Diverse responses

As an example of subjective responses to the same production, read the split comments on Charles Isherwood's review of Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room, or, The Vibrator Play.
I haven't read or seen the play, so can't judge. But based on the review and 16 (so far) comments, it's hard to tell what's going on here. I'm a Ruhl fan, so fingers crossed.
Responses seem to divide (please tell me what you think) along the lines of "It's just a one-joke sex comedy" to "No, it's that and also an examination of sexual politics and other such issues."

Seattle's a great theater town

Here's proof.
[image: news.bbc.co.uk]

video preview: *Undeneath the Lintel*

at Interplayers, Nov. 25-Dec. 12

See snippets of Reed McColm as the Librarian both in performance and in rehearsal with director Damon Abdallah (who really needs to get back on his meds, as you'll see).

AVAILABLE THURSDAY, NOV. 19:

Visit them here at youtube.com/theinlander

[ photo of book jacket from broadwayplaypubl.com ]

*In a Grove* review

remaining performances on Fri-Sat at 7:30 and Sun at 2, at SCC's Lair; see Nov. 5 post, below

The "Four Japanese Ghost Stories" of In a Grove add up to a tedious 90 minutes; I can't recommend this show. But there are a few bright spots, and the various areas of deficiency are the kinds of things that beginning actors can learn about.
This is student theater; it's a training ground; it's not yet ready for the prime time of public exposure, except for friends and family of the cast members.
But you have to appreciate the efforts of director Adam C. Sharp and his cast -- they accomplished some good things, and they have enthusiasm for the same things that theater-lovers love.
Sharp designed a simple but effective set: paper lanterns, branches, rocks, Japanese scrolls, tea lights, long skeins of fabric (simulating snow) against a black backdrop. The lighting was eerie when it needed to be. Sharp himself, up there in full view of the audience, supplied percussion, vocals and some freaky sound effects; the show's sonic presence was a real strongpoint.
Sharp directed well, bringing villagers down the aisles to surround us, planting the narrator sometimes in the audience, sometimes appearing from behind a screen or from the wing opposite where you thought she might be.
As for the acting, there were some teachable moments. (On the other hand, Kendra Meredith, who plays the narrator-figure, Obasan, was very good and expressive. Still, I gather that the cast has lots of first-time actors who can capitalize on their varied ethnic and national backgrounds to bring extensive cultural knowledge to a production like this, which is Japanese and universal at the same time.)



Don't act with your hands. Yes, a hunched-over body with pleading hands bobbing up and down does characterize your mood. For a while. Don't overdo it. Sometimes self-pity and desperation can be in the voice, the eyes. Basic stuff: Know your character's objectives in every moment. And if you're called on to portray fear, jealousy, cruelty ... then think back to the time when you yourself felt (or witnessed) genuine fear, jealousy, cruelty ... and mimick what you recall. (What does Bobo know? He's no acting instructor. But dammit, you can do better. And I just wanna hug you for being as enthusiastic about theater as you are -- it takes some guts to get up onstage in public like this. But you're in it now, and there are thousands of years of theater tradition behind you. So honor the tradition; do it proud. And whether you end up still doing plays 20 years from now or not, you will have learned self-confidence, cooperation, memorization, nuance ... stuff that will help you as an actor, Realtor or jet-fighter pilot. [Maybe Actor should be capitalized all the time, the same way they insist that Realtor needs to be. Just a random thought.])

Remember the impression your character is trying to make.
Don't laugh with nervousness onstage (unless the character you're playing is having a chuckle). And don't stand all in a line. If you're in a foursome who are mostly listening to one other character speak, walk out around campus and study people who are talking in small groups. The leg-shifting, the eyes wandering, the arms defensively crossed, the polite smiles and little self-primping gestures — study those and imitate them.

If your character is written as desperate to learn something, act like it; don't look bored or distracted.

Volume. Projection. Talk to people in the back row. 

Of course you're self-conscious onstage. But if they've put you in an unusual costume -- say, fright wig on your head and branches for hands. Don't fixate on the costume or makeup or props and call attention to them by writhing around. Make another choice: Make a choice to convey the emotions the script calls for. You're supposed to be ominous, scary, creepy. Waving arms connote "maniac." You're not a maniac; you're a scary old legendary snow-lady. What if you remained motionless, deepened your voice, and lasered-in your eyes so that they fixated on nothing but intimidating the hell out of that poor guy? The costume is just a means to an end, not the goal itself.

Clear, genuine dialogue can be more effective than flailing physical movement.
One scene presents the three Oni demons. Are they supposed to be scary, or the Three Stooges? It wasn't clear. Coble apparently wants both, which is asking a lot of any actors. You had to admire the somersaulting, growly-voiced high jinks of the three SCC actors -- but maybe less is more here, too. Maybe less movement, combined with really hitting the sarcasm vocally and playing the jokes straight (as if they were serious, not absurd) could have improved this scene, which was very difficult tonally.

My notes, I now realize, read, "Comic zombies bickering over whether to eat other zombies' brains." Is that close? Was that the goal? (Personally, I gotta say, I've never liked zombies, don't get the attraction at all. But plenty of people, especially today, er, eat 'em up. So ARE the Oni demons like zombies? If so, clarify your goal: What impression are you trying to make on the audience?

No conflict equals tedium.
Something's got to be at stake. If not, it's just chatter.

And the way that scene resolved with the daikon root? Left me scratching my head. But that's Coble's fault, not yours. Maybe daikon roots are as common as spaghetti dinners over in Japan, I don't know. My own cultural ignorance; but it sure fell flat for me and at least two other audience members (who I overheard wondering about the same thing, right at the start of intermission).

Even in children's theater, children don't want to be talked down to.

Maybe I'm missing Coble's point: the singer who has to sing for 48 hours straight? Silly. But maybe kids will giggle. It's hard to be ridiculous and scary all at the same time. At least the sarcastic asides and pop-culture references, delivered especially well by the evil landlord and his henchman, created some enjoyable humor.

Undulating bodies under flimsy veils don't look creepy. They just look silly.
There were these three young women gyrating around with wispy shawls. It was distracting. Very, very distracting.

Why did the monk have to keep singing?
She doesn't sing well. Give up and de-musicalize her lyrics into regular spoken dialogue. That way, we won't wonder all through the scene why she's being put through such torture instead of being allowed to bring out the scene's emotions.

Keep the pace up.

Clap hands, run lines at hyper-speed, whatever. But don't let the action lag. In the fourth story in particular, the comic/creepy juxtaposition would have been helped if only contrasting moods had been crashed into each other more quickly: Keep it moving, folks.  The whole get-food-from-the-scary-flesh-grinding guy sort of worked out like a Japanese trick-or-treat tale. But the joke was set up at great length, tediously, and then the smirking tone at the end seemed to trivialize the demise of the entire village (which we supposed to regard portentously throughout). So what is a playgoer supposed to think at the end? It was all tonally muddled, IMHO.

Scaring people onstage is harder than in the movies. I've been scared by plenty of movies, but seldom in the playhouse. I've been startled and momentarily creeped out by plays, but the sensation fades quickly. That's because of logistics: If the severed head doesn't pop up exactly on cue, if the ghost is visible in the wings before making an entrance, the spell is broken. It's the willing suspension of disbelief: I'm willing to believe that that woman over there is Viola and we're in some made-up country named Illyria, and if she forgets her lines or fumbles a prop, it may even add to the humor, and no harm done, because she's not trying to threaten me. But if the creepazoid monster or ominous otherworldly omen suddenly stumbles, or enters too soon or too late, or coughs, the illusion's broken, and I'm no longer scared: That's just Phil Myers over there in the werewolf suit.
Coble's script makes matters worse by aiming at both creepiness and chuckles. Tell me if this is just one of my blind spots, folks -- horror-comedy seems to be a minority but persistent genre that some people seem to enjoy -- but I feel that you just can't do both. Comedy, by and large, makes you feel superior to the people onstage; ghost stories and horrific characters are supposed to make you fear for your own safety -- acknowledging, in effect, that somebody onstage is bigger and more powerful than you. Lurch back and forth between spine-shivers and quiet smiles, as Coble's play does, and I feel whiplash -- manipulated one way, then another.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that the tonal shifts in Coble's script set awfully high standards for the SCC students. And they don't have the skills, yet, to reach them.

