Stage Thrust, with Bobo the Theater Ho

Race review (at Interplayers)

2011-04-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

at Interplayers through April 16

In its union of insightful script, well-practiced directing and subtle acting, Race represents just about the best of Spokane-area (non-musical) theater.

Take an early moment: Two defense lawyers — one black, one white — are deciding whether to take on the case of a mega-rich white man accused of raping a black woman. The black partner (David Casteal) points out to the alleged rapist (Patrick Treadway) that black people will be thrilled that he’s guilty — but not simply because he’s white. “No. Because of the calendar,” Henry explains. “Fifty years ago. You’re white? Same case. Same facts. You’re innocent.”

From “he can’t be convicted of it” to “he definitely did it”: in half a century, we’ve traveled from black oppression to white guilt.

The rich guy, Charles, he’s trapped by his social class and skin color. Public opinion and the legal system are stacked against him. That’s so unfair.

And at that point, you could just sense the opening-night audience — mostly white, middle-class, middle-aged, comfortably established — start to shift in their seats. So unfair.

Henry delivers another smackdown to Charles: “And p.s. I don’t like all this bullshit about the world is treating you unfairly, as it also treated you unfairly when you were born to wealth, but I don’t believe that you complained then.”

Let’s see now — people lining up against you because of your race, social class, gender. Welcome to what it’s like to be a working-class black woman.

The audience got very quiet. And then Treadway, who had been seated, back to the audience, in the interrogation seat (it’s usually important in a David Mamet play, who’s sitting, who’s standing, who just got told to sit down and who did the telling) turned to the audience, lifted his chin, and made his face take the brunt of Justin Schmidt’s full-glare lighting.

Soon after, Marilyn Langbehn’s direction capitalizes on the script’s metatheatrical opportunities by having Kevin Partridge (as the white lawyer, the James Spader role in last year’s Broadway run) turn to one-third of the thrust-stage audience, addressing us, directly implicating us as if we are jurors seated in judgment. And here we were thinking that race and gender relations are workable, that the law is actually dedicated to something so unprofitable as the pursuit of truth and justice.

For this thoughtful, sometimes startling, always engaging production, let’s get some criticisms out of the way. It’s not elegant-looking enough. These are people of privilege, and it needs to look polished, which is beyond Interplayers’ current capabilities. The production’s not polished yet, either, in terms of memorization or pace: Aside from line-wobbles, junctures that need some air in order to register are being rushed past in the actors’ urgency to shoot through all that rat-a-tat-tat David Mamet-speak. And will someone please take in the sides of Treadway’s suit jacket? Because he’s swimming in it, and no wealthy man has that bad a tailor.

But there’s much else to admire: Langbehn’s choice to keep actors nearly motionless amid the flying accusations of the opening sequence, spotlighting the words. At various junctures, multiple forms of shame and guilt wash over the characters. Partridge’s lowered brow of false concern, the way he peers over his glasses with guile, the way he hunkers over Charles just before delivering a good psychological skewering. Casteal, acting too much with his hands early on, becoming a crowd favorite with his sassy, call-and-response-rhythm put-downs. (You can sense how Henry has blended the streets and the law school.)

As the partners’ new associate, Nike Imoru returns to the Interplayers stage — a gazelle about to pounce, arms back, legs ready to spring like pogo sticks right out of her professional-office-attire-but-still-provocative high heels. In the final act, Imoru flashes her stately, glaring, accusatory eyes — a sharp contrast to her submissive, steno-pad-scribbling secretary’s demeanor in the early going. By that point, Partridge’s Jack, reduced to nervous stuttering, has lost most of his swagger. The power balance has shifted, and with it our attitudes about law, race, gender, ourselves, our social position.

Whites oppressed blacks, and now blacks assume that every white person will continue to do the same. And they do, Mamet suggests, even if only subconsciously. That’s just the way it is, Bruce Hornsby sang, and we are all caught in a cycle of mutual distrust.

Like the electricity that crackled around this theater back in 1994 when it produced the abortion drama Keely and Du, Race has the potential to alter some people’s thinking and break the cycle.

Recent stuff at Bloglander

2011-04-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

Visit the Theater Blog at inlander.com to view

a slide show of Metamorphoses at the Civic (through April 17),

a slide show of Race at Interplayers (through April 16),

and a review of A Streetcar Named Desire at Gonzaga (which closed March 27).

THEATER THIS WEEKEND appears there every Thursday.

Or just visit the Inlander home page, the Arts & Culture page or The Inlander's Facebook page.

Raisin' the roof in CdA

2011-03-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

When Coeur d'Alene's Lake City Playhouse production of Almost, Maine — which was supposed to be Idaho's entrant for the AACT regional competition in Richland, Wash., next month — had to withdraw in favor of installing a new roof ... well, I guess they weren't kidding. (photo by George Green)

9 to 5: The Musical preview

2011-03-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

For Thursday's print version in The Inlander, this article got cut, and then cut again. (This is a tragedy: Bobo's prose is deathless.) Therefore, if you want to read all about Dee Hoty's emulation of Lily Tomlin; her real-life encounters with sexist sleazeballs; what her pre-show routine is like; and a bit about the musical's songs ... here ya go.

If you’re performing in the musical version of a movie that everybody knows, and you’re playing a part identified with a particular actress, then here’s how to pay her homage: Rip her off. But be nice about it.

In the national tour of 9 to 5 (March 24-27 at the INB Center), Dee Hoty is playing the Lily Tomlin role of Violet, the office veteran who mentors two co-workers in their shared struggle against their sexist jerk of a boss.

“Steal from the best,” Hoty says. (That's her in the photo in 2008, when she played Mame at the 5th Street in Seattle.) “If it’s a great idea, you should have it for yourself.” What Hoty found fascinating about Lily Tomlin’s performance in the 1980 movie “was her stillness. It’s a real lesson in how less is more. Just let the words do the work — you don’t have to do all these big gesticulations.”

Late in the first act, for example, when the three women are fearful that they’ve acted out Violet’s fantasy and actually poisoned Mr. Hart’s coffee, everybody runs off seeking medical help. “In the hospital scene, when everyone is going berserk and totally losing it, I’m very controlled in the way [director] Jeff [Calhoun] has redone the show,” Hoty says.

“’You gotta know what to do,/ You gotta do it in a hurry … slam the phone, open the door’ — there’s a whole dance for the ensemble there, but in the middle of it all is my tutorial with Judy. I try to be the calm in the storm.”

Hoty’s wily veteran is joined by Judy the newbie (Mamie Parris) and Doralee the hubba-hubba blonde (Diana DeGarmo, the American Idol runner-up in 2004, the year of Jennifer Hudson and William Hung).

The kind of sexism the characters face isn’t just a relic of the ‘80s — Hoty has faced it herself. “One time,” she recalls, “I had a film audition for a kind of courtesan-y girl in the Old West, one of those dance hall girls. And this was with a famous director and a famous casting director, who will remain nameless. So we went into the room to read, and the casting director began to snuggle up to me. In the moment, I figured that’s what the part called for. I didn’t feel threatened, I just played along — that’s just who this girl is, I thought. Well, he started reaching toward somewhere he shouldn’t … and then he stopped himself.

“I haven’t had a lot of those ‘Hey, baby, I’ll make it worth your while …’ moments,” Hoty says, using her most gravelly voice. “Honestly? I’m a woman of a certain age. Nobody’s making passes at me now. It’s not like I’m 24.”

But that’s OK. “I don’t have a giant ego, because that won’t get you very far in this business,” Hoty says. “I mean, when I roll out of bed in the morning, I’m not thinking of myself as ‘three-time Tony nominee Dee Hoty.’”

She’s thinking of herself as a working actor who’s got a job. (She's already working with her agent to set up a part in a play this August, since the 9 to 5 tour ends in July.)

Ah, yes, life on the road. For an actress in a musical about the routine of office work, what’s the daily routine like?

Hoty — who travels with her three-legged Pomeranian — spends a lot of time describing her routine with Sophie the dog.

Before shows, she says, “I vocalize in the shower. Then I do a little mini-workout — I call it a 'hotel workout' — with those stretchy bands. Then, one hour before the show, I get to the theater and get into my ‘smalls’ [i.e., underwear]. I start my makeup, and I have a ‘hair call’ for the wig lady at half-hour. We do the pin curls and she puts on my wig. I finish my makeup, do some itty-bitty vocalizing — just to make sure it’s all there — and then I have a dresser who comes by to help — make sure I’m wearing my watch and have my wedding ring, since those are both important to the plot.

"I’m rarely offstage in the show, so I set my cap for that. When the curtain comes down, we move in reverse: I give everything to my dresser, but I re-do some things for her, like replacing my clothes that need to be on the deck for my quick changes. Then I get back down to my skin, clothes go to the laundry, and we’re ready to do another show.

"On a two-show day, I’ll keep some of my prep on — the pin curls, my makeup. I’ve fond this fabulous new makeup that doesn’t slide down your neck by 9 o’clock!

"And I have a variety of hats, so I don’t look like one of those Broadway chorines sitting in a diner with her baseball cap on.”

In the show, Hoty gets to sing about that kind of routine. There’s the title tune, of course. (All the songs in the musical, including the lyrics, are by Dolly Parton.) There’s a song for Violet’s introduction to Judy about office life. There are songs for each of the three women’s revenge fantasies against their boss. There’s a song when they realize that they’re confronted by the boss’s right-hand woman, a song when they triumph, and songs for when they rid themselves of useless men and start to realize their own potential.

Because 9 to 5 isn't just a chick show. It's chick-empowering show ... with music.

9 to 5: The Musical • Thurs, March 24, at 7:30 pm; Fri, March 25, at 8 pm; Sat, March 26, at 2 pm and 8 pm; Sun, March 27, at 1 pm and 6:30 pm • $37-$70 • INB Center • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • bestofbroadwayspokane.com • (800) 325-SEAT

Civic's Spelling Bee advances to national finals

2011-03-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

The Civic's production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

has won the Washington state community theater championship and is

going to the national finals in Rochester, N.Y., in late June.

Spelling Bee dominated at this weekend's Kaleidoscope theater

festival, winning seven of 12 awards in all and, most importantly, the

overall production award. Even better (from the Civic's point of

view), none of the other three states in Region IX of the American

Association of Community Theatre sent representatives -- which means

that, in effect, Spelling Bee gets to skip right past regionals and go

directly to the national competition.

ACT Richland (an auditioned group of high school students from the Tri

Cities) won the Excellence in Company Creativity award for its

production of Don Zolidis' !Artistic Inspiration, about two hack

writers trying to create a produceable and therefore awful play.

Bremerton Community Theatre won best set design and the Treasure Award

for Arthur Miller's All My Sons.

For its production of Doug Wright's creepy two-hander about a real

estate agent showing a wealthy but sinister man around a huge mansion

where recently some horrible things have happened, Wildwood Park, the

Richland Players won for best sound, best lighting and best direction.

Wildwood Park was also named the alternate production for advancing on

to Rochester.

Spokane Civic Theatre made the most of its home court advantage,

winning for best costumes (Jan Wanless), best choreography (Kathie

Doyle-Lipe), best design and production team, best ensemble, "Magic

Moment" (an adjudicator-selected award for most compelling episode

within a play, given to Lacey Bohnet for her lead singing in "The I

Love You Song") and Outstanding Performance (Mark Pleasant as Leaf

Coneybear, the hippie speller who goes into trances) -- along with the

all-important "Company Advancing to the National Festival" award.

Doyle-Lipe, who directed the show, reports that in the three months before the national competition, the Civic will probably schedule "a couple" of Spelling Bee performances -- both to keep the performers sharp and to serve as fundraisers. After all, it will probably cost in excess of $30,000 to send two dozen people (cast, crew and band) to Rochester for a week.

Visit the Washington State Community Theatre Association blog for more

information. Visit "Stage Thrust" at Bloglander, too.

Almost, Maine photos

2011-02-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

by John Cariani

at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene, tonight through March 6

snuggled-in-the-cold couple:

Troy Anast as Pete, Jordan Loe as Ginette (from the Prologue, Interlogue and Epilogue)

pillow-throwing couple:

Andy Leferink as Lendell, Liberty Harris as Gayle (from "Getting It Back," the fourth and final full scene in Act One)

"Things To Be Afraid Of" couple:

Janelle Frisque as Marvalyn, Aaron Baldwin as Steve (from Act 1, scene 3, "This Hurts")

Nunsense photos (and 2003 review)

2011-02-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

Nunsense opens Friday night at the Civic and runs through March 6, but hurry and call 325-2507 or (800) 325-SEAT soon, because it's already nearly sold out.

Bobo will have a preview in the print Inlander on Thursday.

In the meantime, how about a review that appears even before the production has opened? (Wait, that's what they're doing in New York with that Spider-Man musical.) Amuse yourself instead with a review, written by some hack, of the 2003 Nunsense at the Civic.

(Left to right in the top photos: Kathie Doyle-Lipe as Sister Mary Hubert, Patricia Brady as Sister Mary Amnesia, Jean Hardie as Sister Mary Regina, Jillian Wylie as Sister Mary Leo, and Abbey Crawford as Sister Robert Anne)

The Professor IS a Professor: Kahlil Joseph in Legally Blonde

2011-02-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

Copied below — but in a nicer format over at the Bloglander — is a 2,000-word profile of Kahlil Joseph, who will be at downtown Spokane's INB Center playing Professor Callahan in Legally Blonde: The Musical through Sunday, Feb. 13.

First you hear the voice — resonant as mahogany, smooth as late-night FM radio.

Kahlil Joseph is wrapped in his best winter clothes against the February chill, with scarf, coat and sunglasses almost obscuring the rest of him. And then you hear his voice, and then it makes sense: There’s a reason that this man who makes his living as an actor — who has done film and TV and voiceover work but is on his first national theatrical tour — has carved out a practice as a vocal and acting coach in L.A. (home to so many I-just-got-an-audition! actors). In fact, he has coached actors who have appeared in such productions as The L Word, Coyote Ugly and Clash of the Titans; he has even coached Sean Connery’s son, Jason.

Joseph — who plays the intimidating Professor Callahan of Harvard Law School in the current touring version of Legally Blonde (a show that I’ve expressed some doubts about) inspires confidence with his no-nonsense but engaging manner. He’s passionate about his craft, and he expects reporters to follow suit.

“I expect them to know as much about me as I know about them,” he says, adding that 85 percent of journalists do their homework before interviews. The rest, he says, get uninspired monosyllabic answers.

The first leg of the current tour (Sept. 21-Dec. 18) was mostly one-night stops in a blur of Southern and Midwestern towns, Joseph says: “Four weeks straight — four weeks!,” he says, “of the show getting out at 10:30 pm and being back on the bus at 6:00, 6:30, maybe 7:30 am. We perfected the art of sleeping on the bus. We pull in around 2:00, sound check’s over around 5:00, call is an hour before the show — it’s just a blur. It’s fun to see new cities, new states — but it’s challenging physically, emotionally, mentally.

“Most of the cast is eating out most of the time. Some eat fairly well, with their protein shakes and all, but I really try to be disciplined by making the time to buy my own groceries.”

Meanwhile, the Legally Blonde tour’s second stint goes on, Dec. 28-May 15 (though mercifully, with a much higher proportion of entire weeks, or at least split weeks, in particular cities).

“Interestingly,” Joseph says, “I have reset my body clock on this tour. Usually, I’m a guy who goes to bed at a normal hour. But if you think of a typical worker who works 9 to 6, gets home 6:30 — they’re going to sleep around 11 o’clock, with several hours to unwind ... well, if you did that on a tour ... and even as it is, I’m often up until 1:00 or 2:00 am.

“But now, I can sleep on command. I can’t do a power-nap, but if I only get four hours’ sleep, I can make up for it. Psychologically, it’s tough.

“But you know, when I went home [to L.A.] on our layoff, I’d get to sleep at a regular hour.”

On the morning of his first full day in Spokane, Joseph didn’t have to get on a bus — but he did have to do the usual round of early-morning radio and TV spots, including a chat with Verne Windham on KPBX in which he recalled how he got interested in song and dance and martial arts, all when he was just 5 to 7 years old; how he once sang in rock bands in New Delhi; and how he hopes that taking a year off from his work as an acting coach to do this tour will get him seen across the country, so that when viewers see him in film and TV, maybe they’ll remember him. (He has guested on TV series such as 24, Numb3rs, Leverage,Castle and Desperate Housewives; he did the requisite stint on a daytime soap, and he does a voiceover in Julia Roberts’s recent movie, Eat Pray Love.)

As for the movie-vs.-musical differences with Legally Blonde, Joseph admits that “film can be more subtle.” But with all the song and dance, he says, “a musical can be a more escapist and fun way of telling it.”

When Callahan comes on to Elle in the film, it’s just a hand placed on her thigh; in the musical, the harasser steals a kiss and then gets slapped — bigger gestures for bigger effects, or, as Joseph says, “the forcible kiss and the slap just pop so much better onstage.”

Actors on tour will tell you that they have a hard time uprooting their lives and staying for extended times away from their loved ones. Joseph swears by technology now. “I didn’t even have a laptop before this tour,” he says. “But I am so thankful for technology now. Skype is my mantra.”

Always having to be on, while touring, is also difficult. “When you do a TV show or shoot a movie,” Joseph says, “you can fly back home. But this is constant.

“I’ve sort of done my career in reverse,” he says, listing his roles as Jean Valjean in Les Miz (in India), and as Zach in A Chorus Line, etc.

“But the interesting thing about choosing this role in this, as you call it, ‘bubble-gum musical,’ is the chance to make something of him.”

Him is Professor Callahan, the intimidating bad guy of the piece — and Joseph is clearly on a campaign to make something of the prof other than a mere stereotype.

“When my agent told me about this role, my first question was: “They made a musical? Of Legally Blonde?’ But she said to look at the character breakdown, and it seemed to fit. At the same time, I wanted to bring my own spirit to the role.”

He talks about giving the character more charisma and intensity — but of even greater primacy is the fact that Joseph, 32 and of East Indian ancestry, is distinct from all the elderly white men you might picture when you think of “established Harvard professor.”

He’s also someone who spent 2007-08 teaching voice and acting in UCLA’s School of Theater — “So that to any naysayers [who think Joseph can’t plausibly play a professor], I can say, “Well, sir, I am a professor.”

The song “Chip on My Shoulder,” sung to Elle by her newfound love interest, Emmett, is a testament to the need for motivation: To succeed, you need to get a little bit angry. Joseph thinks it also applies to his character: If Callahan is younger and darker-skinned than the Old White Men who supposedly make up the Harvard faculty, then he must have been “very fiery,” Joseph says. “It’s like I’m out to prove myself.”

In the Spokane Public Radio interview with Windham, Joseph emphasized that Callahan “also has a chip on his shoulder. I’m the youngest actor to have played this role so far, and I want to make him compelling and charismatic, like he’s got that young fire — in effect, saying, “Look at me: I run a billion-dollar law firm. And look at you — you’re just getting started.” At the law firm, Joseph explains, “I am God, and this is my show. And I don’t know who you are” ... although Callahan’s attitude toward Elle changes, “once he realizes that she isn’t as stupid as I thought.”

While he can’t think of any other stereotypes that this production breaks, at least his Callahan is younger, “full of fire, drive, energy and charisma. The audience is going to take him very seriously.”

Joseph realizes that he’s playing the bad guy in what amounts to (my term, not his) a bubble-gum musical. What’s interesting is how hard he’s working to create a rounded characterization within the show. “The irony is that I like to play bad guys,” he says. “My Callahan is unlike all the other characters in the show. He’s not so happy-go-lucky. He has a lot of power and energy, but he is calculated, calm, still and guarded.”

Asked about how audiences for this musical vary by region, Joseph laughs and says, “When it comes to ‘Gay or European,’ they were screaming with laughter, even in the South. But it oscillates: When those two guys kiss each other [Nikos and Carlos, in “There! Right There!”], then there’s a kind of forced, quiet applause.

After the kiss-and-slap when Callahan turns into a sexual harasser, Joseph says that most audiences begin to “utterly despise me. And the hatred that comes out when I get fired from the legal team — it’s vehement. People applaud. But if you’ve cheered when I get fired, no one is happier than me. If you boo me, it would make my day.”

He has studied film villains — De Niro, Pacino, Denzel Washington in Training Day — for clues on how best to portray the bad guy. But some of his best inspiration, he says, comes from an unusual source: pro wrestling. “When the crowd is shouting, ‘Kill him!,’ that’s when I imagine that I’m like what the wrestlers call ‘the heel.’ Some actors are terrified of their own negative emotions, but I do have a dark side — and I’m not scared of it, I just channel it into my work,” he says. “When I smile, that’s when I’m at my most dangerous.

