WE WON'T PAY, WE WON'T PAY! at Nora Theatre September 20, 2008

From L to R: Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, Scott H. Severance, Stephanie Clayman, Elise Audrey Manning. [http://www.thenora.org/]

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Dario Fo is a rare treat to see produced in a professional theatre, especially given his radical revolutionary politics in the Age of Bush. I was thrilled to see this early play of Fo's (1974) for the first time, as I used a monologue from the play's opening many years ago as a young actress. Ironically, I performed my first and only Fo play this past year, his 2005 one-woman play Peace Mom (co-written with his wife Franca Rame) about US peace activist Cindy Sheehan. That more recent play is, of course, decidely NOT a comedy, which is Fo's stock-in-trade and very much in evidence in We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay! , one of his most popular shows.

The play takes us through a whirlwind day or so with two working class couples; an older couple , Antonia and Giovanni, and their younger neighbors and friends Margherita and Luigi. Antonia drags her girlfriend into her apartment one morning to help her stash bags of groceries she, along with dozens of other down-at-the-heel women, stole from their local grocery store as a response to an endless series of inflationary price hikes. Chanting together the play's title, Antonia's euphoria is broken by the realization that her letter-of -the-law husband will kill her if he finds out. So she plots with Margherita to hide the goodies from her husband and the local police, who soon come calling to investigate. From this premise, the play moves quickly into the comedic domains of sympathetically weepy police officers, both women faking pregnancies to hide their booty and the two men eating pet food and bird seed soup to abate their hunger. Much physical comedy and hilarity ensues, with plenty of direct address to the audience, so we are made complicit in everything that happens.

This Nora Theatre production does the play great justice and features strong performances from its company of five. Stephanie Clayman and Scott Severance boast lengthy acting bios in the program, and their experience shows. Clayman's Antonia is tough-as-nails and smart as a whip, never at a loss for words or an idea. Her easy manipulation of her supposedly macho domineering husband is a hoot, as is her dragging of her friend Margherita into the chaos. Severance plays Giovanni as Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners reborn, although with even more physical comedy! For a large actor he takes an impressive number of falls and shows an endless amount of energy. I also really enjoyed Elise Audrey Manning's work as Margherita as she brought a lovely clown-like quality to the role. Margherita doesn't say a lot, but she must play along with all of Antonia's plotting and con games, and Manning plays her as the childlike innocent who wishes to help her friend but is only barely keeping up with events at hand. She's a delight to watch. The two other male actors, Antonio Ocampo-Guzman (in a number of roles) and Robert Najarian (as Luigi), also fare well here, although they are somewhat overshadowed by the other three.

Director Daniel Gidron keeps everything moving well and makes good use of the black box space in the brand-new Central Square Theatre. The set is simple, as are the costumes and props, but I found the lighting very well-done by long-time Nora designer Scott Pinkney.

When Giovanni speaks to us at the conclusion of the play, as their community moves into resistant action against joblessness, eviction and endless cycles of poverty, he challenges us with the truthful observation that "It's easy to laugh at other people's desperation", a truth that Fo has always known and mined theatrically to his own socio-political ends. However, it is hard to forget that we are a mostly white, middle-aged and middle class audience being preached to in this particular setting. The educator and activist in me wishes this show were made available to young people, high school or middle school age, as it is in them that our revolutionary hopes for the future lie. We oldsters have settled for our creature comforts and are not planning to take to the streets (Obama notwithstanding) anytime too soon. Viva la Revolucion!

FOLLIES at the Lyric Stage Company September 17, 2008

Poster for FOLLIES at Lyric Stage Company [http://lyricstage.com/]. Show runs until October 11, 2008.

Well, if there was even a shade of doubt in my mind that 78 year-old Stephen Sondheim is not a certifiable genius of the American musical, that doubt evaporated forever after seeing his 1971 show Follies at the Lyric Stage Company. I grew up on Sondheim's later shows, from Sweeney Todd (1979) on to Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987) and Passion (1994). But just last fall I saw a wonderful production of his 1970 show Company and was blown away with how great it was. And the same holds true for Follies.

The show is a loving tribute to the great ladies of the musical stage and offers wonderful roles for older women, especially in the lead roles of Sally and Phyllis, two women who, as young girls in the 1940s, were chorus girls in the Weismann Follies (with more than a nod to the Ziegfeld Follies!). They and their husbands Ben and Buddy (who courted the girls at the same time, and were themselves best friends), are re-united 30 years later in a big party to mark the next day's demolition of the rundown theatre that used to be the stage for their glory days. Mirroring this action in the present day, we see the shadows of these characters in their youth, along with the younger versions of other chorus girls, in a very clever and effective book by James Goldman. The dramatic tension that runs throughout is the unhappiness of the long-married (a common Sondheim theme) who look to find freedom in either past longings (Sally's longlost love is Phyllis' husband Ben) or future dreams (Ben and Phyllis claim to want to divorce and Buddy has a younger woman he claims loves him more than Sally). That these two couples end up back in the arms of their spouses at the end of their mutual 'follies' is a foregone conclusion. However, along the way we see each of them reveal their inner turmoil in typically Sondheim-ian deep psychological songs like "The Road You Didn't Take", "Could I Leave You?", "The Right Girl" and "Losing My Mind". Interwoven with this romantic drama are show tunes from other characters, both past and present, including the showstopper favorite "I'm Still Here".

