*Waiting for Godot* review

at Interplayers through April 11

Bleak despairing God the anguish can't bear the Beckett anguish searching joy despondent hopeless escape self can't wait won't bear all the sadness give us instead a musical comedy.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: Two tramps on a trash heap talk-talk-talk for two hours. About nothing, nothing at all. (Bleak despairing God the anguish.)

That's the excuse for not going, anyway: It's dreary, nothing happens, we just want to see something that will make us happy.

But Godot, at several junctures, offers a qualified kind of happiness. (Perhaps, during your sojourn here on Earth, you were expecting happiness of the absolute and unqualified kind?)

At Interplayers (through April 11), you'll still be amused, for example, by Reed McColm's look of bliss while munching on a carrot. (He's Estragon or "Gogo," the whinier and more despairing of the two tramps.)

Beckett’s sad clowns enact vaudeville routines that would be funny anywhere: a rapid-fire hat exchange, four men rolling around on the ground and unable to get up, an agreement about hanging themselves followed by an argument over who should hang himself first.

But the jokes are only meant to fend off despair. Yes, we understand, you don’t feel any despair. You don’t have to, because you believe in God.

But what if you’re wrong? What if salvation isn’t coming? (Just suppose, for the sake of argument.) Then how would you act? You’d tell jokes to pass the time. You’d try to keep yourself entertained.

The problem is that director Karen Kalensky's production of Godot, as if straining too hard to find the comedy in a bleak play, hams up the jokes. Somebody refers to having an erection, and there's a lot of comic mugging; or they pause to cogitate deeply, so deeply, and the chins beneath the frowns are propped up by index fingers.

As Vladimir (“Didi”), the more philosophical and resilient of the pair, Jonn Jorgensen forms a pair of sad clowns with McColm. They hug, then break off the hug, smile, hug again, then cry.
But hugs aren't enough when you're facing life's emptiness, and the duo’s exchanges lack vaudeville frenzy. Godot needs to be played fast and faster, to set up the silences.

Fortunately, the second act offers more: more forgetfulness, more fighting off boredom, more slapstick, more direct address to the audience.

In the play’s conclusion, Jorgensen — who did a half-dozen shows here in the mid-'90s, and glad to see him back — achieves the kind of tragic status he could have been hinting at more all along. Riffing on Pozzo's famous description of life's brevity ("They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more"), Jorgensen settled into haunting sadness for Vladimir's final monologue: "Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.”

As Lucky, the white-haired, bent-backed slave who jumps to every one of Pozzo's commands, Michael Maher groans and grumbles, seething with resentment — and it's funny, at least in the non-verbal sequences. The famous stream-of-consciousness monologue, however — it arrives when Pozzo issues the command to "think, pig" — is disappointing. Maher stumbled and went slow, swallowing his consonants and failing to highlight a rambling speech’s few discernible themes (God is impersonal, human reason is limited).

As Pozzo the grandiose slave master, Damon Abdallah delivers the evening's finest multi-dimensional performance. His voice, deepened, teeters between haughty and insecure. He's sadistic, but he also lets us in on how it's all an act. His angular rodent movements could be assertive, could be paranoid.

Abdallah has a beautiful speech about the beauty of twilight ("this veil of gentleness and peace") that's matched by the subtlety of (Dan Polzin's -- XX) Justin Schmidt's lighting scheme, with the light gradually turning from pink to rose to — this being Beckett — the sudden onset of night's blackness. ("That's how it is on this bitch of an earth," mutters Pozzo.)

None of them know why they're here. They feel powerless to go on, they don't know whether to split up or stick it out together. (Bleak despairing God the anguish.) Didi and Gogo, in other words, are a lot like us. We are the ones who are waiting for Godot, and misery loves company, and a production of Beckett's play, even one as uneven as this, has its consolations.

[ photo: Samuel Beckett, Hebden Bridge Arts Festival in the U.K. ]

*Waiting for Godot* at Interplayers

*Waiting for Godot* at Interplayers
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Reed McColm as Estragon and Jonn Jorgensen as Vladimir

March 26-April 11, 2009
Spokane, Wash.

directed by Karen Kalensky

Lucky ... that name's ironic, right?