“Bad guys think that what they’re doing is right — to the point of delusion. Look at Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds — guys like that are convinced that what they are doing is right, like in that opening speech of his when he compares Jews to rats.

“Callahan is like that. He has a God complex: ‘I am God.’ He’s very grounded, and he moves slowly. He can create a great amount of tension just by moving slowly.

“My first entrance comes in ‘Blood on the Water’ — I tell my students that they have to be like sharks: find their enemies and destroy them.”

Unlike most actors, Joseph likes to watch himself work. He can be self-critical, but he doesn’t like false modesty. He’s serious about his art, wants to see himself performing it, and doesn’t understand “fake humility. It’s very detrimental to an actor. You should appreciate yourself, so long as you know how to appreciate yourself to your advantage.” What he means is having the capacity to criticize yourself as well. “Some actors pretend that it’s abhorrent to see themselves on film: ‘Oh, no, that’s too much.’” But not wanting to see yourself work, Joseph says, is “equally as bad as someone who’s fawning all over himself. We’re all so concerned with appearances. I don’t like actors who act as if they want other people’s pity.”

He’s not looking for any pity in “Blood on the Water.” In Callahan’s entrance song a half-hour into the show — in which he demands that young law students start thinking like predatory sharks — Joseph’s short stature, plus the fact that listening from the wings dissipates the forcefulness of his voice, make him appear less than completely domineering. But the controlled movement he talked about is certainly evident — compared to all the bouncy bubble-gum girls in this show, he’s silent, self-assured, deliberate in his movements.

This may be the 142nd performance of the Legally Blonde tour, but just before a second-act entrance, there’s Joseph, straight-backed in his suit, silently mouthing the words he’s about to speak onstage, even though he’s done this scene many times before. He waves a prop cell phone around, gesticulating, warming up. He’s older than the other cast members — the veteran, dignified, a stalwart among all the backstage silliness and play. When the orchestra strikes up the entr’acte, his head pops to attention: Soon it’ll be magic time.

And sure enough, soon he’s onstage, telling Elle and the other legal interns how to approach their next case. Caught up in what isn’t exactly the world’s most subtle musical, he’s still trying to mold a subtle characterization. In his professionalism and passion for his craft, Kahlil Joseph typifies many working actors today — easy to dismiss as just “that guy you saw that one time,” fleetingly, in a guest spot on TV, perhaps, but someone who has an interesting story to tell, loads of talent and intelligence, and an unsure but rising presence in this business we call show.

Image: Kahlil Joseph, backstage at Spokane’s INB Center on Feb. 11, 2011, during intermission for Legally Blonde: The Musical — he’s wearing a kind of smoking jacket to protect his Professor Callahan costume

Visit the theater blog at inlander.com.

Spelling Bee preview and review: links

2011-01-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

Over at Bloglander, The Inlander's scrolling moshpit of various blogs, you can read Q&A interviews with two cast members from Spokane Civic Theatre's current production (through Feb. 20) of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: Lance Babbitt as William Barfee and Maureen Kumakura as Rona Lisa Perretti.

And then — be warned! — a VERY LONG, blow-by-blow account of how opening night went.

partial review of Opus

2011-01-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

at Interplayers through Feb. 5

If a great artist stops loving other people, is he still a great artist? Do you have a worthwhile legacy if you created great art but everyone remembers you as an expletive?

Ultimately, Opus says no. But Michael Hollinger’s play about a classical quartet springs surprises along the way....

The play's four middle-aged guys (plus one female interloper) are like any bickering family of co-workers. They’re just trying to create good and beautiful things while putting up with one another’s absolutely infuriating flaws.

Flaws like the flighty, artsy, ineffable irritations of Dorian, the quartet’s violist (played here by Patrick Treadway). Dorian revels in music some days and is disgusted by it on others. With fingers fluttering near his forehead and a faraway look in his eye, Treadway delivers the opening scene’s paean to music’s beauty: “The whole thing rises,” he says, “floats together, falls back, arches upward, no one leading, no one following, it’s just … pulsating. Like it’s alive.” Cracking jokes about being off his meds, Treadway delivers all the facets of a man who sniffs and cuddles violins (he loves them so much) but who can, nevertheless, be such a pill sometimes.

As the group’s perfectionistic leader, John Oswald is fussy enough without needing to turn on the mad-scientist mannerisms. Yes, Elliott is high-strung, demanding and intense. But in a drama for five hands like this one — intimate, psychological, refined — the grimaces and grasping fingers seem too jarring. Yet in the hiring scene — allowing a new musician into what has been a closed circle of four egotists — Oswald also displays more than Elliott’s usual phony charm. It’s a rounded portrait, but with the darker corners etched too deeply....

The conclusion tips toward the melodramatic: Would the startling news really be delivered just before the big concert? And would the career-altering decision really be made immediately after it?

Opus, at least, is crammed with incidents — many of them comic, as we watch the bickering of a dysfunctional musical family. Director Jadd Davis could quicken some of the blackouts between those incidents, but it’s to his credit that the musical excerpts are performed realistically (and briefly) enough that we can easily imagine that we’re watching actual professional musicians....

Opus • Wed-Fri 7:30 pm, Sat 2 pm and 7:30 pm, through Feb. 5 • $18-$22; $13-$16, matinees; $10-$12, students and teachers • Interplayers • 174 S. Howard St. • interplayers.com • 455-PLAY

(Full review in Thursday's Inlander, or at inlander.com. Photo by Young Kwak: Dave Rideout as Carl, Bethany Hart as Grace.)

Opus slide show

2011-01-20T17:11:00.001-08:00

You can listen to director Jadd Davis as a dozen images slide by.

Opus, by Michael Hollinger, opens tonight at Interplayers and runs through Feb. 5.

In a nice show of mutual support among local arts community members, the Spokane Symphony Orchestra has bought the house for an added performance of Opus — which is great for Symphony employees and their families, and terrifying for actors who have to mimic playing instruments in front of musicians who actually do so for a (partial) living.

Interplayers announces 2011-12 season

2011-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

Here are the questions that we hear most often about Interplayers: "Are they still open?" "Are they gonna make it?" "Is the board going to start doing some actual fundraising and marketing? And are they going to stop interfering with Reed [McColm, the artistic director]?"

Well, with David Mamet's Race replacing Cotton Patch Gospel this April, and with the slate of plays that McColm announced at last Thursday night's fundraiser, the folks at Interplayers are obviously planning on keeping the doors open. Better yet — despite pressures logistical, political and economic — McColm is going ahead with some adventurous programming.

[You can visit a version of this same post with photos and hyperlinks to reviews of several of the plays at The Inlander's Theater blog.]

First the new season, then some comments.

Sept. 15-Oct. 1, 2011
The Boys Next Door, by Tom Griffin
directed by Troy Nickerson

Oct. 20-Nov. 5
The Receptionist, by Adam Bock

Nov. 23-Dec. 10, 2011
Sisters of Swing: The Story of the Andrews Sisters
By Beth Gilleland and Bob Beverage

Jan. 19-Feb. 4, 2012
Tuna Does Vegas, by Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard
Directed by Patrick Treadway
Starring Bill Marlowe and Michael Weaver

Feb. 23-March 10
Mauritius, by Theresa Rebeck

March 29-April 14
An Infinite Ache, by David Schulner

May 3-19, 2012
Taking Steps, by Alan Ayckbourn

&

The Boys Next Door: A social worker jokes and suffers with the four mentally impaired men who live in a halfway house under his supervision. Nickerson, the Civic's resident director, is branching out to other theaters: He's directing Rent at Lake City next season along with this show at Interplayers. (Wasn't Troy involved with the 1994 production at the Civic?)

The Receptionist: The title character is just dealing with ringing phones and office gossip — until you find out just what kind of business her company is engaged in.

Sisters of Swing: LaVerne, Maxene and Patty were most famous for "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy" and entertaining GI's overseas.

Tuna Does Vegas: This production of the fourth Tuna show reunites the director (currently playing Dorian in Opus at Interplayers) and the cast (the director of drama at SFCC and the former Actors Rep artistic director and Interplayers favorite) who have performed a couple of Tuna shows in Spokane before. The premise here is that Arles Struvie and Bertha Bumiller are driving to Vegas to renew their wedding vows — and everybody from the third-smallest town in Texas joins 'em.

Mauritius: A play about stamp collecting? Actually, it's not a snore, and not even primarily about stamps. Mom dies, leaving behind a rare and valuable collection (including one from the obscure title nation). One daughter wants to cash in, one doesn't — and then the rapacious con men move in, hoping to make a kill.

An Infinite Ache: Dating and the road not taken: What if, at the end of a so-so first date, you suddenly had a foretaste of all the happy and sad things that might happen to the two of you, if only you stayed together? Two twentysomethings see their potential lives flash in front of their eyes.

Taking Steps: A door-slamming farce, set in a three-story Victorian mansion — but with the gimmick, typical for Ayckbourn, that all three floors of the imaginary house are collapsed onto a single level. I still remember Michael Weaver in the 1994 production here, scampering "up" and "down" completely flat stairs (like a running back high-stepping through tires, the way they do in football drills). The idea with this "Interplayers Classics" slot is that the theater will revive, once each season, a hit from its past.

Of Mice and Men review

2011-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Sitting cross-legged on the ground like a little boy, he rocks back and forth, self-comforting. With his lips trembling, he tugs on the legs of his filthy denim overalls. Fluttering fingers wipe nervous sweat off his forehead. When he’s worried — and he’s usually worried, because he doesn’t understand half of what people say — he jerks his head spasmodically and averts his eyes.
With his masterful characterization of a mentally impaired man, David Gigler’s performance as Lennie Small in Lake City’s *Of Mice and Men* sets the tone for a production of a script that exerts a primal pull on viewers’ emotions.

Sure, it’s been filmed three times, and you read it in high school. But Steinbeck’s morality tale of migrant workers during the Depression shouldn’t just be checked off as a been-there, done-that classic.
Steinbeck’s characters act generously, form unlikely friendships, envision a better future. Sometimes they’re cruel, of course, and nobody ever has any money. But when the kind-hearted ones have their little victories, we smile the way Lennie does when his traveling companion George tells him bedtime stories.

George Green has played his namesake before, and as with Gigler’s Lennie, it shows in his attention to detail. Portraying the father-figure for this big lunk of a man-child, Green catches both the tenderness and the resentment: He’s glad to care for Lennie but wishes he could stake out on his own. When he can’t supply any ketchup for Lennie’s canned beans, Green’s smiles are clouded with guilt. Later on, when it looks, momentarily, as if George might actually be able to purchase the little farm of their dreams, Green paces around and grimace-grins: He’s happy-anxious in the way people are when their desires crowd in too close.

In the opening scenes, director Dan Heggem lets the tension linger (in low-key lighting of his own design) while Green and Gigler complete their characters with well-observed gestures. But the deliberate pace doesn’t serve the second act’s flurry of incidents. And while Chris LeBlanc provides sage counsel as the foreman, several supporting actors lack conviction. At least the social-outcast theme is carried forward by Norm McBride, who bestows dignity on an old ranch hand, and David Casteal, who lends his resonant voice to a crippled, embittered laborer.
When it comes to tramps like George and Lennie, the world doesn’t care enough even to treat them unfairly — it just happens. After seeking a better future for themselves, they fail. But watching performances as good as Gigler’s and Green’s instills a little hope, at least, that somewhere, somebody like us deserves a little happiness.

*Of Mice and Men* • Thurs-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm, through Jan. 30 • $17; $15, students and military; $13, seniors; $9, children • Lake City Playhouse • 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene • lakecityplayhouse.org • (208) 667-1323

Don't Dress for Dinner review

2011-01-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

Hubby wants to shag his mistress, needs to get Wifey out of the house. Wifey discovers that a Cute Young Thing is coming over to cook dinner (suspicious, that). Then Wifey learns that her own lover — conveniently enough for our plot, he’s Hubby’s Best Pal — will also soon be arriving.
The name of the game in *Don’t Dress for Dinner,* then, is Mutual Deception: Wifey and Hubby are each trying to get some quick nookie before the other finds out.
But they don’t get much nookie. And what they do get isn’t quick in, er, coming.
But that’s in the nature of farce: frustrations, complications, recriminations, all in good fun.

Playwright Marc Camoletti’s character manipulation is almost algebraic: A matched with C is much naughtier than A matched with B, especially if D takes an interest in both B and C.
Once the cook goes through pretending to be not the cook but an actress, or else someone’s niece, or else somebody’s mistress — and just before she goes back, drunkenly, to being a cook again — playgoers are going to find their intellects disengaged, unhinged. When plots and counterplots are this convoluted, you can’t figure them out, at least not in the moment. So turn off your brain: You’re just along for the ride.
It’s like playtime for adults who may once have had a lascivious thought or two (which is to say, all of us).

As Bernard the Hubby — who’s always *thisclosetogettingcaught* — Scott Miller is particularly good at quicksilver changes from pretend-contentment to anguish: “Oh, good,” he smiles, brightly; “Oh, God,” he moans, miserably.
As Jacqueline the Wifey — sometimes scorned, so beware the hell of her fury — Leigh Sandness snakes an arm up a column, strikes poses and gets all raspy-voiced in indignation. But she doesn’t usually overdo it, which is important.
Comedy’s funniest when the actors play it seriously. For them, the stakes are high, and mugging for comedic effect just won’t do. It’s for those of us in the audience to giggle at what fools these lecherous mortals be.
So in the opening scene, when Hubby and Wifey are making their separate tryst-arrangements, what if there were less in the way of guilty grimaces and anxious finger-chewing? We’d still get the point, and the characters would seem less like cartoons.

In the meantime, someone (like director Thomas Heppler) needs to tell Shawna Nordman (as the cook) that mincing hands and continual eyeglass-adjustment convey anxiety, and that while mincing hands and continual eyeglass-adjustment may be funny the first three times, they stop making sense once the cook gains leverage on the men and a position of relative power.
Nordman still makes a delightful drunk, though, and she gets to wear one outfit — designed by Dee Finan and her team of costumers — that’s just about perfect for farce: Right before our eyes, it transforms from way too prudish to nearly too revealing to just-about-right sexy.

David Baker’s set design stuffs paintings and sculptures by local artists into the interior of an exposed-timber French farmhouse that’s nearly as eccentric as the characters running around inside it.
At its two-and-a-quarter-hour length (including intermission), *Don’t Dress* could use a trim: Nobody can keep laughing that long, and a comedy with so much extended and multiple role-playing requires a lot of time for explaining who’s playing which role now. And you know what they say about explaining jokes.
The finale of *Don’t Dress for Dinner,* though, is clear enough. The husband has been sleeping around, and the wife knows it; the wife has been sleeping around, and the husband knows it; and at play’s end, they come to an understanding that in the midst of all this philandering, their marriage will go on.
Sounds like spouse-swapping to me — which, in light of recent events at the Civic, is interesting. Funny how what’s titillating and giggly on stage is grounds for firing people off it.
But then farce, for all its artificiality, is like that: It acknowledges our sexual waywardness, then contains those desires within societal norms. Hubby and Wifey acknowledge their flaws, keep them private and reconcile. Maybe even comedies have something to teach us.

*Don’t Dress for Dinner* • Thurs-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm, through Jan. 30 • $21; $19, seniors; $16, students; $8, student rush • The Civic • 1020 N. Howard St. • spokanecivictheatre.com • 325-2507 or (800) 325-SEAT

Honky Tonky Angels Holiday Spectacular review

2010-11-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

at Interplayers through Dec. 11

The scenic design for the Interplayers production of Honky Tonk Angels Holiday Spectacular repays careful attention.

Stage left is given over to a large bar backed by a mirror. Two wooden tap handles protrude above the bar, and two bar stools stand nearby. A Christmas stocking dangles from a nail in the bar’s wooden-plank facing — which consists of a row of horizontal beige boards, then a row of grayish boards arranged vertically, and finally a bottom row of two more horizontal beige boards.
Just below the mirror, 33 liquor bottles are displayed — some dark, some light, some tall, some squat.
The mirror is topped by a lacquered trophy fish sporting a Santa cap. Just above, the location is identified in large block letters — rather redundantly, I thought — as “HONKY TONK.”
On the mirror, numerous fingerprint smudges were visible. Also affixed to the glass were wads of play money (98 “dollar bills,” I counted).
Over the central doorway looms a deer head with 10-point antlers. Long strands of silver tinsel hang in the doorway.
The wall on the stage-right side of the central doorway features battered Washington license plates, including the numbers CEC 916, GKG 932 and even TE 8185.
A raised area, stage right, provided an alcove from which various sounds emanated. This area was enclosed in chicken wire, taut across a wooden frame with six upright pieces and garlanded with 27 orange Christmas lights. (One was burnt out.) A large sign above the alcove proclaimed, confusingly, “Don’t feed the band.”
The knee wall supporting the chicken-wire area was wallpapered with flattened cardboard liquor boxes: Visible were the insignias of Seagram’s VO, Tanqueray, Black Velvet and Popov.

A standup comedy routine (the “curtain speech”) was delivered before the show. It went on and on, could have stopped in a dozen places, and delayed the start of the play by 18 minutes, but I paid it no mind, as I found myself enraptured by every detail of this production’s setting.
Imagine my surprise and delight, for example, upon discovering that the onstage table nearest me used four wrought iron S-shapes to support its spindle leg with five, six — no, seven — turns, each having been crafted in a pleasing and symmetrical fashion.
For those of you scoring at home, I am informed that 36 songs were performed in 84 minutes of inaction, with the second act eventually called to a halt by the mercy rule.

Just as I was studying the disco ball (11 seconds for each twinkling revolution), a woman — I didn’t catch her name, or what she was singing about, or why she wanted me to dance with her — interrupted my reverie and coerced me into an onstage jig. Soon she was issuing a musical request, imploring Santa to, as she put it, “come down my chimney,” and urging him, in addition, “to bring my baby back ho-ho-ho-home.”
Oh, look, on the far side of the set — I hadn’t noticed this before — there are eight more license plates. Unusually, JU 5152 is a Montana plate.
The overhead lighting grid, I discovered upon investigation, deploys 53 lights, of which — as I determined during one musical number or another, I forget which — some 16 were illuminated (four of them blue, one partially blocked by a heating vent). There are many wires and cords, marvelous to behold, draped and coiled over the various metal bars of the lighting trellis above, and much may be learned by diligent study of them while other audience members are distracted by whatever it was they were looking at during the allotted performance time.
The Holiday Spectacular set was designed by a Mr. Scott Nicks, and I wish to extend my personal thanks to him for the diverting entertainment afforded to me by his bar stools, chicken wire and license plates during the 102 minutes in which I was compelled to look at them.

White Christmas review

2010-11-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

at Spokane Civic Theatre through Dec. 19

Winter Escape

PLAY REVIEW Dancing, singing and spectacle help White Christmas achieve escapism velocity. What about the parts that don't? MICHAEL BOWEN

Times are tough. You want the holidays to be festive. You want a little escapism.
White Christmas offers escape, all right: tap-dance storms and Fred-and-Ginger waltzing. A torch song that transforms into a lovely duet. The leading ladies parade around in a two-woman fashion show of one elegant '50s gown after another. Amid a multiplicity of well-designed sets, there's one scenic effect toward the end that will take your breath away. And yes, the title song moves from a cappella to singalong in warm, fuzzy, comforting ways.
The muscles and tendons of this production -- acting, dancing, singing, design elements -- then, are quite strong. The show's skeleton, however -- its plot, characterization and dialogue -- have a bad case of osteoporosis.
At one point, an angry outburst -- "That's nothing but a load of guff!" -- provides a good plot summary. Turns out White Christmas doesn't have much at all to do with Christmas: The famous song is just used as a framing device. It'a mostly let's-put-on-a-show sprinkled with the usual boy-gets-girl, loses-girl, gets-girl-again action.
"Oh, that's just old-fashioned escapism," people will say. What's wrong with that? Why not just enjoy it? And over the next several weekends, thousands will -- because this month-long show is already sold out.
Well, escapism doesn't work if half the time (nine out of 16 songs, not counting reprises), the corny-hokey-schmaltz factor has you eyeing your wristwatch instead of watching what's onstage.
The two numbers that are supposed to establish both halves of our love quartet as accomplished performers -- "Happy Holidays" and "Sisters" --come off as vaudeville-cutesy, with the boys in Santa costumes and the girls playing peekaboo with giant blue feathers.
Stereotypes abound -- all blondes are dumb, all men are demonstrably heterosexual, the stage manager (Eric Jeffords, channeling Tommy Tune) is so stressed out. Your eyes may start rolling. Take what Andrea Dawson has to go through, for example, in the Bing Crosby character's love-interest role. She and Kevin Partridge (in the Crosby role) have a whole series of spats, quarrels and tiffs. All night long, she's in and out and in and out and in and out of love. It gets to be annoying.
Still, Dawson does well with the resentful parts of the romantic comedy -- she misinterprets Bob's nervousness for arrogance, and no self-satisfied guy is going to put one over on her -- and in the second-act torch song, "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me."
Partridge is no Bing Crosby, but he's better looking and better at delivering dry witticisms. Partridge doesn't have The Voice, but then who does? And when he and his tuxedo step into the spotlight for "How Deep Is the Ocean," his love-longing answers her love-disappointment in the evening's vocal highlight.

