Fillbrandt Review

Chicago at MSU, Mankato

2010-10-12T16:08:00.000-05:00

I rarely read the director's notes to a show because usually they are self-serving and stupid. But I usually make an effort where MSU is concerned because the directors usually have some information that sheds a little light on the intent of the show. Chicago's director Paul Finnochiaro had some very interesting things to say. Apparently, as part of a grant the school is receiving, Finnochiaro was able to travel and do some hands on research on the Fosse style and the locations of Chicago. It seems his research paid off.

In an effort to utilize an authentic Fosse style of directing and dance, Finnochiaro succeeded in bringing the original vision of Chicago to life. It was a delight to watch the dancing and staging in this energetic show.

The design concept for this show seemed to support the Fosse showcase. The costumes and set were all black, the lighting was spectacular and added the only color to the show. Unfortunately, sometimes the black costumes seemed to lack enough pizazz. After all, how many ways can you make black exciting? Not enough, apparently.

My only other critique of this show is that it seemed a little above what the cast was capable of. This is not to say that the talent was lacking in a general sense, but this show is dripping with sex. The black thongs and little else added to this sense. Much of the choreography and dance was basically a glorified strip show. The problem was, it seemed like the bulk of the cast, at least the women, were all down-home wholesome midwest girls. And they were all very young; not many were very sexually confident. As a result, most of the dances just seemed dirty and uncomfortable, not sexy and alluring. I spent most of my time pitying these poor things who have to go on stage night after night and pretend they were comfortable. Some were clearly not.

There were also a few times where the 4th wall was broken. I don't think I was very comfortable with that. It wasn't consistent, so that whenever it happened it was jarring. But that's probably just my own personal preference getting in the way. The 4th wall is there for a reason, people.

The only other thing I have to mention is the tag. The tag! There was a part where Roxy Hart lifted up her dress (sexy, right) and there on the side seam was a big white tag! Man, that bothered me. Cut the tag, people. I think that will be my new catchphrase.

4 stars out of 5.

Wicked, Broadway Tour at the Orpheum Theatre

2010-10-04T15:14:00.001-05:00

It's been almost a month since we've seen this show, and I still don't know how I feel about it.

We walked into the Orpheum and I was pretty excited. The proscenium was completely decked out in a mechanical gear type facing. The curtain was a map of Oz, complete with a green gobo'ed spotlight on the center where the Emerald City is.

The curtain went up and I was impressed by the flying monkey's and 10 measure overture. Then the show started full swing.

Then the show ended.

Yep, that was it. It was one big fluffy show. If this show were a food, it would be meringue. It should have substance, being made of egg and sugar, but it tastes so light you wonder if it even exists. That's Wicked. It should have substance, being a hit Broadway musical, originally cast with my favorite stage actors of today. And yet, I wonder if the show is about anything at all. I can say this at least, it stayed true to the book: boring and long-winded.

Well, before I come across as hating the show, let me clarify. I am indifferent to the show. It was neither good nor bad, it simply was what it was. Whatever that is. Also, I need to mention [SPOILER ALERT] that the ending was well worth the wait. While I couldn't understand any of the characters' motivations, I did understand the ending. Elphaba fakes her death and she and Fiyero run away together to live anonymously in an other-than-Oz location. Happily ever after. Bittersweet, just like happy endings should be.

The understudy who played Elphaba the night we saw the show was adorable. So unsure of herself, timid, and not altogether a bad actress, I really enjoyed her performance. Also, the music is catchy. Would you believe I've had the soundtrack stuck in my head ever since the show? Well, it's true.

Being a techie myself, I am always on the watch for those technical achievements and workings. I appreciated the smoothness with which they wired their actors. They didn't try to hide it, but it also flowed seamlessly with the action. I liked that the spotlight operators on either side of the proscenium were also wired (for safety, not for flying). But one thing irked me so bad I thought I was going to scream. Almost every song ended with a "sell it" tableau. This tableau featured a light special with a down spot. And almost every actor missed their mark for this lighting. Ah! It drove me batty. Imagine, an actor poses, the music plays it's last dramatic note, and a small circle of light appears two feet stage right of the actor. Huh. Well, that was weird.

