Category: Outside NYC Reviews

Lope de Vega was a prolific Spanish playwright during Spain’s Golden Age.  He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and nearly five hundred plays are attributed to him.  One is La dama boba written in 1613.  This play has been loosely translated as The Lady Simpleton or The Lady-Fool or Lady Nitwit.  Staging the Daffy Dame is a modern consideration of how to present this work in the #hashtag era.

The original play is not simply the silly exploits of a daffy woman or two.  The main characters seem to fall under the spell of potential suitors.  Their father is strict.  Is that to protect or control them?  In a world dominated by men, what role do these women play in order to adapt themselves to their time?  Can daffy be an intelligent strategy to manipulate the world to their advantage?

That is a premise worthy of study.  Staging the Daffy Dame has been written by faculty member Anne García-Romero and was presented by the Notre Dame Film, Television and Theatre Department.  The idea is great but the plot has been grossly overstuffed with nearly every possible hot topic of the moment.

Lupe Sanchez (Natalia Cuevas) is a college professor.  Her vision is to stage The Daffy Dame with colorblind casting.  Latino and Latina actors covet these roles.  Why should they have to share them?  After an overextended sequence about calling them Latinx now, there is an interesting but unanswered question.  Shouldn’t Latinx actors train on Spanish classics like English actors train on Shakespeare?

This story about putting on a play falls into the trap of soap opera plotting.  Twists and turns are not really established.  Felicia Alvarado (Ana Wolfermann) will be playing the lead opposite Luis Gonzalez (Jake Berney).   In the third scene, she announces that she cannot act with him.  I couldn’t see how that was established.  When he suggests they try to rehearse in the play’s native Spanish, she says, “I’m experiencing a hostile environment.”

Felicia, it turns out, is an undocumented immigrant and does not speak Spanish.  Both leads are in the midst of the DACA cycle.  He outs her to the cast.  The director is criticized for creating a hostile environment where such behavior could happen.  The term “safe space” is tossed into the mix.  A cast member who suggests rehearsing in the play’s native language is treated as horrific and insulting.  If this is what the intellectual give and take of college campuses are now, I’m very glad to be well past this period in my life.

As you might imagine, there are lots of side dramas and relationships.  Susan Harrison is “attracted to smart, woke, interesting men or women depending on the person.”  In the best, most complete performance, James Cullinane plays the jock type.  While the character of Jeff Hollister has to utter “bro” and “dude” more times than a frathouse on Friday night, he manages to fill out the role and shade it nicely into a fully developed real person.  He even manages to make the “homoerotic friendship” rehearsal scene work with Mr. Berney.

The best scene in this production, by far, is the one between the jock and the bisexual young lady.  Mr. Cullinane and Ms. Barron brought nice depth and interpersonal chemistry to the moment.  The playwright added some nice imagery about birds crashing into windows, leading to conversations about one’s soul and healing.

The professors and the stage crew are fairly underdeveloped stereotypes.  One stagehand is gay, the other wants to remain a virgin.  Being a professor of the arts as a person of color is hard.  “Don’t pull that card with me,” screams the other teacher.  I found the mounting cliches too much to bear.

When the play finally gets to the point where the cast is Staging the Daffy Dame, I was engaged.  The costumes (Richard E. Donnelly) were particularly good.  Director Kevin Dreyer did not amp up the antics far enough to demonstrate that this was corral de comedias typical of the period.  After all of the woke lecturing and many mini-dramas, an over-the-top flamboyant style might have made all the previous plodding worthwhile.

University theater departments should be pushing their students to take on culturally relevant topics.  They also should be exploring the classics and bringing lesser know plays and playwrights into the theatrical discussion.  The attempt to combine the two ideas was commendable.  The result, however, seemed more like a teaching exercise rather than an explosion of intellectual debate about women and immigrants in today’s society.

www.performingarts.nd.edu

The wedding of Corey and Emily was the planned celebration for this trip.  Earlier this year when visiting the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I witnessed an excited group of children and adults energetically buzzing about.  The Children’s Theatre Company performs in a space attached to this museum.  I heard their work was terrific.  They won the Regional Theater Tony Award in 2003.  A visit to see an exceptionally entertaining Snow White confirmed all of the hype.