The Artistic Director of the Lyric Stage Spiro Veloudos welcomed the audience on Wednesday night (always a class act for an AD to do so) and let us know that this was the biggest show ever produced iin the 35 year history of the company. And the theatre space is a very small one in the Hotel Clarendon! But I was consistently impressed with the levels achieved in this production, especially in the tight and effective choreography, including an almost full-cast tapdance number. The set is simple but makes maximum use of the space, the costumes work well and the 9 piece orchestra sounds fine.

Standout performances were Leigh Barrett as Sally, who found all the levels of vulnerability and sorrow in this woman who has felt she married the wrong man for so long and then finds out how wrong she has been. Barrett also has a lovely singing voice and performs "Losing My Mind" with great strength. Another standout was Maryann Zchau as Phyllis who is sharp and angry throughout, pulling her man back to her through the sheer force of her indomitable will. Her singing of "Could I Leave You?" (in which one hears the dissonant foreshadows of Sondheim's later works) is fantastic. The men do well in their roles as well, and Peter Carey proves himself an able dancer in "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues". Other strong turns come from Bobbie Steinbach in the plum role of Carlotta and Kathy St. George as the French songstress Solange. I also enjoyed much of the work in the young company, many of whom are currently in musical theatre degree programs throughout the city.

Follies has had an interesting critical history (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follies) with lots of split response. Sondheim suffered early on for being way ahead of his time, but recent reviews have come to recognize what I saw in this show...what Ben Brantley called "a landmark musical and a work of art". Amen to that.

How Shakespeare Won the West - September 14, 2008

Poster for Huntington Theatre's production of How Shakespeare Won the West [www.huntingtontheatre.org] on from September 5 - October 5, 2008

This was my second visit to Huntington Theatre's space at Boston University, a lovely old theatre with a carved Shakespearean quotation "To hold as t'were the mirror up to nature" over the proscenium arch. This quote has a cameo in the season premiere production of prolific and successful American playwright Richard Nelson's latest comedy, How Shakespeare Won the West.

The play and its production are delightful, carried off with great energy and exuberance by its large cast of 11 actors who storytell their way though the journey of a ragtag theatre troupe from New York to California in 1848. They are trying to make it to the frontier goldmining towns where, so they believe, miners are starved for culture and will throw sacks of gold dust onto the stage for a good production of the Bard. On the simple but effective wooden set (designed by Anje Ellerman), the company uses a combination of action and narration---in the style of story theatre---to introduce us to the tavern-owning and theatre-loving Calhoun family and their dream of creating a theatre company. In New York of the 1840s the plays of Shakespeare are popular, Edwin Booth is a big star (as also, apparently, are two sisters aged 9 and 11 who played scenes from Shakespeare's plays to much acclaim and we are treated to a snippet of their show!), and the Calhoun's spy an opportunity to reclaim the stage out in California. They gather together a mixed-bag of actors who are willing to make the journey and off they go.

From this point on the play becomes a theatrical variation on the classic American Dream, striking out for unknown territories with the hope of striking it rich. However, the Calhoun Theatre Company is both ill-suited and ill-prepared for the arduous journey ahead and much of the play is taken up with the many challenges they face along the way. These challenges include disease and death, winter cold, hostile natives, kidnapping and near-starvation. Not the expected ingredients of a comedy! But the sheer energy and unstoppable optimism of this misfit group keeps us with them throughout this long trip, even meeting a young and theatre-loving Abe Lincoln along the way, until they reach their destination. There, they find that the miners are an uncouth lot and are facing destitution (luckily, one of the troupe is a former prostitute who is not above returning to her trade to help out) until a benefactor appears to save the day. The play ends with a bowdlerized version of Hamlet (historically accurate and very popular in its day!) that features a happy ending where the poisons are innocuous and Ophelia was just pretending to kill herself.

Playwright Nelson clearly knows how to write a play, and director Jonothan Moscone has gathered together a highly-skilled company to perform it. Most characters take on multiple roles and Moscone keeps the action moving at a good clip throughout this 110 minute one-act play. Standout performances for me were Will LeBow and Mary Beth Fisher as Tom and Alice Calhoun, Chris Henry Coffey as the dissolute star of the troupe Hank Daley (charming but hopeless, as with many a leading man!) and Susannah Schulman as his wife Kate Denim, the too-good-to-be-true ingenue who suffers a sad fate. But honestly, there's not a weak link in this company, and they also look pretty fabulous in the array of period costumes designed by Laura Churba Kohn.