Sharp, who teaches film and theater at SCC, is holding the student-produced Bigfoot Film Festival on March 6 and then a multi-media production of 1984 (from May 21-30). If we believe in the value of theater as an educational tool (for the participants at first, when they're just starting, then for both the cast and crew AND their audiences, when they get more accomplished), then we should approve of what theater instructors like Sharp are doing all over the world in little out-of-the-way high schools and colleges. They keep theater alive. Glee is the Hollywoodized, mass-media pinnacle of what's going on all over the country.
So, no, the SCC acting troupe isn't yet ready to win the national championship; they're sort of playing in a flag football league right now. And it'll take months of work -- but Sharp and his crew can hope to start playing tackle, and then competing, and then winning a few, and then winning a lot. Right now, he has to keep explaining that no, he doesn't teach theater at SFCC. But wouldn't it be great to have a third high-quality community college theater program in this area, in addition to the ones already at SFCC and Coeur d'Alene's NIC?
[image: Japanese ghosts and demons in an early 19th-century print, from asianart.com]

On writing previews and reviews

I knew this was gonna happen.
Somebody anonymously posted this a couple of days ago:

It's too bad you missed reviewing a great production of "String of Pearls" at the studio theatre... I guess you were too busy compiling "tidbits" that related to you personally.

I intended to review String of Pearls. I don't know why I didn't. My workload's been heavy lately. I didn't mean any disrespect to Susan Hardie or the five actresses in her cast.
And I can see the poster's point: Bobo goes off on his lah-dee-dah theater jaunt, writes a bunch of long, manic reviews about shows that nobody around here has seen, then comes back to town and doesn't even perform the most basic services for the theater community here.

(I will try to rectify that problem, very belatedly, in a Special Theatrical Sidebar, coming soon to a blog post near you.)

But here's the deal. In my nine years at The Inlander, it's always been made clear: For plays, you can either do a PREview or a REview, not both; there's not enough interest in the community at large (i.e., among non-theatrical Muggles) to merit what would be, in effect, double coverage of a single arts event when there are so many other arts events across all the genres also clamoring for attention. (Ironically enough, the second exception to that occurs in tomorrow's issue: Both times Lion King has roared into town, I've written about it both before and after opening night.)

But that's for print. And blogs and Websites change the rules: As long as I get my work done, my boss doesn't care if I blog at epic length about what comes out of my nose when I pick it.

Space is no consideration on the Web; no word counts to hit there.

And if theater were my only beat around here, I'd pre- and review the hell out of every show in town.

But I'm also the point man (not the whole team, but it's kinda, go to Bowen for this one) on (in rough order of demands placed on me):

classical music, books, movies, sports (mostly Hoopfest and Bloomsday, but also stuff like College Hoops Preview) and jazz

(I'm even in the Food section this week, though that's rare.)

Oh, and I do holistic edits and line-edits on most of the paper each week. (There are five of us who can sign off on articles; two of those five have to read any given story before it's laid out on the page, whereupon one of us does a third read. I relinquished the arts editor position because I couldn't handle all that AND do all the scheduling and assigning of articles. I'm a writer, not a manager. Besides, I'm an old fart with a bad ticker who's facing the end of being able to do triathlons, woe is me.)

So boo-hoo for Bobo, he has to work so hard. Tough gig.

Just man up, wimpy.

But those other beats get in the way of simply getting to shows, much less doing the research on them beforehand for a preview and then gathering my thoughts about them for a review afterwards.

I read my print reviews on KPBX; we're experimenting with video previews of plays.
And I'm a narrow-focus guy who doesn't do well juggling lots of plates at once.

You get the idea.

The agreement with the Civic, both this season and last, is to PREview the downstairs, less well known plays, and REview the upstairs, better-known titles.

For String of Pearls, there was a print preview. (And I sincerely hope that my screwing up days and times did not impact attendance at that show. I feel bad about that.) Before that, we had the video preview on this blog, along with the Jean Hardie interview.

I'm doing what I can, folks.

[photo from hardcore-stress-management.com]
SPECIAL THEATRICAL SIDEBAR:

A very belated review of String of Pearls (which obviously I cannot do justice, since I saw it weeks ago):

A very wonderful, insightful production that argues for the Circle of Life in a less cartoonish, more grownup way than The Lion King does.

It's a little off-putting at first, when women stroll out and assume, confusingly, multiple identities -- some of which they're clearly not suited because of age. But you get used to it.

Very well directed and acted. Seeing it in performance, as opposed to reading it as I did (twice), made connections clearer: how this woman is related to that one, how the string of pearls ended up with her, and then with her daughter, and then inside a fish, and so on.

Director Susan Hardie achieved a magical effect at the end of the divorced-and-skinny-dipping-women sequence, with three actresses bathed in light, their arms extended upward toward some spiritual source.

All five actresses were always interesting and sometimes riveting to watch. I particularly welcomed the versatility of Sarah Denison: from vapid and drugged-out art student to toddler brat; from the Italian-American working class woman, snapping her gum with great cultural awareness and buried beneath cascades of greasy pin-curls to the obese gay gravedigger.

Katie Carey as a resentful housewife, gnashing her teeth as her career passes her by; Kate Vita as a bitchy resentful daughter. Ela (Jean Hardie) who doesn't want to get involved, gets involved.

Playwright Michele Lowe creates surprises in how the pearls get passed around, and how (by implication and metaphor), the magic of vitality touches our lives at unexpected moments.

One of my favorite moments (out of several) involved an encounter between Tami Rotchford (as the downtrodden undertaker's assistant who has labored for years in taking care of her incapacitated mother) and Kate Vita (as a rich woman's daughter, determined to carry out her resentment against Mom even into the grave): Lowe teaches us here not to trust appearances. The daughter who had been faithful judged herself unworthy; the daughter who had hated her mother gets to be regarded, unknowingly, as a woman who must have really loved her mother.

Rotchford stayed within herself; Vita made her resentment clear; neither went to extremes of over-acting, and the moment was all the more powerful for it.

There are ironies and surprises like that all through String of Pearls, and Susan Hardie's production embodied them movingly.

What theater might learn from *Call of Duty*

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million copies and did more than $300 million in business on its opening day; people lined up at midnight.
And who says books or movies or music are the dominant art form of our time? (Theater's not even in the conversation.) Videogames, quite arguably, are.
But the question is: How could theater tap into advantages of videogaming? Yes, gaming is predominately (though not exclusively) for young men and violent.
But interactivity creates an opportunity. Sitting in a theater (despite all the talk of energy flow between actors and audience) is essentially a passive experience for spectators.

Not to harp on one of my favorite points, but site-specific theater (especially with some violent acts thrown in, and perhaps decision-junctures or scene-switches that create the illusion of spectators choosing their own focuses or paths) could lure in younger viewers accustomed to concerts and games in which they too are the performers.
What I'm saying: a local theater doing site-specific theater would create buzz and expand its customer base past just the middle-aged-to-elderly crowd (while still including them, too). Examples: a Victorian murder mystery in one of our local B and B's, either in Spokane or CdA. Or, for edgier fare, The Container, which takes place entirely, for actors and playgoers both, inside a ... you guessed it. (To which a local railyard or truck depot might provide access.)

[images from mywii.com.au and

And visit thecontainerplay.blogspot.com.

(image from import-export-secrets.com)
For a review of Clare Bayley's play (Edinburgh Fringe, August 2007; Young Vic, July 2009; and at digitaltheatre.com), go here.

*A Tuna Christmas* photos

at Spokane Civic Theater, Nov. 20-Dec. 19

directed by William Marlowe

starring Dan Anderson and Damon Mentzer

Death of escapist rimshot comedies?

A revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs closed on Nov. 1 after less than a week on Broadway.
As Patrick Healy explains in the NYT, that may be down to the lack of stars, or poor marketing, or people just not wanting to hear about the Great Depression when they're still struggling with the Great Recession.

(Digression on a pet peeve: "Times are tough. Nobody wants to go to the theater for something depressing." And when exactly was this mythical era when people were so flush, so content, so spiritually uplifted and joyous that of course they'd be happy to run out and catch a Greek tragedy tonight? Never. Exactly. Which means
After a demanding day at work, I frankly find movies, not plays, a more dependable source of escape. But they don't have to be comedic movies — a good weepie, a drama, effectively filmed, and I'm completely drawn in for two hours. I wake up from my cinematic dream and don't know where I am, momentarily. I forget about my troubles. But Neil Simon-style ha-ha one-liners are certainly not the only way that I can escape. And that goes for romantic comedies, too (the best of which, I treasure; but it's not a genre that I'll leap at instead of a movie such as, for example, the likely very depressing upcoming film version of The Road). (End of digression; back to the Simon play closing early.) (Photo is of Neil Simon in 2006; from contactmusic.com)

Healy recounts all the recent comedies that have an edge, a dark side. What with terrorism, the recession, climate change, crazed men with guns — people want that ... they want their comedies to acknowledge their fears. Neil Simon doesn't have much of that. Simon's plays are stuck in the Borscht Belt, ta-da-boom rhythms of slender plots with cardboard characters who deliver very funny lines that, at their best, get us laughing for awhile. But you leave the theater, retell a couple of the best jokes, and you're stuck back in the real world/not Simon world that was depressing you before you walked in. A stopgap measure, not a panacea.

When Bobo saw Barefoot in the Park at the Civic a couple of seasons back, he was surprised at how stale the comic techniques seemed. Simon was all the rage, and for many years. And I had good memories of the Jane Fonda/Robert Redford movie.