Lucky ... that name's ironic, right?
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

*Waiting for Godot*
by Samuel Beckett
directed by Karen Kalensky
with (from left) Jonn Jorgensen as Didi, Damon Abdallah as Pozzo, Reed McColm as Gogo, and Michael Maher (in foreground) as Lucky

*Waiting for Godot* at Interplayers, March 26-April 11

Samuel Beckett's "tragicomedy in two acts" in which "nothing happens, twice"
*En Attendant Godot* was composed in French from Oct. 1948-Jan. 1949, so in a sense, the play is 60 years old
But its premiere wasn't until Jan. 1953, in Paris.
English-language premiere: Aug. 1955, in London.
(The title's often mispronounced: The emphasis is on the first syllable -- GOD-oh -- to rhyme with Irish "boyo," slang for "friend" and often used dismissively, as when an American man addresses another adult male as his "buddy.")

directed by Karen Kalensky
with Reed McColm (Estragon, "Gogo"), Jonn Jorgensen (Vladimir, "Didi"), Damon Abdallah (Pozzo), Michael Maher (Lucky) and Keith Hahto (The Boy)

Lights by Justin Schmidt, set by Dan Polzin, sound by Karen Kalensky; stage managed by Ginny Abdallah

Ya gotta pay to pee

[photo: At Public Amenity No. 9, they're not too happy about all this urination taxation. ]

Urinetown at Gonzaga, March 27-April 5
directed by Rick Hornor, theater arts professor at Whitworth University

Keep some change handy (for pay-toilet emergencies) during Urinetown at Gonzaga’s Magnuson Theater (east end of College Hall), 502 E. Boone Ave., running from March 27-April 5 on Fridays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm and on Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets: $12; $10, faculty and staff; $8, students. Visit www.gonzaga.edu/theaterarts or call 313-6553.

YouTube video of the Broadway cast of Urinetown performing “Run, Freedom, Run” at the 2002 Tony Awards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9T0w5zmukE


[ photo: Officer Lockstock interrogates Little Sally ]

opening-weekend review of *Godspell*

at the Civic's Studio Theater through April 11

Either you feel the spirit or you don't. Godspell speaks to human emotions, and it shouldn’t be intellectualized. So here's one human's emotional response to director Troy Nickerson’s production: During the silly parable re-enactments, I was smiling; when Jesus said goodbye to one apostle after another, I had a lump in my throat; and when the show was over, I sat in my car and cried — in sadness over my own failings, in sadness for the world. But I also cried for joy — joy that people in my own community could create an evening as touching, funny and profound as Spokane Civic Theatre's Godspell (through April 11 in the Studio Theater).
But only Jesus freaks enjoy Godspell, right? No, because Stephen Schwartz’s show paints a vision of a better world — one that we can all share, the kind where we demand the highest moral standards of ourselves while having hair-trigger forgiveness for others (instead of the reverse).
The all-embracing range of Nickerson's production — from earthy to spiritual, from condemnation to acceptance — is echoed by the range of Robby French's portrayal of Jesus. French soothes and preaches, cajoles and reproves. He does a soft-shoe; he impersonates Groucho Marx. He hangs upon a cross of chains, keening as he’s dying; in the next moment, he’s confident and resurrected, with “Prepare Ye (the Way of the Lord)” joyously reprised to fulfill the show’s Christian message.
God's creation has range too — alpha and omega and all that — so it makes sense that we too might journey from silliness to sadness while watching the story of Christ’s life.
The image of the Savior doing vaudeville shtick may seem irreverent or silly to some, but those sequences reinforce Godspell’s insistence that God isn't some white-bearded abstraction. Instead, in the delapidated subway station of this world, she's the bag lady over in the corner.
Peter Hardie’s graffiti-splattered tile evokes that subway station; even better, his lighting scheme helped emphasize the action in a multi-level, sometimes fast-paced production.
Nickerson’s choreography (assisted by Jillian Wylie) gathers up ‘70s moves, but especially in a number like “O, Bless the Lord, My Soul,” he combines them in inventive ways: dip-stomp-swirl, step-clap-kick, fan hands and — big finish!
During the fast pace for the Jesus-Judas soft-shoe number, "All for the Best," diction suffered, as if Nickerson deliberately chose to slur over the gee-whiz lyrics. Still, French and David Gigler (as Judas in a business suit, full of misgivings) built to a rousing finish.
Becky Moonitz's five-piece band provided musical accents (including a rock-anthem guitar screech for Jesus' death) without overwhelming the singers, though volume was a concern in a couple of places (at the start of “Day by Day,” for example, and in the top-of-Act-Two reprise of “Learn Your Lessons Well").
But the fun soon resumes. As John the Skater-Kid Baptist, Mark Schurtz launched “Prepare Ye (the Way of the Lord)” with a thrilling a cappella solo; Nickerson’s direction amplified the intensity nicely. And this is the kind of production in which baptism involves squirt bottles, and the Last Supper, some baggies and a Thermos. So if religious practice too often seems to you like just a solemn duty, Godspell is the corrective: Loving Jesus can be a blast, man!
Happiness practically radiates off French, whose aw-shucks Jesus is capable of welcoming sinners with a hug, slapping them for their sins and then opening his arms wide to them yet again.
Both he and Nickerson handle the show’s tonal contrasts well. There can be jarring contrasts, after all, between the Sesame Street antics and Christ's rigorous theology: Cut off your hand, cast out your eyeball and ha-ha-ha. And somewhere around the parable of the sheep and goats or the story of the prodigal son, the comedy-sketch antics grew tiresome, as if Nickerson's cast were pushing too hard to deliver Theology Lite. But, in the parable of the sower, four groups of improvising cast members make the four-way metaphor visually graspable. With few lapses, the ten-person cast sang well, allowing joy to emerge from doubt.