All in all, I would love to see this play performed semi-professionally, but I would never want to see it again just for the play itself. It would have to be for the company performing it.

3 out of 5 stars.

MASH; Jefferson High School; Bloomington

2009-05-07T08:26:00.002-05:00

I am too young to truly appreciate all of the nuances of M*A*S*H*. When I happen to catch an episode on TV I can see the dichotomy of light-hearted tom-foolery and heavy war-time themes. But having not lived through the tense times of draft and conscientious objectors, the meaning is lost on me.

I'm 24.

Now imagine a gaggle of teenagers trying to play at grownup, and adult themes, and complex relationships based a good 20 years before they were born. I mean, come on. When "OMG, Brittany just broke up with Bobby" is the topic of the day, how are they supposed to make the audience feel anything of significance.

But I blame the horrible choice of show on the director, not the kids. Jefferson High School has a very talented group of young actors, most of which I see real talent in. The theatre itself has acoustics to die for, but that didn't mean that any of those kids were slackers when it came to projecting. This is a Herculean feat with anyone under the age of 20, much less two dozen under 20. Even the mumbling and throwing away of lines was minimal, and I am inclined to blame the director again for this bad habit that he had difficulty nipping in the bud. But who knows: maybe he had his hands full promoting the projection issue.

Judging from the 2 dozen nosy, annoying, overacheiving house-wife mothers in the audience, I would say they had a fair amount of "talent" to pull from to obtain their costumes, props and set pieces, which were so impressive, I am only noticing them in retrospect. The set was minimal and simple. The costumes were both age appropriate for high schoolers and for Vietnam american soldiers, nurses and doctors.

I wish I could remember the directors name, because I have a few more critiques for this guy. First, please, please, please oil that damn curtain. Second, please be aware of both your stage space and your audience space. Jefferson has an added advantage of having a double wide proscenium and a double wide house. Unfortunately this means that the "split stage" convention that is the standard when portraying a telephone conversation doesn't work, because the audience will get whiplash from bouncing back and forth between the two actors that are 1 mile apart. (Or they could do what I did and just watch their favorite actor and ignore the other one).

And by the way, our niece was FABULOUS. Of course. Even though she had only one line. And all bias aside, I wish the director had found more excuses to bring the vietnamese into the scenes. I think they added a lot in terms of environment. Especially when he had people randomly walk behind the tents. Brilliant touch. Perhaps his only brilliant touch. I wish he had taken advantage of those extra girls and given the atmosphere an extra oomph. Oh well.

Coming up:

2009-03-11T12:14:00.003-05:00

The next few days should yield some fun reviews. My own play is tomorrow (back to back performances of The Actor's Nightmare and This Is A Test), which I'm hoping Jess will review on here. Did I say hoping? Maybe I meant dreading.

Then on Friday we're going to the State Theatre to see Stephen Lynch, one of my favorite comedians. I'm looking forward to hearing a live performance of such great classics as "Special Ed," "Love Song," "Craig," and "Lullabye." Totally stoked!

Finally, on Saturday we're going to Hamline University to see The Real Inspector Hound. I'm fairly excited for that one especially because Maggie Shields is in it. When I appeared in Godspell in 1997, she was my youngest disciple. I think she was only 12 at the time. Now she's all growed up. I didn't realize she was still acting until Jess and I went to see Romeo & Juliet at Hamline a couple of months ago. Suddenly I look up and see Romeo's mom and think to myself, "she looks SO familiar."

So, yeah. Look for more reviews coming soon.

Brave New Workshop's How To Make Love Like a Minnesotan

2009-02-22T15:19:00.000-06:00

Let me first start by saying that I often wish, nay, pray that the artistic entities behind naming the productions would get over themselves and stop adding superfluous bylines. How to Make Love Like a Minnesotan is fine just by itself. It's witty and also completely captures the essence of the show's theme. Does it really need or, Sleepless in Shakopee? No. No, it does not. By adding the byline all your doing is adding a random reference to a random movie that was wildly popular almost 20 years ago but has been syndicated so many times that people are sick of it. It adds nothing. It detracts. It screams "Look, look, we did something funny with the title! Aren't we wonderful?!" And I better not hear any bullcrap about "It's tradition"; "BNW's shows always have witty bylines." Again, I say, get over it. Writing on the walls to commemorate a show, that's tradition. Keeping something stupid is just stupid. Plus it makes the title far too long for anyone to care.

