| 02 September 2010
Ken Clement, Shane R. Tanner, Mara Gabrielle and Joey Zangardi in Mack and Mabel.
After first-rate productions of A Little Night Music and The Drowsy Chaperone, and now a very credible mounting of the problematic Mack and Mabel, we are going to have to stop being so surprised when the Broward Stage Door Theatre delivers satisfying entertainment.
The formerly erratic company has been coming through with the goods more and more, giving us hope for such demanding shows as On the Town and Light in the Piazza, which are on the schedule for later this season.
Mack and Mabel, the bittersweet tale of silent movie producer-director Mack Sennett and his “Bathing Beauties” muse and love interest Mabel Normand, is substantially darker in tone than composer-lyricist Jerry Herman’s megahits (Hello, Dolly!, Mame, La Cage aux Folles). Undoubtedly that is why -- like Mabel herself -- the show died before its time, running only 66 performances on Broadway in 1974.
The script by Michael Stewart is sketchy at best, but it serves what is generally acknowledged to be Herman’s best score. Herman has long expressed a special affection for the show, which explains why he has been preoccupied with revising and reviving Mack and Mabel for the past 35 years.
The Stage Door production incorporates a lot of those revisions, but the show’s chief asset remains its songs. The score ranges from the highs of the anti-love ballad I Won’t Send Roses and the bluesy Time Heals Everything to a signature Hermanesque rousing anthem, When Mabel Comes in the Room, which brazenly rips off the title numbers of Dolly! and Mame.
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Although it is not the only reason Mack and Mabel failed to generate an audience originally, much of the blame is placed on the show’s downbeat ending. In all of its various revivals, efforts have been made to give the conclusion a more positive spin, even if only ironic. So it is at the Stage Door, which one could call less than honest, but then Stewart’s book takes plenty of liberties with the facts throughout the show.
Nevertheless, as long as you are not a film historian, there is a lot to like in this production. Shane R. Tanner, looking suspiciously like a young Orson Welles, carries the evening as crusty, staunchly unsentimental Mack Sennett, obsessed with making his two-reeler comedies and disdainful of anything resembling an art film. He sings with authority, delivers his dialogue persuasively enough and -- to his credit -- never bothers to try to soften Sennett’s character.
Less successful in an even less-dimensional assignment is Mara Gabrielle (Mabel), but she too knows her way around a song, belting out Wherever He Ain’t and Time Heals Everything with power to spare.
As part of the show’s revisions, the role of Fatty Arbuckle -- another of Sennett’s stable of stars -- was added, though he serves little dramatic purpose beyond comic relief. He is played here by the always welcome Ken Clement, who feels underemployed. The only other featured player is Kelly Cusimano as second banana Lottie Ames. She barrels through her second act number, Tap Your Troubles Away, well enough, but needs to pull back on her facial tics.
Director Michael Leeds builds scenes from the script outline, managing a more cohesive narrative than exists on the page. And whenever the story starts evaporating, he relies on choreographer Chrissi Ardito to cover up the plot holes with dance flash. Unfortunately, the show includes several extended sequences on the set of The Keystone Kops, Sennett’s most lasting legacy, but they are nowhere near as funny as the actual movie shorts that play before the show and at intermission.
Mack and Mabel is hardly a perfect show and probably never will be, but it has a great score and enough entertainment value to make it worth seeing.
MACK AND MABEL, Broward Stage Door Theatre, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs. Through Sept. 26. Tickets: $34-$42. Call: (954) 344-7765.
| 29 July 2010
Barbara Bradshaw and Peter Haig in The Gin Game.
Without the safety net of their subscriber bases, South Florida theaters often ease up on their missions in the summer with lighter fare. A case in point is Palm Beach Dramaworks, which just came off its most challenging season in its 10 years of existence, lowering its sights with the playing card-thin serio-comedy, The Gin Game.
The play brought instant recognition to its playwright, D.L. Coburn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1978 for this tale of two elderly residents of the Bentley Home for seniors who meet and do battle over a series of gin rummy games. Some find this odd couple match to be profound, but Coburn’s real achievement was creating a couple of acting roles that two wily veteran performers could sink their teeth – or dentures – into.