“We can build a beautiful city,” Jesus sings, in a lyric imported here by Nickerson from the movie version, “—not a city of angels, but we can build a city of man.”
We can indeed build a better world, and Godspell makes the good news personal. Its emotional power — acknowledging loss and failure, but insistently pointing out the transcendent — hits you right in your spiritual guts.
That’s why lot of people who might otherwise not consider attending a show like this — from charismatics to disbelievers and all the Lutherans in between – ought to consider spending a couple of hours at the Civic. It’s better than any sermon you’ll hear on Sunday, and a lot more tuneful.


Godspell delivers its song-and-dance version of the Gospel According to Matthew through April 11 at the Civic's downstairs Studio Theater (just east of Spokane Arena) on Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays-Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets: $22; $11, student rush. Visit www.spokanecivictheatre.com or call 325-2507.

Mike Daisey vs. American theater

Mike Daisey is back in Colorado Springs this month criticizing the state of American theater.

Bobo herewith presents a self-serving snip:

Denver Post: You have described the slow death of newspapers as "the next great crisis of the American regional theater." Why?

Mike Daisey: Theater is deeply interdependent on the newspaper industry — theater critics have been an integral part of theater's identity for more than a century, woven into the core rituals of opening night, previews and so forth. With the current model of newspapers collapsing, we will lose that support system of critical feedback, and it will strike a deep blow to theater's sense of itself as a relevant art form.
The media that replaces and evolves from newspapers are unlikely to give theater as much attention as it is getting now, and the loss of advertising space will mean theater needs to actually think about how to reach people. It will be a difficult transition that theaters are poorly equipped to handle.

A review of Daisey's show at the Wooly Mammoth in Wash., D.C., in Jan. '09 is here.

OK, so Spokane doesn't even qualify as a regional theater hub, certainly not from a New York City POV. And theaters will continue to struggle in this economic climate. But ya know -- when have people ever NOT said theaters were struggling? Shows like Together Again for the First Time at Interplayers and Cuckoo's Nest and Godspell at the Civic demonstrate that sufficient numbers of the public will take to a production and support it, at least enough to keep theater around here floating and maybe even thriving.

To reassure you: *Editor & Publisher,* a trade magazine, recently ran a good-news-in-very-bad-times article on small-market alt-weeklies that are, counter-intuitively, still making money. And The Inlander was one of ten profiled. And most of them, instead of declining, were showing annual growth rates of 1 or 2 or 3 percent.
The Inlander grew 9.6 percent last year. Our gross annual revenue is in the $3 million range.
We're geographically isolated, the only (comparable) show in town. The home-grown McGregor boys started us. We're left-of-center, but not as liberal as lots of alt-weeklies in other parts of the nation. We make some mistakes, but we try to offer good customer service. And we've got -- here's the mantra -- the highest market penetration of any alt-weekly in the country.
So page counts are holding stable, InHealth and the Annual Manual are money-makers, and we're doing quite nicely, thank you. Been givin' it away for free for 15 years, and guess how readers like their content delivered today? Free.