Entering a vast room, the seating arrangements clearly follow the troupe’s mission.  When picking up tickets, we worried about blocking the view for a child.  The box office told us the show was designed with a four year old in mind.  The risers were indeed high enough and everyone seemed to have a great and full view.  (If only Broadway was equally thoughtful, Linda Vista).

Mikail Kachman’s scenic design was large and menacing but also warmly inviting, like the tale.  Tree roots reached up to the ceiling.  The trunk stretched along the stage.  Limbs and leaves were painted on the floor and were also hung high from the ceiling.  The lighting (Rebecca Fuller Jensen) was atmospheric.  Sunlight was peeking through the forest.  One child remarked that she saw a rainbow on a tree trunk.  Indeed she did.  Good eye.

The story of Snow White is so well known thanks to Disney’s first full length feature cartoon in 1937.  This version was much closer to the original Grimm story.  The darker sections could be frightening to children such as when the evil queen’s huntsman is chasing poor Snow White through the forest.  Ingeniously, Greg Banks’ adaptation and direction created a beautiful balance between faithfulness to the story while clearly delineating a world of make believe.

Joy Dolo and Dean Holt begin the performance.  As Snow White, Ms. Dolo is ready to start.  Mr. Holt is Four, one of the seven dwarfs.  Where are the other six?  Not here yet.  Oh well, they begin hoping for a late arrival of the rest of the cast.  That never happens.  This Snow White is a two person play.  Since the fourth wall is broken early, there is a lightness to the playacting.  The darker elements are indeed a bit creepy but the children are trusted to absorb a fictitious tale.

Both performances are stellar.  The actors switch roles as the story demands.  When the dwarfs return home from the mine, Mr. Holt has to play all seven of them.  I could return to see this production just to watch him turn a hat, change voices and use body language to amusing effect.  That one’s Grumpy!  That one’s Dopey!  Dean Holt is impressively hilarious and physically astonishing with his almost cartoon-like physicality.

Joy Dolo was just as effective in her interpretations.  Tie a simple skirt around her waist and she is Snow White.  Put a shawl over her shoulders and she is the evil queen asking the mirror who is the fairest one of all.  This is an evil queen for the ages and Ms. Dolo seemed to bare her fangs with exquisite delight.  Not a shred of goodness to be found in this wicked one.  Both performers are ably supported by musician Victor Zupanc and his memorable assortment of sound effects.

As I was leaving the show, I was overjoyed by the subtle messaging in Greg Banks’ production. The children could recreate this wonderful play with simple props and pieces of fabric lying around the house.  The storytelling and make believe came first.  That is the magic of superb theater.  The tale itself, not the often overproduced spectacle which can overwhelm and bury the heart of a show.

Even more compelling, this production embraces a fairy tale world that is gender and race neutral.  Snow White can be black and also play the prince.  Four can not only morph into seven dwarfs but can also be Snow White when the storytelling requires.  That both performers marvelously play nearly every character – and none of this is ever confusing – is something for theater lovers to get a kick out of.

Princeton University Press published a version of the first two editions of Grimm’s Original Folk and Fairy Tales in 2014.  That book is still sitting in a pile at home.  With all its darkness and interesting spins on life and friendship, Snow White has inspired me to finally crack open this collection of 156 stories.

This Snow White is everything theater for young people should aspire to:  smart, entertaining and supremely engaging.  That is how live theater will thrive into the future.  The children seemed enthralled.  The adults were even luckier to have tagged along.  Bravo!