But to stare down betrayal, disease, the ravages of war, personal failure, addictions — real problems — and still be able to twist them in absurd, counter-intuitive, actually funny ways ... that's where comedy is headed (cf. NBC's Thursday night comedy block and its sensibilities). And that leaves Neil Simon as a relic.

Albee as tyrant

Edward Albee wants his plays performed the way he envisioned them; Samuel Beckett did the same.
Is that so wrong?
Or is the essence of theater so collaborative that insisting on to-the-letter productions demeans innovative directors?
What seemed outrageous and scandalous and more suited to the middle-aged in 1962 (when Who’s Afraid premiered) might well have more impact today if performed as even more vindictive and biting — and with younger, more energetic actors — today. That’s part of how theater evolves, stays relevant, and avoids being mere museum theater.
Because he’s a theater giant and because he's a fellow adopted person (who's willing to explore his neuroses on that topic), I admire Albee. But he’s wrong on this issue.
[photo of Edward Albee from billpullman.org]

*Underneath the Lintel* at Interplayers

Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger
Directed by Damon Abdallah
Starring Reed McColm as the Dutch Librarian
at Interplayers, Nov. 25-Dec. 12
Underneath the Lintel premiered in L.A. and New York in 2001
Berger is presently co-writing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with Julie Taymor — a musical with music by Bono and the Edge that may or may not open on Broadway in February, or April, or ...
[Tammy Marshall photos for The Inlander]

*Take Me Out* review

Only one performance remains (Friday the 13th at 10 pm) and rumor suggests that Gonzaga's Magnuson Theater will be packed. (Donations requested.)
Kevin Connell's more-than-just-semi-staged readers theater presentation is good enough that you wish these nine guys (yes, nine, in a baseball play) could take a few more weeks to rehearse and mount a full production.
Richard Greenberg's play takes on such important, resonant topics -- race, gender, sexuality, class, wealth, non-communication, the National Pastime -- that it deserves to be heard and studied and discussed. Connell stages it effectively, with game sequences in slo-mo simulation, and a shrine to baseball shining up front, and everybody wearing Empires uniforms with their names on the back, and hunks drawing gasps as they stripped to their waists for simulated shower scenes.
Yeah, even if you're not listening all that closely, it's a crowd-pleaser.
Let's start with possible improvements. Diction has to improve by tomorrow night: It's been awhile since I've heard so many dropped final consonants. (The A/C and some over-loud music intro's drown out some bits of dialogue, which is too bad, because Greenberg writes witty repartee.) Projection and volume can be a concern with nearly every character. Laugh lines and significant lines were stepped on in half a dozen places: The cast needs to let the emotional hammer (or tickle of laughter) register with hearers before actors start rushing into the next line.
But these are small flaws, fixable if only this could go on to a full production.
It's remarkable how much of this play the cast has already memorized -- given all the stage business that Connell has engineered, scripts just have to be discarded momentarily.

Everyone will want to hear about the star (played here by a real-life star). Well, Darren Lemming's name is ironic -- Lemming is no follower -- and Steven Gray mostly lives up to the role's demands. He could one-hand his script instead of clutching it with both hands for dear life in some sequences, but he's got the self-assured, lazy coolness of a standout athlete who knows that he's a standout. (Just like Darren; just like Gray himself.) Gray's natural smirk (all this is a joke, right? he's just goofin' on ya) serves him very well for most of the 80 minutes, when Darren IS amused by the all the gay men fawning over him, the rookie who, he says, "am in awe of you." But in the later, darker, more disturbing episodes, Gray's smirk did him a disservice -- Darren's more somber by then. Still, watching Gray act is like watching what college SHOULD be all about: jocks demonstrating that there's more to them than jockdom, that the arts matter too. Gray's engaging, funny, narcissistic, violent, sobered. You won't come across many life-imitates-art opportunities like this performance.
The cast was solid. Bing Blalock, for example, brought the uncomprehending hillbilly rage that's required in the show's bigoted John Rocker character. But the most exciting find in this production is freshman Andrew Garcia in the gay accountant role of Mason Marzac: gangly, fey, bubbling over with baseball mania, star-struck, drunk, ranging all over the stage even as you sensed that his character just wanted to crawl up inside himself and stay there.

Bobo directed this show once at the Civic, also as readers theater, and I gotta say ... in nearly every respect, this show's better. A tip of the baseball cap to "bat boy" Kevin Connell and his cast and crew -- and a wave to everybody who's thinking of rounding third and charging into Magnuson tomorrow night. Come on home and get taken out of yourself. Take Me Out offered a consistently engrossing 80 minutes.

Postscript: Connell announced in his curtain speech, among other upcoming Gonzaga productions, that the next readers theater project there, in February, will be a semi-staged version of To Kill a Mockingbird, in conjunction with The Big Read (the NEA-sponsored national program which encourages entire cities to focus on a single American classic for a month) and that late March will bring "Greek Week" (historians and others illuminating the customs of 2,500 years ago in conjunction with Connell's own production of Aristophanes' sex-strike-and-giant-phalluses comedy, Lysistrata.

[photo: playwright Richard Greenberg; from broadwayworld.com]

belated review of *Sweeney Todd* at U-Hi

[photo: timburtoncollective.com]
It was great on Saturday night to catch the closing performance of director Briane Green's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at University High School -- full house, lots of folks from the Civic both in the crowd and involved in the show.
The buzz was that this was an exceptionally good high school show -- and the buzz proved to be correct. Technical elements were outstanding and the leads' voices and acting were solid. Briane Green (due in December -- congratulations!) has directed and choreographed with inventiveness.
Carolyn Jess sounded ominous chords on the keyboard at the outset, and Russ Seaton served as an energetic musical director. Dan Heggem (before showtime, mischievous, apologetic, lollipop-sucking) designed the dramatic lighting, Briane's husband George did the set. (Let's take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate people like these, who toil night after night at all kinds of shows, each making his or her talented contributions to local theater. Seriously. These are folks who sacrifice time (away from loved one) and money (they could be doing something else to bring in more income, God knows) and yet they keep on working at stuff that they love. That's not time wasted -- that's a life well lived. Bravo to all. Without artists like you, we wouldn't have a local theater scene.)
More on George Green's set design: Angular 2-by-4's descend from the ceiling. A practical and elaborate shop for Mrs. Loveit, with baking implements hung out front, rickety stairs on the side leading up to Sweeney's abbatoir up top: no walls, but a barber chair-with-death-slide that brought creeped-out-then-amused reactions from onlookers. When a two-story set piece swings out into view with a knife-wielding maniac up on top (or the damsel in distress, Johanna, rolls out, singing, on top of industrial scaffolding, whirling around her lover Anthony as they share a duet, it not only makes for effective and quick scene openings and exits, but it also creates a dizzying sense of visual variety.
Jordan Taylor's Sweeney had a commanding presence, both vocally and physically.
For "Pirellis' Miracle Elixir," he adopted far too casual body language -- I would have preferred remote, motionless, creepier -- but that's a minor quibble.
Kylene Peden (Mrs. Loveit) has mastered the art of subtly augmenting lyrics with gestures that reinforce their meaning. In "A Little Priest" and "By the Sea" in particular, she helped the narrative along by using her entire body while avoiding grandiose, melodramatic mannerisms. Sassy, practical, lower-class and conniving, she was a likeable Mrs. Loveit, an offhanded accomplice to butchery with a wicked sense of humor. Well done.
Right from "There's No Place Like London" and on through "Johanna" and its reprises, you could tell that Ross Mumford had an expressive voice as Anthony. Maybe it was the high-waisted sailor's trousers that he had on, but Mumford adopted a forward-leaning, slender eagerness in his posture that suited Anthony's love-yearning very well.
I would definitely pay to see Taylor, Peden and Mumford again, and I hope to see them again on local stages.
Most of the other roles were fulfilled capably -- of course there was some drop-off in the ensemble, and the Johanna was far too operatic and diction-bobbled for my taste** -- such that the thought "this is really good for a high school show" blended over into "this is just a really good show."
In the light of (unsuccessful) challenges to "controversial" high school shows in Las Vegas recently, it's great that U-Hi has encouraged a Sondheim show like this one (even if all the blood was edited out. Silly, if you think of it -- turn on any popular police procedural on network TV, to cite any one of numerous examples, and you'll see plenty of blood and guts.) ...
In fact, there is a serious argument to be made to high school administrators that excising the blood was a LESS moral move than leaving it in: Serial murders kept spotless only perpetuate the comic-book and summer-movie FANTASY that offing somebody doesn't really involve harm. It's like the Bush administration denying any photos of coffins returning from Iraq. It's like movie violence in which the guy gets shot but there's scarcely any blood. Ask anybody who's actually seen a victim of violence -- there's plenty of it. When are people gonna learn that images of violence (when not allowed to become addictive, and when discussed probingly by parents, friends, teachers) are actually a means of helping small children, teens and adults deal with our fears (of muggings, terrorism, war)?