Most of Act Two prior to that feels like variety-show filler. There's a cutesy "I'm in love" number, followed by a cutesy "we're not in love" number.
When the next song requires a couple to get along, they get along; if not, they don't. One of the worst offenders is "Falling Out of Love Can Be Fun," in which Betty and Judy are dejected over how men are so untrustworthy. Their lines sound almost tragic. So they decide to do a snappy little song-and-dance.
Then there's a drag number, with the boys imitating the girls in a version of "Sisters" reminiscent of the antics at your local Powder Puff football game.. And then the Shirley Temple character came out with shoulder shimmies in a case of adults compelling kids to act like adults, with all the attendant self-consciousness (on the part of the kid) and seat-squirming (on the part of the adults looking on).

Midway through the first act, though, came one of the best things about this show -- called, appropriately enough, "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing."
The secondary couple have just fallen in love, you see, and things are bustin' out all over. Cameron Lewis and Siri Hafso proceed to provide us with a Fred-and-Ginger moment, with the choreography of director Troy Nickerson (assisted by Jillian Wylie and Kathie Doyle-Lipe) reaching its apogee.
Lewis, with mischievous smirk and raised eyebrows, somehow conveys cleverness and joy all at once: "Look at how good I am, and look at how I got this girl," his actions seem to say. With tiptoe pirouettes and flowing swirls, he's remarkably light on his feet.
Lewis and Hafso waltz and shimmy arms, clap hands and kick, throw in some boogie-woogie moves, move apart and back together, floating across the stage and into each other's arms. It's better than Dancing With the Stars because we've gotten to know Phil and Judy -- they're open and frank about their feelings, not as starched-collar as the main couple -- and because it's emotive dancing (look at how much I'm in love) as opposed to show-off dancing (look at my impressive technique). The two of them are all graceful lifts, curling arms and extended toes. Nickerson, maximizing the romance, adds a vocal quintet and moonlit setting that idealizes the lovers.
Now that's the kind of stuff I can escape into.

Design features are strong. With nine major settings spread across 17 scenes, set designer Peter Hardie ranges from a rustic barn to an elegant cocktail lounge. There's a backdrop featuring a country inn covered in moonlit snow that will take your breath away. (The treetops actually seem to, um, glisten.)
Jan Wanless and her costume crew also work wonders: Every time you look, the two leading women are wearing elegant suits and ballroom-dancing gowns.
The spangles on the some of the tap ensembles' brighly colored vests, however, encapsulate the entire show: Trying too hard to be cheery, they come off as lightweight and insubstantial.
As the old general (who led his battalion with crusty dignity and now runs the inn that's in a cash-flow pinch), Tony Caprile avoids excesses of sentimentality in a heartfelt speech of thanks to his troops (who are seated right where we are). As a tough old broad who runs the Vermont inn, Kathie Doyle-Lipe gets all throaty and pleading in a way that she knows is hilarious in a sexagenarian who wants to get back into show biz. "Put a light on me, I'm like a sunflower!" she squeals, longing for the limelight.

To summarize, then: White Christmas features beautiful sets, detailed and colorful costumes, and some exhilarating choreography.
The score features love duets, gimmick songs, a patriotic chorus, that torch song, a wonderful lullaby and two Christmas carols. An 11-piece band supports two dozen cast members, including the four triple-threat leads.
It's a lot of talent lavished on mediocre material, a lot of overproduced schmaltz with enforced pleasantness.
In his review of the Broadway production two years ago in the New York Times, Charles Isherwood got it right: If what you want is "old-school ... escapism" and" the prospect of singing the title tune along with a bright-beaming ... cast in festive sweaters," then White Christmas will please you. If not, it won't. And some of us aren't so big on festive sweaters.

review of The Cemetery Club

2010-10-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

at the Civic's Studio Theatre through Nov. 14

As a script, The Cemetery Club has some weaknesses. The three main characters are almost (not quite) reducible to types. It's not hard to predict one of the main plot developments, and you can just tell which debates will transpire and which characters will be on which side. The ending leans toward the maudlin.

After reading it, Bobo was expecting an episode the The Golden Girls, just focused more firmly on death (but with the character types and one-liner rimshots pretty much intact).

The fact that Cemetery Club reaches past that level is due to a couple of factors: the immediacy of live theater, and the talents of this production's three merry widows: Melody Deatherage, Mary Starkey and Susan Hardie.

At one point, Tom Heppler (as the eligible widower who is the cynosure of every widow in Ivan Menchell's play) is making small talk in the living room of one of the widows. He gestures toward a pipe rack — anything to make small talk — and mutters something about how he didn't know that her deceased husband was a smoker. On the page, it's just a stage direction; but in Heppler and Deatherage's hands, it becomes a moment. The pipes are all that remain of Murray; both onstage characters, in their different ways, acknowledge the loss. A lot is left unspoken, and is all the more powerful for that — powerful, because the audience has to process the significance for themselves. A prop that we'd overlooked becomes the focus of grief, and Heppler, Deatherage, and director Heather McHenry-Kroetch — all three — handled the moment with subtlety.

Or the second scene: Each widow talking to her husband's gravestone. On the page, except for some cross-cut conversation, it seemed straightforward. But in live performance — Bobo's only stating the obvious here — you're in the same room as three grieving women, and the emotional impact multiplies. And yet another advantage: the three gravestones remain rooted just outside the realistic living-room set. Unlike the reading experience, when you watch the Club members in action, the sense of death and dying is never far away.

Hardie has the scene-stealing role — the flirty, embittered one — and she duly steals scenes ... but not without also finding the serious side of come-hither-and-let's-have-some-fun widow on the prowl. Some of Hardie's second-act revelations were just as impressive, in their way, as her earlier flouncing and flamboyance as some kind of Jewish Dolly Parton. She acts like she owns the joint; then, when the insecurities peep through, Hardie makes them convincing too. It's a powerful performance, unlike most of Hardie's other roles, and she becomes the center of attention (when appropriate) in most of what she does.

Starkey slits her eyes in disapproval throughout — but whereas it's in genuine disapproval early on, she finds the comedy in being a killjoy later on. And Deatherage does some of the most subtle acting of her local career with Ida's understated disappointments and small victories. Her reluctance at her husband's grave — clutching her purse, she'd like to move on with her life, but she's afraid of offending him (several years dead now) — is affecting.

Some comic three-way bickering over their ages is nearly as quick and accomplished as a bit of Marx Brothers shtick. The cast is good at doing nervous pauses and making them seem real.

It's the little things that make a staged conversation feel lived-in, and two examples would include the un-commented on business of sugar lumps in Lucille's tea and the matter-of-fact way that she flips (in a gossipy way) through another woman's mail: She's intrusive, and almost aware of how intrusive she is, and yet neither director nor actor are going to make any intrusive comments about it.

There are lots of understated features of this show like that. These women happen to be Jewish; they could be Presbyterian, but they happen to be Jewish. No big deal. It's not their sole, defining characteristic. Stereotypes are hinted at, but not more. Heppler has an amazing moment when he expresses disbelief over the 40 years that passed between kneeling to propose and kneeling by his wife's grave.

McHenry-Kroetch let a couple of scene-endings fall flat, lingering too long, and there are some fixable backs-to-the-audience moments, but generally her directing lets the actors create comfortably.

Menchell wrote a well-made play (the echo, in two different contexts, of "I'll see ya when I see ya" is emotionally effective), and Bobo wishes he could write something just as accomplished. At the same time, The Cemetery Club, while satisfying and funny and sad, never quite rises above the formulaic. It's a lot of widows — pro, con and in the middle on the issue of grieving and moving on — and you can always sense the playwright's hand at work (not just in the witty one-line jokes, but in the play's overall shape). Still, it's a mostly engaging evening, and a very well acted one.

(Bobo had more to say, but he's blathered on long enough, and it's taken him a week to produce this much, and besides, as usual, he can't read most of his notes anyway.)

West Side Story this weekend

2010-10-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

The fundraiser in-concert version at the Civic is virtually sold out, but you can try 325-2507.

A recent NPR interview with Stephen Sondheim (about his new book, Finishing the Hat)
reveals some of his criticisms of Oscar Hammerstein and comments on Arthur Laurents' made-up slang in WSS and what Sondheim really wanted the phrase "Krup you!" to be. (Like this is some big surprise.)

The Elephant Man opens at Lake City

2010-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

The Elephant Man of Victorian London was Joseph Merrick (though his caretaker, Dr. Treves, called him "John"). He suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis and Proteus Syndrome, which caused bone deformities, an unusually large skull, and warty growths scattered over his body.

The movie of 30 years ago tries to show you all that, literally. During the play, however, you're left to imagine those deformities for yourself.
Merrick used to end his letters with a poem about how he wished he'd been better made, but that a man's mind and soul are better measures of his value than his physical appearance.

The play about him by Bernard Pomerance, which won the Tony for Best Play in 1979, opens at Lake City Playhouse tonight. (Pomerance, now 70, lives in New Mexico.)

Directed by Marina Kalani. Lake City artistic director George Green plays Dr. Frederick Treves, the Victorian-era London physician who examines and cares for Merrick (Christopher Lamb). Bill Caisely plays the head of the hospital, Sean Cahill plays the freak-show manager who exploits Merrick, and Anne Lillian Mitchell plays the famous actress who becomes Merrick's first female friend. Seven other actors complete the cast of 12.

Opening tonight and running Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm and Sun at 2 pm. Top ticket price is $17. Call (208) 667-1323.

review of The 39 Steps

2010-10-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

at Interplayers through Oct. 30

It's funnier if you're funny without showing us that you know you're funny, you know?
The 39 Steps — a spoof of the veddy British 1935 spy-caper movie by Alfred Hitchcock, performed with just four actors with a lot of props and quick changes — certainly signals its comic intentions.
An innocent man gets himself ensnared in international intrigue, chased over loch and heather (he's in Scotland, you see) by policemen and double agents and a self-righteous woman who refuses to believe in his innocence. Of course, we never really think that our hero, the dapper Richard Hannay (Damon Mentzer) is going to succumb to the nefarious forces that encircle him — he has such an awfully dashing mustache, don't you know — but we're also not entirely sure how he's going to escape, either, especially with an uncooperative blonde handcuffed to him.
And it's a hoot. When the newsboy transforms into a Bobby with nightstick and then a traveling underwear salesman — all with switched hats and accents — it's delightful to watch in a clap-your-hands, jack-in-the-box surprise kind of way. When Jerry Sciarrio (in one of several dozen roles as Clown No. 1) transitions from a dignified lord of the manor to a goose-stepping, lunatic Nazi, the threat's rendered comic and harmless even as we giggle over the actor's venture into make-believe. Things happen fast, and we're invited to join in the fun: chairs become car seats, picture frames are held up to become escape hatches, audience members are invited onstage while the overworked actors rest for a while in front-row seats.

Michael Ward's set design rims the stage with bric-a-brac, and director William C. Marlowe has committed his show to a grab-a-prop-and-run operation.
Too often, the props get in the way. Oh, Marlowe loves his sight gags and sound gags — holds them and clutches them, crushes them in his arms, then ravages them and leaves them quivering, still barely alive, in the dust. In particular, the thunder-and-lightning gag that accompanies one of the play's key phrases became, with repetition, less amusing than annoying.

The action is set in the 1930s, with the Nazis threatening Europe. But when Marlowe camps up the proceedings with a disco ball or the Jeopardy theme, there's a sense that we're being condescended to — as if we couldn't enter into the comic spirit of a romp through pre-war British culture without a wink and a nod. It's funny — Hannay is faced with a serious dilemma, and that familiar quiz-show music comes over the speakers — but it's funny in terms other than the show itself is funny. And Patrick Barlow's frenzied four-actor adaptation — which refines two actors' reinterpretation of three movies' worth of revisions of the original novel — has plenty of laughs to offer all on its own, thank you very much indeed, sir.

In fact, the biggest laughs in Interplayers' production of The 39 Steps — and there are many bright spots in this show — land not because of all the wigs and props and furniture, but because of the acting. In particular, in the three-way role of femme fatale, innocent farmer's wife and skeptical love interest, Elisha Gunn is a revelation. With the opening scene's German woman of mystery, Gunn wrests multiple meanings out of single words: When she comes on to Hannay, she turns the final three syllables of "You wish to be — in-VOL-ved?" into a symphony of seduction, rubbing her thigh once up, once down, no more. She's a woman on a mission. She rolls the R's in "Richard" for so long that his name seems to tumble out the door and come back in again. For a melodramatic scene involving murder, she flops around like a stuck fish (and Marlowe hits upon an ingenious way of getting one character out from beneath a corpse). In the second act, when her third character is angry about being forced into proximity with Hannay, Gunn spits out a feigned agreement of "Yes, darling" with about six different kinds of irritability and rancor in it.
In a later sequence, as a dour Scottish farmer's wife, you might think Gunn is overdoing the skipping, barefoot ingenue bit until it pays off when she curls her toes around a chair leg, then extends them over to Hannay's side of the table for a flirty game of footsie — all while her Calvinist husband (Damon Abdallah, in one of his Clown No. 2 roles) intones a parody of saying a guilt-ridden grace, imploring our "unforgiving Father" to "beat our gluttonous thoughts and lash our lustful desires, as with a three-forked flailing stick, pressing our bestial noses to the grindstone...." Self-disdain like that is funny, especially when we see "lustful desires" going on under the dinner table.

But when you overload a show with stage business, verbal humor like that can get overshadowed. Hannay has a naive quality — slow to realize that he's been seduced or duped, easily distracted by trivia, rather vain about his appearance, willing to believe the best of others even when they're schemers — and Mentzer has pipe-clenched-in-teeth, grinning quality that lives just down the block from Dudley Do-right. His little witticisms and side comments sometimes get squashed by the insistence on scampering over to fetch the next prop.
The scene when Hannay is pushed into public speaking is an example of Marlowe's comic business over-burdening the text. The joke lies in Mentzer's character being caught in a pickle and understandably nervous about it; but a pop-up, roll-over bit of physical comedy detracts from the scene's focus (though it has to be admitted: Mentzer changes pace during the speech, improvising a rousing ovation that electrified the opening-night crowd).

Meanwhile, the two clowns generate a lot of verbal jokery. Abdallah gets comic mileage out of two different characters by making them, in different ways, almost completely unintelligible. Sciarrio's doddering hotel keeper and insane Aryan form hilarious contrasts. Abdallah can do both ends of a phone conversation; Sciarrio can imitate the ignition-cough of a '30s clunker starting up.
And this is the kind of show where the cues come in deliberately late: First you get the comic ineptitude, then you get a second joke out of the actors glaring at the sound booth. The 39 Steps proclaims its amateurishness for all to hear, though sometimes you just wish it would stop proclaiming and get on with the next chase scene and predicament.

All four actors have brilliant moments, and when they settle comfortably into the run, some of the timing issues (bobbled lines, cues that hit just a tad late) and diction problems (exaggerated German and Scottish accents aren't funny if they're completely indecipherable) will disappear.
Marlowe's 39 Steps is creative, inventive, rollicking. It just needs some editing: Sometimes, gags just need to be gagged.

(a shorter version of this review will appear on Oct. 21 in The Pacific Northwest Inlander)

The 39 Steps at Interplayers

2010-10-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

"A little bit of James Bond, a little bit of Masterpiece Theatre, and a lot of Monty Python" — that's how director William Marlowe describes the farcical Hitchcock spoof The 39 Steps (at Interplayers through Oct. 30).

Our hero, a dashing chap called Richard Hannay (played by Damon Mentzer) finds himself up against an international spy ring after a femme fatale (Alisha Gunn) implores him to help her and then gets herself murdered in his London flat. What ensues is a wild goose chase that involves locomotives racing up to the Scottish Highlands and narrow escapes from the coppers while Hannay finds himself handcuffed to a beautiful woman (also played by Gunn, who is the sister of Brian, currently starring as Buddy Holly at the Civic).

All the other parts (and there are many dozens of them) — vaudeville performers, underwear salesmen, Bobbies, bed and breakfast operators, thugs, detectives, orators — are played by two "clowns" (Damon Abdallah and Jerry Sciarrio).

The entire show — innovated by Patrick Barlow just five years ago, though it's based on a century-old novel and the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film — needs to have a frantic and improvised feel. That's why Marlowe — in his directing debut at Interplayers, despite having worked on and off at the joint for two decades as backstage techie and as an actor — has chosen a "found props" approach: Junk will encircle the entire perimeter of Interplayers' thrust stage, with the four actors picking and choosing and making their costume changes in full view of the audience.

Despite the show's done-on-the-fly flavor, it's

technically challenging, with 200 lighting cues

and 135 sound cues (most of them in the first act, which has Hannay clinging to a speeding locomotive as he tries to outwit the coppers).

Barlow's script is almost verbatim to the movie, and it includes several allusions to other Hitchcock films, like North by Northwest and Rear Window. Marlowe has even incorporated a bit with a birdcage (and guess which 1963 film starring Tippi Hedren that alludes to).

A lot of the sound effects are done by the actors, with Sciarrio vocally imitating the sounds of a 1930s clunker starting up.

Yeah, but will it be funny? Marlowe says that several times during rehearsals, "we had to stop to wipe away tears."

This weekend: Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm; continues through Oct. 30. Tickets: $15-$21. Interplayers is at 174 S. Howard St. Call 455-PLAY. Visit the theater listings under "Stage Thrust" in the Bloglander at inlander.com.

South Pacific review

2010-10-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

Bobo saw the touring production last night at the INB Center (where it closes on Saturday night) and whew, did he have a lot to say about it.
Bottom line: You will never in your lifetime see *South Pacific* done better than it is being done here. Bart Sher's direction and David Pittsinger's singing are the big stars, but design elements are exquisite too.
Tickets and info here.
Bobo's blow-by-blow review is at inlander.com here.

Wrestling with Willy Loman

2010-09-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

There's talk of a Mike Nichols-Phillip Seymour Hoffman-Linda Emond Death of a Salesman on Broadway in 2011, according to Michael Riedel in the New York Post.

Bobo likes the idea of of PSH as Willy Loman; and he likes Riedel's irreverent tone toward Nichols' directing (and, especially, his Seagull) — no sacred cows here; and he especially likes Brian Dennehy's comments about "wrestling" with a great role for six months.

Which brings up a (conveniently localizing) thought: In a town where plays run for five weeks max (and usually much less), how does anyone really sink their teeth into monumental (or merely challenging) role?

What Bobo thinks he thinks: If Dennehy needs six months, then none of us locally are achieving the maximum in short runs. Possible partial solution: long-time pre-rehearsal preparation. (I'm thinking Brian Gunn in Buddy and what Damon Mentzer is doing for Richard III at SFCC next year: Total immersion, totally running with it even before the table reading, so that maybe, just maybe, by the end of a short run — and long after those picky critics see it on opening night — a given role can achieve full fruition.)

[ photo: Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman; from forgotmylines.com ]

Buddy review

2010-09-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Rock ‘n’ roll’s Father, Son and Holy Ghost

(at Spokane Civic Theatre through Oct. 24)

He didn’t want any plucking restraint. He wanted thrashing passion.

Buddy Holly aimed to turn sedate country music into ravenous rock ‘n’ roll.

And on the strength of Yvonne Johnson’s audience-participating directing style and Brian Gunn’s likable performance in the title role, the Civic’s Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story turns jukebox nostalgia into a rousing of the rock ‘n’ roll rabble.
As Buddy, Gunn is even more than a singing-dancing-acting triple-threat: He quintuples his impact by shredding his Strat and looking good in horn-rims, too. Gunn’s acting rings the changes from nervous kid to defiant artist, from gentle balladeer to rockin’ rebel. “Rave on and tell me/ Not to be lonely," he sings toward the end. "Tell me you love me only/ Rave on to me.”