And I still (mostly) like my job. Which means, I guess, the theater community is stuck with Bobo for awhile.
Which has its disadvantages.
But also advantages: Somebody advocating for theater, trying to treat it as important (in the sense of giving it as much space as, say, sports coverage). Somebody who, even if you disagree with him all the time, at least you're accustomed to what you're disagreeing with.

*Godspell* at Spokane Civic Theatre

*Godspell* at Spokane Civic Theatre
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

directed by Troy Nickerson
Yvonne A.K. Johnson, executive artistic director

*Godspell* in a subway

*Godspell* in a subway
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Spokane Civic Theatre
March 2009

Robby French as Jesus

Robby French as Jesus
Originally uploaded by Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Godspell
Spokane Civic Theater
March-April 2009
directed by Troy Nickerson

*Judas* redux, April 9 at Gonzaga

Thursday, April 9, at 10 pm -- yes, 10 pm.
Gonzaga University, Jepson Center, Wolff Auditorium
The Gonzaga Readers Theater Project presents a late-night encore performance of its hit production of *The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.* The play, by *Sopranos* scripter Stephen Guirgis, depicts a wildly surreal trial in which characters from Satan to Mother Teresa debate revoking Judas’ damnation. *Inlander* critic Michael Bowen called it “laugh-out-loud funny but also profound.”
(Bobo's been blurbed in his own blog!)
(Admission is free, though donations are encouraged.)
[ painting: The Kiss of Judas, by Giotto, c. 1304 ]

A stimulating play

Vibrators on Broadway! Sarah Ruhl's *In the Next Room (or, The Vibrator Play)* just finished a run at the Berkeley Rep and is headed to Broadway in November.

Ruhl's premise: At a spa in New York state in the 1890s (and with the use electricity just becoming widespread), what better way to treat women diagnosed with "hysteria" than to provide a little stimulus (of a kind other than economic, if you know what I mean)? It all makes for an obstetrician who becomes very popular with the local housewives.
Ruhl apparently aims to get past the "I'm coming!" jokes to an examination of gender relations and marital miscommunication. Can the premise (and her "hysterical" women) achieve, um, fulfillment?

[ photo: Maria Dizzia, left, and Hannah Cabell in Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” in Berkeley, Calif.
2/18/09 New York Times, article by Charles Isherwood ]

*James and the Giant Peach,* March 27-April 11 in CdA

Young orphan James is sent to live with his horrible Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. Life is hard until a James finds an ENORMOUS peach growing in his yard. There are talking insects, too.

directed by Danielle Holcomb
Tickets: $16; $13, seniors, students and military; $10; children; $10 for everyone on Thursdays

Show opens Friday, March 27 and runs through Sunday, April 11
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Sundays at 2 pm

Lake City Playhouse, 1320 Garden Avenue, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
208-667-1323; lakecityplayhouse.org


photo: author Roald Dahl

*No Exit* at Empyrean, March 20-22

The Gonzaga-affiliated Drunken Sailor Theater Group presents Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 existentialist drama this weekend, Friday through Sunday, at the coolest coffeehouse in town, 154 S. Madison St.
Just $7, or $5 for students -- and only 75 minutes long. Since it starts at 6 pm on Friday-Saturday and at 2 pm on Sunday afternoon, there will be plenty of time to party afterward.

Director Jenny Van Houdt calls *No Exit* "a sordid feast of existentialism centered around three questionable characters who find themselves trapped together in one hideous room. ... These characters have found their place in hell, and they have an eternity to get on each other's nerves."
These three are capable of some nasty comments to one another — e.g., "I wonder why she even tries to dance. Unless it's to help her lose weight."
Van Houdt adds that her Drunken Sailor Theatre Troupe, "a student group operating out of Gonzaga, is willing to break the bank for the love of theater. Just like the name implies, we intend to operate with more hazardous content — so don't expect any musicals anytime soon. And as for swearing like a drunken sailors, it's a given."

Cast:
Cradeau: Jason Meade
Inez: Brigid Carey
Estelle: Ashley Newberry
Demon: Taylor Warren

*No Exit* at Wikipedia is here.

Student responses to *No Exit* and some quotations from the play, drawn from a WSU source, are here.