But the CV district, still, deserves kudos. And so do Green and her cast. I'm glad I added another Sweeney to my collection. 
** Note to Breanna Duffy: In the his first college show -- and in a very positive review of Shakespeare's The Tempest — Bobo was singled out as the worst part of the production. Playing a young lover was beyond my talent, it seems. (One guy's opinion. I bounced back, lived, resolved to do otherwise in other shows.)

Spokane-area auditions and performances

Arron Craft of Spokane Valley has started a Website for announcing upcoming auditions and performances in our area.
You can visit Craft's site here and write him at
am.craft@live.com
[photo by Joe Jacoby of NIC's theater dept.: Tim Rarick's Moira's Crossing at NIC]

*The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* at EWU

[Maggie Smith in the 1969 film; from ferdyonfilms.com]

Nov. 13-21; directed by Sara Goff
at the University Theater (on Washington St. on the EWU campus in Cheney)
adapted by Jay Presson Allen in 1966 from the 1961 novel by Muriel Spark

Fridays-Saturdays, Nov. 13-14 and Nov. 20-21, at 7:30 pm; Sunday, Nov. 15, at 2 pm; and Thursday, Nov. 19, at 5 pm
Tickets: $5; free, EWU students
Call 359-2341 or 359-2459

In 1930s Edinburgh, at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, students (ages 10-16) follow with fascination the outspoken, assertive, flawed Miss Brodie. But one of the girls will betray her.
Vanessa Redgrave won an Evening Standard Best Actress Award in London for the role; Zoe Caldwell, a Tony; and Maggie Smith, an Oscar (for her performance in the 1969 film).


[Muriel Spark in the '50s; from London's The Guardian]

From an e-mail exchange with director Sara Goff, an assistant professor in Eastern's Theater and Film Dept.:

Bobo: How did you solve the problem of 20-year-old students appearing too old for middle-school age girls (ages 10-18 in the novel) and too young to resemble a Maggie Smith-in-the-movie kind of woman?
Sara Goff:  The age of the characters is hard to translate to an audience in a college production — not only the age difference between the students and the teachers but also in the girls themselves. They play 10-year-olds in Act I, 14-year-olds in Act II, and 16-year-olds in Act III. But I think if the acting is good the play will work. So I focus on what I can do something about — making the dramatic action believable. 

I also worked closely with our costume designer, Jessica Ray, to deal with some of these issues. As the girls age, their silhouettes become more and more defined — also, hair and makeup helps. But again, I really believe audiences forgive a great deal as long as the acting is good, and I think the performers are meeting this challenge.

Why'd you choose this play? (Because it has a large cast, lots of women, good moral ambiguity, and deals with issues close to the experience of adolescents?)
First, I select plays that move me, plays that excite me. I am seduced by Brodie and my heart bleeds for Sandy. The play is provocative and sexy and ripe with conflict. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie fires my imagination. In addition, it's an actor's play.
Second, I was committed to doing a large-cast female show. I have a cast of 14 women and four men.

What scene or design element is most distinctive?
I was really inspired by beauty and history of Edinburgh, and Brodie is obsessed with art and anything Italian, so I wanted to highlight those things in the design. Don [McLaughlin, EWU's technical director] constructed a towering arch with columns — that’s my favorite design element. It has all kinds of sculptures carved into it — it’s beautiful.

Why not just rent the DVD?
I’m a soldier of the theater. For me, there is no comparison. If I saw a woman being painted in the nude in a movie, I wouldn’t stir; and yet, if I saw the exact same woman being painted two feet in front of me on the stage, I would be on the edge of my seat.

Theater is about community and immediacy. I had seen Frankie and Johnny and String of Pearls at other theaters, and yet I saw them again. I’m really upset that I missed Doubt, even though I saw Cherry Jones play Sister Aloysius. There aren’t any surprises when I watch a film adaptation of a play. But I never know what I’m going to get when I go to the theater, even if I’ve seen the play several times. It’s dangerous, and I love that.

Brian Doig on the state of Lake City Playhouse

We got trouble, right here in Lake City. With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for ...
Predicament. Because a predicament is what Lake City Playhouse is in.
"We were $40,000 in the hole when I started," says Brian Doig, who's in his fourth year as artistic director of Coeur d'Alene's community theater.
The deficit climbed to $80 and now $100K. But Doig remains guardedly optimistic, and for a number of reasons: the deficit is leveling out, audiences are growing, profitable musicals are on the way, and the recession isn't likely to get any worse for the financial-sector sponsors that LCP had been depending on in recent seasons.
Average audiences have climbed from 45 to 105 (and even higher, up to around 125, for musicals) in a converted-church of a theater that holds 170.
This year's Christmas show, The Little Princess, "almost sold out when we did it four years ago," says Doig. "And [director] Laura Little is as tireless in her promotional efforts as she is a talented director. It's a wonderful Christmas musical, and we're going to have Kent Kimball [Capt. von Trapp at the Civic two years ago] as the father.
They were selling tissues in the lobby the first time we did it, and I thought, 'Yeah, right....' But dude, you watch this show, you need the tissues."
Doig is philosophical about his theater's outlook. "As bad as things are, people are working hard. We are losing less. Last year, we lost five sponsors, who'd [sponsor] a night of a show for $1,500. But all our sponsors are investment firms, and they all got hit. If we just had those five, we would have made money last year for the first time in 10 years."
Tickets sales only cover about 60 percent to 70 percent of the theater's expenses.

But a guy can dream: Doig envisions, in the long term, the possibility of Lake City finding a location closer to the Sherman Avenue corridor (maybe somewhere around Fourth).
"It may seem dark and dim," Doig says, "but a lot of people are working really hard. And it's starting to respond -- we just need continued support."
"Frankly, for a few years, the product was inconsistent. But we're always trying to be better. At the same time, part of our mission is that we are a community theater -- and that means that we will have actors, sometimes, who are onstage for the first time."
And in an encouraging sign of cooperation among theater-lovers, says Doig, "we're starting to see more people from across the border involved" -- meaning that some prominent names associated with Spokane Civic Theater have offered to help Doig organize a fund-raiser sometime soon for LCP.
"People don't want to see another theater go down," Doig says.
"Right now, we're just focused on getting through this next season, with an eye on making it to our 50th. We're working hard to make sure that our 50th season isn't our last."

*Dracula* continues through Sunday

at Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden St., Coeur d'Alene

Tonight through Saturday at 7:30 pm; closes on Sunday, Nov. 8, at 2 pm

Tickets: $16; $13, students and seniors

This is Steven Dietz's 1996 adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, faithful to the plot and directed here by Rebecca McNeill. Chris Schwartz plays Van Helsing and Dave Rideout stars as the blood-sucker.

Call (208) 667-1323.

[ logo: from a Fall 2005 production at Northeastern Illinois Univ. -- "Your fear hemorrhages deliciously within you." ]

*In a Grove* at SCC, Nov. 13-22

In a Grove: Four Japanese Ghost Stories, by Eric Coble

directed by SCC theater and film arts instructor Adam C. Sharp

Fridays-Saturdays, Nov. 13-14 and Nov. 20-21, at 7:30 pm

and Sundays, Nov. 15 and Nov. 22, at 2 pm

Spokane Community College, Lair Auditorium, Bldg. 6

Mission Ave. and Greene St.

"A hundred years, four stories, one village shrouded in mystery -- a play for the whole family"

Obosan is our guide and narrator. Other characters include Keizuke, who must keep a secret; the Oni demons, who may have something to fear from humans; Uta the singing monk; and Hyroku, the famished and desperate outsider.

Tickets: $5; $3, students and seniors; free, children

Call 533-7387

[ photo: Eric Coble, from doollee.com]

Coble, born in Scotland, went to Fort Lewis College and to Ohio University. Since 1994, he has written more than three dozen plays. In a Grove, from 1996, is one of his earliest. His Natural Selection was produced at Louisville's Humana Festival in 2005.

audition for *Leader of the Pack*

on Monday-Tuesday, Nov. 9-10, at 6:30 pm

Harding Family Center, 411 N. 15th St., Coeur d'Alene

Callbacks on Nov. 11-12

Bring resume, photo and list of conflicts; be prepared to sing

Needed: four men; 10 women; extras

director: Marina Kalani

For the Lake City Playhouse production, Jan. 14-31

Leader of the Pack surveys the life and ('60s) times of Ellie Greenwich (who died on Aug. 26 at the age of 68 — the 1984 off-Broadway jukebox musical follows Ellie's life in Brooklyn and Queens, with characters based on Phil Spector and on Ellie's husband and songwriting partner, Jeff Barry)

Songs include the title tune, "Chapel of Love," "Da Do Ron Ron," "Be My Baby," "Hanky Panky," "Do Wah Diddy," and "And Then He Kissed Me."