Johnson and co-music directors Jim Ryan and Michael Saccomanno succeed in showing Buddy’s development as a musician, the build-up to all his raving on. When the Crickets are still playing roller rinks — and in their initial recording sessions — they sound tentative and rough. By the time they’re recording “Everyday” and signing contracts, though, they’re rocketing up the charts.

Along the way, however, the intra-band squabbles and fights with producers lacked conviction. And during the first half of opening night, unfortunately, the sound balance was off, with Gunn’s guitar amped too high and his mic turned too low. As a result, the wonder of being in on the recording of “That’ll Be the Day” and the surprising-the-black-folks impact of “Peggy Sue” at the Apollo was lessened.
But the balance got restored after intermission. And while Act Two contains too much clunky exposition, the payoff is exciting. Johnson sends bobby-soxers screaming down the aisles and distributing programs in a you-are-there simulation of Buddy’s final concert.

David Baker’s designs, remarkably, provide a dozen different settings, with the lived-in grime of a New Mexico recording studio particularly impressive.
Casandra Marie Hayes is engaging as Buddy’s wife Maria Elena, but isn’t given much to do — she’s even cut out of the couple’s final phone call.
As performers at the Apollo, David Allen McElroy and Keyonna Knight create an urban vibe with sassy dance moves. Knight is also one of the five dancers who, along with nine musicians, stoke the final concert’s fire. Choreographers Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie have ordered up finger-snaps and preacher poses, crossed arms and Watusi wiggles.

On opening night, vintage cars were on display and and root beer floats were served out in the parking lot, adding to the party atmosphere. And Johnson's direction adds verisimilitude by having bobby-soxers scream down the aisles and handing out programs to the Feb. 2, 1959 concert that would have a tragic aftermath.

On that frigid Iowa night in ‘59, Jhon Goodwin — joshing and flirting as the Big Bopper — exudes confident stage presence. As Ritchie Valens, Paul Villabrille got laughs for his pelvic thrusts but earned approving whoops for how he tore into “La Bamba.”
It’s unexpectedly moving to watch Buddy and the Bopper join in on that song with Valens when you know it’s their last night on earth.
The report of their deaths, when it arrives, is sudden. But it’s handled without schmaltz, and soon the encores and curtain calls restore a rousing sense of being in at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.

Buddy Holly stood for genre-bustin’ creativity and youthful rebellion, and Johnson’s production conveys the joy and sadness of his meteoric two years of fame. The Day the Music Died, we all lost.

At the final concert, Buddy sings, “Oh boy, when you're with me/ Oh boy, the world can see/ That you were meant for me.”
Buddy Holly’s music was meant for all of us, and Johnson’s production celebrates it. Rave on.

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story • Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm; Sun at 2 pm; through Oct. 24 • Tickets: $28 (top); $10, student rush • Spokane Civic Theatre • 1020 N. Howard St. • Visit: spokanecivictheatre.com • Call: 325-2507

A condensed version of this review will appear on Thursday, Sept. 30, in The Pacific Northwest Inlander.

Ten greatest stage actors of all time

2010-09-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

What Bobo thinks he thinks is that making this list is probably even more prestigious than winning a Spokie.

(At least the English think so.)

Living: Gambon, McKellen, Rylance (pictured)

Female: Dench, Redgrave, Smith

Dead: Gielgud, Olivier, Richardson, Scofield

Alegria review

2010-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Bobo attended the Spokane premiere on Wednesday night of Cirque du Soleil: Alegria at the Arena and live-blogged it. (Well, after-the-fact blogged it, actually.)

For all the exhausting detail, visit Bloglander on The Inlander website's home page (or check out the Stage Thrust entries there under "Blogs").

Buddy photos

2010-09-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story

Sept. 24-Oct. 24 at Spokane Civic Theatre (just east of the Spokane Arena)

Thurs-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm

Tickets: $28; $26, seniors; $20, students; $10, student rush

From Lubbock to Nashville, from the Apollo Theater in Harlem to a dreary Iowa cornfield, follow the career of the rock 'n' roll pioneer in horn-rim glasses.

with Brian Gunn as Buddy Holly, Paul Villabrille as Ritchie Valens and Jhon Goodwin as the Big Bopper

book by Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson

directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson

music direction by Mike Saccamanno and Jim Ryan

choreography by Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie

Mamet and Rebeck win PEN awards

2010-09-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

David Mamet just won for master dramatist; and Theresa Rebeck, for mid-career dramatist.

Novelist Dan DeLillo won the big award. Go here for samples of their work.

PEN (poets, playwrights, essayists, editors and novelists was founded in NYC in 1922.

Evita review

2010-09-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

at Lake City Playhouse through Oct. 10
(long version; for print on Sept. 23 in The Inlander, this'll have to be cut in half)

They’re the moments when you hold your breath.

They’re the big solo dramatic songs in musical theater: “The Impossible Dream,” “Bring Him Home,” “Send in the Clowns,” “Rose’s Turn.” Everybody knows the tune, everybody’s hoping for good but fearing they’ll get less, and no one’s really expecting tonight’s performance to live up to any ideals.

Singing the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, Alyssa Day appears early on as the young, dark-haired social climber. Day briefly sings “Don’t cry for me,” but director Abbey Crawford had turned it into a trio with two other women, and it didn’t have the big build-up that the set-piece aria gets early in Act Two. (Everybody knows the big moment arrives soon after intermission.)
So the political-rally scene finally arrives, and Day comes out in her glittering white princess dress, and she holds hands with her husband, Juan Peron, and a dozen people in the crowd are clamoring for her, and she ascends her little rostrum, and she sings the opening two warm-up verses (“I had to let it happen, I had to change“), but those are just for building up the suspense, and then she hits the chorus (imploring the people not to cry for her, when you know that she wants them to cry for her), and she hit it solid, she really knocked it out of the park — she spread her arms wide and created moments of vocal beauty, and you could feel the relief and the happiness in the audience, that whatever shortcomings this production might have (and it has them, how could it not?), the ticket-buyers could go home feeling that “Well, they got that right, they got Evita’s big highlight-reel sequence right.”
It was a stirring, lyrical moment, full of Evita’s admirable/flawed character (her sincere desire to help the common people, her sincere desire to glorify herself), and Day sang it with full-throated expression, and it was simply lovely.

And then a remarkable thing happened.
The chorus had been chanting Evita’s name, but now they were humming along. Day, though, remained facing forward, facing the audience, as if we were the shirtless ones, Evita’s beloved descamisados. And several playgoers seated near me started humming along — even the husband who’d been dragged along by his wife, he was humming along too.
A fleeting moment of interactivity turned us into political reformers — and it made Day’s appeal as Evita all the more alluring.

But let’s not get carried away here. This is still a community-theater production of Evita. The big emotional crescendos sometimes sound tinny (and lacking in fullness) when performed by just two keyboards, guitar and drums. Dance steps were often predictable, hesitant, over-crowded. In the narrator role of Che Guevara, Todd Kehne lacks vocal power. Almost nobody onstage looks even vaguely Hispanic. Long stretches of Act Two lean too much on politics and not enough on melody. Both the stage direction and the musical direction opt for a deliberate pace. (An artistic choice, or just the performers’ tentativeness?)

On the positive side, Abbey Crawford directs inventively, with scenes sometimes divided in thirds and developing rapidly; with surprise entrances; and with boisterous crowd scenes (despite limited numbers).
As Evita’s first boyfriend-tool, Agustin Magaldi, Dan McKeever adds hip-shimmies and exaggerated modulations to “On This Night of a Thousand Stars,” making the character’s celebrity-appeal more persuasive (and amusing) than in most productions. When he needs to, McKeever can project impressively.
Kehne pulls off the cynicism of Che’s narrator role with a sarcastic, hands-in-pockets stroll and convincing anger in his shouted cries of revolutionary defiance, and he effectively leads a harmonizing male trio during the dismissal of Peron’s earlier mistress, “Another Suitcase, Another Hall.” The crowd energy for the first-act finale, “A New Argentina,” was strong.
Kent Kimball, full of stentorian solemnity as Juan Peron, knows how to enact a song’s nuances, as when he stands on the balcony of the Casa Rosada and pretends to be a general who’s pretending to have populist sentiments (“our great nation is awakening”).
Both Perons flirt politically (and otherwise, and well) in “Charity Concert” (“I’d be surprisingly good for you”).
In addition to her singing (which during Act One, truth be told, got screechy and indistinct in the higher register), Day’s acting is effective. When Evita rises to power, for example, Day is visibly more confident and flirtier. During Eva’s final decline, it wasn’t just a quick makeup job that made Day seem visibly ill and weakened.
Jamie Russell’s costumes — Evita’s gowns, the gaggle of high-society women all in black, Magaldi’s sequined vest — created illusions of grandeur on (what was presumably) a limited budget.

All in all, Lake City’s new regime change under Generalissimo George Green (its new executive artistic director) has taken on an ambitious production and largely succeeded with it. Day, in particular, excels in the title role. Not only does she sing beautifully, but she’s also convincing as a social climber and social reformer who wants to leave Argentina a better place.
Similarly, under Green’s leadership, Lake City has made strides. The place just feels different — new signs, new paint, new lots of things, and a new feeling throughout. If the playhouse can achieve this much positive change in just the few months since Green took over, then the rest of its 50th season is likely on an upward trajectory.
Maybe then even more folks will fill the seats — and when the big moments come, maybe they’ll hold their breath.

Evita has scheduled the revolution for Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through Oct. 10 at Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene. Tickets: $19; $17, veterans and students; $15, seniors; $10, student rush; $9, children. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

[ photo by Young Kwak for The Pacific Northwest Inlander: Alyssa Day as Eva Peron and Kent Kimball as Juan Peron in Evita, directed by Abbey Crawford at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Sept.-Oct. 2010]

Evita photos

2010-09-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

Sept. 17-Oct. 10 at CdA's Lake City Playhouse

Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm

Tickets: $19 (top)

For more info, see the Aug. 13 post on this blog and p. 30 of tomorrow's Fall Arts Preview in The Inlander.

with Alyssa Day as Eva Peron, Kent Kimball as Juan Peron, and Todd Kehne as Che Guevara; directed by Abbey Crawford

Patti redux

2010-09-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

NPR's Morning Edition profiled Patti Lupone today. In contrast to the capsule review of her new memoir (cited in an Aug. 10 post on this blog), the chat highlighted Patti's more positive, less negative side.
The link contains video of her Mama Rose at the Tonys. Powerful stuff. She can indeed make you feel as if you're on a roller coaster.

Together Again: photos and review

2010-09-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

review-of Together Again for the Next Time (long first draft)
(at Interplayers through Sept. 30)

One of the chief pleasures of Reed McColm’s Together Again for the Next Time — a comedy about two blended, bickering families preparing for a wedding — is in how natural-sounding the conversations seem.
A cast of 11 fans out all over Scott Nicks’ dining-and-living-room set (which needs to look upscale and does), so that the downstage argument about credit card payments zigs to the dinner-table squabbling over wedding decorations, then zags over to the exchange of cynical barbs among the in-laws and old folks. Some of these people don’t much care for each other at all, and it’s amusing to watch.
Mom and her stepdaughter, the bride, want everything to be just perfect; Dad’s wondering how much this is all gonna cost; Grandpa and the ex-wife are wondering about how much longer till they can get outta here.
Resentments and insecurities, both petty and substantial, pop up here and there. In other words, it’s your typical happy family gathering that’s destined, any moment now, to splinter into a family train wreck.

This sequel to Together Again for the First Time (which Interplayers produced in 2008) adds characters to the original lineup. Max (McColm, who wrote, directed and stars) still has three adult daughters, and his second wife, Audrey (Tamara Schupman), still has two grown sons from a previous marriage. The middle daughter (Christine Cresswell) is getting married to a bald vegetarian who can’t seem to finish his dissertation (Damon Abdallah); his eccentric mother (Wendy Carroll) blows into town to add blunt commentary. Completing this portrait of dysfuncts are Max’s ex-wife and ex-father-in-law (Mary Starkey and Barrie McConnell), sourpusses both.

Lead roles are hard to discern here, but it is, after all, Chinelle and Carey’s wedding (with the lovebirds played by Christine Cresswell and Damon Abdallah), and the focal, befuddled, middle-aged couple who are the parents of all these misguided grown-up kids played by McColm and Schupman.
All four are fine, but three actors in supporting roles are standouts. Andrew Scott Parish, an actor from SFCC, steps into the role of Roger, the elder of Audrey’s two sons and the one who gets to range from cracking wise to shouting angry accusations. Parish is up to the role’s range, and in a playful but not showy way. Roger gets all the rebellious snark-lines in the early going, but Parish is convincing later on when Roger has to stand up for himself (and the people he loves).
Wendy Carroll plays the mother of the groom with a sly Eastern European accent, one gaudy purse (or another) hooked over her arm, a soft pat to your cheek, and then a zinger aimed right between your eyes. She’s had four husbands. So what if those marriages didn’t turn out so well? She’s not about to let social niceties obstruct her prowling for Partner No. 5. In her too-brief scenes, Carroll commands the stage with her Lina’s carefully observed eccentricities.
As Max’s depressing ex-wife and mother of the three sisters, Mary Starkey clenches her lips and makes her eyes grow cold. She’s frustrated and angry and well prepared to revel in others’ failings. In their faceoff late in Act One, you could see how McColm’s Max dithered and hoped for the best while Starkey’s Maddie, his angry ex, cut right to the core of why their lives have turned out to be such disappointments.

Because this isn’t just a light romantic comedy. It has plenty of crowd-pleasing jokes of the local variety: Gonzaga jokes, anti-P.C. jokes, Spokane airport jokes. Even Interplayers board members get poked at.
An ecological wedding theme leads to green bridesmaids’s dresses — and to one of the women complaining that her gown makes her look like Gumby.

McColm avoids charges of fluffiness by studding the action with some high-stakes conflicts, mostly over money.
But sometimes, marital pasts and career plans are taken up, debated angrily, then dropped, as if just to ratchet up the tension, Lifetime-style.
McColm’s script throws career plans, career disasters and medical problems into the mix, rounding out some characters while sometimes leaving conflicts undeveloped.

Despite swirling direction that nicely matched all those swirling conversations, there were some acting lapses.
Opening night brought some bobbles and pauses, missed lines and flattened jokes, especially in the opening minutes, though that problem may disappear with repeated performances..
Several punch lines weren’t punched but placed quietly into the dialogue like throwaways. Laugh lines were oddly underemphasized.
The actors playing Hank and Jason and yes, even Max, need more work on achieving enough volume and and comic emphasis, especially in the timing of witty retorts.

One of the daughters’ parts feels underwritten (she’s leaving for college but still loves Dad), as if writer McColm were eyeing yet another sequel. (The finale leaves several threads untied, but they stand for the inconclusiveness of human lives, not just as openings for the next installment of the Wolders-Frobisher saga.)

But McColm demonstrates several solid comedic techniques. First, there are jokes at the expense of characters whom we never see (but who make the fictional world seem more real). Then there are allusions, minutes later, to previous punch lines, allowing audience members to recall matters on their own, congratulate themselves on their own attentiveness, and then splutter out the surprised laughter of people who are laughing even harder at a punch line because they just figured it out for themselves.
He knows when to tell his script just to shut up. Images alone tell the story of the sad, funny bride, comically, pathetically isolated — along with a non-verbal, six-way scene that meditates on the profound, unsurpassable pleasure to be obtained from savoring sweet, sticky cupcakes.
McColm knows how to undercut sentiment with humor, to the two moods’ mutual benefit: The teary-eyed stuff doesn’t drag out too long, manipulatively; and the comedy seems all the more comic for being plopped into the middle of a warm, fuzzy moment.

Because Next Time is, like the most comforting comedies, laugh-out-loud funny at times and heart-in-throat touching at others.
There’s just something about seeing characters you’ve gotten to know over two plays (and four hours) that has us pulling for them, wanting to see them succeed with all their little schemes and big wedding plans.

It all seems very typical, very basic. You and I know families like this — with these secrets and resentments, but also with their rituals and little glimpses of affection. Somehow we muddle through. The Together Again plays offer the comfort of offering reflections of our imperfect selves, played for laughs and for sentiment. It’s a pleasing mix.

Reed McColm’s Together Again for the Next Time will be performed at Interplayers, 174 S. Howard St., through Sept. 30. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.

Photos by Young Kwak:
upper right: Reed McColm as Max Frobisher and Mary Starkey as Madeline Arnhand in Together Again for the Next Time at Interplayers, Sept. 2010 (with several of their family members in the background)
top: the wedding party: Micah Hanson as Kaye Frobisher, Christine Cresswell as Chinelle Frobisher, Bethany D. Hart as Sandra Frobisher (in the middle), Damon Abdallah as Carey Krzyznyk, and Andrew Scott Parish as Roger Wolders
top left: reverse angle on wedding party, with James Pendleton as Jason Wolders in the left background, and, in the right rear, Barrie McConnell as Grandpa Hank, Wendy Carroll as Lina Kllwydd-Brycik (Carey's mother), and Mary Starkey as Madeine Arnhand
bottom: from left, seated in foreground -- Barrie McConnell, Wendy Carroll, Mary Starkey, and then Reed McColm and Tamara Schupman, as Audrey Wolders-Frobisher, seated on the right; wedding party (as above) in background

INW Radio

2010-08-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Swing your browser over to Inland Northwest Radio for recorded audio conversations about marketing, INW music, local writers, social networking, wineries, all things wedding-related, and so on.

Jerry Sciarrio is hosting a show called "Applause" in which he fritters away his time (and yours) by listening to local artsy-fartsy types blather on and on.

Half-hour chats have been recorded with Reed McColm of Interplayers, Janeane Jorgensen of KPBX, Patrick Treadway of His Own Little Universe, Jim Kershner of the Spokesman, Yvonne Johnson of the Civic, and Bobo of Blah-Blah.

And actually, I've learned things (for example, about Jim K's Colorado and Wyoming exploits). So ... happy listening.

Liza tells no lies

2010-08-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

Liza Minnelli's reps have just informed Bobo that on Sept. 2, she will be able to give him 10 minutes for a phone interview.
I wrote back and said that unfortunately, I can only give her five.

But seriously, folks. I thought I might take the opportunity to crowd-source this opportunity. What would YOU ask Liza Minnelli?
(She'll appear at the INB Center on Oct. 15.)

Samples:
When's the last time you actually ate a Snickers bar?
For your encore here, will you agree to change the chorus of your signature song from 'New York, New York" to "Spokane, Spokane"?
What was the best bit of vocal-coaching advice that Kay Thompson gave you?
What are you doing to improve your poll numbers among gay women and elderly men?

Your thoughts? If Liza's people are calling soon and you'll only be able to ask a half-dozen short, pointed questions, what exactly would you ask Sally Bowles / Judy's daughter / Liza with a Z?

Theater marketing and theater trailers

2010-08-18T15:28:00.001-07:00

To follow up on a discussion Bobo tagged back in June: Scot Covey has now completed his seven posts on how to innovate new forms of theater marketing. (Out of order in the sidebar, but all clickable.) They're worth a look.
Bobo's no marketing expert, but Covey has worked on political campaigns and for the (alas, defunct) Theater de la Jeune Lune in Minnesota — and he has some good ideas:
Theatergoers are not monolithic: Know what kind of theatergoers you're marketing to.
Strive for "fans" and not "patrons." Top-line your actors in your advertising -- not your venue or your directors. Use Facebook, but not exclusively.
Consider that most forms of entertainment today can be consumed at home, in your jammies, on the Internet. Not so live performance. The only real solution? High-quality theatrical trailers. Give people a reason to get excited about what your next big musical is going to look and sound like.
If the only way people can see your product involves their paying $20, you're missing out: Hold events at your place that involve free and easy access.

South Pacific mania

2010-08-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

Bart Sher's production is "live" (actually, tape-delayed) from Lincoln Center TONIGHT at 7 pm on KSPS, with Kellie O'Hara and Paolo Szot. And a touring version arrives at the INB Center in October.

Death of a Small Town in the West

2010-08-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Ben Olson's original new play — a satire about Sandpoint — showing on

Fridays-Saturdays, Aug. 20-21 and Aug. 27-28, at 7:30 pm

at the Panida Theatre in Sandpoint, Idaho

Tickets: $12; adult audiences.