If I have any quibbles at all, they are with the play itself. I know it's a comedy, but there are plenty of contemporary and historic comedies to be found that also take on a level of pointed satire, or political provocation, that is entirely absent in Nelson's play. It seems to me, as a Canadian abroad in the US at a time where the country is literally deciding upon its future identity in the world, that Nelson opted out of using this engaging story of the pioneering and entrepreneurial American spirit to remind us of the cultural cost of keeping our eyes firmly set on the money prize of the winner-takes-all American capitalist dream. The cultural cost in the US has resulted in a wholly dominant Hollywood and TV dramatic landscape that is very profitable, yes, but also almost entirely vapid. When the troupe performs their "Americanized" version of Hamlet it is funny, yes, but also struck me as very sad, especially in comparison to the rendering of King Lear they give to an Indian chief (as his captives) that moves him to tears, beyond language, beyond cultural boundaries and differences. That's the inexhaustible power of Shakespeare, and I couldn't help leaving the theatre wondering what it would be like to see this gifted company performing Hamlet or Lear themselves.

The Discreet Charm of Monsieur Jourdain

Photo credit: Cast of A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training's The Discreet Charm of Monsieur Jourdain [http://www.amrep.org/iatt/instperf.html]

Performance date: Saturday, September 6. No remaining performances.

As a theatre educator by trade, it seems fitting that my first blog review in Boston this season is a student production. This intensive two-year acting and dramaturgy training program has a long pedigree at Harvard and a decade ago a partnership with the Moscow Art Theatre was added into the mix. These fortunate students spend a three month residency in Moscow, where this current production--an adaptation of Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman--had its first run.

I thoroughly enjoyed this 100 minute show, bursting with youthful talent and energy and reminding me yet again why Moliere is up there with Shakespeare as one of the greats of all time. This production, directed by Dmitry Troyanovsky (a graduate of the program himself), is set in swinging Paris of the 1960's and is spiced up with dance routines to French pop music and lots of exuberant physicality. Staged in the simplest way in a black box space with one moving wall, the focus is on the parade of characters, most of whom wish to both profit from and make a fool of Monsieur Jourdain. He is a wealthy businessman, a nouveau riche son of a shopkeeper, who wants nothing more than to make it into the noble class. So, he has dance, music and fitness coaches, tutors, philosophers and clothiers trooping into his home in an endless parade, ridiculing his naive pretensions and laughing behind his back as they collect their pay. His long-suffering wife, daughter Lucile and household maid Nicole conspire to marry the daughter to her true love, but this backfires as the boyfriend Cleonte is no nobleman himself. This sets up a grand climactic con by the young lover and his friend that finally may knock some small amount of sense into the pompous (if lovable and harmless) Jourdain.

The production features strong performances from the whole company, who seem to be having a pretty good time with it all and has achieved an enviable ensemble feel...no doubt through lots of training and hard work. Standouts for me were Jim Senti in the title role, bringing a sweet clownlike affability to Jourdain, Kaaron Briscoe and Shelia Carrasco as Madame Jourdain and the daughter Lucile, both of whom found the core qualities of their characters and played them with great consistency, Emily Alpren as the sexy and world-weary maid Nicole and Renzo Ampuero and Josh Stamell as Cleonte and his friend (suitor to Nicole) Covielle, whose physicality and pseudo-revolutionary bravado were spot on.

Costumes were lots of fun...plenty of bright graphic prints and miniskirts for the girls and the appropriate ridiculous ensembles for Jourdain. Things go really over the top when Jourdain believes he is marrying-off Lucile to a Turkish prince (Cleonte in disguise) and the parodying of Turkish language and culture is intentionally squirm-inducing. But the final moments of the play, when Jourdain realizes what a dupe he has been and reunites with his family, finally giving his blessing to the young lovers, are very moving. Senti looks the audience in the eyes as if to remind us of our complicity in witnessing his buffoonery, and then seems to forgive us, as well as himself.

No wonder the court of Louis XIV loved it; what fun for the aristocracy to laugh at the upstart bourgeoisie from their unassailable positions of power (until 1789, that is!)

Welcome!

Image: http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/theatreintro.html

As a brand new resident of Cambridge (across the Charles River from Boston), I plan to see as much theatre as possible, and to use this blog to record my responses. Coming from quite a small city (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) where there is only one fully professional theatre company, a university theatre and a community theatre (plus a few small theatre companies), I am looking forward to being in a larger city with a more vibrant theatre scene. I lived for 12 years in Toronto and have missed that kind of theatre culture in the decade I have lived on the west coast. There are some great-looking shows to anticipate this season, starting off very soon with Anna Deavere Smith's new show at ART. I'm also eager to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n Roll at the Huntington Theatre later this fall. I'll be posting some NYC reviews from time to time as well, when I make my way down there. So keep tuned!