[photo: from spectropop.com]

Short plays at Auntie's, Nov. 14

Eight short plays by Sandra Hosking and Nick Stokes

in an evening called "Hit & Run II"
on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 2 pm
at Auntie's Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave.
E-mail debutpromotions@cs.com or call 838-0206.

Nick Stokes is a Tacoma playwright. Sandy Hosking is co-playwright in residence at Spokane Civic Theatre; she has an MFA from EWU, is editor of Inland NW Homes & Lifestyles magazine, and has had her plays produced all over the U.S. and Canada.

In Stokes' two plays, sisters lie to each other and a couple relaxes at the beach.

In Hosking's six plays, an atheist seeks converts, Vikings have to downsize, a former couple's reunion is bittersweet, and a man must pay a ridiculous tax (among much else).

In addition, Hosking's 7-year-old son will recite a poem entitled "My Bug."

Actors at this staged reading will include Tony and Maria Caprile, Penny Lucas, Will Lund, Emily Hiller, Nina Kelly and Molly Parish. 

[photo: Nick Stokes, from artisttrust.org;

also from digital.library.upenn.edu -- "The Landing of the Vikings," from a 1917 book by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall called This County of Ours: The Story of the United States]

*Dearly Departed* at SFCC, Nov. 12-22

In this "redneck comedy" by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones, everybody in a Southern family starts bickering after an unexpected death.
Performances on Thursdays-Saturdays, Nov. 12-14 and Nov. 19-21, at 7:30 pm
and on Sundays, Nov. 15 and Nov. 22, at 2 pm
(canned food collected at the Nov. 15 performance)
SFCC, 3410 W. Fort George Wright Dr., Communications Bldg,, Bldg. 5, Spartan Theatre
with Daniel Varavin, Rushelle Provoncha, David Honeycutt, Katherine Kruse, Tony Morales, Merrin Field, Erin Schultz, Greg Collinge, Jamie Smith and Geoff Lange
directed by Sara Edlin-Marlowe
Donations requested (suggested donation: $8)
Visit the Spokane Falls Community College Theater program here
or call 533-3222.

[photo: from Psychology Today]

audition for *Humbug*

In John Wooten's Christmas Carol comedy, Eleanor Scrooge is a power-hungry Wall Street executive with an aversion to Yuletide fun.
Director Theresa Kappus will be seeking eight men and six women in cold-reading auditions 

for an Ignite! readers theater production on
Thursday, Nov. 12, at 7 pm
at the Blue Door Theater, 815 W. Garland Ave.
Performances: Friday, Dec. 11, and Sunday, Dec. 13
Visit ignitetheate.org or call 993-6540.
[ photo: John Wooten, producing a.d. at Premiere Stages, housed at New Jersey's Kean University; visit them here ]

review of "*Chess,* in concert"

review of "Chess, in concert"
at Spokane Civic Theatre
Oct. 30-31, 2009
directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson



I'm grateful to Yvonne Johnson and the Civic for delivering a concert-style production of a seldom-performed musical, and to all the singers and musicians and crew members who volunteered their time to make it happen. But Chess is only a partial success.

With lyrics by Tim Rice, a book by playwright Richard Nelson, and music by the ABBA guys, Chess has a decent pedigree.

There were problems with dynamics: In too many numbers, it was the singers vs. the orchestra (especially the horns and guitar) -- and the singers didn't win. The early, establishing numbers like "Freddie's Entrance" and "Press Conference" were almost disastrous in just being undifferentiated sonic onslaughts -- we weren't getting the information we needed to get situated. (Perhaps putting 13 musicians onstage instead of in the pit contributed to the problem? So did some mic failures early on -- but the latter half of the first act avoided that problem, largely by concentrating on simple piano accompaniment for ballads and more comprehendable lyrics.) Early in Act One, particularly, the passages of dialogue came as a relief: At last, quieter lines that we can understand.

The score is a mix of prosaic and forgettable songs with several highlights.
Too many songs in Chess are expository, like the opening "Story of Chess" and songs like "Merchandisers" and "Diplomats," which aim to inform more than to inspire. Fairly often in this show, people break out into song not because they're feeling any deep emotion, but because Nelson and Rice need to inform us some more about some detail of their plot.
It's a plot that, especially in the second act, starts to resemble a soap opera draped around a story of Cold War intrigue so as to personalize big forces that we might be too imperceptive to grasp. (Hence the CIA/KGB faceoff gets entangled in the more graspable love triangle of a woman torn between two grandmasters.)
Some of the highlights clustered in the middle of Act One: "Quartet" featured Molokov (Henry McNulty), the Arbiter (Tim Campbell), Florence (Andrea Dawson) and Anatoly (Jordan Gookin) singing precisely and in counterpoint, with the argument over chess rules raging but each voice distinct and powerful. "You Want To Lose Your Only Friend?" -- a duet for Robby French as Freddy, the brash American/Bobby Fischer figure, and the wonderful Andrea Dawson as Florence, the woman who gets caught in an international grandmaster sandwich -- was powerfully sung, with its "1956 and Budapest is falling" refrain taking us back to the wonderful opening image of a little girl, fascinated with chess pieces. And French rapped out the lyrics to "One Night in Bangkok," celebrating the lavish nightlife that Johnson's staging (slide show of international locales, a collection of flags with stars and stripes pitted against hammer and sickle) helped emphasize.
But there's more to this musical than just its one hit song."Terrace Duet" immediately follows, with Dawson and Gookin, in the course of just one tune, making clear why their characters mistrust each other but still start to fall, almost unwillingly, into love.
After Freddie has been pushed aside and lost the girl, French sits at the front of the stage for the self-pitying "Taste of Pity" -- recalling his moving sadness as Jesus in the Civic's Godspell last season, but in the service here of another song that tells rather than shows. Dawson finishes Act One impressively with "nobody on nobody's side," and then Gookin, as Anatoly, stands and delivers the "Anthem" to self-loyalty over patriotism: "My land's only borders lie around my heart." He's going to defect, and damn the consequences.



Act Two is about the consequences. A weakness in the book is bringing in Svetlana, Anatoly's estranged Russian wife. Emily Bayne sings expressively, but we've barely heard her name and suddenly, in three successive songs, we're supposed to care about the inner turmoil of her heart.
But those manipulations are more than made up for (after all, Florence and Anatoly will turn out to have been terribly manipulated by their governments) by Dawson's delivery of "Heaven Help My Heart" (praying in a church, troubled by what it will mean to fall for Anatoly). It's almost impossible to praise Dawson's talent too much; she's that good.
But soon after you recover after feeling exhilarated by Dawson's voice, the book falls into the trap of analogizing everthing to chess moves: "Don't we all make foolish moves?" and "It's your move now," and other facile chess comparisons, and we are supposed to Nod Knowingly at the Weighty Significance.
Gookin and Dawson share a lovely duet, the reprise of "You and I" (marred by Rice's habit of stepping in the lyrics on obvious rhymes), and we arrive at the rather unlikely denouement.

Bobo remembers Jordan Gookin as a gifted but still young comic actor who skilfully spoofed up a lot of comedies at Lake City Playhouse several years ago. He went to Lake Arrowhead (I think) in California and now has returned -- more mature, singing and acting well, glowering as the disaffected Russian and playing a lead dramatic role effectively. Welcome back, Jordan.

Henry McNulty, as the KGB agent who acts as the Russian chess player's "second" or consultant, conveyed Solzhenitsyn dignity in a manner that commanded respect.

All three principals -- French, Dawson, Gookin -- were impressive. I just wanted to hear them in the service of better (or at least more consistently compelling) material.
I wanted to like Chess more, I really did. I enjoy and dabble at chess; I like political intrigue; I remember Fischer vs. Spassky and later, glasnost and Gorbachev and all of it. I even like musicals with sad but meaningful endings, like this one. And this performance of Nelson's Broadway version (which over-talks a lot of plot points) left me wishing that Americans might be able to hear Trevor Nunn's 1986 London version (which has different locales, different plot details and a very different song list).
But a lot of it was over-loud wailing-screaming rock opera that was kind of like melodrama ... except that they were playing for high political stakes ... except that it's really just a love triangle thrown not very plausibly into the middle of an international power struggle ... except that there were several lovely songs performed by all three principals, especially Dawson as Florence ... except that many of the songs are neither hummable or memorable ... except that this show's goals are laudable ... except that it doesn't attain its goals.
A musical like Chess can leave a guy feeling seriously ambivalent.

One performance remains at the Civic: Halloween night from 7:30-9:45 pm. (You can still party afterwards.)

correction: *String of Pearls* times

Bobo's print preview in the Oct. 29 Inlander got it wrong.

Sorry. 