In Olson's own words:

In this "comedic satire, ... an infamous land raper moves into town and bribes the city council into letting him bulldoze the entire town and recreate Sandpoint from scratch, making it a full-blown kitschy resort town. This, as you may imagine, pisses off a gang of locals, who decide to plant bombs on all the three bridges surrounding Sandpoint and create an island community, not allowing anyone else in.
"There are musical numbers, singing land rapers, whiskey-fueled plans of sabotage, drunken city officials, villains with eye-patches, meaningless deaths and maybe, just maybe a little bit of social and political commentary that might live beyond these four nights."

Bobo is reminded of an exchange between Wesley and Emma in Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class:

W: I'm not staying here forever.

E: Where are you going?

I don't know. Alaska, maybe.

Alaska?

Sure. Why not?

What's in Alaska?

The frontier.

Are you crazy? It's all frozen and full of rapers.

It's full of possibilities. It's undiscovered.

Who wants to discover a bunch of ice?

Lake City's season preview

2010-08-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, Aug. 22, at 7:30 pm — and for just $10 — you can witness preliminary versions of songs from upcoming musicals at Lake City Playhouse like Evita, A Taffeta Christmas and Urinetown, along with snippets from an intended children's show, Honk!, and from a planned in-concert presentation of Kander and Ebb's revue And the World Goes 'Round. It's a benefit, with proceeds going to Lake City's renovation project.

The theater is at 1320 E. Garden Ave. in Coeur d'Alene. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

Evita cast list

2010-08-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Lake City Playhouse season opens in just over a month with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita.

Thursdays-Sundays from Sept. 17 through Oct. 10; specifically ...
Sept. 17-19, 23-26, 30; Oct. 1-3 and 7-10

directed by Abbey Crawford, with musical direction by Carolyn Jess and choreography by Jennifer Shell; Jay Anders will be production manager

with Alyssa Day as Eva Duarte de Peron (1919-52), Todd Kehne as Che Guevara (the narrator; 1928-67), Danile McKeever as Agustin Magaldi (Eva's first lover), Katrina Heath as Peron's Mistress, and Kent Kimball as Juan Peron (1895-1974)

Ensemble: Liberty Harris, Anne Mitchell, Gianinna Damiano, Melissa Gren, Mary Wherley, Emily Nichols, Amy Schoedel, Ariel Cansino, Kate Johnson, R. Scott Clemons, Ross Mumford, Alex Winther, Dan Heggem, Steve Kane, Michael Perry, Josh Cooper

Children's Choir: Autumn Plucker, Mason Crawford-Heim, Sadie Russell, Julia Lovell, Amelia Crawford-Heim, Isaac Crawford-Heim and Janessa Riordan

It's been 34 years since the album, 31 years since the Rice/Webber musical premiered on Broadway, and 14 years since the Madonna/Antonio Banderas movie.
Best of Broadway Spokane produced the show at the Opera House in Feb. 2005.

Bobo has long thought that the range of musical styles in Evita — classical, salsa, rock, etc. — is justified and not a weakness. I always look forward to Magaldi's "Night of a Thousand Stars," and Peron playing musical chairs in "The Art of the Possible," and of course "Don't Cry...." One of the joys of re-watching some musicals involves rediscovering the good stuff that you missed the first couple of times you heard it.

Big musical, though, on a cramped stage — it'll be interesting to see how the first show under new artistic director George Green shapes up.

Tickets: $19; $17, military and students; $15, seniors; $9, kids. Call (208) 667-1323.

Buddy cast list

2010-08-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Brian Gunn, Jhon Goodwin and Paul Villabrille will headline as (respectively) Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens in the Civic's production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (Sept. 24-Oct. 24).

The rest of the cast list is here. Michael Hynes will play Hip Pockets Duncan; new Civic music director Jim Ryan will also appear onstage as one of the Hayriders and as Jack Daw, leader of the Songbirds.

Yvonne A.K. Johnson will direct, with Michael Saccomanno and Jim Ryan sharing the music-direction responsibilities. Choreography will be by Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie. Tia Woolley will produce and stage-manage.

A review of an April production in La Mirada, Calif., is here. Apparently the book's not much, but the songs are wowza! I don't know about you, but I plan to re-watch the Gary Busey film just as soon as my Netflix queue cooperates.

[ photo: Jiles Perry "J.P." Richardson, aka the Big Bopper ]

The Four Princes opens tonight

2010-08-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

Thursdays-Fridays, Aug. 12-13 and Aug. 19-20, at 7 pm
at Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St.

Fractured (or at least modernized) fairy tales, written and directed by Jean Hardie (winner of the Civic's LIfetime Achievement Award) and peformed by her students in the Civic's Summer Academy

Montana Shakespeare in the Parks

2010-08-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

In its 38th season, MSIP is touring Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream all around Big Sky Country this summer.

Saturday, Aug. 21, marks their closest approach to The Inlander's distribution area — Heron, Montana, which is 40 miles southeast of Sandpoint, Idaho. That night at 6 pm Mountain Time (that's 5 pm Pacific), they'll pile out of vans, set up a stage and put on MND.

Cross the river and the railroad tracks after turning off Hwy. 200, then follow the signs to the Community Center. It's free. Contact Debbie at lastlyman@blackfoot.net.

Joel Jahnke — MSIP's artistic director for the past 30 years — is aiming for a Midsummer atmosphere that's both fun "and a little nightmarish." His direction is influenced, he says, by the various Alice in Wonderland movies and by Avatar. After all, in Shakespeare's love-quadrangle, young lovers wake up abandoned in a dark and scary forest. And strange people have fallen in love with them. And some guy is running around with a donkey head on his shoulders. It's one weird, surrealistic — and eventually redemptive — night.

MSIP will make stops in Libby, Kalispell, Missoula ... all over. Even Salmon, Idaho. (You get the idea.)

Trivia: MSIP's most famous alum is Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993; Independence Day, 1997), who used to teach at Montana State.

partial review of Hairspray

2010-08-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

“Welcome to the ‘60s”: It may sound quaint, but Hairspray‘s anthem isn’t just a return to Beach Boys innocence. As shimmied and shouted in director Kirk Mouser’s Coeur d’Alene production, it’s a party-whoop celebration of freedom from prejudice and the sheer joy of living. The plus-size mother-daughter team, Edna and Tracy Turnblad (Roger Welch and Lindsey Hedberg) may have personified Dowdy and Dorky until now, but a revolution is underway, and the big girls, the black girls — and especially, the big black girls (like Deidra Grace’s Motormouth Maybelle) are going to get some respect and get it now.
The Dynamites (think: the Supremes) start harmonizing, some of those crazy kids from The Corny Collins Show start cavorting all over the stage, and soon Edna and Tracy are popping out of Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway in matching outfits: They’re here, they’re heavy, and they don’t give a hoot. “Welcome to the ‘60s,” like the show it encapsulates, is a joyous bitch-slap to the faces of snobs and bigots everywhere.
And that’s why people enjoy Hairspray so much: the unloved, unpopular, put-upon kid in all of us … she gets to stand up and sing! And dance! And make out in the backseat with that dreamy Link Larkin! Go, Mama, go-go-go!
With creative choreography, inventive direction, a tuneful score, plenty of energy and an anti-discrimination message, Hairspray (through Aug. 21) is clearly CdA Summer Theatre’s best production this season.

{This is the first half of the review that will appear in the 8/12/10 Inlander; photo by Young Kwak -- from left: Lindsey Hedberg as Tracy Turnblad, Keyonna Vene Wright as Little Inez, Deidra Grace as Motormouth Maybelle, and Gabe Lawson as Seaweed J. Stubbs}

Hairspray welcomes you to the ‘60s on Thursdays-Saturdays, Aug. 12-14 and Aug. 19-21, at 7:30 pm, and on Sunday, Aug. 15, at 2 pm at NIC’s Boswell Hall, 1000 W. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene. Tickets: $39; $35, seniors; $25, children. Visit cdasummertheatre.com or call (208) 769-7780.

Interplayers auditions continue tonight

2010-08-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

Bobo is ridiculously late here, but they continue at 7 pm tonight at 174 S. Howard St.
Also, Bobo has heard that a couple of roles may have opened up in the season opener, Reed McColm's Together Again for the Next Time.
Two 30-sec. monologues; callbacks are on Wed. at 7 pm.
Christopher Moll is directing The 39 Steps in October.
Honky Tonk Angels Holiday Spectacular needs an African-American female vocalist, 30s or younger.
Next year's shows, Opus and Privilege, need a variety of men, women and teens.
Bluegrass players are needed for Cotton Patch Gospel in April 2011.
Patty Duke will hold auditions in Sept. for The Miracle Worker, which runs next May.

No appointment necessary.

If you're in the mood for catty ...

2010-08-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Patti LuPone’s memoirs come out on Sept. 14, published by Crown.
In 1976, she appeared in the title role of Stephen Schwartz’s The Baker’s Wife, which flopped on Broadway and eventually died on the road.

A snip from the Publisher’s Weekly capsule preview of the book:
“LuPone is the ultimate backstage gossip, and she never pulls her punches: During the ill-fated Baker's Wife, she despised actor Chaim Topol ("an asshole") and had little enthusiasm for his replacement, Paul Sorvino ("like having Howdy Doody at Auschwitz").

And people say Bobo is a harsh critic …

[ photo: Lupone in that same show, 34 years ago; from pattilupone.net ]

Hairspray photos

2010-08-09T15:19:00.000-07:00

Michael Tramontin as Link Larkin and Lindsey Hedberg as Tracy Turnblad in *Hairspray* (by Mark O'Donnell, Thomas Meehan, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman), directed by Kirk Mouser at Coeur d'Alene Summer Theater, Aug. 7-21, 2010

Matthew Wade (center, with microphone) as Corny Collins, Michael Tramontin (left) as Link Larkin, Lindsey Hedberg as Tracy Turnblad (next to Wade) and some of the Corny Collins Dancers in *Hairspray* at NIC's Shuler Performing Arts Center in Boswell Hall

Deidra Grace as Motormouth Maybelle (left), with Gabe Lawson as Seaweed J. Stubbs and Kasey Nusbickel as Penny Pingleton, in Kirk Mouser's production of *Hairspray*

Lindsey Hedberg as Tracy Turnblad, surrounded by the Dynamites, emerges from Mr. Pinky's Hefty Hideaway

(through Aug. 21 at NIC in Coeur d'Alene)

CST's 2011 season: 3 of 4 shows announced

2010-08-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

Bobo's been taking a summer siesta, and he' s known about this for a week, but ... Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre Executive Director Laura Little announced last night (on opening night for Hairspray -- more on that later) what's on tap for most of their summer next year:

The Sound of Music (not done at CST since '94; received second-highest number of votes in their playgoers' poll)

Sondheim's A Little Night Music (recently revived on Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, who were even more recently replaced by Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch; it's based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, which you must get on Netflix even if it is a '50s Swedish comedy in black and white, especially for the scenes when the actress engineers the confrontation of her two arrogant lovers and the failed-suicide-followed-by-pop-out-bed.

... and we'll off skip down the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz.

Pump Boys and Dinettes photos

2010-07-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

July 22-Aug. 1 at Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre
directed by Kasey R.T. Graham
musical direction by Steven Dahlke

with Dane Stokinger as Jim and Jessica Skerritt as Rhetta Cupp
J. Michael Zygo as Jackson and Jillian Zygo as Prudie Cupp
and
Steven Dahlke as L.M.

The Screwtape Letters in CdA, June 25-27

2010-06-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

at Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave. in Coeur d'Alene, but presented by
Ain't It Good Productions

David Clemons stars in his own adaptation of the C.S. Lewis satire about the reverse psychology used by demons to tempt humans.
Rated PG-13; not for little kids

Tonight at 8 pm; Saturday, June 26, at 2 pm and 8 pm; Sunday, June 27, at 2 pm
Tickets: $8; $5, children 12 and younger.

Call: (208) 769-4262

The Spokies: nominations for 2009-10

2010-06-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

The 2010 SPOKIES
Covering what Bobo managed to see in the June 2009-May 2010 season.
Winners announced in the June 24 Inlander and at inlander.com.
Admiration, kudos and applause to all.

Please write in with corrections and comments.

CHOREOGRAPHY
Tralen Doler for The Producers, Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre
Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie for The Pirates of Penzance, Spokane Civic Theatre
Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie for Curtains, Civic
Michael Wasileski for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, CdA Summer

LIGHTING DESIGN
Bryan Durbin for Amadeus, Lake City Playhouse
John Gallegos for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, CdA Summer
Peter Hardie for Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Joel Williamson for Miss Saigon, CdA Summer Theatre

SET DESIGN
David Baker for The Pirates of Penzance, Civic
David Baker for The Spitfire Grill, Civic Studio
Peter Hardie for Annie Get Your Gun, Civic
Peter Hardie for Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Don McLaughlin for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, EWU

COSTUME DESIGN
Judith McGiveney for Miss Saigon, CdA Summer Theatre

Jan Wanless for Annie Get Your Gun, Civic
Jan Wanless for The Pirates of Penzance, Civic

FEATURED ACTOR, PLAY
Andrew Garcia as Mason Marzac in Take Me Out (staged reading), Gonzaga
David Gigler as Remnar Soady in Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Todd Kehne as Jimmer Negamanee in Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Patrick Treadway as Yvan in Art, Interplayers

FEATURED ACTOR, MUSICAL
Lance Edwin Babbitt as Christopher Belling in Curtains, Civic
Patrick Treadway as Franz Liebkind in The Producers, CdA Summer Theatre
Steven Dahlke as Carmen Ghia in The Producers, CdA
Jerry Christakos as Hennesy/The Captain in Dames at Sea, CdA Summer Theatre
Doug Dawson as the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance, Civic
Brian Gunn as Sheriff Joe Sutter in The Spitfire Grill, Civic Studio
Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Aaron Fox in Curtains, Civic
Henry McNulty as Molokov in Chess (concert version), Civic
Gary Pierce as Charlie Davenport in Annie Get Your Gun, Civic

FEATURED ACTRESS, MUSICAL
Liberty Harris as Shelby in The Spitfire Grill, Civic Studio
Maureen Kumakura as Georgia Hendricks in Curtains, Civic
Yvonne Same as Gigi in Miss Saigon, CdA Summer Theatre
Ellen Travolta as Mona Kent in Dames at Sea, CdA Summer Theatre

FEATURED ACTRESS, PLAY
Wendy Carroll as Clairee in Steel Magnolias, Civic
Sarah Denison in multiple roles, String of Pearls, Civic
Kathie Doyle-Lipe as Ouiser in Steel Magnolias, Civic
Tami Rotchford in multiple roles, String of Pearls, Civic
Kate Vita in multiple roles, String of Pearls, Civic

LEADING ACTRESS, MUSICAL
Krystle Armstrong as the Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, CdA Summer Theatre
Andrea Dawson as Florence in Chess (concert version), Civic
Tami Knoell as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, Civic
Manuela Peters as Percy in The Spitfire Grill, Civic Studio
Mia Yoshida as Kim in Miss Saigon, CdA Summer Theatre
Darcy Wright as Ruby in Dames at Sea, CdA Summer Theatre

LEADING ACTOR, PLAY
Damon Abdallah as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, Lake City Playhouse
Dan Anderson as Arthur in Psychopathia Sexualis, Interplayers
Jack Bannon as Marc in Art, Interplayers
Wes Deitrick as Albert Soady in Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Jamie Flanery as Ray in Blackbird, West Central Community Center
Bill Forant as Greg in Sylvia, Civic Studio
Reed McColm as the Librarian in Underneath the Lintel, Interplayers
Damon C. Mentzer in multiple roles, A Tuna Christmas, Civic
Aaron Murphy as Father Flynn in Doubt, Interplayers
Dave Rideout as John Haddock in Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Civic Studio
Roger Welch as Serge in Art, Interplayers

LEADING ACTOR, MUSICAL
Steven Booth as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, CdA Summer Theatre
Jerry Christakos as Roger De Bris in The Producers, CdA Summer Theatre
Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun, Civic
Russell Seaton as Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, Civic
Matthew Wade as Leopold Bloom in The Producers, CdA Summer Theatre
Andrew Ware Lewis as Lt. Frank Cioffi in Curtains, Civic
[ Bobo regrets that he did not see Mike Hynes in both halves of the title role in Jekyll & Hyde at Lake City Playhouse ]

LEADING ACTRESS, PLAY
Beth Carey in the title role in Sylvia, Civic Studio
Nancy Gasper as Artie in Eleemosynary, Interplayers
Bethany Hart as Shelby in Steel Magnolias, Civic
Emily Hiller as Una in Blackbird, West Central Community Center
Caryn Hoaglund-Trevett as Lucille in Psychopathia Sexualis, Interplayers
Ann Russell Whiteman as Sister Aloysius in Doubt, Interplayers

DIRECTION, PLAY
Maria A. Caprile, Eleemosynary, Interplayers
Kevin Connell, Take Me Out (staged reading), Gonzaga
Troy Nickerson, Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Roger Welch, Doubt, Interplayers

DIRECTION, MUSICAL
Tralen Doler for The Producers, CdA Summer
Yvonne A.K. Johnson for The Pirates of Penzance, Civic

Kirk Mouser for Miss Saigon, CdA Summer
Troy Nickerson for Curtains, Civic

Roger Welch for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, CdA Summer Theatre

BEST ENSEMBLE
Art, Interplayers
Doubt, Interplayers
Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
String of Pearls, Civic Studio
Sylvia, Civic Studio

BEST TOURING MUSICAL
Avenue Q
The Lion King
Little House on the Prairie: The Musical

BEST LOCAL MUSICAL
Curtains, Civic
The Pirates of Penzance, Civic
Miss Saigon, CdA Summer Theatre

BEST DRAMA
Art, Interplayers
Blackbird, West Central Community Center
Doubt, Interplayers
String of Pearls, Civic Studio

BEST COMEDY
Escanaba in da Moonlight, Civic
Psychopathia Sexualis, Interplayers
Sylvia, Civic Studio

Partial review of Putnam County Spelling Bee

2010-06-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

at Coeur d'Alene Summer Theater through June 26

(basically, the middle third of the review that will appear in The Pacific Northwest Inlander on Thursday, June 17)

... With the exception of the title song, composer/lyricist William Finn’s melodies aren’t particularly memorable. And this isn’t a glitz- or dance-heavy show. (It’s kids standing at microphones — not exactly a spectacle — though director Roger Welch maintains the flow with hyper-speed and slo-mo spelling sequences.) But in her book of the musical, Rachel Sheinkin is good at creating a sense of community, then building the tension before each speller performs.
The little mock-introductions that each speller receives — and the definitions they request when they’re up at the mic — are among Spelling Bee’s funniest lines. But there’s plenty of fun in the scripted parts of the show, too, as we follow the tribulations of our six contestants: the nerd, the Boy Scout, the unloved child, the multi-talented genius, the prodigy, the mystic hippie.
Playing the pressured-by-her-parents overachiever in “I Speak Six Languages,” for example, Yvonne Same demonstrates an impressive range of talents. She demonstrates a lot more than just fluency — martial arts, musicianship and other feats of physical prowess all made rapid-fire appearances.
The nose-picking nerd with his shirttail hanging out (Andrew Hartley, disgusting but vulnerable too) performs his “magic foot” spelling routine: He’s an oddball, but he’s going to stick to his oddball guns.
With nine actors playing twice that many characters, there’s a danger of repetition. But the show avoids predictable, one-after-another character revelations, and there are unexpected second-act sequences involving Jesus and the Taj Majal that propel the narrative unexpectedly toward satire and even compassion. With all the tonal shifts, cast members could afford to improve their diction: The CdA sound system can be harsh and blarey, and some of the rapid-fire details of characterization got muddled.
For all its displays of nerditude, Spelling Bee is a show with a heart. It’s effective whether or not you know or care about spelling bees, and it brings back all the fears and joys of youth.

[ photos by Young Kwak for The Inlander ]

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee continues at NIC’s Boswell Hall, 1000 W. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene, on Thursdays-Saturdays, June 17-19 and June 24-26, at 7:30 pm, along with a matinee on Sunday, June 20, at 2 pm. Tickets: $41; $37, seniors; $27, children. Visit cdasummertheatre.com or call (208) 769-7780.

The same production transfers to the Idaho Rep at UI's Hartung Theater, Sixth St. and Stadium Way, Moscow, Idaho, on Monday-Friday, June 29-July 2, at 7:30 pm. Visit uidaho.edu/class/irt

Designing women (and men)

2010-06-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

Interplayers is advertising on craigslist for designers and received 15 calls in the first two hours, according to board member Jeff Moreland.
If nothing else, this is a positive sign for the theater's future. Maybe now, Moreland says, we can put a stop to the trend of every media story bemoaning the imminent demise of the House the Welches Built.

