tag:www.scene4.com,2009:/qreviews//2 2009-05-08T20:14:56Z QREVIEWS—Short, little reviews on theatre, film, the arts and media. To post a new article or a comment to an existing article, click on the "Post A New Article" link on the right sidebar. Movable Type Personal 4.1 tag:www.scene4.com,2009:/qreviews//2.716 2009-05-08T20:09:43Z 2009-05-08T20:14:56Z

"Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco. A strong choice for a small theater space

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco. A strong choice for a small theater space--one set (Frankie's bedroom) and two characters plus a radio voice. Director Michael Haven stages the two acts of this "search for connection against a world of loss and longing" with tight, spare movement--no wasted motion, no attempt to "open" the space or make the action or characters appear larger than they are. True to Terrence McNally's script, it leaves the exchanges between the would-be lovers, as they strive to find a way to make their one night stand into something more, the single focus. At times I closed my eyes and let the voices do the work. Ben Ortega as the emotional Johnny and Cheryl Smith as the stolid Frankie had the edgy swirling confrontations just right. Their shifts to more intimate, easier interchanges were, perhaps, not as smooth, but overall the performances were vibrant and engaging making this production of a solid play into a exciting evening of theater. Rich Yurman ]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2009:/qreviews//2.695 2009-04-13T02:09:34Z 2009-04-13T02:21:12Z

Julian Rozzell, Jr. as Macbeth and (L-R) Rachel Tiemann, Amelia Workman and Bryn Boice as the Weird Sisters. Photo courtesy of Pharah Jean-Philippe The challenge to producing a play by Shakespeare is always how to make the familiar fresh, to...

Julian Rozzell, Jr. as Macbeth and (L-R) Rachel Tiemann, Amelia Workman and Bryn Boice as the Weird Sisters. Photo courtesy of Pharah Jean-Philippe The challenge to producing a play by Shakespeare is always how to make the familiar fresh, to re-imagine what has been already been re-(and re-)imagined, and Hipgnosis Theatre Company has tried to do this with its current production of "Macbeth." The company stages the piece on a fully lit playing area without any lighting effects other than lights-on/lights-off because it wants the ensemble (in the words of its press release) to "evoke the darkness of the setting (and of the plot) with their language and action, rather than with technical effects." To create what the company calls "a harsh, unforgiving and clinical atomsphere," the floor is layered in featureless white vinyl, and overhead three banks of fluorescent lights buzz away. Actors sit in view of the audience and enter and exit as needed. The approach produces what the company wants: a concentration on Shakespeare's action and text, stripped of superfluous effects. However, such a gambit requires that the actors speak the text superbly and the direction do more than move people around the space. This is where the company's reach exceeds its grasp. Julian Rozzell, who plays Macbeth, toils mightily at the language, but his gangly frame makes it difficult to believe he is "Bellona's bridegroom," and he's been directed to make every conspicuous choice in gesture and intonation suggested by the language -- his obvious emotions, thus being so obvious, are high in melodrama and short on subtlety. The other major characters also work hard but come up short: Elizabeth Mirachi portrays the tortured (and torturing) Lady Macbeth without much variation between the queen's molten ambition and icy dementia, Richard Ugino does a competent but mostly monochromatic Banquo, and Douglas Scott Streater (Malcolm) and Nick Brooks (Macduff) sport the required soldierly manliness but do so at such a high decibel level that at times, such as in IV, iii, when Malcolm tests Macduff's loyalty, they compete to see who can bellow the loudest. The sound design by Demetrios Bonaros is mostly illustrative (i.e., a bell rings when a bell is called for) and does little to create a world to match the production's "clinical" concept. Krista Thomas-Scott's mish-moshed costume design uses suit-jackets with cut-off sleeves to represent breastplates and Wellingtons as stand-ins for leather boots -- its slapdash look lacks a unifying through-line. (Though Thomas-Scott's dressing the three witches in swaths of Tyvek, with gauze across their eyes, marries well the weirdness of the Weird Sisters to the company's conceit of a fully lit horror-fest.) All in all, this is just another production of a Shakespeare play -- the direction seems mostly aimed at what a director friend of mine calls "crowd control," its design elements do not match and reinforce one another, and the actors' performances do not (in the words of another Shakespeare character) come "trippingly on the tongue." In other words, nothing about this production makes the familiar words and themes fresh and memorable -- and that is the real tragedy of this otherwise energetic "Macbeth." Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2009:/qreviews//2.670 2009-03-07T17:52:49Z 2009-03-07T17:54:46Z

According to the dramaturg's notes in the program, Leslie Lee composed "The Book of Lambert" some 30 years ago and over the past several years has workshopped the play extensively. But despite the evident attention that Lee has given to...

Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2009:/qreviews//2.649 2009-01-20T21:32:07Z 2009-01-20T21:37:35Z

Austin McCormick, the founder of Company XIV, has chosen to re-tell the story of how the Trojan prince Paris gained access to, and then the body of, Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus (thus kicking off the Trojan War and...

Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.626 2008-11-08T03:01:07Z 2008-11-08T03:17:02Z

"Missa Solemnis" (the title comes from Beethoven's orchestral work of the same name) is, indeed, a solemn play. Playwright Roman Feeser (who is not Mormon) focuses on the homophobia in the Mormon Church that eventually makes Henry Matis, a gay Mormon (and the "Henry" of the title, played well by Matt Huffman), take his own life, compelled by religious doubt and self-loathing. Feeser dutifully takes the audience through the conditions that led to this tragedy, placing the blame for Henry's death on an institution where devotion to an exclusively heterosexual definition of "family" dismisses, with savage denunciation, all those who do not fit that category.

Matt Huffman as Henry Stuart Matis - Photo courtesy of Graham T. Posner "Missa Solemnis" (the title comes from Beethoven's orchestral work of the same name) is, indeed, a solemn play. Playwright Roman Feeser (who is not Mormon) focuses on the homophobia in the Mormon Church that eventually makes Henry Matis, a gay Mormon (and the "Henry" of the title, played well by Matt Huffman), take his own life, compelled by religious doubt and self-loathing. Feeser dutifully takes the audience through the conditions that led to this tragedy, placing the blame for Henry's death on an institution where devotion to an exclusively heterosexual definition of "family" dismisses, with savage denunciation, all those who do not fit that category. Director Linda Nelson has done her best to extract and shape whatever dramatic tension exists in the play, but she is often stymied by the undramatic structure of the script itself, which begins, in the first scene, with Henry committing his suicide, and then gives the audience what amounts to a 90-minute PowerPoint presentation of how Henry came to his end. Several moments do stand out: Henry's relationship with Todd Elliot (Jai Catalano), a lover he meets in New York, full of tenderness and humor; Henry's discussion with Bishop Rhodes (Warren Katz), where the Mormon leader shows an unexpected sympathy for Henry's plight; and, perhaps the most affecting because the most simple and wordless (in a play overstuffed with talk), the long drawn-out keening of Henry's mother Marilyn (Gail Winar) by his graveside. Lighting (Graham Posner), set (Marisa Merrigan), sound (Justin Utley), and costume (David Thompson) serve Nelson's directorial vision adequately, though Beethoven's music sounded under-volumed whenever it was used (thus losing a chance to fill the air and audience with its power) and went missing completely at the end of the play, a point when it would seem appropriate to let the music sweep the audience up in its redemptive embrace and reinforce Henry's message of tolerance. "Missa Solemnis" sits squarely in the genre of "journalistic theatre," which uses theatrical devices to teach a story that, while compelling and laudable, is not necessarily dramatic, and whose purpose, as Feeser says in an interview, is to get people to stand up and "do something" (in this case, about homophobia), an intention which often disallows saying anything ambiguous about the motives and reasons of the characters. Henry's story can move us, as it did Feeser when he first read about it, but "The Play About Henry," as a kind of "theatre of correction," is less successful in transferring to the audience the emotional punch of the original Newsweek article that inspired Feeser to write the play. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.586 2008-08-24T02:00:23Z 2008-08-24T02:18:19Z

Paul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and...