Actual remaining performances:

Thursdays -- Nov. 5 and Nov. 12 -- at 7:30 pm

Fridays -- Oct. 30, Nov. 6 and Nov. 13 -- at 7:30 pm

Saturdays -- Oct. 31, Nov. 7 and Nov. 14 -- at 7:30 pm

Sundays -- Nov. 1, Nov. 8 and Nov. 15 -- at 2 pm

(There are no Saturday matinees.)

review of "Pride and Prejudice*

[portrait of Jane Austen from english.upenn.edu]

The best things about Gonzaga's production of Pride and Prejudice (continuing tonight at 7:30 pm and on Sunday at 2 pm) are the stage adaptation of the novel by Marcus Goodwin (which he himself directed at Seattle's Book-It Rep Theater nine years ago) and the direction of Brian C. Russo, in keeping the traffic of so many Regency dandies and high-waisted gowns flowing.
The opening image is impressive: all five Bennet girls striding confidently right at us and sharing the famous opening line about "a single man in possession of a good fortune": At a stroke, the aggressive/precarious/desperate situation of the unmarried daughters is established.
There is much moving-about of furniture and clambering into and out of carriages, but Goodwin and Russo have managed to mingle scenes both crowded and intimate in a mostly fast-moving way. Several first-act scene transitions, however, lagged, slowing the pace; entrances should start before exits are fully completed.
The standouts in the cast are Brigid Carey -- showing range in dual roles, from the hands-thrown-up-and-shrieking society-gossip hysteria of Mrs. Bennet to the remote hauteur of Lady Catherine DeBourgh -- and Jason Meade as Mr. Darcy -- handsome and aloof at first, but gradually making the transition to a man willing to explain himself and show his vulnerabilities.
I'm no Austen expert, but it didn't appear that any major chunks had fallen out of Goodwin's stage version. Which is both a strength and a weakness. Somehow he encapsulates an entire novel in about 2:20 of running time (with intermission), and the pace has almost cinematic quickness. But no one reads P&P all at one go -- and being subjected to a crash course of country strolls and elaborate missives and squealing excitement and hands excitedly clasped in anticipation of the next gentleman caller ... well, I love Austen, but her talent is for the dry narrative observation (not easily included in a theatricalized version, though Goodwin includes several, announced presentationally by the actors). Austen's narrator's voice, of course -- even with the adapter working hard to preserve it -- is going to fall out of any stage version.

Russo shared with me that, when asked about the fall production, women in particular would repeatedly volunteer their personal connection with Austen's novel. And it's true: Elizabeth Bennet (played here by Millie Duchow, straining too much vocally but good at being feisty and self-assertive, as she was with in the title role of Shrew this summer) has to face familiar obstacles: overcoming her own misperceptions; fighting the restrictions of class and gender prejudice; fending off acquaintances who are snooty, superficial and stupid; enduring the insufferable self-regard of that damnably handsome (and rich!) Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth, in other words, provides a template for women's self-determination in a world with rules (all that curtseying and formal dancing and yes-Mum propriety).
Michael Barfield's unctuous Mr. Collins (the nerdy clergyman with no social skills and elevated self-image) was subtly comic: slight stumbles, twitchy mouth, out-of-step awkwardness, a wonderful mixture of ineptitude and self-confidence -- an awkward bear cub scampering among all the ladies with their pretty dresses.
John Hofland's set design sketched in Regency elegance with five large gilt frames depicting a mansion's exterior, the corner of a grand ballroom, and so on. With some inlaid designs surrounding a central wooden floor, and with Summer Berry's gowns and waistcoats depicting the formal wear of Austen's world, we got a strong sense of how constrained these people were by etiquette and propriety.
The second act dragged and the acting's uneven, but the Gonzaga Pride and Prejudice provides a Cliff's Notes reminder of what Austen's novel is like, and the many challenges that likeable Elizabeth faces and overcomes. Just old-fashioned chick lit? No. Universalized human experience performed so convincingly that the high stakes will be apparent to all? Not that either. The Goodwin/Russo Austen provides many amusing moments and scattered insights, but it's like getting hit with a hardback in the forehead: There's an overwhelming sameness when you drink your P&P all at once.

review of *Doubt*

at Interplayers Professional Theater
seen Oct. 28

Doubt — isn’t that the one about the nun and the priest, and she’s convinced that he’s a creepy child molester? I saw the movie — why bother seeing it again?
Because seeing it onstage, reduced to just four characters, is a more intense and psychological experience. Because Interplayers’ four cast members are uniformly fine in their roles. And because this is the best drama Interplayers has produced in the past three years (and probably in the past five).

Start with Aaron Murphy’s Father Flynn — East Coast Irish accent, all-American looks, the bemused look of a man who has something to teach you and knows he has a clever way to do it. We see him solo, alone, then suckered into a meeting with two nuns that’s not at all about what he thinks it is — the priest, marginalized in his own parish.
Murphy was so convincing, he put this former Catholic schoolboy right back in the confessional. When he ended his second sermon by making the Sign of the Cross, I came this close to joining him. (We laugh at these 1964 people and their exaggerated respect for the Church’s hierarchy -- but you know, once in 1962, when I was in first grade at St. Mary’s of the Assumption, I peered over the rectory wall and saw a priest, sunning himself. With his shirt off. And was immediately convinced, truly, that I had committed a mortal sin and would roast in hellfire eternally. Which is a hard thought for a 7-year-old to bear.)

Ann Russell Whiteman strolls with authority around her office desk, convinced utterly — convinced beyond all doubt — that Father Flynn must be stopped and the children protected. (There was much talk afterwards about how the show changes from night to night. And it’s true, this time it registered with me, the number of times she’s referred to as joyless, a Puritan, cold and unforgiving; at other moments, she can appear like a warrior for righteousness.)
Whiteman’s eyes glisten early on, when she plants suspicions in the young nun’s mind; Whiteman makes clear that Sister Aloysius is a bit too eager to be regarded as the most clever fox in the henhouse. No upstart young priest is going to outmaneuver her.

As Sister James, Bethany Hart uses subtle facial expressions to convey her wonderment, doubt, anger and sadness over what her superior is trying to do. As the mother of the young boy who’s supposedly the object of Father Flynn’s pederastic lust, Rebecca M. Davis plants herself in that office chair and scowls, even as she observes decorum. She mixes being deferential with being defiant (nicely sustaining the play’s ambiguity and balance), and the emotion’s contained but still evident.

Throughout this intermissionless chess game, what we’ve been waiting for is the faceoff of priest and nun in the penultimate scene. When it arrived, at first I thought Murphy was being weak, unassertive — until I grasped (so I thought, can’t be sure, still have my doubts) that he was wearing down under Sister Aloysius’s interrogation. The pendulum was swinging: In a performance in which, for most of the time, she had seemed joyless and vindictive — and he, cheerful and innocent — now our doubts about him were rising to the forefront. Sister’s methods may be Machiavellian (corrupt means, but valuable ends, she preaches) but maybe, just maybe, she has ferreted out corruption in the end.
Or not. Doubt is a mirror that shows us ourselves: inclined to trust others, or accuse them; inclined to forgive or indict. The value of such a production — especially in a Catholic town dominated by a Catholic university and its law schools’ many graduates, its parochial schools and G-Prep Bullpups, its own sad history of priestly sex abuse and coverups — is not only that it “takes you on an emotional journey,” but that the journey, quite likely, will differ from night to night.
Theater should piss some people off. Being inoffensive is not, forever and always, a virtue. When people get angry, somebody’s touched a nerve.

Roger Welch has directed seamlessly, with no fuss and with many of the most gripping speeches delivered while stock-still. Renae Meredith’s set includes a polished-wood square for the priest’s sermons, both in the pulpit and on the basketball court: an arena for the baring of our souls.

Certainty without evidence is faith. But when certainty, absolute conviction, turns past the point of being willing to hear contradictory opinions and evidence, it hardens into dogmatism. And Sister Aloysius — played by Whiteman with squinting, aloof, marble-cold implacability — is dogmatic for 89 of the show’s 90 minutes. By the end, even she has her doubts.
Shanley is taking aim at dogmatism of all kinds, religious and political — at one point, the actual line “You lie!” is shouted at the priest, and suddenly I was transported back to Obama’s health care speech before the joint session of Congress.

Overcome your doubts (it won’t be any good, I’ve seen it before, sex abuse is such a sad topic, people draped in black who lived 45 years ago have nothing new to tell me), and just go. Theater is transitory — this one goes poof on Nov. 7 — but for theater this good, attention must be paid. Cancel your bowling night, skip Mass just this once, whatever — but go see Doubt at Interplayers.

And yes, I’m influenced by how meaningful and good tonight’s post-performance talk-back was — actors articulate, questions observant, Reed McColm moderating like a pro. Theater of the kind we can and should be proud of. An important play, done with subtlety and intelligence. I could go on and on about this cast, and about how Whiteman and Murphy’s performances in particular are exceptional and accomplished. But just go see the show for yourself.