[ photo: from travel.southwest.com ]

No, you're not too small

2010-06-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Kennedy Center's Michael Kaiser is still spreading the word about how small arts organizations needn't despair, despite the Great Recession.

His Huffington Post article makes several assertions:
The importance of long-range planning, and of committing your organization to large-scale events
The importance of getting yourself mentioned in local media at least once every three months
The importance of appealing to movers and shakers
The example of world-class art in a small town, like Glimmerglass.

[ photo: Glimmerglass Opera, Cooperstown, New York ]

Holding On — Letting Go staged reading, June 11-12

2010-06-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

In this play by Bryan Harnetiaux, who has been playwright in residence at the Civic for the past 28 years, Bobby is dying of liver cancer and has been referred to hospice care — but his wife Lee doesn't want to give up the fight.
Harnetiaux has revised and re-revised the script since it was staged (with the late Bryan Jackson as Bobby) at the Civic in June 2009.

Friday-Saturday, June 11-12, at 7:30 pm
Free
at the Civic's Studio Theater, Howard St. and Dean Ave.

See the 6/6/09 post on this blog.

Spelling Bee photos

2010-06-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Music and lyrics by William Finn
Book by Rachel Sheinkin
ran for 1,100 performances on Broadway from April 2005 to Jan. 2008
nominated for six Tonys in 2006, winning for Best Book of a Musical and Best Featured Actor (Dan Fogler as William Barfee)

June 12-26 at Shuler Performing Arts Center, inside NIC's Boswell Hall, in Coeur d'Alene
Visit cdasummertheatre.com or call ((208) 769-7780

Continues June 28-July 2 at UI's Hartung Theater, Stadium Dr. and Sixth St., Moscow, Idaho
Visit idahorep.org or call (208) 885-7212

Three adults (each with their personal problems and anxieties) conduct a middle-school spelling bee with six contestants (the overachiever, the hippie, the Boy Scout, the nerd, the neglected child, the one's who's politically intense) and everyone, in the midst of singing all those songs and spelling all those words like "hemidemisemiquaver," turns out to be very, very neurotic.

Directed and choreographed by Roger Welch
Musical direction by Chris Thompson
Sets by Michael McGiveney
Lights by Dean Panttaja
Costumes by Tessa DeMoy
PSM: Kim Crawley

with (most actors double in other roles as well)
Andrew Hartley as William Barfee
Laura Sable as Rona Lisa Peretti
Jay Paranada as Chip Tolentino
Mallory Cooney King as Olive Ostrovsky
Matthew Wade as Leaf Coneybear
Reed McColm as Douglas Panch
J. Reese as Mitch Mahoney
Kara Jones as Logainne Schartzandgrubenierre

We need a bigger pie

2010-06-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Theater is a marginalized art form.
How can this be? We love it so much. We devote our lives to it.
Yeah, all 17 of us in Spokane.

Scot Covey of Minnesota Playlist has started a blog on how to market for theaters and how to increase its grassroots support.
Worth reading in the upcoming weeks, Bobo thinks.

My guess about his final line? Tweets, Facebook, viral marketing, much more audience interaction.

Green room productivity

2010-06-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

Patrick Healy has a piece in the New York Times about the unusual ways in which some actors spend their downtime during a performance: Jan Maxwell (doubly Tony-nominated next Sunday) helps her son with his homework; during August: Osage County, John Cullum actually went and did another play, then returned for the curtain call.

Since a recent post on local actors who can improve box-office receipts scared up a lot of comments, Bobo thought this topic might do the same, providing some modest entertainment value. So ... local actors, how do you spend your time backstage?
Any amusing stories about people completing their master's theses, brushing their teeth, changing their cousin's baby's diapers in the minutes before rushing onstage as the fourth chorus girl from the left?

[ image: from thegreenroomstudio.tv ]

Theatrical reading

2010-06-03T13:11:00.001-07:00

Ben Brantley in the New York Times has again suggested a reading list for theater ho's.

In addition to his suggestions — Hart, Rich, Quintero, Gielgud, Coward — peruse the many good suggestions down in the comments, including books by Antony Sher, Peter Hall, Michael Blakemore, Tyrone Guthrie, James Kirkwood, Simon Callow and more. (Helen Epstein's biography of Joe Papp is about the only book by a woman listed here.)
[ photo: Antony Sher as Richard III in 1985; see Frank Rich's review here ]

review of Annie Get Your Gun

2010-06-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

Pretty Much Shot

PLAY REVIEW
In the Civic’s Gun, cardboard characters shoot off pleasant songs. Shouldn’t musicals aim higher?
MICHAEL BOWEN

Like a Lawrence Welk Show episode attempting to update itself (more tolerance! more gender equity!), the modernized version of the 64-year-old codger-musical Annie Get Your Gun tries hard to avoid being unhip.
Despite Peter Stone’s 1999 revision, most of the material in between the famous Irving Berlin songs amounts to patter, filler, and a poor excuse for a plot filled with adults acting like emotionally stunted children. It’s all about as authentic as the white guys in ponytails of this production, passing themselves off as Indians.

Nearly all the good material that shoots out of this particular Gun (at the Civic through June 20) derives from the work of singing actors, working hard within the confines of a given song to provide something approaching genuine emotion. Quite often, they succeed.

A fine opening sequence has Patrick McHenry-Kroetch, as sharpshooter Frank Butler, entering from the audience and singing a cappella, waxing nostalgic about this Business called Show, which really is unlike any other. We’re a long way from Ethel Merman here, folks, and McHenry-Kroetch’s rich baritone projects genuine devotion to the art of keeping other people entertained.
As Annie Oakley, curly-haired Tami Knoell also has exceptional solo moments. Separated from Frank late in the show, she has a lovely recollection of how “I got lost in his arms/ And I had to stay,” soon followed by Annie’s praise of simple living, “I Got the Sun in the Morning.”

Director Yvonne A.K. Johnson’s production is at its best when it isolates its two stars in duets. It’s a nice touch, for example, to have McHenry-Kroetch’s speculations about “The Girl That I Marry” to be answered, in the song’s second half, by Knoell’s love-longing. And both singers shine in their duet about other people falling in love, “They Say It’s Wonderful.” And Johnson engineers a lovely reunion for the once-estranged lovers, followed by their counter-singing dispute over what properly constitutes “An Old-Fashioned Wedding.”
Best of all was the variety and inventiveness of “Anything You Can Do,” with chorus after chorus topping the previous one. By then, Annie and Frank had started to approximate actual human beings. Too bad it’s at the end of the show.

Technical elements are strong, with Peter Hardie’s sets ranging from circus tents to fancy ballrooms to the deck of a low-rent steamer floating in New York Harbor on a starry night. And a team led by Jan Wanless provides consistently stunning costumes. As Dolly Tate, Frank’s desperate-snooty assistant, Ryan Patterson practically gets to engage in a one-woman fashion show — at nearly every entrance, she has on some new, just-fancy-enough-to-feel-exaggerated gown. As Buffalo Bill, Doug Dawson almost gets lost behind his leather fringes and giant mustachios.

But this Annie, both in plan and execution, has numerous weaknesses. Frank’s vain, for example, and Annie’s a hick. And as far as characterization goes, that’s it. The idea that other people have points of view dawns slowly on this cornpone couple.
The choreography, credited to a three-person team, relied too much on thumbs hooked in pockets and the heel-tap shuffle. (The surprising Annie-flips at the end of “I Got the Sun,” though, were a welcome departure.)
The first reprise of “No Business Like Show Business” — meant to demonstrate onstage energy — lacked it. Berlin’s lyrics tend to make already-established assertions about characters — and then repeat them (even if they are set to memorable melodies). But then Annie is not the place to go for insights about the battle of the sexes. Herbert and Dorothy Fields’ book may have raised eyebrows back in the day, but the revelation that sexism is wrong-headed leads mostly to yawns today. Which would be OK, if the show didn’t also dumb-down its main couple to the level of middle-school puppy lovers.
The path of their love is not a smooth one. For no good reason, a scene in a Pullman car jerks from topic to topic: Annie’s in love, Buffalo Bill’s show has a problem, and the kids want to hear a lullaby. An expendable subplot throws in tap routines for the secondary couple — vaudeville displays with zero character interest and just meant to fill time, apparently. Meanwhile, Frank is still full of himself, Annie’s still from the backwoods, and the fact that their romance goes awry at the end of Act One registers … not much at all, really.
To top it off, this production’s filled with fake rifle-firing, balloon-popping and wise-cracking that just don’t work, mostly because they called attention to stage logistics instead of seamlessly creating an effect.

A lot of musicals have one or two memorable songs; Annie Get Your Gun has a half-dozen at least. But they’re in the service of a hokey story centered on cardboard characters struggling to learn the simplest lessons.
The Civic’s production succeeds in stringing together several entertaining music-and-dance numbers. But as with Mr. Welk’s show, there’s no through-line. Just wunnerful, wunnerful, smiling, vacant faces.

Annie Get Your Gun celebrates show business at the Civic, 1020 N. Howard St., through June 20 on Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm. (No show on May 30.) Tickets: $27; $25, seniors; $18, students; $9, student rush. Visit spokanecivictheatre.com or call 325-2507.

Gleeful Phantom

2010-06-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

High schools can now apply for the rights to Phantom of the Opera — even if the technical demands are steep.

Bobo can scarcely credit the rumors that the high school version of Lord Webber's musical has been re-set, not underneath the Paris Opera, but underneath the gym floor at William McKinley High School — or that the Phantom herself now bears a strong resemblance to Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester.

Local stars mean box-office bonanza?

2010-05-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

As part of its Tony coverage, the New York Times included a sidebar on how much big-name stars mean to Broadway's weekly grosses.
Basically, if you have Denzel Washington/Hugh Jackson/Catherine Zeta-Jones/ScarJo in your production and the other guy doesn't, then you will rake in two to four times as much per week.

Which leads to a local application. Kathie Doyle-Lipe has her local following, and for good reason. Some people will go see anything directed by Troy Nickerson — again, for good reason. Perhaps Patrick Treadway, Reed McColm, Ellen Travolta, Jack Bannon, Patrick McHenry-Kroetch and others have similar fan bases? (I don't know, and apologies to anyone I've failed to mention here. You fill in the names.)

Now, Bobo doesn't have access to box-office records hereabouts, and he tends to go to shows on opening night (which has its own buzz, but cannot yet have acquired the shine and increased ticket sales that result from good word-of-mouth). In other words, what does he know?

But here is your chance to praise your fellow artists. Who around here has the marquee name to "open" a show? What examples can you recall of a) poor scripts that sold well because so-in-so was the star, or b) good productions that grossed even better because of a recognizable lead actor?

[ photo: Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, Spokane Civic Theatre, May-June 2008 ]

One-on-one theater

2010-05-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

If we really mean it when we preach the impact of live, up-close-and-personal performance, then why not follow the example of what they're doing in Times Square?

Obviously, with their air conditioning and gasoline generator and glassed-in performance area, they've got a bigger budget than we, the 91st-biggest radio market in the nation, might be able to manage.
But what if somebody scored a) a confessional from a Catholic church about to be dismantled, b) a new Dumpster, c) one of those double Porta-Potties, d) a two-sided enclosure that some hardy local actor with carpentry skills devised?

Just dream with me a second: the Civic and/or Interplayers gets the permits to set up on a sidewalk somewhere near Post and Riverside, or else in Riverfront Park. It has the aroma of something slightly risque, like a peep show, only it's perfectly legit. Think of the curiosity it would arouse: Me, too! Me, too! And it plays right into the current fashion for reality-TV, you-are-there, no-bullshit, WYSIWYG entertainment.

The payoff? Somebody told me once that an event needs to enter a prospective playgoer's consciousness six times before he or she will actually make the decision to attend. This could count for a couple of those pings. A Lake City actor in an enclosure? Makes passers-by just a bit more likely to attend, the next time they hear of a Lake City show....

Sandy Hosking and Bryan Harnetiaux could start churning out one-person scripts. Local actors would be able to add a line to their play program bios.
And the critics? Sorry, fella -- there's no room. We're sold out.

Pocahontas at the Bing

2010-05-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Pocahontas presented by Christian Youth Theatre-Spokane, with a cast of 81 (!)

Fridays-Saturdays, May 21-22 and May 28-29, at 7 pm,
Saturdays, May 22 and May 29, at 3 pm, and
Sunday, May 30, at 3 pm
at the Bing
Visit cytspokane.com
Tickets: $10; $9, seniors and youth.

"When people hear 'Pocahontas,' many associate it with the Disney production. What is different about CYT's Pocahontas production is that it is a historically accurate portrayal with original songs and dances," says Lydia Kinne, CYT's box office manager and registrar.

[ photo: Pocahontas, 1595-1617; from probertencyclopaedia.com ]

Psychopathia Sexualis review

2010-05-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

(first half of the review; full review available on newsstands Thursdays, and online at inlander.com; also on KPBX on Thursday at 7:35 am)

Psychopathia Sexualis (at Interplayers through May 29) is a thinking person’s sex farce. The premise has to do with a guy who can’t perform in bed unless he’s in visual contact with a pair of his father’s argyle socks. But, hey — lots of us struggle with that same neurosis. (I know I sure do.)

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: Guy has a strange sex fetish, confesses it to his pal; word leaks to the guy’s fiancée; complications ensue; your typical door-slamming bedroom farce.

Wrong. Playwright John Patrick Shanley takes the locker-room jokes in unexpected directions having to do with power struggles, gender politics and the profession of psychiatry. It’s not the kind of silliness that makes you feel as if you just lost brain cells. It’s the kind of silliness you have to earn by ruminating on what fools these mortals be, then recognizing yourself among the fools.

While director Reed McColm’s production elicits plenty of laughs, this particular Psychopathia isn’t as funny as it should be — partly due to the script, partly because of the execution. On the one hand, Shanley’s script appeals simultaneously to both brain and funny bone — asking us, in effect, to reflect and react at the same time. McColm’s cast, on the other hand, both over- and under-plays their characters’ eccentricities.

But make no mistake: With all the Freudian stuff going on here — transference, projection, slips — there’s plenty to laugh at here as Arthur confides in Howard, only to have Lucille and Ellie learn all about it. All the secrets and analysis explode into a game of trying to outsmart the shrink with the symbolic name, Dr. Block.

Two performances are standouts. As Arthur, the guy with the socks hang-up, Anderson embodies comic exasperation: He stomps the floor, does deep knee-dips, lunges crazily across the floor, shakes his fists and then his limp wrists. Then he whines, “I just need the socks!”

As Arthur’s fiancée, Caryn Hoaglund-Trevett plays a Daddy’s girl who regards wedding preparations as a good excuse for going on a rampage....

Psychopathia Sexualis delivers smart sex jokes at Interplayers, 174 S. Howard St., through May 29 on Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays at 8 pm, and Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm. Tickets: $15-$21; $10, student rush. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.

Tammy Marshall photo for The Inlander: As Herr Freud looks on, Lucille and Ellie (Caryn Hoaglund-Trevett and Bethany Hart, right) are scandalized by the sexual hang-ups of Arthur (Dan Anderson)

Annie Get Your Gun photos

2010-05-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Spokane Civic Theatre main stage, May 21-June 20
directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson
with Tami Knoell at Annie Oakley, Patrick McHenry-Kroetch as Frank Butler, Doug Dawson as Buffalo Bill, Gary Pierce as Charlie Davenport, Ryan Patterson as Dolly Tate and a cast of more than 40

See the April 19 post here and visit the Blog at Inlander.com.

Unusual socks fetish

2010-05-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

Psychopathia Sexualis, by John Patrick Shanley
May 13-29 at Interplayers
directed by Reed McColm

with Dan Anderson as Arthur, Caryn Hoaglund-Trevett as Lucille, John Hart as Dr. Block, Damon Abdallah as Howard, Bethany Hart as Ellie

[ photos by Tammy Marshall for The Pacific Northwest Inlander ]

Summer casting

2010-05-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

CdA Summer Theater runs June 12-Aug. 21 this year.
The 29th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (June 12-26) will feature Matt Wade as Leaf Coneybear (the hippie speller) and Reed McColm as Douglas Panch (the vice principal). This production will also venture to Idaho Rep in Moscow (June 28-July 3).

Cinderella (July 3-17) will feature three Travolta sisters (Ellen, Annie and Margaret), along with Ellen's husband, Jack Bannon, as King Maximillian — joined by Tamara Schupman as Queen Constantina, Andrew Ware Lewis as Christopher and Jessica Skerrit in the title role.

Skerrit returns in Pump Boys and Dinettes (July 22-Aug. 1) as Prudie Cupp, joined by Dane Stokinger as Jackson and musical director Steven Dahlke as LM.

The buzzworthy casting choices for Hairspray (Aug. 7-21) are, in the roles played by John Travolta and Christopher Walken in the movie, CdA artistic director Roger Welch as Edna Turnblat and Patrick Treadway as her husband, Wilbur. Schupman and McColm return as the Authority Figures; Matt Wade is Corny Collins; and Lindsey Hedburg plays Tracy Turnblad.

Hilarious Socks Farce

2010-05-10T14:59:00.001-07:00

Psychopathia Sexualis
by John Patrick Shanley
May 13-29 at Interplayers
directed by Reed McColm

Arthur (Dan Anderson) is getting married to Lucille (Caryn Hoaglund-Trevett). Problem is, he can't perform sexually unless a pair of his father's argyle socks are in view.
Having counseled Arthur about his problem, Dr. Block (John Hart) decides to try some shock therapy: He just steals the damn socks.
Arthur enlists his friend Howard (Damon Abdallah) for help; Arthur has a gossip-monger wife, Ellie (Bethany Hart); high jinks ensue.

Ben Brantley's Feb. 1997 review in the New York Times concentrates on the centrality of the Dr. Block role (played then by Edward Hermann) and compares the comedy's witticisms to those of S.N. Behrman, Nichols and May, and early-'60s Woody Allen.

[ image: from compasstheatre.com — from a production a year ago in San Diego ]

Patty in June

2010-05-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Patty Duke will appear at Interplayers on Thursday-Friday, June 3-4, at 7:30 pm and on Saturday, June 5, at 2 pm for conversations about the obstacles she has faced onstage and in life. Subscribers can purchase tickets (prices unannounced) through May 17, when general-public tickets go on sale. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.
[image: from dachshundlove.blogspot.com ]

Enron fizzled

2010-05-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

Lucy Prebble's inventively (gaudily?) staged play about an American financial crisis (no, not last year's -- the one from a decade ago) is closing quickly on Broadway, despite being a success in London.

('Muricans don't much like having snooty Brits poke fun at our red, white and blue shortcomings, evidently, along with our other moral failings.)

Some take-aways from Michael Billington's analysis:
1. Musicals can be expressionistic, but plays should be realistic. This is not only false, but it endangers theater's future. Serious, or serio-comic non-musical plays that use dream-like, imagination-prodding theatrical effects are the future. Let movies do spectacle and novels grab individual readers — but you-are-there, psychological immediacy ... that's what theater can deliver like nothing else.

2. And two points from near the end of Billington's article:
"If Enron's melancholy saga proves anything, it is Broadway's irrelevance to serious theatre. ... at heart, Broadway is a big, gaudy commercial shop-window, where fortunes are won and lost."
What's commercial isn't cutting-edge. What isn't cutting-edge will be lost — in a generation, possibly two — to oblivion.

3. Chicago is generating more exciting theater than N.Y. (In general, a tip of the cap to America's regional theaters.)

[ photo: Lucy Prebble, from bargaintheatre.com ]

Almost, Maine at EWU, May 7-15

2010-05-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

John Cariani's nine vignettes about love and friendship in a remote town, way up there in "The County" will be performed at EWU's University Theater in Cheney on
Friday-Saturday, May 7-8, at 7:30 pm
Sunday, May 9, at 2 pm
Thursday, May 13, at 5 pm
and Friday-Saturday, May 14-15, at 7:30 pm

Directed by Sara Goff

[ photo: Chailee Friant and Joel Chiswell as Rhonda and Dave ]

Elyse Sommer's review of a 2006 NYC production is here.

A Rochester, N.Y.. production of four months ago is reviewed here.

Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene will also produce this play next February and March.

Visit the Blog at Inlander.com.

Daniels on downers

2010-05-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

Bobo was already up at 5:30 am this morning, so he tuned into the Webcast of the Tony nominations announcement.
Jeff Daniels acted even sleepier than I was.
I mean, show some enthusiasm, man.