There’s nothing wrong with that, and J. Barry Lewis, the company’s chief director, seemed to have cast the play well with Peter Haig and Barbara Bradshaw as the compulsive gamesman with a paramount need to win and the complete novice who stumbles into beating him, time after time. Individually, they are fine, but the play is a fragile duet and even after a week’s delay of the press opening, they seemed to be occupying completely different plays.
As curmudgeonly Weller Martin, Haig takes a broad approach, pumping his foot like a sewing machine pedal to the rhythm of his dealing, barking out the cards by number, erupting with foul-mouthed anger with each defeat. Bradshaw underplays straitlaced Fonsia Dorsey, subtly suggesting her thoughts through facial expressions as she goes from innocent glee to embarrassment to a new-found competitiveness as she plays.
Both performances are right for the characters, who are vastly different, but for the rhythms of the dialogue to work, the actors need to mesh better. Chances are that intangible quality known as chemistry will develop over time, but at the performance I saw, the added spark that the play so needs from its cast was not yet evident.
The Gin Game’s strength is in the clash of characters, though Coburn also tosses in some social commentary about the way we warehouse our elderly. Both Weller and Fonsia are guarded and secretive, so it is anything but surprising when their mutual protective armors get punctured in the second act and they are revealed to be different from their initial claims.
The entire play is set on the old age home’s porch, nicely realized by scenic designer Michael Amico. But with so much time devoted to the card games, the stage action is necessarily quite static. Lewis does what he can to counteract that problem, but the fact that the notion comes to mind suggests that the performances do not sufficiently draw attention away from the play’s limitations.
THE GIN GAME, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Aug. 15. Tickets: $42-$44. Call: (561) 514-4042.
| 25 July 2010
Vocabulary fans, the word for today is “zoetic.”
It’s an adjective, meaning “pertaining to life,” so it is not a bad name for a new live stage company, unless you happen to worry that theatergoers in South Florida will not buy tickets for a troupe it cannot pronounce or spell, let alone know what it means.
Still, welcome Zoetic Stage, the brainchild of producing artistic director Stuart Meltzer and his partner, playwright-designer-actor Michael McKeever. They have gathered a group of prominent local theater artists and established themselves with a lofty mission statement, promising to become “Miami’s theater company.”
Michael McKeever.
Meltzer, former artistic head of City Theatre, has certainly been able to lure some terrific talent to the venture. The roster includes Irene Adjan, Stephen G. Anthony, Jeffrey Bruce, Nick Duckart, Lela Elam, John Felix, Elena Maria Garcia, Maribeth Graham, Amy London, Margery Lowe, Amy McKenna, David Perez Ribada, Jerry Seeger, Kim St. Leon, Barry Tarallo, Laura Turnbull and Tom Wahl. Very impressive group.
Still, this is hardly an opportune economic time to start such an ambitious venture. But Zoetic already has a board of directors in place, headed by Stephanie Demos-Brown, wife of Christopher Demos-Brown, whose When the Sun Shone Brighter premiered at Florida Stage at the end of last season and who will be one of the company’s resident playwrights, along with McKeever.
Each will have a world premiere in Zoetic’s debut season, which is certainly one of the most promising in the region. Specific dates and venues are still being worked out, but the season will kick off with McKeever’s South Beach Babylon, a “wickedly funny and sexy” look at the lives of five fictional Miami artists in the weeks leading up to the Art Basel exhibition.
Second on the season slate is the Florida premiere of Stunning, by David Adjmi, the story of a well-to-do Syrian Jewish couple living in Brooklyn and their clash of cultures with their African-American maid.
Christopher Demos-Brown.
Next up is Demos-Brown’s Wrongful Death, a satirical take on the way the American civil justice system values human life as seen through efforts of a jaded personal injury lawyer to land the case of her career. The group’s first season concludes early next summer with Carlos Murillo’s Diagram of a Paper Airplane, a Southeastern premiere about four former best friends and their aftermath of the tragic death of one of them.
Besides all the logistical chores of starting a new company, a key priority is fund-raising. To fill its coffers and introduce itself to the public, Zoetic will be presenting a staged reading this Monday night (July 26) of seven of the prolific McKeever’s short plays under the puckish title of McKeever’s Briefs. Audiences at City Theatre’s Summer Shorts have seen a few of these plays, and three have been finalists in the 10-minute play contest at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville.
McKeever’s Briefs will play at the Caldwell Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, beginning at 7 p.m. A $15 donation is requested. For more information on the fundraiser or Zoetic, call Meltzer at (954) 235-6208.
| 20 July 2010
Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Mississippi Charles Bevel, Felicia P. Fields and Gregory Porter in Low Down Dirty Blues.