[ photo: nyu.edu ]

Losing 10k arts orgs

From Charlotte Higgins' story on Saturday about arts funding the U.K., "Arts world braced for 'hurricane' as recession hits," in The Guardian, a sobering contrast to the impact of the recession on arts orgs in the States:

Arts leaders are pointing to the bleak example of the U.S., where the arts, with minimal support from the public purse, exist at the whim of the market and where 10,000 arts organisations could collapse this year, according to Americans for the Arts.
According to Diane Ragsdale, associate programme officer of the U.S.-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a particular problem for American arts organisations is the hits taken by endowments, which are failing to yield income - or are actually "underwater," meaning their current value has dropped beneath their historical value.
"Some organisations have endowments in the millions - but cannot make their payroll," she said.
In the UK, the problems are less extreme, and many corporate sponsorship deals signed before the crisis hit are still in place.

a hundred and 38 prudes in La Grande

More silly censorship from Pharisees who want to demonstrate just how admirably high their moral standards are: The Union of Over-Zealous Puritans in La Grande, Oregon, succeeded in stopping a high school production of Steve Martin's *Picasso at the Lapin Agile* -- that is, until Martin himself stepped in to fund a production at the local university, Eastern Oregon State.

[ photo: www.piffe.com; Einstein riding a bike in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1931 ]

Ignite's *Much Ado* (readers theater)

Tonight at 7 pm inside Gonzaga's Foley Center (the library building). Free. Also on Sunday, March 15, at 2 pm at the Blue Door Theater on Garland.

You need a docent

...to lead you through Brooke Kiener's inventive production of Tina Howe's *Museum* at Whitworth. Only tonight and Saturday at 8 pm. But arrive early: You'll be escorted by a guy in a beret or an intense German postmodern woman past actual art to linger in front of "installations" that mock the pretentiousness of so much modern art. (The brief "tours" start around 7:15 pm.)

Bobo's away from his notes now and has spent all week slaving over next week's Best Of issue for The Inlander, but ... here goes. He really wants to recommend this show, kicks himself for not posting here sooner.
Only 200 admitted per performance; stadium-style seating, so you're staring at others who are staring at the art and you. Causes intense self-awareness. 19 actors play 40 roles -- therefore, you're not likely to see this 1976 script performed anytime soon anywhere other than in college or community theaters. And this production is, in many ways, a model of what a college show should be.
There are long patches in the script and the acting that are too broad and over-elaborated or over-acted, but ... it's an exceptional theatrical experience. No plot, just a pastiche (or is that panache, or paradigm?**) of linked vignettes involving the oddballs who hang out on the last day of an avant-garde art exhibit.
Kiener managed to collaborate on a large scale with Whitworth's art dept., whose students created the white paintings (!) and dummies on a clothesline (so evocative of the human predicament, in a post-post-modern way, don't you know?) along with another dozen collage-sculptures, all of which become, at various points, hilariously focal within the show.
Two gay men pontificate about art, the front of their hips preceding them into the space by several seconds as they prance about. Photographers and angry young sketch artists. Wealthy ladies who lunch (and gossip about art). Lunatics. Giggling schoolgirls. Tasteless Texans. More than I can even remember just now. The pace and the comedy are maintained well.
It may add up to a "Huh?" experience for some, but I think the comedy nicely balanced the thrust of all the pre-show manuevering, which gets us questioning, "What IS my relationship to art? Why DO we sort of assume that all art must be approached with great seriousness? When did the experts' insistence of art's need to have political meaning begin to outweigh simple, visceral pleasure of color and beauty?"
Thanks to all at Whitworth for bringing a provocative, funny, cleverly staged show to our area.

Maria Caprile on *Terabithia*

The Spokane Children's Theater production of *Bridge to Terabithia* runs through March 22 at SCC's Lair Student Auditorium. Visit www.spokanechildrenstheatre.org.

Q&A with SCT's Maria Caprile (since director Reed McColm is apparently not returning my e-mails -- bad boy, Reed, bad!)


Bobo: Does name recognition from the movie help or hurt you at the box office?
Maria Caprile: Name recognition is the No. 1 factor on show attendance for Spokane Children's Theatre whether or not there is a movie attached! In fact, the book *Bridge to Terabithia* is required reading for many classes in Spokane Public Schools. This play was written by the author of the book, Katherine Paterson and is much more true to the book. It's even set in the early 1970s, which lends much to the feelings of ostracization and difference between the characters due to the changing times.