Paul Schnabel as James Mann and Stephanie Viola as K Mann - Photo by Abigail Feldman The Riot Group, using a script by co-founder Adriano Shaplin (who also performs along with Riot Group company members Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and Drew Friedman), sets many targets in its sights in this sharply drawn, occasionally tedious 90-minute piece. The story, such as it is, follows the rise and fall of broadcast news rivals James and K. Mann, father and daughter (the "K" stands for Katherine, but she never refers to herself by that name). Their head-to-head battle for ratings supremacy is also a stand-in for the passion play of a bitter father/daughter battle, with K. accusing James of his loving her "like cancer loves cells." During K.'s premiere broadcast, terrorists attack the United States, cutting off all electrical power. Within the space of ten minutes the US declares war, then wins the war it has declared, and, as power is restored, K. beats James to the usual insipid end-of-broadcast eulogy/paean delivered by news anchors about victory and heroism. The overnight ratings declare K. the winner, and James resigns (to be replaced by his assistant Andrew). But Andrew, not content with his victory, brings down K. by exposing photographs of K. in a leather S&M mask, photographs taken by K.'s assistant Spence (who is also K.'s sex partner), who is angling for his own rise up the corporate food chain. The play ends with Andrew and Spence co-anchoring the nightly newscast that James had run for 30 years, while a chastened K. and James (now doing the weather report) work for a local TV station somewhere in America's heartland. Each has his or her own "victory at the dirt palace," the lowest kind of victory, as K. points out. Shaplin's satiric dissection of celebrity culture, the vapidity of the news media ("all news is jokes," James says at one point), and the operatics of family dysfunction are all intelligent and presented with humor and flair (thanks to Whit MacLaughlin's tight direction). Yet Shaplin also has a love of his own voice and pours out metaphor-laden word-streams that often strain too hard for significance and delay or divert the story's unfolding. And the choice to have the actors direct almost all their lines to the audience and the air (only rarely do the characters interact with each other) in essence makes the play a monologue and denies it the opportunity to build the kind of gravitational attraction among characters that creates dramatic tension. "Victory at the Dirt Palace" is cerebrally interesting and sometimes culturally provoking, but it never goes beyond its own cleverness and bombast, in the end not looking or sounding very different from the celebratized superficial culture which it aims to demolish by parody. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.584 2008-08-15T03:45:31Z 2008-08-15T03:52:42Z

Photo: Bill Connington as Quentin P., serial killer, with his favorite ice pick (photographer Tony David) What are we to make of "Zombie," a one-actor piece about Quentin P., the queer sadistic sexual-psychopathic murderer who yearned to create a zombie...

Photo: Bill Connington as Quentin P., serial killer, with his favorite ice pick (photographer Tony David) What are we to make of "Zombie," a one-actor piece about Quentin P., the queer sadistic sexual-psychopathic murderer who yearned to create a zombie who would obey him without question by performing home-made lobotomies with an icepick rammed up through his victims' eye-sockets? "Zombie" is in that genre of theatre that uses the stage for the case-study of a psychological/psychotic condition (think "Equus"), in the hope of (in this order) titillating the audience through voyeurism and, perhaps, shedding some explanatory light on the "abnormal" (i.e., people not like the audience members). But a script is not a case-study, imagination is not the same as the DSM-IV, and two-hours-with-intermission does not substitute for therapy. Inevitably the interpretive effort must always deliver less than it promises because, one, the audience is always more interested in titillation than explanation and, two, explanation can never be dramatic (think of how all those CSI shows try to tart up the lab tests with music and camera-work so that people won't switch the channel). Well, then, if by the end of "Zombie" Quentin P. is still an unsolved riddle, what about the quality of the performance itself? Again, "Zombie" delivers less than it promises. Directed by "Mamma Mia!" resident director Thomas Caruso, with set by Josh Zangen, lighting by Joel Silver, and sound by Deidre Broderick, Connington chooses to present Quentin as a sort of button-down nerd, with owl-eye-styled brown-rim glasses, slicked down combover, chinos, and a short-sleeve shirt who speaks in slow, upper-Midwest-themed accent. All this is meant to contrast with the viciousness of his anecdotes about using the trash of society as his experiments in zombie-making. Connington does well enough, though several line-flubs and Caruso's advice to play Quentin with only the slightest hint of animation drain off most of the story's vigor and danger. But the choice to adapt this as a monologue is also partly to blame for the slightly soporific quality of the production. No matter if the actor is talking to a stuffed dummy (the only "zombie" Quentin is able to create) or to the audience or to the air, the stage lacks a second center of gravity around which the dramatic action can orbit. In addition, almost all the "action" in the piece is told in retrospect, not shown in the present tense, and so the piece becomes something more for the ear than the eye. Finally, Connington just does not offer the kind of performance that turns the dialectic between the outward dweeb and the inner monster into a memorable hour upon the stage. "Zombie" unfortunately feels too much like its title. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.581 2008-08-04T15:00:54Z 2008-08-04T15:15:05Z