Enough of that soapbox. Other than that one annoyance I found the show funny, entertaining and very well executed. The only time I found myself actually cringing from total script failure was when Caleb ex machina came down and grandiosely inserted yet another montage of needless poetic crap. Thankfully it was short and we got back to the action quickly. I only have a few things to say about the acting itself, but keep in mind that I did see it opening night and I always give actor's slack on opening. So take this with a grain of salt.

If I could have the acting skills of anyone on this planet, it would be Lauren Anderson. Her dedication to each and every role and character is complete. She has the ability to take any character, no matter how detailed or vague on paper and make it her own. Can anyone say "Match.com"? Brill. I only regret that in the "Who's the man, who's the woman" scene she didn't bust out my favorite Anderson character from improv: the butch chick. It's this fabulous character with a deep voice and male mannerisms, but totally a girl. I love it. Maybe that character would have been a bit over the top for that sketch, but I would have appreciated it. As it was, I felt that character was just a watered down version of what it could be. Especially next to Mike Fotis' wonderfully random midwife husband.

Ellie was fabulous to watch as always, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she has never seen the Hulk. Perhaps she has never had truly Hulk-like moments in her life from which to draw inspiration. There was definitely something about her performance in that scene that did not jive. Although, come to think of it, I think it was the writing that didn't jive. It was so disjointed that the only way they could figure out how to end it was to segue into another, albeit funnier, scene. Do people really have a problem with missiles being shot up giant Hulk-like vaginas? Cuz I thought it was funny. I think they may have underestimated their audience. It can't possibly be offensive after Joe Bozic and Mike Fotis' ridiculous military characters make a very strange scene even more strange. Added with Josh Eakright's hilarious tiny men, you can't go wrong. Well, until you can't figure out an ending, apparently.

The highlight of the evening was bittersweet. I do hope it was an original piece and not recycled from an earlier *cough*better*cough* show. The spoken word at the end of the first act was fabu. That's all I can say. I can't add to the perfection of that written piece of perfection. I can, however, pick on Bobby. Dear, sweet Bobby Gardner. I've seen Bobby in epic shows: Metamorphoses, Godspell, JCSS. Come on. But he has a

On the whole, their seemed to be a general lack of commitment from everyone on the stage. Comedy is best when done seriously in context (if that makes sense), but the more I see these actors the more they seem to be acting tongue-in-cheek to their own comedy. It's almost as if they are embarrassed to make an ass of themselves. I remember a high school production of Wizard of Oz that had no want for talent, but we were all so self-conscious the show was horrible. Sometimes I don't want to laugh at the show, I just want to walk up on stage and hug their insecurities away. I think this may be why late night shows are so awesome. They don't give a crap anymore about who's in the audience. That's when Joe Bozic will completely throw himself into his strange characters; when Mike will channel every emotion he has and heighten the stakes the most; that's when Ellie Hino's characters will totally spaz out and her physical comedy shines; when Josh Eakright will just keep going, and going, and going and never loose steam.

We actually saw a play!

2009-02-16T00:34:00.005-06:00

Sorta.

On Friday night, we (along with our favorite companion, "Spaniard") attended the opening of the new spring show at The Brave New Workshop:

HOW TO LOVE LIKE A MINNESOTAN:
SLEEPLESS IN SHAKOPEE

Now, I've been seeing shows at BNW for a while now. Come to think of it, I've seen every show in the last two years, with only one exception. Anyway, this was far and away the best show that I've seen there.

Since Jess actually worked there for just over a year, we are in a position of being uniquely qualified to speak to the particular performance of actors that we both know on a first-name basis, and who we've been vaguely social with on several occasions.

This show was about love. Fitting enough, as it opened the day before Valentine's day.