Over the weekend, Florida Stage unveiled its new roomy, yet still cozy home at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, inaugurated with a shapeless musical revue imported from Chicago, Low Down Dirty Blues.
The show is enormously entertaining, thanks largely to its powerhouse four-member cast, but as with last summer’s erroneously named Some Kind of Wonderful, the nation’s largest company devoted exclusively to new and developing work demonstrates that it is far less rigorous when it comes to showcasing musical material.
Low Down Dirty Blues plunks us down in a South Side Chicago blues club, ’round midnight, after the tourist trade that keeps requesting the same old, predictable songs has gone back to its hotels. That is when the local blues singers and musicians arrive to sing and play for each other, reaching for some of the bluer -- as in off-color -- blues numbers, revealing their affection for songs based in double entendres and innuendo.
Typical is My Handyman, growled and winked to perfection by Sandra Reaves-Phillips as Big Momma, proprietress of the club. As she sings the praises of a guy who can “churn my butter … cream my wheat,” we quickly understand that his real talents are not culinary. Reaves-Phillips gets the party started, lifting her voice in songs that are blue, but definitely not downbeat, as she keeps time with slaps on her beefy thighs.
She is soon joined by Mississippi Charles Bevel, a slight, dapper, low-key performer, adept at his acoustic guitar and a punch line, as he demonstrates on a number called Jelly Roll Baker. Next up is hulking Gregory Porter, who booms out the ominous Born Under a Bad Sign. All three are terrific, and yet they seem mere preface to the arrival of Felicia P. Fields, a mountainous woman with the sound to match. Fields, prominently in the original cast of The Color Purple, arrives announcing in song I Got My Mojo Workin’, and the spell she casts over the proceedings is palpable.
Low Down Dirty Blues was created by Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, who also co-conceived the Tony Award-nominated It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues in 1999. The only dialogue between the 22 songs is a few biographical lines, taken from interviews with actual blues singers and dealt out here to the cast in an unpersuasive attempt at character development. There is plenty to enjoy in the musical numbers, but they never manage any dramatic synergy.
The first-rate sound bodes well for Florida Stage’s future in the space, though much of it is probably due to the acoustic design of Victoria DeIorio.
The attractive club set by Jack Magaw, decorated in regional beer paraphernalia, is located far from the three-sided audience, with a few club tables and chairs on the floor where subsequent plays will presumably be staged.
The Rinker in this new configuration has great potential for Florida Stage’s future, and Low Down Dirty Blues is likely to make the company plenty of new fans.
LOW DOWN DIRTY BLUES, Florida Stage at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, Sept. 5. Tickets: $47-$50. Call: (561) 585-3433 or (800) 514-3837.
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Kevin Crawford and Heidi Harris in Macbeth.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival dips into the Bard’s bag and pulls out a bloody good crowd-pleaser, the tragedy of that ambitious, murderous Scot, Macbeth, a play the company debuted with and revisited 14 years ago.
Directing the production and playing the title role is Kevin Crawford, long the company’s best asset. His performance dominates the evening with his signature skill with the Elizabethan language, rendering the text with clarity and attention to the poetry.
In a reprise of the Festival’s production from 1996, Crawford is again partnered by Heidi Harris as his goading wife, who pushes him to take control of the political situation and realize the royal prophecy of the witches. In the intervening years, Crawford has grown burlier and Harris more buxom, but they still make a combustible couple, striking sparks of passion onstage while rendering these two towering roles with greater maturity and nuance.
Fourteen years ago, the festival was more inclined towards gimmick production concepts, and that previous Macbeth borrowed heavily -- and pointlessly -- from Braveheart, the hot movie of the day. Crawford places the new production in contemporary times, but is relatively restrained with references to the times.
True, Lady Macbeth first hears from her spouse by text message and the final showdown between Macbeth and Macduff is a duel by pistol rather than swordplay -- an update that drains the scene of its theatricality -- but otherwise the production is straightforward and conventional.