The movie offered special effects; your show augments the action with songs. But don't kids respond more to visuals than to melodies?
A lot of people don't realize what different mediums film and stage are. I thought it was perfectly appropriate to show the fantasy creatures of *Terabithia* in the film, even though that doesn't happen in the book at all. The book (and play) is really much more about feelings of "otherness" and how friendship can be a saving grace for children of a certain age. Visuals are much better at portraying magic but music is much more conducive to portraying emotion.

What's likely the most crowd-pleasing song? (and its dramatic context, theme, singers and some sample lyrics, just to give a taste) Same question for the musical number that has proven to be the most complicated to stage, and why.
There is a charming faux-folk song, "Differences" sung by the lovely Sarah Miller as Miss Edmonds, the pretty teacher everyone has a crush on. She accompanies herself on guitar with the assistance of Bryton Martin (who plays the main character, Jesse). The audience will be humming this one on the way home!

"If every song had just one note and that one note was C,
If every book had just one word and that one word was 'Me'
There'd be no difference and what are differences for?
Without a difference the world would be a bore!"

This song is taught to the entire class on the day that Leslie, the outsider from the big city, makes her appearance. And, naturally, both Jesse and Leslie think that Miss Edmonds chose the song specifically for them since they both see themselves as being "different" as so many kids do at this age!

If you had to pick just one, which of the following themes does *Terabithia* portray most effectively, and why? — growing up, being independent, dealing with bullies, using your imagination, making friends, dealing with adversity, reveling in reading, fending off despair
While there is a bit of everything in this show, "growing up" hits the nail on the head.

[ photo: Katherine Paterson; her Website is here. ]

Bremerton and Edmonds advance to regionals

At the Washington State Community Theatre Association awards over the weekend, productions of *Overtones* by Bremerton Community Theatre and *Minnesota Moon* by the Driftwood Players of Edmonds won the state's two slots in the AACT Region 9 competition to be held April 17-19 in Coeur d'Alene.

Spokane Civic Theater's *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* did not qualify, though the production did pick up two awards:
the Stage Manager's Award for Technical Excellence (to the Civic's costume crew) and Outstanding Achievement in Set and Lights.

So that's what Will looked like ...

Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells has revealed what he believes to be a 1610 portrait of The Big Shake himself: not the dodo-bird of the Droeshout portrait, but a wise and handsome fella who's quite proud of his elaborate lace collar.
In 1604, for a year or so, Shakespeare rented a room in London from a family of French emigres named Mountjoy. Their family business? Making elaborate lace headdresses for wealthy ladies.
Not only is it a better-looking portrait -- it suggests that Shakespeare had ascended from farm-town boy to wealthy property owner. The disgraced glover's son had gone off to the big city and made good. Too bad he only had six more years to live.

Remains of the 1576 gathering place known simply as The Theatre have also been excavated, according to a BBC report. The Globe wasn't built until 1599, so this is where Shakespeare himself would have acted in the premieres of plays like *Romeo and Juliet.*

For Stanley Wells' smackdown of Mark Rylance, Sir Derek Jacobi and all who think that "Shakespeare didn't really write those plays," go here.

ADDED on April 3, 2009:
Ron Rosenbaum in Slate on why Will's looks aren't relevant to what matters: interpreting his plays and sonnets
Also: Katherine Duncan-Jones says that Stanley Wells is wrong because, well, the portrait is of Sir Thomas Overbury and not Shakespeare at all.

You need a docent

http://www.daraseitzman.com/images/shows/museum/pc.jpg
...to lead you through Brooke Kiener's inventive production of Tina Howe's *Museum* at Whitworth. Only tonight and Saturday at 8 pm. But arrive early: You'll be escorted by a guy in a beret or an intense German postmodern woman past actual art to linger in front of "installations" that mock the pretentiousness of so much modern art. (The brief "tours" start around 7:15 pm.)