With this show about sin, the most apparent sin is that more people aren’t supporting this show.
Lake City on the verge, Interplayers teetering — if you value theater in this town, overcome the excuses of "no time," "no money." Overcome your doubts and just go see Doubt.

[image: movie poster, from tower.com]

20 Questions ... well, about 14 Questions ... with Jean Hardie

Jean Hardie has been doing shows at the Civic for 28 years. She's currently appearing there in String of Pearls. 

First, let's do the bio.  Where did you grow up and go to school? First exposure to theater? Theater you did in high school and college?  How many years and shows at the Civic? How many years teaching at St. George's?  How many years with Box 'n' Hat?

            I was born over in Mount Vernon and lived in Anacortes until I was 8, then a year in Littleton, Colo., then on to Sacramento, where I grew up. My father was a musician and my mother was a dancer; but by the time I came along, my father managed a dime store and played his saxaphone on weekends and my mother had opened her own little dance studio. There was always music and dancing around. I took tap and ballet from the time I was very young and danced in recitals, etc.  Apparently, I played Little Black Sambo’s Mother in our first-grade play, although my memory of it is somewhat vague. I was in one play in junior high and spent my high school years pining to be a cheerleader. But I did write — and act in — a lot of the skits for the pep rallies. 

I went to Sacramento City College after high school.  On my 18^th birthday, my best friend and I decided to audition for the first play of the year. We were both so scared! Well, she got the lead and I got a small part — and that, as they say, was that. I was completely and utterly bitten by the “acting bug." I think I was in every production we did there for the next three years, including my first musical...the role of Alma Hix in The Music Man (“that woman made braaaazen overtures...”).  I went to Sac City for three years ... I lost a big part of one year to a bout of mono ... but although I dropped a lot of classes, I didn’t drop out of The Cherry Orchard. After those three years, I worked for a year and saved up money to go on to Sacramento State. Pete and I got married during that year. We also worked at the JayRob Playhouse, a community theatre in Sacramento which did all comedies. We ushered, did props, worked backstage, played small roles — and watched a lot of performances of a lot of shows ... great experience. And I was a member of a group of young performers — very much like Box ‘n’ Hat, actually — for about a year. 

On to State College. A lot of the same — did a lot of shows, but I was, in actuality, an English major. In 1970, the year we graduated, the Kent State shootings occurred.  That year sort of ended in a blur ... a bunch of us theater types formed a political sketch comedy troupe, and we ran around doing our show wherever we could — including the park downtown next to the Capitol building in Sacramento. I think we were somewhat disappointed that we never got arrested, although we did get asked to move on a couple of times. (It was a different world.) I got my degree even though I never really finished a couple of my classes. The professors accepted a write-up of our theatrical exploits in lieu of finals. Go figure.

          Upon graduation, a group of us — a lot of the same kids — decided we knew enough to start our own theatre ... and so we did. Major Gray’s Company was formed, and we did some pretty good shows over the next couple of years on the second floor of one of the few buildings left standing in Old Sacramento ... just before it got developed into quite a happening tourist destination. But by that time, Pete and I had moved up to Seattle. He got his master's in Design at UW. I worked and had daughter Joanna. Then, out of the blue, we were invited to move to Helena, Montana, where Pete worked as the resident designer at the Grand Street Theatre. I did lots of shows there and I had son Ian. In 1981, the job at Civic opened up, Pete applied and was hired; and we moved here. Our youngest son, David, was born here.

          Since 1981, at Civic Theatre, I have directed – and, where applicable, choreographed — somewhere around 33 shows. String of Pearls will be the 30th show that I’ve appeared in at Civic. I’ve also done shows for Spokane Children’s Theatre, Interplayers, CenterStage, and Valley Rep, but the Civic is certainly my theatrical home. 

            I directed the Box ‘n’ Hat Players for 20 years.  My daughter was one of the original players.  My youngest son graduated from the troupe in the last year I did it. A nice full circle. 

          I’ve been the Drama teacher at Saint George’s School for the last 13 years.  We do at least three mainstage shows a year out there ... so I guess you could say that I’ve done my fair share of theatre in Spokane. And I’m reasonably proud of most of it.

 

Let me be blunt and ask questions that you may certainly wish to overlook.  Right now, you're the ex-wife being directed by the second wife.  That sounds really awkward.  When was the divorce?  Was it a case of being terribly difficult to act anywhere near Peter for a few years, and then gradually becoming something that worked out?  (My sister got divorced after 20 years and four kids; for the following 20 years, she and the kids and her ex all lived in close proximity and interacted a lot, even as he remarried not once but twice. So I have some sense...)

I am bewildered as to why this should be of any interest; and I am somewhat offended at your asking this question at all, so I sort of waffled between:

a) forgetting about this whole interview; b) saying “none of your goddamn business, so fuck off"; c) politely skipping past it; or d) just going ahead and answering. 

          It’s not awkward at all. The divorce happened about 10 years ago. Things may have been awkward for a very short time for the family, but since our decision to end our marriage was predicated upon our remaining best friends, there wasn’t much point in being awkward, bitter, angry, etc. Peter and I have been a couple since 1966. The romance may have worn itself out, but the love and the friendship have not. I cannot imagine my life without him as a part of it. I think the world of Susan … always have; and I am gratified to see them so happy together. 

          If there has been any awkwardness, it has been from other people not knowing how to react; but that seems to have worked itself out. 

Anecdote: A few years ago, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for awhile; and out of the blue, he asked me how my daughter was doing.  “Fine," I said. “Still out in Seattle, doing some performing, etc. etc.”

“But what about this show that she’s directing in the Studio Theatre?” he asked.

“Uh … no,” I said.

“But it says so right here,” he said, showing me the Studio brochure: “Susan Hardie.” As it dawned on him what he had said, he was pretty embarrassed. I thought it was pretty funny.

 

From your perspective as a drama instructor, what mistakes do young and/or beginning actors commonly make? 

Commonly – and very generally: They fail to pick up cues, so the pace drags; and yet, they rush through the moments that need time — they are afraid of pauses.

They speak too quickly — sometimes too softly — and don’t enunciate clearly enough.

Often, they see themselves inaccurately ... they think they are performing an action or a movement in a much bigger way than they really are, and it is difficult to convince them to give you more.

They wait too long to get their lines learned. They don’t think enough about what the character is really saying, doing, wanting, meaning, thinking, etc.... they don’t listen or react enough; and what comes out is line recitation.

They resent the fact that acting/performing/rehearsing is hard work, and they whine.

They lose things, a lot — scripts, props, costumes, schedules, you name it. Some young actors are arrogant and sure that they know more than you do ... they don’t realize that no matter how talented you are, you should stay open to listening and learning for as long as you live.

          All that being said, it is also a most rewarding thing for a teacher or director when they feel they have really taught or brought out something in a student or young actor. It can be really thrilling.   

 

We hear a lot that the audience for theater is aging, graying, dying out. Yet with Box 'n' Hat and at St. George's, you work all the time with young people who are enthusiastic about theater. Has the High School Musical phenomenon paid off, with musicals increasingly popular among teens today?  Or do they hunger for more contemporary (not Oklahoma!) and less cheesy (not HSM) musicals?  Or do teens today have so much entertainment competition (mp3's, videogames, YouTube, movies) that they truly are losing any taste for handcrafted, live entertainment (of the sort that theater provides)?

I thought you were sending me the first 10 questions ... there are at least three or four questions right here!

I don’t feel that I am qualified to speak to this question for the very reasons you state above. I work all the time with kids who are already crazy about theatre, performing, singing, dancing, acting – even directing and writing – and watching. Their appetite for what is “new” is unquenchable.  The interesting part is that often what is “new” to them is really old stuff.  I see this pattern over and over again.  They are all about the newest thing ... Wicked, Spring Awakening, In the Heights, etc. But if you play them a classic musical theater song from some vintage musical, they fall in love with that, too — they “discover” it all over again. It’s cute. 

           I will also go out on a limb and make another odious generalization by saying that a big difference between theater geeks today and young people of my generation is a layer of ironic awareness that we didn’t tend to possess. They recognize cheesiness and embrace it knowingly in all its cheesy glory. You might call it the Glee Effect. At the same time, they recognize great artistry, too. They are free to love it all – even things they know are bad – as long as they are gloriously, sincerely bad. 

          As always ... non-theater geeks — of any age — need not apply. They will just look at you as though you were speaking a foreign language. It’s always been that way, and it will always be that way. I imagine that the percentage of high school theater geeks has remained pretty stable over the years.      

 

What's the most important thing that you've changed your mind about? Why did you alter your opinion?

            Having kids.  When I was young, I didn’t want to have children. (So I’m glad I waited until I was a little older before having them.) I have to be honest and say that my opinion was altered for me when I got pregnant. None of the three kids were planned. One thing I haven’t changed my mind about, however, is that having children should be a personal choice and that it is a big serious business that should not be entered into lightly!