Concentrate on Crawford and Harris, because the performance quality drops off substantially when it comes to the supporting players. As Macbeth’s buddy Banquo, Andre Lancaster fights a losing battle with his lines of dialogue. You are unlikely to mind that his death renders him a mute ghost. Better are the three “weird sisters” -- Krys Parker, Trinna Pye and Greta von Unrue -- a trio of Goth babes who crawl about Daniel Gordon’s steeply raked stage. Either Crawford had a thematic notion or he was trying to save on salaries, but these witches keep popping up as members of Macbeth’s court and as his homicidal henchmen.
The festival is already crowing that its opening week set a new attendance record for Seabreeze Amphitheatre in Jupiter’s Carlin Park. For the past two decades, the company has become a fixture in the community and probably the main opportunity for many Palm Beach County residents to brush up their Shakespeare. That is commendable, but the troupe could still use a few more classically trained actors.
MACBETH, Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival at Seabreeze Amphitheatre, Carlin Park, A1A and Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Through Sunday, July 25. Tickets: Free, donations accepted. Call: (561) 575-7336.
| 18 July 2010
The cast of Broward Stage Door's 'The Drowsy Chaperone.'
Broward Stage Door Theatre has a tendency to overreach with its musicals, biting off a beloved, not-quite elaborate show and not quite delivering on the pleasures we once enjoyed with it.
Now, however, it is presenting a modest little show, the intermission-less The Drowsy Chaperone, a multiple Tony Award winner from 2006 that is bound to be new to most of its audience, and renders it very capably with just the right touches of affection and whimsy.
Much of the credit goes to the company’s former artistic director, Dan Kelley, who stages the production deftly with a perpetual wink as well as playing the show’s central character, known simply as Man in Chair, with complete commitment to his musical comedy world. Every now and then one sees an ideal match of performer and role like this. If Man in Chair were not written as a wedding gift for Bob Martin, one of the show’s co-authors, you would swear it was tailor-made for Kelley, fluttery hands and sly comic takes and all.
You see, Man in Chair is an avid fan of musicals, preferably from an earlier era, long before they were lazy copies of popular movies or before Elton John began attempting to pen theater songs. And when he feels a little blue, nothing brings him out of his funk like putting on a record -- yes, a vinyl record -- of a cherished, bygone, fictitious show from the 1920s, like Gable and Stine’s The Drowsy Chaperone. And as he narrates and annotates the show, it comes to life in his otherwise drab apartment.
As students of musical theater know, shows from the ’20s were one degree removed from vaudeville, a series of specialty numbers for variety performers that were barely connected to a storyline. Dramatic logic was beside the point and that is the world that The Drowsy Chaperone -- the show, not the show-within-the-show -- celebrates.
The plot, such as it is, concerns the imminent wedding of celebrated stage star Janet Van De Graff, who is about to make the supreme sacrifice of giving up her career for domestic life with her beau, Robert Martin. Trying to prevent the nuptials is her producer, who would hate to lose such a lucrative meal ticket.
For no particular reason other than daffiness, the groom is soon careening about the stage, blindfolded and on roller skates. Perhaps it is a metaphor for marriage. In any rate, the stage is soon filled with pun-slinging gangsters posing as bakers, the title tipsy matron charged with looking after the bride, a dense, but harmless Latin Lothario, a ditsy dowager prone to spit takes and a few other stray comic types.
The Tony-winning score by Broadway newcomers Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison is well attuned to the sound of the period and highly democratic in the way it provides everyone -- even a barnstorming aviatrix, so tangential to the show, she should have bought a ticket to get in -- with a spotlight number.
Among the standouts are Laura Oldman (Janet), who opening anti-want song, Show-Off, puts her through a dizzying display of narcissistic talents, from plate-spinning to snake-charming to ventriloquism. Matt Ban’s Adolpho is, by necessity, broad, but he earns his laughs with surprisingly precise comic timing. And Kelley is truly ideal as Man in Chair, holding together the mayhem with an effortless hand while supplying the show’s emotional heart.
The ever-inventive Chrissi Ardito supplies the vintage feel-good choreography, Ardean Landhuis gives solid support with his scenic design and lighting and David Nagy’s music direction is adroit, although the orchestra is pre-recorded.
The Drowsy Chaperone is not a great show for the ages. It seems unlikely that Man in Chair’s great-grandson will be listening to it 80 years from now. But it is a lot of fun, and Kelley’s production delivers on every wacky bit of schtick it contains.
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, Broward Stage Door Theatre, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs. Through July 25. Tickets: $38-$42. Call: (954) 344-7765.