Bobo's away from his notes now and has spent all week slaving over next week's Best Of issue for The Inlander, but ... here goes. He really wants to recommend this show, kicks himself for not posting here sooner.
Only 200 admitted per performance; stadium-style seating, so you're staring at others who are staring at the art and you. Causes intense self-awareness. 19 actors play 40 roles -- therefore, you're not likely to see this 1976 script performed anytime soon anywhere other than in college or community theaters. And this production is, in many ways, a model of what a college show should be.
There are long patches in the script and the acting that are too broad and over-elaborated or over-acted, but ... it's an exceptional theatrical experience. No plot, just a pastiche (or is that panache, or paradigm?**) of linked vignettes involving the oddballs who hang out on the last day of an avant-garde art exhibit.
Kiener managed to collaborate on a large scale with Whitworth's art dept., whose students created the white paintings (!) and dummies on a clothesline (so evocative of the human predicament, in a post-post-modern way, don't you know?) along with another dozen collage-sculptures, all of which become, at various points, hilariously focal within the show.
Two gay men pontificate about art, the front of their hips preceding them into the space by several seconds as they prance about. Photographers and angry young sketch artists. Wealthy ladies who lunch (and gossip about art). Lunatics. Giggling schoolgirls. Tasteless Texans. More than I can even remember just now. The pace and the comedy are maintained well.
It may add up to a "Huh?" experience for some, but I think the comedy nicely balanced the thrust of all the pre-show manuevering, which gets us questioning, "What IS my relationship to art? Why DO we sort of assume that all art must be approached with great seriousness? When did the experts' insistence of art's need to have political meaning begin to outweigh simple, visceral pleasure of color and beauty?
Thanks to all at Whitworth for bringing

(** in-joke for those who've seen the show)

Jane Alexander-Bobby Jindal smackdown

Why $50 million for the arts in the stimulus package matters.

To repeat: The opening number in *Spamalot* may make fun of the Finns and their fisch-schlapping, but per capita government arts spending in Finland is 200 times* what it is the in the United States. Two hundred times.
(*as of 2007)

Why are "green rooms" called that?

For some theories, read William Hageman's article in today's Chicago Tribune.
Green curtains in 17th-century French theaters is what Bobo had heard ...

The first recorded use of the term dates to 1701. Wikipedia offers a bit more information.

changes to Civic's 2009-10 season

The Fiddler got Pirated away. And it's Curtains for Chicago.

The Civic has announced changes to the first and third full-run slots in its next Main Stage season.

A touring version of Fiddler on the Roof will be coming through Spokane, so the Civic's season will now open (Sept. 25-Oct. 25) not with Fiddler but with Sullivan and Gilbert's The Pirates of Penzance, directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson.
(Best of Broadway had no comment, saying that they'll announce THEIR season on April 16.)

The third long-run Main Stage slot (Jan. 15-Feb. 7, 2010) was going to be Kander and Ebb's Chicago, but now it's going to be another Kander and Ebb show, Curtains. (Think David Hyde Pierce investigating a murder in the middle of a musical production.) Troy Nickerson will direct.



Curtain Up reviews of *Curtains* from August 2006 and Feb. 2007 are here.

opening-night review of *The Belle of Amherst*

at Interplayers through March 14

Emily Dickinson was ahead of her time, sure. But then she was ahead of ours too. We don’t read enough to be verbal; she’s nothing but. We expect to be happy and entertained all the time; she knew that happiness arrives, at best, intermittently. Like some kind of hyper-articulate and contemplative nun, she knew how to live in silence and observe nature; we stomp on silence with cell phone chatter.
Two hours' worth of poems and talk, talk, talk about poetry? A tough sell. But in Ellen Crawford’s masterful performance of William Luce’s one-woman play, *The Belle of Amherst* (at Interplayers through March 14), there’s a wide range of emotions: spiritual longing, fascination with God’s creatures, even sexual passion. Crawford’s Emily is, by turns, mischievous, self-assertive, irreverent, resentful, infatuated, sly, coquettish, rebellious, sarcastic and yearning. She mocks the “prim starched ladies of Amherst” and their “dimity convictions”; she mocks herself.

It’s just Crawford alone onstage with some Victorian props — no visual excitement here, so it’s all down to the words. But Christopher Schario has directed with energy, twirling Crawford and running her around so as to take advantage of Interplayers’ extreme thrust stage.

Yes, there’s a sense that you’ve spent a couple of hours in the presence of that slightly odd and more than slightly chatty spinster who lives down the street. But especially in the second act, when Dickinson’s thoughts about unexpressed passion and death predominate, Crawford’s performance repeatedly underscores how the reclusive poet — the lonely, passionate human being — decided by sheer force of will not to dwell in grief (so many deaths, so many unrequited loves) and instead rush to take refuge in words.
It’s a little creepy, in the way that a nerd intellectualizes experience, shuns strong emotion and hides behind a wordy veneer.
But Crawford, while making Dickinson’s love of language palpable — she lingers over “phosphorescence,” she makes a revolving playlet out of “circumference” — also makes clear that what underlies all the energy and zest is disappointment and death.