         

What's your best idea for getting more people to attend theater?

            Get Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Kristin Chenoweth, Bernadette Peters, Sutton Foster and Cheyenne Jackson to come to your town and be in one of your shows. Or get them to read the phone book. (You could probably sell tickets to watch them brush their teeth.) In general, I would say that most people are cautious about putting out the price of a theater ticket unless they are reasonably sure it’s going to be worth it ... hence, the cult of stardom. I do recognize the impracticality of this idea, however, and doubt that it’s going to happen.

          Beyond that, I haven’t the slightest idea. Do good theatre? Sure — but it’s no guarantee. Do well-known plays and musicals? They’ll be sure-fire hits ... unless they aren’t. Do new and exciting works? Create buzz? Great! But will it actually translate into ticket sales? THERE IS NO ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION. If there were, theaters would be filled to capacity for every performance.

You do the best theater you can, get the word out as best you can and hope for the best. It’s a hard fact to accept that a great many people just don’t care for live theater. If we’re lucky, a few of them will give it a try and develop a taste for it, but most won’t. What seems magical and meaningful to us just isn’t attractive or interesting to most people. I think it feels like it’s going to be too much work or something.  That’s how it is. 

          Still ... more local media coverage couldn’t hurt. 

         

Think of all the shows you've done at the Civic — rehearsals, onstage, backstage, in the green room, the fiascoes, the relationships, all of it. Please specify your three favorite exact memories from your years at the Civic.

            One: On opening night of the very first run of Nunsense, during the last number of the first act, I did this little jump and pulled a muscle in my calf — I swear I could hear a “ping." I really couldn’t put any weight on it at all. I hobbled through the rest of the number in a blur. During intermission, we iced it and wrapped it and someone found me a cane. I really don’t remember who, but I owe this person a debt of thanks, because from that moment on, the cane became an integral part of Mother Superior as I play her.

During the second act of Nunsense, there is a scene in which Mother Superior is very angry at the other sisters and orders them to follow her offstage — presumably to do some kind of penance. At that precise moment, I remember thinking, “I’ve always wanted to do this.” I fixed them with a serious stare and said, “Walk this way.” Then I turned and limped off thinking, “If they don’t pick up on this, I’ll kill them!” They did. They limped off after me. The audience laughed – a lot – giving me a reason to whip around and almost catch them at it.  They – Marilyn Langbehn, Deanna Stover and Jennifer Jacobs – played it perfectly. We kept it in, and it always got a wonderful laugh, but there was something really cosmic – almost magical – about that first time.

          Two:  Watching my daughter play Maria in West Side Story in 1995. I think I was there for all but two or three performances. I had choreographed a production of WSS in Montana about 10 years earlier. She went to a lot of rehearsals with me and saw the show several times. I didn’t know it at the time, but she dreamed then of playing that part someday. I was thrilled and proud and awestruck by her performance. 

          Three: Every summer for the past 13 years, we have done summer camp shows at Civic. Several years ago, I began to write an original script for the Main Stage camp show each summer.  The first truly and completely original script I wrote was called Portrait of Love. It is still my favorite of all the scripts I have written. It involved paintings in a museum coming to life after-hours and interacting in the lives of the “real” people. During the show, there is a moment when the Woman in the Red Dress, who has spent the day in the “real” world, must now return to her painting. As Alli Standley moved back into place behind the painting, the lighting effect worked perfectly so that the portrait appeared to go from being flesh and blood to paint and canvas. The audience gave a collective oooh-aaaah. It was such a thrill! 

 

My guess is that you're very well read.  So what's on your night stand now?  Last good book you finished?  And what, in all her extensive free time (ha!), does Jean Hardie do in the way of hobbies?

            I am not well read at all. In fact, I am appalled at how little I read now compared to my younger years. So my stack of things to read is enormous and I will never work my way through it. I am particularly fond of biographies. Most recently, I finished a bio of Stephen Sondheim and have worked my way through most of James Lipton’s memoirs. I devoured the Harry Potter books and cannot deal with the reality that there won’t be any more. I read Entertainment Weekly every week. Right now, I’m reading the script of String of Pearls every day ... so that — and keeping up with all the dancing shows on TV — keeps me pretty busy.

Other hobbies? Well, honestly, theater is my hobby and my greatest passion; but I also love to do some crafty things with beads and decoupage when I have a little extra time. Oh, hell, let’s be really honest ... if it wasn’t for Spider Solitaire, I’d have time to take over the world!    

 

You get to meet your 18-year-old self. What advice do you have for her? Would she listen to you?

Well, aside from the obvious — eat less, exercise more and don’t forget to floss — I would say:

          Make bolder choices. Don’t be so afraid of failure: “Stink with authority.”

          Learn to handle rejection better. Don’t get so upset. Don’t take it so personally: “Deal with it and move on.”

          Learn not to care so much about what other people think of you. Don’t be afraid of making a fool of yourself: “To thine own self, be true.”

          Deal with who you really are, not who you wish you were: “Know thyself.”

 

She would want to listen — she would recognize the truth and wisdom of the advice — but since she is still struggling with these issues even today, I’d say it’s unlikely that she would be able to implement the advice in any practical way. 

 

Please describe the half-dozen characters whom you play in String of Pearls. What do you know about one (or some) of them now that you did not know before rehearsals began?

Four of my characters are quite small in terms of lines and stage time. I play a down-to-earth housekeeper, a Tunisian woman who pretty much leeches off her niece, a judgmental Jewish mother and a knowledgeable jewelry store owner. These four are really just snapshots in the stories told by the other women in the play.

In rehearsal, we have talked quite a bit about how these minor characters are, metaphorically, some of the grains of sand which cause the irritation in an oyster that ultimately turns into a pearl. It’s a lot of fun to put on a costume and turn into someone else for less than a minute. You have a lot of freedom to make bold choices. You are the stuff of memory; and memory has distilled you down to what is most vivid to the rememberer. 

          My other two characters are ones who get to tell their stories. One is Ela, a Wisconsin divorcee and the other, Dora, a cultured New Yorker.

Each character tells of a set of experiences that bring about big life changes and which are, in some way, affected by the almost mystical power of this particular string of pearls. Since both women are, I think, very different from me, I’ve learned almost everything I know about them since rehearsals began. Before the auditions, all I really knew was that there were some pretty freakin’ long monologues in this puppy.  Now that the monologues have become stories, I’m surprised every night by how quickly the time goes and how soon I have to say goodbye and leave the stage. As always, I have also learned — again — that no matter how different someone may be from you, you will inevitably find something you have in common with the character.

I can certainly relate to Ela’s wounded self-esteem and her need to hibernate for a while. And like Dora, I fear the hidden power of the past. There are things we both want to keep at bay; and when they bubble to the surface, that’s going to be a difficult day.

There is both joy and agony in doing such a challenging piece as String of Pearls. It’s a joy to get to immerse yourself in the world of these characters, but an agony to have the fear that you won’t do them justice on the stage. But I am seeing a quality of work in this cast and crew that makes me very proud and happy to be part of this show.

[photo: baby Jean]
[photo at top: Jean Hardie and Robert Wamsley in Barefoot in the Park, at the Civic, Jan. '08  -- "a picture that actually I really like a lot" ]

Lake City Playhouse needs your help

A CdA Press article specifies the problem: more than $100,000 in debt, attendance much improved but still only at 105 per show; struggling to get through its 49th season to make it to its 50th.

What can you do? Attend *Dracula* (Oct. 29-Nov. 8) and/or *The Little Princess* (Dec. 3-20). Call (208) 667-1323.

*Take Me Out* at Gonzaga, Nov. 11-13

What if a player very much like Alex Rodriguez (or Derek Jeter?), while playing for a team very much like this year's World Series-bound New York Yankees, casually let drop during a press conference that he's gay? What if he were so self-assured (and even arrogant) that he assumed no one would really care? And what if he then became the idol of gay men across America -- and the cause of deep, deep discomfort among conservative (and even homophobic) players, both in his own team's locker room and on opposing teams?

The Gonzaga Readers Theater Project presents Richard Greenberg's play (which ran in New York in 2002-03), directed by Gonzaga Prep principal Kevin Connell and performed by Gonzaga University actors, on Wednesday-Thursday, Nov. 11-12, at 7 pm and on Friday, Nov. 13, at 10 pm (yes, 10 pm) in the Magnuson Theater at the east end of College Hall, on the GU campus at 502 E. Boone Ave. Donations requested; definitely NOT for children.

In an intriguing bit of casting, Steven Gray (the 6-5 junior guard from Bainbridge, Wash., on the Zags' basketball team) will be reading the central role of Darren Lemming, star centerfielder of the New York "Empires."

[ photo: Steven Gray, two years ago as a freshman, when he had broken his wrist early in the season; from slipperstillfits.com ]