Snow White will be performed at Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Company through December 8, 2019.

www.childrenstheatre.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/lindavista

We noticed a small colored poster plastered on a bulletin board while standing in line to checkout at the single supermarket in town.  The African Queen was going to be presented at Glen Lake Church during the week we were visiting this beautiful area of “up north” Michigan.  Was this going to be a showing of the famous movie over four nights?  The poster hinted otherwise with the co-director credits.

The price of admission was free with refreshments provided.  Donations appreciated.  We circulated the idea of attending this very off-off-off-off Broadway event and friends began to get very excited.  It turns out that they are rabid fans of Waiting For Guffman.  That 1996 mockumentary film by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy spoofed a community theater and its quirky amateur performers.

Given this blog, my monthly podcast and those reviews I have written for other online sites, the anticipation escalated.  The group hilariously postured that I was the Guffman character, a critic from New York planning to review a local community theater production.  We arrived at the church and were warmly greeted.  The audience totaled a dozen people.  We were four of them.

The African Queen is based on the 1951 movie and was performed as a staged reading in two acts with fourteen scenes.  With scripts in hand, the movie is reenacted with four roles.  Rapids were traversed and bullets flew as the adventure unfolded.  The entire play felt a bit long to be honest.  The material is so visual that it is quite difficult to conjure up all the imagery needed to effectively dramatize this adventure.  Some scenes probably should have been shortened and others sped up.  Janet Stilpicevich was very good as the narrator and could certainly have been utilized to provide more descriptive color.

Like nearly all theatrical endeavors, there are positive aspects of this production to celebrate.  First is the set design.  The African Queen was an outline of PVC pipes with a black barrel and painted smokestack placed in the center of the deck.  The ship filled the entire stage and was a believable rendition of the boat assembled with little money and winning creativity.

My second call out is for the sound design by lead actor Ron Smith.  This play utilizes sound effects from the movie frequently throughout the performance.  Water rushing, bullets flying and the musical soundtrack are heard.  I have to say that I was impressed by how accurately that was incorporated into the play.  The timing was spot on.  I’ve seen plenty of shows with much greater budgets and significantly higher ticket prices not achieve this level of accuracy.

Last but not least are the actors playing Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayre.  Kathering Hepburn famously played Rose and Janice Ross showed us some of her prickliness.  An early scene in Act II where the two were arguing was the best one of the show.

Humphrey Bogart won an Oscar for portraying Mr. Allnut.  Ron Smith was quite entertaining as this larger than life character.  The drinking scene that ends with him passing out on the deck was a high point.  Slightly older actors take a few extra seconds to collapse into a drunken slumber.  The slow motion effect was very fun indeed.

The two leads were also the co-directors of this play.  At the beginning of the performance, Mr. Smith explained that his cousin suggested The African Queen for their next production.  Both were life-long vacationers to this picturesque locale of natural beauty.  His cousin is now suffering from Parkinson’s Disease along with serious dementia.  The moment was touching and nicely expressed the feeling of community that this small troupe works hard to nuture.

One friend was chatting with a woman at the reception table who told us she will be directing a show later this year.  He volunteered to try out and received an email the next day about auditions for the October run of The Long, Hot September.  Whether he will summon the nerve and put on the greasepaint remains to be seen.  (He did say privately, however, that he will not do any nude scenes.)  The Glen Arbor Players are a community theater creating their own brand of magic in a very small town.  Guffman was happy to make an appearance and support their mission.

www.facebook.com/ReadersTheaterGlenArbor

Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros is an absurdist triumph considered to be a social commentary on the growth of Fascism and Nazism prior to World World II.  There are many themes which underscore that premise including conformity, mob mentality and morality.  From his mother’s side, Ionesco was ethnically Jewish during the rising antisemitic atmosphere.  The radical right was pushing for the removal of these illegal aliens from their country.