Crawford recites Dickinson’s poems — since they’re short, there’s time for a lot of them in this two-hour show — in a raspy, oratorical, eager manner and at a rapid clip. And she keeps the energy high. For example, in telling how Emily went to hear Jenny Lind, Crawford’s impersonation of the Swedish Nightingale goes from operatic to sarcastic in an instant. Later, while reciting one of the spiritual-yearning poems, Crawford makes transitions from thunderous voice to dipped-chin wistfulness to intense contemplation — all in the space of just three lines.

Luce’s 1976 play, meanwhile, provides explanations for the weird-spinster-in-white reclusiveness: a possessive sister, unattainable suitors, Emily’s willingness to thumb her nose at Amherst society by playing the role and enjoying the game.
And the dramatist places poems in speculative contexts (“Success is counted sweetest” after being rejected for publication, “Wild nights! wild nights!” imagining the unconsummated love of her life). The result? Making the poems come alive in new ways.

Quibbles? Sometimes the monologue’s changes of topic seemed too abrupt, though you might write that off as reflecting Dickinson’s quicksilver mind. At the top of Act Two, Crawford overdoes the coquettish nervousness while practicing how she’ll greet the distinguished editor who’s about to pay a visit.
In addition, no one doubts that Dickinson had irreverent and passionate thoughts, or that Luce needed Emily to have an outgoing, theatrical personality to keep the interest up for an entire evening. But I seriously doubt that the historical Dickinson was anywhere near this forthcoming. Still, once you accept the premise of this engaging, fictional Emily, Crawford’s performance constitutes seduction by thought-process.

You’ve been through so many emotions during this visit to Aunt Emily’s house that by the final moment, when she leaves to go do some more baking, you’re sad to see her go.
Meanwhile, Crawford’s Emily has been opening her arms wide and embracing the light, plunging into possibilities even as she knows that life will find a way to undercut her plans. She delivers an acting class up there, folks — one so good that, by the end, you’re sorry to see Crawford go too.

& & &

Next week’s shows on Wednesday-Friday, March 4-6, have been cancelled so that Crawford can fly to L.A. to film the finale of E.R. She will still perform both scheduled shows on Saturday, March 7. The show’s scheduled to run through Saturday, March 14; there’s a possibility of an added matinee on Sunday, March 15.

[ photo from Wikipedia: Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson in 1846 or 1847, when she was about 16; this is the only authenticated image of her after childhood. ]

Interplayers has possibilities

Interplayers has released 15 titles that it's considering for its 29th season in 2009-10:

The Wrong People Have Money, by Reed McColm
Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen
Lost Highway, by Randal Myler and Mark Harelik
Skin Deep, by Jon Lonoff (overweight, frumpy but funny sister vs. gorgeous, married sister who relies on plastic surgery; cast of four)
Dead Man's Cell Phone, by Sarah Ruhl (Mary-Louise Parker answers it and insinuates herself into the lives of his dysfunctional family and demanding mistress)
Company, by George Furth and Stephen Sondheim (Robert/Bobby, turning 35, and the lives of five couples leading to questions of frustrated commitment vs. independent loneliness)
Third, by Wendy Wasserstein (feminist professor accuses rich-kid student of plagiarism, with an overlay of *King Lear*)
Johnny Guitar, by Nicholas Hoogstraten, Martin Silvestri and Joel Higgins (a musical based on the Barbara Stanwyck movie featuring the Wild West and blacklisting)
Doubt, a Parable, by John Patrick Shanley
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (one-woman show about death and grief)
For Better, by Eric Coble (3M, 3W; a farce about a bride and groom using e-mail, texting and camera phones to enjoy their honeymoon ... while in different cities)
Incorruptible: A Dark Comedy About the Dark Ages, by Michael Hollinger
Misery, by Simon Moore, based on the novel by Stephen King
Seascape With Shark and Dancer, by Don Nigro
I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, by G. Cryer and N. Ford

Reed McColm is now listed in the Interplayers program as "Producing Director," with Karen Kalensky still as "Consulting Artistic Director."

photo: HenrikIbsen.info