Photo: Steven Rattazzi as the Heistman - Photographer: Brian McDermott In "Heistman," Heistman, played by Steve Ratazzi, and his two cohorts (a man and a woman) have just taken over a bank and secured two female hostages when they...

Photo: Steven Rattazzi as the Heistman - Photographer: Brian McDermott In "Heistman," Heistman, played by Steve Ratazzi, and his two cohorts (a man and a woman) have just taken over a bank and secured two female hostages when they are surrounded by the police and commanded to give themselves up by a police officer (Matt Oberg) barking through a megaphone. However, instead of surrendering, Heistman proceeds to deliver the first third of "The Heist Man Manifesto" (the complete text of which, running for three double-sided single-spaced pages, is stuffed into the program). The Manifesto begins with Personal Happiness and ends with The Fear, which he defines as "the fear that your life is a waste"; according to Heistman, it is The Fear which drives most people to do desperate things (such as robbing banks) to make their lives have meaning. At this point, about 20 minutes into the 45-minute production, Heistman, driven by his own capital-F "Fear," is saved by the two hostages, who have somehow freed themselves from being tied up and who lead him and his two "associates" on a dance of self-peace. This is all sort of a metaphoric and mildly interesting silliness, with ideas like "heist" and "hostage" and "giving up" laden with double and triple layers of "meaning," underscored by an eclectic sound design by Marcelo Añez, choreography by Barnstone (which is excellently performed by Ratazzi and Molly Lieber, Eleanor Smith, Carolton Ward, and Barnstone herself), and Paul Douglas Olmer's and Garin Marschall's effective set and lighting. Ratazzi's performance is what gives the piece any intellectual heft that it has: by turns flippant, fear-laden, comic, and dangerous, Ratazzi turns the commonplaces of the Manifesto, which are a dull read on the page, into words with edges and possibilities. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.574 2008-07-20T21:23:01Z 2008-07-20T23:05:01Z

(L-R) Amelie Lyons, Joanne Jacobson and Lenora Champagne - Photographer: Gary Breckheimer TRACES/fades runs about 75 minutes and is Ms. Champagne's "meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history." Therein lies the challenge with this sometimes affecting...

(L-R) Amelie Lyons, Joanne Jacobson and Lenora Champagne - Photographer: Gary Breckheimer TRACES/fades runs about 75 minutes and is Ms. Champagne's "meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history." Therein lies the challenge with this sometimes affecting but often off-putting production: a mixture of themes and devices that have not been blended dramatically. The script's constant references to wars and bumbling presidents and amnesiac societies is butted up against the central story of a memory-losing Ann (Joanne Jacobson) who, packed away in a nursing home, is beloved by her granddaughter (Amelie Champagne Lyons) and only marginally attended to by her daughter (played by Ms. Champagne). Naturally, the old woman's story steals center stage because it is immediate and visceral as opposed to the more abstract commentaries on big-picture politics. The play's structure mimics this uneasy link of part-to-part, with presentational elements morphing into song-singing to prettyish tunes by Daniel Levy and Lisa Dove to some very wry and wrenching interactions among the denizens of Ann's nursing home (Mary Fogarty, Matthew Lewis, and Judith Greentree) as they spar with their well-meaning but overwhelmed care-giver Nettie (Quanda Johnson) -- all of which are individually interesting but which are also not quilted into a dramatic whole. (Not to mention the video projections by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty of purling water under ice, snowstorms, hands that write then un-write what they've just written, and so on, which are more distracting than illuminating.) The moments I found most touching were the ones ungussied by "theatrical device" and "author's message," such as when Nettie complains to Delores about how her getting-older body is thickening in the middle, and Delores responds, straight and acerbic, with "That's nothing. Just wait. Everything hurts." Truth plain and unadorned in those words, and the audience, understandably, laughed in both recognition and commiseration. Or when Nettie muses, "If we are what we remember, then who are we when we forget?" Moments like those are what makes seeing TRACES/fades worth the effort. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.572 2008-07-12T23:54:11Z 2008-07-12T23:58:29Z