By the time he got to the University of Budapest, one of his philosophy professors was using his lectures to recruit students into the Iron Guard.  This fascist legion was violently antisemitic.  In a 1970 interview, the playwright noted that during this time one person after the next was becoming an Iron Guard.  Trapped in the mechanism, they fell into line, accepted the doctrine and “became a rhinoceros.”

The play begins in a small French village where intellectual Gene is waiting for the kindhearted drunkard Berenger (the program spellings were in English).  An important discussion was planned but Gene decided to berate his friend for his tardiness and general drunkenness.  This continues until a rhinoceros is spotted rampaging through the square.  Another rhinoceros appears and crushes a woman’s cat.  We are told the cat’s name was Marmalade.

Berenger heads to the newspaper office where he works and is, of course, late.  The staff are arguing about whether or not a rhinoceros could appear in France despite all of the eyewitness accounts.  Botard (Jomar Tagatac) argues that the locals are too intelligent to be tricked into the empty rhetoric of a mass movement.  From there, you can guess what happens.

This production at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco is a mixed bag of absurdity.  Although written in three acts, this version is performed in two.  The second half dragged on.  The last, long scene between Berenger and Daisy (Rona Figueroa), the woman he loves, was a dud.  There didn’t seem to be any bond between the two and, as a result, no sparks were generated which is definitely needed with this material.

Two performances stood out for me in terms of their inspired characterizations.  Mrs. Boeufs’ husband works with Berenger but her husband has turned with the tide.  She literally falls for him despite the fact that he is now a rhinoceros.  Trish Mulholland was hilarious in the role.  As the boss Mr. Papillon, Danny Scheie was probably my favorite absurdist on the stage.

David Breitbarth and Matt Decaro were entertaining as Berenger and Gene but there were more laughs to be had, most notably in Gene’s bedroom scene.  Directed by Frank Galati, the pacing seemed to slow down and, as a result, so did the play’s effectiveness.  I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Perdziola’s scenic design which suggested very good fun.

This is a perfect time to stage this Ionesco masterpiece.  Imagine how many times in history we’ve seen people blindly follow rhetoric with a mob mentality.  Hard not to feel sympathy for Berenger and see that right now.  For Rhinoceros to shine brightly, that sort of disturbing fun and absurdity need to be sustained more consistently than was in this production.

www.act-sf.org

On vacation and visiting Munich, what might be an interesting piece of theater?  The Münchner Kammerspiele company was founded in 1906 and became the city’s municipal troupe in 1933.  In 1926, they moved into their Schauspielhaus, a surviving, nicely renovated art nouveau theater built in 1901. Written by Olga Bach, Doktor Alici is based on Professor Bernhardi by the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler.

First performed in Berlin, this 1912 play was billed as a comedy even though it explored anti-semitism.  Hitler referred to Schnitzler’s works as “Jewish filth” and they were banned by the Nazis.  Ms. Bach has updated the conflicts explored in Professor Bernhardi to our current times.  Instead of Jews, this play addresses Muslims.  Add in English supertitles to a “comedic” play about racism which is historically significant and staged in a cool German theater… what’s not to love?

Doktor Alici (Hürdem Riethmüller) is the police president.  The year is 2023, two months before the Bavarian state elections.  The set is eerily dystopian.  A house lit in bright neon colors.  A telephone pole with wires on a colorless street.  It is storming and rain is coming down hard.  Bizarre figures enter the stage.  Is this imagery surreal?  Futuristic?  Simply dark and quirky?

In the home of Doktor Alici, there is a statue of woman.  She is standing with outstretched arms and has a baby sucking her teat.  The piece is deemed obscene as its shape is similar to a crucifix.  The implication is that this Islamic woman is mocking Christianity.  She is under attack by members of the Occident Party (a 1960’s French far-right militant political group) for some controversial decisions she has approved.

Adding to the intrigue is a double crossing member of her staff who is pushed to throw her under the bus.  “You have a heart but you’re no do-gooder.  Your boss is a risky situation.”  Making matters even more tantalizing, Doktor Alici is a lesbian and her “niece” is an immigrant.  Rain continues to pour throughout this story.  The weather is “simply abnormal” these days, adding climate change to the mix of social and political commentary.