But there is much fun to be had watching the current show clips, which help explain why the big nom-nabbers — Fences with 10, Fela! with 11, La Cage with 11, Memphis with eight, Red and Ragtime with seven each, and so on — did as well as they did.

The O'Neill won the regional Tony, but they weren't that high on my ballot. Marian Seldes and Alan Ayckbourn will receive honorary Tonys on the June 13 show, and long overdue, says I.

That Spokane show only got one nom, for Walken.

In the New York Times, Patrick Healy is heartened somewhat by the fact that money-makers didn't grab as many nominations as the more artistically fulfilling shows. But the Tony noms are voted on by a select group of about 30 theater people; the voters tend to skew toward the money people, for whom commercial success means it must be pretty good artistically too, right?
[ photo: Fela!, a show that will never play Spokane ]

Jekyll & Hyde continues through May 23; The Crucible on May 7

2010-05-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene
(Check out their new Website.)

In Jared Helm's production, Mike Hynes plays both halves of the title role.
The Frank Wildhorn (music) and Leslie Bricusse (lyrics) musical ran on Broadway from April 1997 to January 2001.

**

Lake City also has a fund-raiser this Friday night, May 7, at 7:30 pm at the Harding Family Center in CdA: Arthur Miller's The Crucible, in a staged reading directed by Rebecca McNeill
Tickets: $7
Call (208) 667-1323

Gonzaga grad to be on Friday Night Lights

2010-05-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

Jeff Rosick, Gonzaga '08 and a theater arts major, has just started filming the upcoming fifth season of NBC's show about high school football culture in a dusty Texas town. Rosick (John Proctor in The Crucible, the lonely kid in This Is Our Youth here at Gonzaga) will play Buddy, who has returned to Dillon and wishes he hadn't.
Best of all, it's a seven-episode gig.
And that's a pretty good line in the ol' IMDB entry for an actor who's just two years out of college.

SSC does MND at WU

2010-04-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Translation: the Seattle Shakespeare Company, as reported here earlier,
will perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at Whitworth University's Cowles Auditorium
on Saturday, May 8, at 7 pm. Tickets: $5.

Some comments from director George Mount of the SSC:

"We have been wanting to get our shows to the Spokane area for a few
years. When we developed or regional touring programs, Spokane was always
an area we hoped to book into. However, traveling that far can be costly
and we want to keep our performance fees as low as possible.
"This year, we used money from a grant from the National Endowment for the
Arts as part of their Shakespeare in American Communities initiative. With
their support, a lot of the cost to schools and community theaters (our
primary "customers" for these tours) is greatly reduced. So I arranged with
several high schools in the area to come out and perform. We'll be in your
area for about a week and a half with performances in places like Deer Park,
Ritzville, Colville and Wilbur."

(On May 5 at noon, they'll perform a show for local high school students at Whitworth, then return on May 8 at night for a general-public show.)

"The production has seven actors playing all the parts," says Mount. "Each actor plays at
least two other characters, and most play three. And their third character
is a puppet! I've focused on the fairy tale-like nature of Midsummer and
costumed the cast in a style reminiscent of Victorian-era children's
literature illustrations, like the work of Arthur Rackham. The characters
of Puck and the fairy attendants to Titania are played by near life-sized
puppets manipulated by the actors. It's a highly theatrical approach to the
show, yet also keeps it streamlined and simple for touring. As you guessed,
the show has to fit into the back of an SUV with the actors arriving in a
separate vehicle. And while children's literature was the inspiration, the
show, despite the puppets, isn't really a 'children's' show. It's a great
show for all ages. Younger audiences will like the puppets and the goofy
situations; older audiences will not feel "talked down to" and will still enjoy
all that Shakespeare has to offer.
"Well, not quite all that Shakespeare has to offer — we've reduced the
length of the show to about 90 minutes. But we didn't change the
language — except for a couple of muttered actor ad libs."

Lips Together photos

2010-04-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Lips-Together, Teeth Apart (1991), by Terrence McNally
at Spokane Civic Theatre from April 29-May 23, in the Firth J. Chew Studio Theatre

directed by Wes Deitrick
with Dave Rideout as John Haddock, Melody Deatherage as Chloe Haddock, Amy Nathan as Sally Truman, and Ron Ford as Sam Truman

photos by Young Kwak for The Pacific Northwest Inlander
see the preview in the April 29 issue, and visit the Blog at inlander.com

Interplayers' 2010-11 season

2010-04-21T17:05:00.001-07:00

Dates firmed up, and some titles added, from what has been announced before:

Sept. 9-25, 2010: Together Again for the Next Time, by Reed McColm
This time, Chinelle and Carey are getting married.

(Fundraisers will be held on Oct. 1-2, 2010, and on Jan. 14-15, 2011.)

Oct. 14-30, 2010: The 39 Steps, by Patrick Barlow, adapted from John Buchan's novel and Alfred Hitchcock's movie
Four actors play more than a hundred roles.

Nov. 24-Dec. 11, 2010: Honky Tonk Angels Holiday Spectacular, by Ted Swindley

Angels. In a honky-tonk. At the holidays. It's spectacular.

Jan. 20-Feb. 5, 2011: Opus, by Michael Hollinger
A world-famous all-male string quartet fires its violist and replaces him with a young woman.

Feb. 17-March 12, 2011: Privilege, by Paul Weitz
Two teenage brothers on the Upper East Side find out that their father has been up to some big-stakes financial hanky-panky.

March 31-April 16, 2011: Cotton Patch Gospel, by Tom Key and Russell Treyz; music and lyrics by Harry Chapin
Jesus appears in modern-day rural Georgia.

May 5-21, 2011: The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson; directed by Patty Duke
Annie Sullivan tries to tame Helen Keller.

Spring Awakening in winter

2010-04-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

There's been a date change: The touring version of Spring Awakening will visit Spokane not on Dec. 1, as previously announced, but on Jan. 19, 2011.

And don't pretend you have a conflict. You'll be there. Because despite the bitch of living, the song of purple summer allows us all to go on believing.

And the sex is good, too.

Seattle Shakespeare Company at Whitworth

2010-04-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

SSC will present MND in two performances, on May 5 and May 8.

The Wednesday, May 5, performance is free, but it's at noon and in a lecture hall (inside Weyerhaeuser Hall on the Whitworth University campus, 300 W. Hawthorne Rd.).

The Saturday, May 8, performance will cost you five bucks (though students and graybeards get in for free), and it's (a presumably more fully staged version) in Cowles Auditorium at 7 pm.

Visit seattleshakespeare.org or call 466-4263.

review of Eleemosynary

2010-04-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

at Interplayers through May 1

Interplayers’ production of Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary doesn’t entirely succeed: as the grandmother, Tamara Schupman works too hard at appearing eccentric; Blessing’s script spells out its conclusions too much; the onslaught of crises can seem wearying; and there’s no visual interest at all. But Eleemosynary also presents a nonlinear, poetic experience that’s filled with insights and with characters who, like the rest of us, are a strange assortment of good traits and bad.

[Young Kwak photo: Nancy Gasper as Artie]

You couldn’t film this dreamlike story of a grandmother, her daughter and her grandchild (who’s a spelling bee champion, hence the fancy word of the title). For a story with a lot of chronological leaps that appeals to the audience’s imagination — first she’s alone in a strange apartment, then she’s making a home movie from years ago, now she’s waking up from a coma — you need a theater’s neutral space and close-ups.

In Eleemosynary, there are deaths and resentments and rejections, but also foibles and aspirations and quiet acceptance. Filled with sensitivities and nuances, it presents a mixed mood that can pall when extended for two hours.
But director Maria A. Caprile gets mileage out of simple expedients: three women strolling around a dreamlike space, avoiding eye contact, spewing their resentments, sitting at odd angles, their backs to one another and staying like that.
The costumes and setting are so minimal that they call attention to themselves, so it’s all down to the script and the acting: There’s nothing else here to occupy your attention.
At least Caprile’s direction adds interest in the second act’s spelling bee sequence: a recessed area becomes the stage for big event, with Echo showing off her prowess while a lighting trick denotes her main rival in the spelling bee.

Blessing’s chief insight about this family’s matriarch, Dorothea, is that she self-consciously adopted eccentricity as a way to fend off conventional and patriarchal expectations: If her husband wanted a meek housewife, what he’d get instead was a psychic tuned in to astral projections. Schupman has an inspirational moment when encouraging her girls to fly — face uplifted, arms wide, the enchantress invoking the spirits of possibility — but mostly she overplays the mannerisms. Dorothea’s eccentric displays have become, for her, a habit. Treating them in a more matter-of-fact way would lend them more credibility.

As Dorothea’s daughter and Echo’s mother, Artie — short for Artemis, because Mom expected her daughter to be like a goddess, so no pressure there — Nancy Gasper delivers a sterling performance. Tragic events assault Artie, and Gasper persuasively portrays their effects. Squatting, her face buried in her knees and rocking slowly back and forth, she muffles her voice, then raises her head to reveal glaring, tear-streaked eyes. Artie has run away from her mother, repeatedly, and she’s no good at expressing affection. She doesn’t even know how to touch her child. And yet when Artie curls up, depressed, she whispers that while her daughter only sees poor parenting during the day, “what she doesn’t know is how good I am, at night, as a mom.” In trying to break away from an overbearing mother and draw closer to a daughter whom she doesn’t really know, Gasper will break your heart. Her life, she says, has been “a long apology.”

Rainee Palmer — an EWU student making her Interplayers debut — plays Echo as childlike and headstrong. From the outset, she displays a spelling champion’s delight in words — “clamjamfry,” “bijouterie,” “logodaedaly” — that’s intended to suggest the Wesbrook women’s tendency to show off what they know. Problem is, each of them has an EQ lower than her IQ. They hide what they feel (and most of what they feel is about themselves, anyway).
The qualified achievement of this Interplayers production — particularly in Caprile’s direction and Gasper’s acting — is to show us the value of struggling toward generosity. In the end, Echo, Artie and Dorothea don’t want to be brainiacs anymore; they’re just trying to become charitable human beings.

Eleemosynary depicts three generations of Wesbrook women through May 1 on Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays-Saturdays at 8 pm, and Saturdays-Sundays at 2 pm at Interplayers, 174 S. Howard St. Tickets: $15-$21; $12-$19, seniors; $10, student rush. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.

Eleemosynary at Interplayers: photos

2010-04-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

at Interplayers though May 1
written by Lee Blessing
premiered in 1987
directed by Maria A. Caprile

with three generations of Wesbrook women:
Tamara Schupman as Dorothea
Nancy Gasper as Artie
and Rainee Palmer as Echo

Cast list for Annie Get Your Gun

2010-04-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

May 21-June 20 at Spokane Civic Theatre

Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin
Book by Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields (who were siblings)
Directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson
Choreographed by Troy Nickerson and Jillian Wylie

In order of appearance:

Frank Butler ................. Patrick McHenry-Kroetch
Buffalo Bill Cody ............. Doug Dawson
Dolly Tate ...................... Ryan Patterson
Tommy Keeler ................. Todd Kehne
Winnie Tate ........................ Alyssa Day
Charlie Davenport ................ Gary Pierce
Foster Wilson ..................... Mark Sims
Mac, the Prop man .............. Dan McKeever
Chief Sitting Bull ............. Paul Villabrille
Annie Oakley ......................... Tami Knoell
Jessie, Annie's little sister .............. Natalya Ferch
Nellie, Annie's other little sister ......... Bailey Heppler
Little Jake, Annie's little brother ........... Evan Achten
Running Deer ....................... Jason Coleman-Heppler
Eagle Feather .............................Mario Zavala
Dining Car Waiter ..................... Stephen McKinney
Sleeping Car Porter .................. Peter Gardner
Pawnee Bill .............................. Dan Griffith
Messenger .......................... Adam Peterson
Moonshine Lullaby Trio ...........Dan McKeever, Adam Peterson, David McCarthy
Band Leader ........................... Mike Saccomanno
Mrs. Sylvia Potter-Porter/Queen Victoria ...... Vera Oro-Winslow
Mrs. Schuyler Adams .................. Julie Beeman
Cowboys/Roustabouts .......David McCarthy, Jessie Hulsizer, Will Dubiel, Hayden Ward
Indians/Roustabouts .....Mario Zavala, Jason Coleman-Heppler, Logan McHenry-Krotech, Frances Charles
Kings of Europe .... Dan McKeever, Mark Sims, Stephen McKinney
Female Chorus ..... Madison Clarry, Alyssa Day, Lauren Goldblum, Lexie Hofpauir, Katie Kennedy, Keyonna Knight
Male Chorus ....... Peter Gardner, Todd Kehne, Dan McKeever, Stephen McKinney, Adam Peterson

Notes:

Annie Oakley, 1860-1926

the original composer, Jerome Kern, died before completing the score

the 1946 musical ran for more than 1,100 performances on Broadway and more than 1,300 in London

Mary Martin toured as Annie in 1947-48

1950 movie: Betty Hutton replaced Judy Garland

the only Rodgers and Hammerstein production without an R&H score (they acted as producers)

the 1999 Broadway revision (Tonys for best revival and for Bernadette Peters) ran for more than 1,000 performances before it closed — 10 days before 9/11

[photo: from BernadettePeters.com]

Patty Duke to direct The Miracle Worker at Interplayers

2010-04-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

Artistic director Reed McColm announced on Friday night that Patty Duke will direct the show in which she has played both leading roles -- at Interplayers, sometime this fall, perhaps as early as September.

Anna Marie Duke played Helen Keller in William Gibson's play on Broadway at ages 12-14; at age 15, she starred alongside Anne Bancroft in the 1962 movie. For a made-for-TV movie in 1980, Duke (at age 33) took over the role of Annie Sullivan (with Helen Keller played by Melissa Gilbert).

And now, at age 63, Duke will return to the show with which she is identified -- right here in Spokane, both as director and by taking a cameo role.

Even before that, sometime "in the first week of June," Duke will appear here (date and venue TBD) for an In the Actors Studio-style interview.

Two months ago, Duke ended her run as Madame Morrible in the San Francisco production of Wicked.

Visit the arts blog at inlander.com.
[photo: from the 1962 movie; from sixties60s.com]

Lake City Playhouse announces 2010-11 season

2010-04-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Sept 1 -Oct 10
Evita
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Oct 28-Nov 14
The Elephant Man
by Bernard Pomerance

Dec 2-19
A Taffetas Christmas
by Rick Lewis

Jan 13-30, 2011
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck

Feb 17-March 6, 2011
Almost, Maine
by John Cariani

March 24-April 3, 2011
Dearly Departed
by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones

April 21-May 8, 2011
The Miracle Worker
by William Gibson

May 26-June 19, 2011
Urinetown
Music by Mark Hollmann
Lyrics by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis
Book by Greg Kotis

[ photo: John Cariani, who is from Presque Isle, Maine, where Bobo was once offered an English professor job; from BangorMetro.com; you may recognize Cariani as the over-eager forensics guy from Law & Order, or possibly from Numb3rs ]

Next to Normal wins the Pulitzer

2010-04-12T12:10:00.001-07:00

The soundtrack has some overlapping songs that are just chilling, given the big twist (not be be revealed here). The Pulitzer server is jammed, so no word yet on finalists or judges. (Bobo was calling The Orphans' Home Cycle by Horton Foote as the winner, with Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room, or, the Vibrator Play as a finalist.
But then what does he know? More later.

ADDED later on Monday:
Brian Yorkey has an Issaquah connection.
(In fact, he was associate a.d. at the Village Theater for seven years.)

Here is a link to the Pulitzer ("pull it, sir") announcement, with the plays by Diaz, Joseph and Ruhl listed as finalists.

Can anyone clarify the "moved into contention by the Board" phrase? Does this repeat the squabbling of the year Rabbit Hole won after the Board rejected the Jury's choice? Or the time long ago (1961?), when Virginia Woolf lost out to How To Succeed?)

ADDED early Tues. morning:
Charles McNulty of the L.A. Times, who chaired this year's drama jury, explains: They got overruled, and he's not too happy about it, and he chalks it up to the board's geographical chauvinism. (If it wasn't produced on the East Coast, then it must not be very good.) Bobo had a review-writing workshop with McNulty two years ago, and he is fastidious with detail, committed, reasonable and insightful. As for the board -- there isn't a theater person among them.
And look at those stats: 15 times the board has overturned the jury on drama (as much as three other categories combined). Makes me feel kinda good: theater is still considered dangerous, subversive. At least in some towns.

[ photo: from Washington City Paper -- with Alice Ripley, in the New York production ]

Give 'em what they don't even know they want

2010-04-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

In the Wall-Street-Journal, Terry Teachout laments the lowest-popular-denominator script-massaging that takes the edge out of potentially edgy material like a musical built upon the cynical nonconformism of Charles Addams' cartoons.
"Such are the ways of big-budget franchise theater, in which the goal is to give the public what it already knows it wants," Teachout says in his review of the new production with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth -- a musical, apparently, without very good music.

Better art, of course, gives the audience what it doesn't know that it already wants. For example: Mormons, Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, an Antarctic drug fantasy and HIV-positive gay men, all tossed into a five-hour, two-play brew that summed up half a century and more of American history? People would have scoffed at the very attempt before Tony Kushner produced Angels in America. Or earlier: an episodic dream play about a family in denial, with the narrator-figure revealing his own ugliness alongside his idealism? Not standard fare in 1945, but then The Glass Menagerie, like all great plays, broke molds.

And then this article by Chloe Veltman in the New York Times, which describes the Bay Area as a breeding ground for more adventurous musicals, citing several examples.

Artistic directors and their boards often argue the need to play it conservative, gotta sell tickets, these are tough times, recognizable titles sell, maybe we'll try something more adventurous when the economy turns around.
Except the good times never roll, and American theater is always in a state of crisis.

Which brings us to the part where Bobo is going to get himself in trouble.
Honky Tony Nonsense, Annie Get Your Stupid Gun, Forever Staid and Plaid, Criminally Bland: The Musical, and a Very Special Evening with the Minnelli Fossil: Giving the audience what they know they want, duplicating past pleasures while driving more nails into the coffin of theater's irrelevance.
Metamorphoses, Spring Awakening, Lips Together (if this was 1992, which it isn't), boom (if Interplayers adds it) and would somebody please do McDonagh's The Pillowman?: giving playgoers something they don't yet know they want.

I know: too tough a sell.
But consider, after the economic dust settles: the buzz that Bobo hears (no corroborating evidence just yet) is of more and more Portlanders and Seattlites, etc. moving into the area. Theater can't just be for gray-haired people with mortgages.

Which is why Michael Mayer's attitude -- and a new way of measuring theater's effectiveness, on which more in a moment -- are inspiring.
Mayer, who won a Tony in 2006 for directing Spring Awakening, is quoted as follows in the theater section, p. 79, of the current, 4/16/10 Entertainment Weekly (with Chewbacca on the cover; ew.com/stage seems not to have it, however). Mayer is directing Green Day's American Idiot, which opens on Broadway on April 20; he's been working on adapting the album for the stage (and adding four songs from 21st-Century Breakdown) for the past two and a half years.
Signicantly, says EW writer Simon Vozick-Levinson, the creative team of American Idiot "stayed true to the album's copious profanity, snarling attitude, and distorted guitars. Mayer isn't worried about how audiences will react. 'No one ever thought, 'Oh, we've got to make it safe for Broadway.' I love my Carousel as much as the next person, but the supertraditionalists are not the majority of the theatergoing audience anymore. It's time again for Broadway to have music that is what people are listening to now.'"

The tyranny of conservative old farts over theaters' programming choices has got to end. Escanaba in da Moonlight is hardly high art, but it is very well done at the Civic, and surely it proves (I heard belly laughs all over the house on opening night) that audiences in Spokane are not such straitlaced prudes that they can't uproariously enjoy sex jokes, fart jokes, a smattering of off-color language, and depictions of hare-brained schemes.

So how about local artistic directors employing the following survey?
The gist: measure audience members' emotional involvement with a show, by means of a questionnaire (which you can access here and here and here). (It was developed by the Independent Theatre Council; visit itc-arts.org.)
Right now in Spokane, as means of evaluating a given production's "success," we have box office numbers, reviews by two middle-aged white guys, and word of mouth. The third's unquantifiable, and what if the first two produce mixed results?

The questionnaire asks, in a particular form, questions such as: Were you absorbed? Did you learn something valuable? Did you notice time passing? Did you notice the reactions of other audience members? Will you discuss the show with friends afterwards? and so on.