It is well-nigh impossible to hear Sarah Kane's aching meditation on the cravings for love, connection, and understanding minus the static bred by her suicide several months after the piece was written. But it is important to do so in...

Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.571 2008-07-12T18:23:31Z 2008-07-12T18:24:32Z

"Do Not Do This Ever Again" is a 90-minute intermissionless journey into "a landscape of lost love and modern loneliness," though the multi-media'd journey feels so much longer because about halfway through writer Keithley and director Goyanes decided to drop...

Michael Bettencourt ]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.570 2008-07-12T18:20:21Z 2008-07-20T21:08:22Z

(L-R): Peter Schmitz as Prodo and Jan Maxwell as Galactia - Photographer Stan Barouh Howard Barker is a hard playwright to feel warm about -- his primary characters make no concession to sentiment, and all of them, to one...

(L-R): Peter Schmitz as Prodo and Jan Maxwell as Galactia - Photographer Stan Barouh Howard Barker is a hard playwright to feel warm about -- his primary characters make no concession to sentiment, and all of them, to one degree or another, are fascinating monsters, driven by a complicated choreography with power that causes pain and dislocation as they cut their way through the world. In "Scenes," Galactia, an unmatched painter with an unruly desire to tell the truth, is commissioned by the city-state of Venice to memorialize its greatest military triumph, the battle of Lepanto. In the course of covering 3000 square feet of canvas, she manages to offend everyone from the Doge on down by choosing to portray slaughter rather than triumph. But lest we take the the default liberal position of championing the artist over the state, Barker gives the state some pretty strong arguments about why we shouldn't trust artists to tell the truth, and in the end Galactia comes off both as a hero and a fool. For the most part, director Richard Romagnoli has crafted a balanced and energized production, and Jan Maxwell has created a Galactia who may be impossible to love but who demands that we pay attention -- and we do, to our delighted agitation.. Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.569 2008-07-12T18:17:01Z 2008-07-20T21:14:41Z

(L-R): James Smith as McGuiness and Malcolm Madera as Albers - Photographer Stan Barouh The ensemble work in this tale set on a troopship "somewhere in the Pacific" towards the end of World War II is very good, well-timed and...

(L-R): James Smith as McGuiness and Malcolm Madera as Albers - Photographer Stan Barouh The ensemble work in this tale set on a troopship "somewhere in the Pacific" towards the end of World War II is very good, well-timed and well-choreographed. But while Neal Bell's core desire in the play, as told in his program notes, is to show how homophobia damages not only its target but also its targeters, from captain on down to private, his good intention gets lost in the play's clunky structure and its WWII-war-movie-inflected dialogue. Director Jim Petosa also makes some ineffective choices, such as the staging of the last scene on a life-raft after the troop ship has been torpedo'd, that obscure Bell's message. In the end, I was not clear why Bell wrote this play, what question he had in mind that the play answered, since the play seems as much about the complicated friendships among men under the crush of war as it does about the crush of prejudice and proscribed desire. Michael Bettencout]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2008:/qreviews//2.460 2008-02-21T21:15:20Z 2008-02-21T21:19:34Z

Running February 16-March 2, 2008, at Theatre for the New City in NYC. This two-actor show about finding love takes place in a bar that hosts a trapeze act(!). Wendy (Cantrelle), the trapezista, looks down to find Jack the bartender...

Michael Bettencourt]]> tag:www.scene4.com,2007:/qreviews//2.376 2007-11-06T00:32:01Z 2007-11-07T05:17:43Z

Hey, you must be an "Angeleno" and I'm not. And that means that you live in a town with tons of live theater and other than the road shows, very few worth seeing. If you knew better, you would have...

Larry Marcus]]>