and costumes are appropriate to characters who are by turns starched and flirtatious — and a story that uses coffee tables and sideboards to stir emotion.
Even if the playwright’s more serious meditations are never fully realized, the show rarely disappoints. Director Freddie Ashley delivers the goods with comic brio. And artistic director Mira Hirsch says goodbye to her 13-year-old ensemble with a stiff upper lip and a heroic mixture of laughter and tears. Mazel tov.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays. Through May 25. $18-$30. Jewish Theatre of the South, Marcus Jewish Community Center, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, jplay.org.
Bottom line: Jewish Theatre of the South ends 13-year run with a juicy comedy — and a dash of existentialism. Finis.
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‘Some Men’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: Grade: C
Actor’s Express’ fondness for male nudity is no secret, but its production of Terrence McNally’s new play, “Some Men,” must rank at an all-time high for flashes of flesh.
Nearly every actor in the nine-man cast drops trou at least once, and some seem to spend more time naked than clothed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to wonder if it isn’t meant to distract from the disjointed tedium that sometimes plagues the production.
Spanning the decades from 1922 to the present, “Some Men” is a series of vignettes that illustrates the progress gay people have made toward social acceptance. A rich young banker (Louis Gregory) makes love with his Irish chauffeur (Tim Batten) on a dark South Hampton beach before acknowledging they can never share a life together in 1922.
A closeted family man (Doyle Reynolds) flaunts the law to explore his forbidden desires in a hotel tryst in 1968. Middle-aged “show-tune queens” huddle in fear inside a piano bar while the Stonewall riots rage outside in 1969.
The strength of “Some Men” is in the juxtapositions McNally creates between disparate segments of the gay community: young gay activists vs. settled life partners; a man on the verge of coming out vs. an angry closeted colleague; those who are HIV positive vs. those who are not. But there are an awful lot of scenes, and more than a few seem superfluous, making it a challenge to connect the dots. It’s as if McNally set out to include every milepost in gay culture. Gays in the military, check. Gays in the Harlem Renaissance, check. And so on.
The production opens and closes with a same-sex wedding in 2007, but it comes across more like a convenient literary device than the significant cultural milestone it is and the thing that the entire play builds toward. At times director Kent Gash struggles to develop the tension in each vignette, and as a result, the emotional pitch sometimes starts too high, too fast, leaving the actors nowhere to go but louder. By contrast, it is the quieter, less showy scenes that pack the most punch.
Some of the more satisfying scenes underscore the gulf between generations.
In 1975, a pair of slumming “elder queers” (Don Finney and Tom Thon) discover they’re out of their element among the randy young hotties looking for action in a gay bath house. Even more poignant — and universal — is a chat room scene where a middle-age lonely heart (Finney at his best) makes a surprising emotional connection with a cruiser (John Benzinger), only to be dumped with the stroke of a computer key for a young trick just looking for sex.
It just goes to show you: Gay rights have come a long way, baby. But human nature remains pretty much the same.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Through May 31. Plus, 5 p.m. May 11 and 25; and 2 p.m. May 18. $16-$27. Note: Contains adult language and nudity. Actor’s Express at King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W., Suite J-107, Atlanta. 404-875-1606, 404-607-7469,actors-express.com.
Bottom line: An uneven comedy-drama about the coming out of gay culture.
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LLoyd Webber picks Alliance’s Booth to direct gospel ‘Superstar’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production company has tapped Atlanta’s Susan V. Booth to direct the forthcoming gospel version of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” scheduled to run at the Alliance Theatre Jan. 14-Feb. 22.
The Alliance artistic director said she was called to London recently for a sit-down with Webber’s Really Useful Group. “Sir Andrew wasn’t there,” Booth said, “because he was on his way Las Vegas for ‘American Idol.’ ”
Detroit native Louis St. Louis is restaging the classic musical as “Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL.” To prepare, Booth said they will be hitting Atlanta’s gospel churches in the coming weeks. She says part of the fun is being able to check out churches “other than Presbyterian,” which is her denomination.
Apparently, the search for a director was quite competitive.