Mike Fotis was in top form, as were Ellie Hino and Lauren Anderson. Josh Eakright's shining moment was playing an elderly mother with an accent who would occasionally shout "I want a grand-baby!" at his/her erstwhile son and daughter-in-law. At least, I assumed he was playing the paternal grandmother. Bobby Gardner did an excellent job, slowly fleshing out his BNW skin, still relatively fresh and dewy compared to those of his co-stars. I did notice, however, that there were times when Bobby seemed slightly uncomfortable with waiting for the applause to die down, an essential skill for an actor. (Bobby either closed the first act or opened the second act with a beat poetry recitation that needed just a bit more panache. The scripting itself was excellent. I think he was probably just nervous about the long speech by himself.) Joe Bozic was... um... okay. I'm finishing this review several weeks later, and I can't really remember any great Joe moments. I also don't remember any crappy ones, however, so he couldn't have been that bad.

The highlight of the show was probably Lauren Anderson's role as the robotic embodiment of Match.com, engaged in a sing off against a Cupid (played by Eakright)who didn't stand a chance, musically (though the script ended the scene with Cupid's bow making Match.com fall in love with another website. The odd reason that Lauren really nailed the scene was her ability to do the robot (relatively) straightfaced with a colander on her head.

I wish I could remember more of the great Ellie moments. I would love to recount them here. Jess accuses me of having a crush on her. Whether or not that's true. I do recall thoroughly enjoying the entire performance. Good times to be had, and what all. It was also good to see Dudley Riggs in the audience for another opening night. It's always a pleasure to see him.

Farce of the Penguins -and- National Treasure: Book of Secrets

2009-01-08T22:37:00.003-06:00

Reviewer: Mike

Jess recently signed herself up for a two week free trial of Netflix. Tonight we indulged in a couple instant streaming movies at home.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Though I've only seen the last half hour of the original film, it wasn't enough to stop me from watching the sequel. The plot a vaguely decent rehash of the original, but with a few quirky moments, like seeing Nicholas Cage adopt a crappy cockney dialect to insult a British security guard at Buckingham Palace. All in all, however, there was nothing really distinguishing about the film. The idea that the lost "City of Gold", always attributed to the great tribes of Central and South America, might have been in South Dakota is absolutely ludicrous. While Ed Harris made an oddly compelling antagonist, the movie in general played out more like National Treasure 1.2 rather than National Treasure 2.0. It was more of a remix than a sequel, a bad habit that Hollywood shows no indication of trying to shake. I did like, however, that there was a romantic sub-plot about Ben's parents falling in love again. I've realized over the last week or so that I'm a sucker for geriatric passion. I refuse to let that color my rating of the film, however.
SCORE: 2 of 4 stars

Farce of the Penguins

This was delightful. One hour and twenty minutes of a joke mocking "March of the Penguins" might seem excessive, but they somehow pulled it off without ever being boring. Lots of potty mouth, though. The baby penguin born at the end manages to have "Fuck!" as their first word. Some of us are just born with better vocabularies, I suppose. The musical numbers distracted more than added, but for me the two best things about the movie were Samuel L. Jackson's scintillating narration ("You can't handle the truth, Ruth" - referencing both "A Few Good Men" AND "Do The Right Thing" in a single breath) and the ending credits, where we get to realize who some of the more amusing voices were supplied by. Some were surprises, some weren't, and some were people I'd never heard of before. But here's my favorite: While Bob Saget obviously played Carl, the main penguin, the two "Global Warming" penguins were voiced by Uncle Joey and Uncle Jesse from full house! I nearly laughed my ass off.
SCORE 3.5 of 4 stars

Superbad

I nearly forgot to mention watching this last night. While the use of the F bomb was fairly excessive, there were some serious life lessons in this film. What plays out as a wild and raucous quest to get the elusive booze that will unlock the more elusive sex is actually a very touching "bro-mance," as Jess called it. I won't go into more detail, since I mentioned this movie only as an afterthought. I don't remember ever being quite this stupid or desperate in high school, however.
SCORE 3 of 4 stars

An introduction

2009-01-05T00:03:00.003-06:00

For those of our friends who keep looking at this page and wondering, "What's the point?" we would like to offer a brief explanation.

Jess and I love watching live theatre. While our finances limit our ability, nothing pleases us more that going to see a live production, and then proceed to analyze it to within an inch of its life... or something to that effect. For that purpose, Jess started this blog so that we can share our musings with a great number of people who don't really care. We're just whistling in the wind.

However, I do hope we get to see some theatre soon. I hope we get to write about it, and I hope that somebody out there gives a crap.

Here's to the future of my profession...