Five individuals have been arrested and detained on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack.  One of the suspects is not physically well.  The Müller report about his medical condition is being withheld.  The man in question is more than seventy years old.  He is a very successful businessman and has children.  The play clearly plunges headfirst into today’s headlines.

Humor is often employed and is sharply effective.  Regarding public opinion:  “75% of people (of the 500 we asked)” believe…  The Turkish police are called “enemies of the people.”  As the plot progresses, considerations for using the legal system are discussed.  “We know the outcome.  Why tax the legal system?”  There’s even mention of withdrawing a firearm’s license.  A crystal ball into democracy in 2023?

Doktor Alici subtly excoriates the world we live in today.  Vividly directed by Ersan Mondtag, the murky imagery increasingly ratches up the tension.  Rain will pour with increasing vigor.  The stage design by Nina Peller was exquisitely moody and dark, both claustrophobic and cartoonish.  The creative elements nicely framed a play which considers our imperfect societies, our nauseating politics and our history-repeating behaviors.

The whole production, including the memorable performances, makes Doktor Alici a worthwhile theatrical experience.  For an American, watching German artists creatively commenting on current affairs adds to this uniquely enjoyable drama.  The creepiness of the story’s plausibility visible underneath the artistically rendered imagery is the “wow” factor.  A link to a brief clip of this show provides a glimpse into the exquisite mood and unforgettable visuals of this highly recommended play.

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/doktoralicivideo

www.muenchner-kammerspiele.de

As Mother, Shannon Cochran’s character informs us early on that she believes God is a woman.  How can she not be?  If a man really were the divine deity, “he would’ve taken an eternity to create a blade of grass then boast about it for twice as long.”  A promising start of whimsical hilarity kicks off Act(s) of God by Lookingglass ensemble member Kareem Bandealy.  Unfortunately for this ambitious play, the momentum fizzles out over the course of its three acts.

The family at the center of this story lives near the desert.  They are simply labeled as Mother, Father, Eldest and Youngest.  Middle brings Fiancée to meet them.  A magical envelope has arrived in the mail.  No one can seem to open it.  Quickly they learn that this envelope affects the house’s power supply.  Eventually opened, there’s an unclear message so it appears that we are headed to a spiritual farce.  Then the family dysfunction explodes.

Eldest is an atheist and a lesbian.  Middle is a nerd trying to please.  Youngest is the jock.  Mother bemoans that Father “robbed me of my youth with his sperm.”  We hear lines such as “you are a wilting, whiny, sniveling tragedy.”  Also, “mothering is 90% smothering and 10% guilt trips.”  God stuff comes in and out of this story.  Who knew he farted so much?  The quote:  “why am I second to the divine gas bag?”

This already overcooked melodrama heavily laced with farce then goes far off the rails.  The siblings fight, indiscretions happen and Father sleeps through the second act before this play launches into absurdist territory.  After a very long mind-numbing monologue, the third act crawls to a big yet unsatsifying finale.  The glacially devolving storyline and lack of focus distanced me completely from caring about these characters or their predicaments.  An abundance of ideas cannot make up for murky playwriting.

Ms. Cochran as the ferociously tough, feminist mom and Kristina Valada-Viars as the eldest daughter achieve the most fully realized personas.  They are both strong women in perhaps the best written roles.  While the whole cast works hard to sell this material, the mood swings and plot turns are too frequent.  Mother warns “don’t embarrass me in front of God.”  I didn’t see any embarrassment in Mr. Bandealy’s wide-ranging writing.  He certainly can craft sharp one liners.  Often, however, I found myself confused and bored despite the occasional bright sunbeams from heaven.  There is just not enough sizzle to recommend (or endure) three Act(s) of God.

www.lookingglasstheatre.org