Note, in the comments, the skepticism: It's still a subjective measure. It'd be better to set up a video booth. If somebody was bored by a show, they're less likely to fill out a questionnaire -- hence you get an over-representation of positive answers. And there are no directions, even should local theaters use such questionnaires, of how to use them further to produce even more good shows.
So this is far from a panacea.
But Bobo's point is that this might offer a new way of assessing what really matters to audiences may not be what theater managers expect. And taking chances, talking about controversial issues -- may be a way of re-attracting to the theater people who have just assumed for years now that theater is a dead institution -- irrelevant, moldy, and fit for stuffy museums.
It doesn't have to be. And more's the pity if the people who love it most consign it, by dint of conservative and uninteresting programming, to the dustheap of moldy irrelevance.

Because I'm sorry, but I really doubt that even the fans of Honky Tonk, Annie and Liza sat through (or will sit through) those shows and honestly say afterwards, Yes, I was engrossed; yes, I learned something new; gee, I noticed everyone was enthralled; never once looked at my watch (never thumbed through the program to see how many more songs they were gonna sing); can't wait to talk about it after.
Sure, people will say they were entertained, nothing wrong with a nice, light evening out. By which they mean they're content to settle for the Thursday Night Special at Shari's.
But theater can cook up even better meals. And we should always be trying to cook them.

[ photos: Green Day; from freewilliamsburg.com/archives/green-day.jpg -- also, Charles Addams himself, from charlesaddams.com/images/history/CAp1_02.jpg ]

review of Escanaba in da Moonlight

2010-04-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

at Spokane Civic Theatre through April 25

A man with a rifle brings it to bear directly at us. He cocks the hammer. Takes a big, calming breath.
On the way in to the huntin’ lodge for openin’ day of deer season, you see, he’d had a vision. (Maybe it was all those PBRs he drank -- but to him, it was a vision.) A vision of a huge buck, dancin’ on the highway, as he was drivin’, right before his eyes. So he raised his .30-.30 (this being the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, he calls it his “turdy-turdy”) and then he “cocked back the hammer and blew him off the face of the earth.”
This is David Gigler as Remnar Soady -- all mismatched plaids and camo pants -- inviting us into his world for opening’ day here at the world-famous Soady Deer Camp somewhere out in the woods outside the town of Escanaba, where boys become men when they bag their first buck, and all the women have come to the conclusion that all the men are merely morons.
Gigler’s portrayal of Remnar is one of the funniest features of one of the funniest productions the Civic has created in recent years. Director Troy Nickerson’s gift for portraying men making fools of themselves, along with Peter Hardie’s man-cave of a rustic huntin’ lodge set, Hardie’s ominous lighting -- there are creepy things out in the Michigan woods -- Jan Wanless’s costume design (plenty of flannel and ear flaps) and Jeff “Dumberer” Daniels’ comic-onslaught of a script all combine, at breakneck pace, to create an enclave of eccentrics who think they see happiness, don’t know what to make of it, and decide to fire off a few rounds just to work off their frustrations.
Escanaba in da Moonlight, which has been produced all over the country ever since Daniels premiered it in 1995 at the little Upper Peninsula theater that he oversees, is full of sex jokes, gross-out jokes, cockamamie conspiracy theories and concern for the male pecking order.
It’s not men behaving badly, in other words -- it’s men behaving normally.
All that, and Act Two has the Mother of All Extended Fart Jokes.
And there, my friends, is where the comedy lingers.

Wes Deitrick -- with dumb geniality straight out of The Red Green Show, and with the befuddled looks and excess of flannel plaids to prove it -- acts as the clan’s patriarch and the audience’s goofball narrator. If scratching yourself constantly, fantasizing about 18-point bucks, staying in a hootch-induced stupor all day, and making fun of anyone who’s not from northern Michigan seems like it might be a foreign experience, Deitrick’s Albert Soady is there to guide you.
Gigler knows how to play the confident doofus, sure of his hunting mastery right up until he isn’t. (Then the little superstitions tumble out.)
The plot (more like a series of boyish squabbles over nothing’, but funny) revolves around the fact that the other Soady son, Reuben (Civic newcomer Scott Miller, persuasively desperate) has dishonored the family by remaining, at age 35, “buckless“ and “without venison.” (He’s “just not a straight shooter.”)
As Reuben pursues his buck-bagging quest, the action gets entangled with alien abductions, maple-flavored whiskey and Native American rituals (in ways you’ll just have to witness for yourself).
In a show that hurls its eccentricities at you relentlessly, the most eccentric characterization belongs to Todd Kehne as Jimmer Negamanee of Menominne. (Say that fast five times, and you’ll be talking gibberish just like he does. Jimmer hasn’t been the same since strange things happened to him out in the woods, you see.) Kehne is a revelation, with incredibly high energy, antic fits, and expressions that convey his puzzlement that the backwoods boys around him don’t realize that they’re just as insane as he is. (Slightly better diction, is all.)
For a glimpse of the attention to detail, both by Nickerson and his cast, watch the episode when Reuben introduces the gang to some foul-smelling stuff that supposedly wards off evil spirits. The joke -- and as in much of Daniels’ play, you may see it coming, but it’s funny anyway -- is that once it gets all freaky-deaky outside, the guys are going to go for the liquid they were just now acting all squeamish about. One dabs it daintily, with two fingers grazing his neck; one splatters himself; another slathers it on.
Or when characters, seemingly catatonic, suddenly but briefly rise up just to clarify a point or two -- you can see where rehearsals paid off, where Nickerson and his inventive actors had experimented, tried things out, and opted for the funniest bits.

The script and acting both veer off occasionally into the kind of excessive silliness that can make an audience become self-conscious about being directed to laugh instead of simply laughing. The eccentricities of the forest ranger, the predictability of who’s behind Reuben’s vision-quest (and why), the childish exuberance of some of these men’s rituals and superstitions (over-indicated, and with too much stepping on the laughter) all briefly intrude on the fun.
But not much, and not for long. Daniels and Nickerson keep the surprises and the goofin’ at a fever pitch, and the result was a whole lot of belly laughs

People were wiping away tears, they were laughing so hard. (I noticed this, right after wiping away my own.)
That fart joke, it’ll really blow ya away, yah sure.
Escanaba in da Moonlight is one of the funniest and inhibition-shattering comedies you’re likely to see.
I may be more like those “white wine-drinking, Winnebago-driving, fun-sucking trolls” who live in urban areas of the Lower Peninsula (like, God forbid, Detroit) -- and I’ve never handled a “turdy-turdy” rifle in my life, but I’d go back to spend a couple hours with the Soadys anytime. Somehow they remind me of the no-slugs, penalty-beer, passed-out-on-the-couch-so-put-his-fingers-in-warm-water days of my misspent youth.
I’d like to spend some more of it. And the Soadys seems to have their fingers in my pocket.

[ video cover (2001) from hotmoviesale.com ]

Escanaba in da Moonlight photos

2010-04-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

April 9-25 on Spokane Civic Theater's main stage
by Jeff Daniels

directed by Troy Nickerson
with Wes Deitrick as Albert Soady
Scott Miller as Reuben Soady
David Gigler as Remnar Soady
Todd Kehne as Jiggers Negamanee
Thomas Heppler as Ranger Tom T. Treado
Lynn Komarek as Wolf Moon Dance Soady

review of Little House on the Prairie: The Musical

2010-04-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

at the INB Center through Sunday, April 11

Well, it’s better than the TV show. Remember how Michael Landon would do that little chin-dip and grin, signifying that tonight’s moral lesson had been learned?
Director Francesca Zambello’s production of the Little House musical mostly avoids that kind of preachment, with comic snipes undercutting most of the saccharine moments. (When the Ingalls family first gapes at all their new treeless and grassy acreage, the littlest daughter deadpans, “There’s nothing there.”) Even better, Zambello practically conducts a clinic in imaginative staging, instant scene changes and the creation of sudden crowd energy onstage.

While the headliners are Steven Blanchard as Pa Ingalls (who’s macho and kind all at once, bestriding his homestead in a variety of dirtied boots) and Melissa Gilbert as Ma (absent for the Spokane shows due to minor back surgery) — and while Gilbert’s understudy replacement, Meredith Inglesby, brings grace and a strong voice to the role — the fact is that Ma isn’t that big a role. (The fact that the roles usually played by Inglesby, who is Blanchard’s real-life wife, include a schoolmarm and a seriously depressed housewife stuck on a treeless, frozen prairie suggests the kind of range that Inglesby has. The show holds a moment after Ma’s first entrance, anticipating the applause that no doubt usually greets Gilbert’s first entrance; but Spokane theatergoers shouldn’t avoid this affecting and imaginative show just because Gilbert’s not appearing in it.)

The real standouts in this production, however, are the three young actors who play the central coming-of-age role, Laura; Laura’s beau and eventual husband, Almanzo Wilder; and Laura’s conceited rival, Nellie Oleson.
As Laura, Kara Lindsay is hampered by an opening solo, “Thunder,” that’s meant to express the eventual author’s youthful exuberance and wanderlust — but which doesn’t have as much energy as the assembly of hopeful homesteaders in the following number, “Up Ahead.” For comic scenes, Lindsay projects a squeaky-mischievous voice that complements her impish charm.
It isn’t the ring curls, knee dips and proferred wrists that define Kate Loprest’s coquettish and haughty Nellie. Loprest has the show’s most expressive soprano voice and best comedic gestures. In “Without an Enemy,” a second-act bedroom number, Loprest slumps and jumps and hops all over her bed, all in contrast to Laura, working by candlelight behind a scrim, in darkness. And Loprest can wring Lucille Ball comedy out of simply climbing up and over a wooden fence, with hilarious effect.
As Laura’s love interest, Almanzo, Kevin Massey has the athleticism that explains why he got to understudy Tarzan in the Disney musical on Broadway. In “Faster,” Zambello directs Massey and Lindsay to use a simple device — reins hooked to the stage floor, coordinated with riding-in-a-buggy movements that transmute into a kind of love duet that’s tentative, then feisty. Throughout, Massey has a jaunty confidence that marks him as an able horseman.

Blanchard’s best moment, meanwhile, arrives early, in a tribute to natural beauty (“The Prairie Moves”), sung against a starry background.

Zambello, who has extensive experience in directing opera, repeatedly appeals to the audience’s imagination: We are there in constructing all those clapboard houses. It’s like wish fulfillment: Imagine a schoolhouse, a snowed-in shack, a dusty horse race … and suddenly it’s there, with viewers picking up just enough clues to share in the vision.
Certainly her staging outweighs Rachel Portman’s music: Only one or two of the show’s tunes linger in the mind.

The “I’ll Be Your Eyes” sequence that closes Act One, moreover, reverts to the sentimental excesses of the TV show. Laura’s sister Mary (Alessa Neeck) undergoes a misfortune, and Laura’s character suddenly goes in for self-sacrifice and acting “Good” in ways that she had specifically repudiated just minutes before.

The show’s co-originator with Zambello back at the Guthrie in Minneapolis in July 2008, Adrianne Lobel, keeps her scenic design’s cyc alive with a succession of cloud formations and prairie sunsets; Mark McCullough’s lighting brought a high-noon glare to the upbeat townspeople scenes while remaining suitably gloomy for all the adversity that the Ingalls family confronts.
Jess Goldstein’s costume designs kept tomboy Laura in drab prairie homespuns while at one point bedecking her nemesis, that snooty Oleson girl, in a flashy pink gown complete with wispy parasol.
The dance designs of Michael Dansicker and Eric Sean Fogel are at their most inventive in “Fire in the Kitchen,” when the Ingalls family’s hand-rubbing and foot-stomping morph into a jig: double-clap, lift your skirts, waggle heads, go arm-in-arm.
Richard Carsey’s orchestra contributed, among many other effects, an ominous clarinet for the onset of sickness and a lively fiddle for the family’s happier moments.

… to be continued …

[ More notes: we are blind, too; horse race; doesn’t shy from adversity; two shovels; realistic/artificed tension in step-out; Restless Heart needless and Wild Child not wild; basic emotions, primal; resentment vs. govt.; difficulty of monthly payments; windy day depressing; vogues and cackles; horses > master ]

Discuss the future of Lake City Playhouse

2010-04-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, April 18, from 3-5:30 pm

1320 E. Garden Ave. in CdA

an open discussion with Lake City's new executive artistic director, George Green

All volunteers, staff, directors, performers and musicians are welcome.

Get to know George, share concerns, ask questions.

If you're interested in directing for Lake City next season, submit your resume by Sunday, April 25. Green already has board approval for all (or most) of the upcoming season, so what's on offer and what will be expected are things he'll be able to clarify.

Call (208) 667-1323 or (509) 218-6282, or write george@lakecityplayhouse.org

Rumors of criticism's death

2010-04-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

A.O. ("Tony") Scott of the New York Times recently ruminated on the demise of "At the Movies," the Siskel-and-Ebert-inaugurated, thumbs up/down discussion of current films in a format that Scott shared with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune for the past several months, until it was axed by Disney.

Here's a snippet from near the end. Scott is laughing about how he and Phillips would be told they'd have 60 seconds to discuss, really discuss, an entire movie (as opposed to reading off the TelePrompTer). All critics can ever do, he says, is get people to think, to make a claim that people will agree with or oppose.

"And that kind of provocation, that spur to further discourse, is all criticism has ever been. It is not a profession and does not stand or fall with any particular business model. Criticism is a habit of mind, a discipline of writing, a way of life — a commitment to the independent, open-ended exploration of works of art in relation to one another and the world around them. As such, it is always apt to be misunderstood, undervalued and at odds with itself. Artists will complain, fans will tune out, but the arguments will never end."

Writing reviews — even with all the illiterate, uninformed, idiotic citizen-reviewers on the Web, even with Metacritic reducing entire films to a single number — won't come to an end, because it's a habit of mind. We all do it, all the time. We're always trying to figure things out, or should be.

(Scott's partner on the show, Phillips, is one of the best theater critics - and far and away the best teacher of criticism — that Bobo has ever encountered. I had the good fortune to have him as an instructor twice, in 2005 and again two years ago. But viewers don't want to spend the time time with two talking heads anymore.)

Watching movies and going to plays, even for those who do so regularly, has become too much of a checklist activity: "OK, saw A Serious Man, I can cross that off my list now."
When was the last time you saw a movie or play and discussed -- really discussed, at length, with point and counterpoint in the discussion — what you'd just seen? We're all too afraid of appearing naive or too easily impressed. Or something.

Added April 2:
Phillips' response to the show's cancellation -- with a good Fred Willard joke at the end — is here.

[ photos: Scott, left, and Phillips; from amysrobot.com ]

Review of Amadeus

2010-04-01T11:24:00.001-07:00

at Lake City Playhouse through Sunday (April 1-3 at 7:30 pm)

Few local productions have been more deserving of a bigger budget than Amadeus. With a powerful performance by Damon Abdallah as Antonio Salieri (the accomplished composer who is nonetheless outshone by Mozart’s brilliance) and several features that distinguish it from what you think you know (from the 1984 movie) about the script, director Jhon Goodwin’s production accomplishes much with minimal resources.

Barren set. The Vienna court nobles, not in powdered wigs and silks, but running around in shirts and ties like so many middle managers or insurance salesmen. Mozart’s wife, Salieri’s prize pupil, and the two Venticelli (here played by two women) displaying cleavage in corsets atop long skirts – plenty of sex appeal, but a contemporary look instead of 18th-century elegance.

The payoff in making such a virtue of (financially constrained) necessity was in Eric Paine’s hipster Mozart, a Hollywood producer type in floppy sleeves and jeans, way cooler and more rebellious than his aristocratic Viennese patrons. Here, the contemporary touch worked: at a glance, you could see who’s uptight and who isn’t.

Playwright Peter Shaffer has revised his script repeatedly, pointedly making room in the conclusion for greater historical accuracy (or at least less self-assurance about the circumstances of the Requiem and Mozart’s death at age 35). That, the de-emphasis of spectacle and underscoring of the language here, Paine’s unself-consciousness about the fact of Mozart’s genius, and the energy provided by the Venticelli are all reasons to take in this show (and not assume that you’re good because once, long ago, you saw the movie).

As Salieri’s gossip-mongerers and hangers-on, Marnie Rorholm and Ariel Cansino emphasize seductiveness over energy. The suggestion that poor repressed, conservative, married Salieri has beautiful admirers sets up his manipulative seduction of Mozart’s wife Constanze (Janelle Frisque, sultry) nicely, but the energy of rapid-fire news-gathering seemed to be missing. The Venticelli, however, allow Shaffer to move the plot along and provide Salieri some allies, so he’s not quite so alone.

Abdallah — at first hunched over as an elderly man in a wheelchair, later the hands-crossed-in-submission schemer at court — delivers one of the best local performances in memory. He achieves great intensity in the Act One-closing sequence, Salieri’s impassioned rejection of any God who would choose vulgar Wolfy instead of dignified Antonio to be the vessel of divine musical brilliance. (“What use is man, if not to teach God a lesson?” – Yikes, I could feel the blasphemy and feared the oncoming thunderbolt.)

Shaffer’s much-reworked plot and some laggard pacing, however, worked against the effect: at two and a half hours, some of Shaffer’s urgings about Salieri as mediocre talent, the resentment of Mozart’s childish behavior, his ravings against God — all seemed over-extended. Goodwin might’ve trimmed here and there — and in the blocking, he sometimes allowed five-person-wide static groupings of actors to impede the onstage progress.

Paine, a talented comedic actor, was engaging the early going, with his high-pitched giggles and calm self-persuasion that yes, I am just about the greatest composer who has ever lived. (You have to admire a guy who commuted weekly, 800 miles roundtrip from Marysville, for the sake of a volunteer acting gig; and he was memorable in Lend Me a Tenor at the Civic in 2002). But the final, tragic sequence seemed beyond Paine’s grasp: the loss of his art and his Constanze still had a kind of bemusement about it, when the script calls for tragedy and despair.

Random notes: Abdallah’s dismissive gesture on “the voice of God in an obscene child” was powerful. Paine looked authentic in plinking away at the “harpsichord.” Paine’s mockery of Italian composing as unimaginative (“tonic and dominant, on and on”) was self-assured. Words like “breeches,” Idomeneo and “seraglio” were mispronounced. Frisque was reluctantly seductive and Abdallah was nervous and awkward — both, just as the script calls for — in their seduction scene. Paine needs more weight in his remorse over the (retold) death of Mozart’s father, Leopold — and more horror and guilt near the play’s end.

Despite flaws, however, Goodwin has presented a meaningful drama that reconceptualizes some of what it means to go on in life, as we all do, knowing that we aren’t the best at what we do. Not even near it. And yet on we trudge.

Salieri, a mediocrity, speaks for and to us. And some of those moments under Bryan Durbin’s light design — Abdallah’s upturned, anguished face; Paine’s quizzical chortling — are moments that will live in your memory. If you get out to CdA this weekend.

Coming up at Lake City Playhouse:
Jekyll & Hyde (the musical), May 1-2, 6-9, 13-16, 20-23
lakecityplayhouse.org

Poetry Live! on April 17

2010-03-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Actors will read and perform the poems of 17 finalists (grades 2-12) on Saturday, April 17, at 2 pm on the main stage at Spokane Civic Theater. Tickets: $5. Coordinated by Sandra Hosking and run in conjunction with Get Lit! Call 325-2507.

George Green will lead Lake City Playhouse

2010-03-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

Effective today, George Green has been appointed as executive artistic director of Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene.

The current artistic director at Lake City, Brian Doig, will stay on through June as an artistic consultant to Green (and to help Green, as Doig says, "figure out where the staples are").

Green's already engaged in marketing for CdA's community theater: He has announced that tickets for the final three performances of Amadeus (April 1-3) will be sold on a buy one, get one free basis. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

Stage Thrust, with Bobo the Theater Ho

*Race* review (at Interplayers)

Recent stuff at Bloglander

Raisin' the roof in CdA

*9 to 5: The Musical* preview

Civic's *Spelling Bee* advances to national finals

*Almost, Maine* photos

*Nunsense* photos (and 2003 review)

The Professor IS a Professor: Kahlil Joseph in *Legally Blonde*

*Spelling Bee* preview and review: links

partial review of *Opus*

*Opus* slide show

Interplayers announces 2011-12 season

*Of Mice and Men* review

*Don't Dress for Dinner* review

*Honky Tonky Angels Holiday Spectacular* review

*White Christmas* review

review of *The Cemetery Club*

*West Side Story* this weekend

*The Elephant Man* opens at Lake City

review of *The 39 Steps*

*The 39 Steps* at Interplayers

*South Pacific* review