“This is their prime copyright,” Booth said. “This is the first major reconception of the work in a long time and that’s a big deal.”
“It’s very humbling and it’s very challenging, and it’s the greatest thing in the world when you get to do that,” she said of her new assignment.
Booth’s connection to the ’70s rock opera is personal. She says she sang “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” in a sixth-grade talent show. “I thought it was stunning, but I don’t think everyone else did.“ She says she now croons “Everything’s Alright” to her 4-year-old daughter, Moira.
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What Are Your Encore Park Expectations?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The newest major performance venue in metro Atlanta’s northern suburbs won’t open until Saturday, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra inaugurating the $35 million Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park. The rest of the summer calendar is booked with vintage rock acts — Styx, Stevie Nicks, the Steve Miller Band — and a variety of community events.
But the 12,000-seat pavilion, off Ga. 400 across from North Point Mall, has already been a topic of both anticipation and concern among patrons and Northside residents.
Alpharetta High School principal Buck Greene calls Encore Park “a great experiment for us.” On opening night, the school’s marching band will join the Atlanta Symphony (along with numerous other local youth groups) in the bombastic, cannon-blasted finale of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”
Then, on May 24, the high school’s seniors will graduate from the stage.
The concert, says Greene, “is great public time for the school, and with the students working side by side with the ASO, a priceless opportunity.”
For the graduation ceremony, the school will pay about $7,000 in fees, including security and audio-visual equipment — or about $3,000 less than the Gwinnett Center charges for a comparable rental.
Brandon Beach, president of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce, was a key figure in the original Encore Park conception, hoping to build an arts and community center on the site.
“Concerts were the one missing component in north Fulton,” he said, “but everyone knows that the arts and performances are a quality of life issue, and we expect [Encore] to bring the business community together. Encore will be our meeting ground.”
Yet even as some Alpharetta residents see an attractive opportunity, others are not convinced Encore Park will meet their summer entertainment needs.
Sydney Sivertsen and her husband, John, an attorney, are in their 50s with children away at college. They were initially thrilled that the ASO would be performing just a couple of miles from their house.
As she checked into her options, however, she compiled a checklist of “disappointments” — mostly in comparison with concerts at the ASO’s other outdoor venue, Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Buckhead.
Where patrons often bring elaborate picnic meals to ASO concerts at Chastain, Sivertsen worries that Encore Park’s no-outside-food rule will steer the event too down-market.
“A hot, Southern evening at the symphony,” she says, “calls for vichyssoise, cool pasta salad and fresh fruit, with a nice wine and candles. If we want burgers and hot dogs and beer, we go to a baseball game. It’s a different aesthetic, and the ASO should know that.”
With frustration in her voice, she adds that if Encore Park’s owner, the Woodruff Arts Center, “is being greedy and is mistaken in its sense of ambience, maybe we should continue to fight traffic down [Ga.] 400 to Chastain for our summer arts.”
Indeed, ASO leaders had anticipated these sorts of concerns. ASO president Allison Vulgamore sees three distinct identities for its three venues — Encore Park, Chastain and Symphony Hall in Midtown. Encore Park includes 184 VIP seats, although all those spaces are already sold-out for the summer.
“We present the orchestra in different settings,” she says. “Chastain is under the stars and you bring your own [food] basket.”
At Encore, “we have a chef on-site [for the VIP tables], and you’re under a cover in case it rains.”
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Twice the Clarks!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We don’t see too many of these: A mother and daughter, both best-selling authors, appearing together.
Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark are being billed as the Queen and Princess of Suspense for their appearance tonight at the Atlanta History Center.
Mary, the mom, is one of those brand names in publishing like Nora Roberts or James Patterson that’s just a force of the marketplace. She has sold more than 85 million books in the United States, according to her publisher. Her latest thriller is “Where Arte You Now?”
Carol, the daughter, has co-written four suspense novels with mom, and then created her own series of mysteries around Regan Reilly and her husband Jack. Her latest is “Zapped,” which takes place during a blackout in New York City.
The lecture and signing is sponsored by the Margaret Mitchell House; admission is $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Reception at 6, lecture at 7.
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