This Gaudy Gilded Stage

While on vacation last week, PJ and I saw two plays at the Shaw Theatre Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Shaw Festival started in 1962 and is dedicated to staging the works of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and his contemporaries.

American audiences are probably most familiar with Shaw’s Pygmalion, since it was the basis of the musical My Fair Lady. (I read the play in high school.) But Shaw wrote a large number of plays, many of which are still part of the repertoire, including Man and Superman (1903), Major Barbara (1905), and Saint Joan (1923).

Neither PJ nor I have ever enjoyed Shaw’s plays all that much, so we didn’t have the highest expectations. We were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed Niagara-on-the-Lake and the two plays we saw at the festival.

The first play we saw was Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. The play centers on Vivie, played by Moya O’Connell. Vivie is a rather prudish, mannish kind of young woman who intends to become an actuary now that she has graduated from Cambridge. As the play begins, Vivie is joined in the country by her mother’s friend, Praed, played by David Jansen, and eventually by her mother, Mrs. Warren, played by Mary Haney. Over the first two acts, Vivie learns that her mother has supported her through prostitution (Vivie has been raised by surrogates while Mrs. Warren has lived on the continent). After hearing her mother describe her early life in poverty, Vivie initially forgives her for her choices, but when she learns in Act 3 that her mother’s extremely profitable business is still in operation (Mrs. Warren now serves as CEO of the company), she decides to repudiate her and swears never to see her again. In the meantime, other revelations about Mrs. Warren’s past doom Vivie’s relationship with her young man, Frank, played by Andrew Bunker.

(more…)

Leave a Response »

This week, PJ and I saw two productions at Ohio University, Knock Me a Kiss and The Compleat Female Stage Beauty. Knock Me a Kiss was written by Charles Smith, a professor of playwriting here in the School of Theater, and tells the fictionalized story of W.E.B. DuBois‘s daughter, Yolande, and her short-lived marriage to poet Countee Cullen. It was part of the School of Theater’s regular season. The Compleat Female Stage Beauty, by Jeffrey Hatcher, is about Edward Kynaston, the last actor famous for playing female roles in the Restoration. It was made into a feature film in 2004. I really enjoyed both productions.

Knock Me a Kiss is a really complex examination of race, gender, and sexuality during the Harlem Renaissance. The play revolves around Yolande’s struggling to decide whether she should marry for love or duty. She is in love with musician Jimmy Lunceford, but her father wants her to marry Cullen, a poet frequently featured in DuBois’s magazine, The Crisis. According to DuBois, his daughter’s marriage to Cullen will usher in a new age of racial equality, helping to liberate African Americans from discrimination. Once Yolande has married Cullen, however, she learns that he is more interested in “spending time with” his “friend,” Harold Jackman, than in being with her. Cullen ultimately confesses his homosexual leanings to his wife, causing her to divorce him.

I knew nothing about these figures before seeing the play. A little internet research and conversations with PJ have suggested that Smith has taken license with some of the historical details, but historical accuracy isn’t really the point of this play, it seems to me. Instead, I thought that the play used these events to explore issues of patriarchal power, masculine privilege, and double standards based on gender. Yolande is forced into making a decision she later regrets because her father is able to dominate her and convince her that marrying Cullen is for the greater good. Indeed, according to this play, women pay the greater price for men’s efforts at political change.

One of the things I liked most about the play was its depiction of Cullen’s sexuality. It would have been easy to make this character the villain, to portray him as malevolently using Yolande to hide his sexual orientation. I thought the production did a good job of showing Cullen’s own victimization. In order to receive a fellowship to write in Europe, he needs DuBois’s recommendation. DuBois makes this recommendation contingent on Cullen marrying well. Kevin Vaught does an excellent job of showing his character’s humanity — he’s a complicated character that is both likable and despicable.

(more…)

One Response »

PJ and I saw some great productions this year. We saw plays here in Ohio, in New York City, and in London. Usually our London trip gives us the opportunity to see some great plays, but this year the works we saw there were rather weak on the whole. New York was much better. Ohio University’s School of Theater also regularly puts on interesting work.

So, here’s my annual list of favorite plays:

1. August: Osage County. I’ve already reviewed this production from our New York trip, but I’ll reiterate here how much I enjoyed this play. It borrows a lot from other great American plays, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. Indeed, part of the fun is listening for those echoes. I definitely want to plan a trip to Chicago sometime to see another production by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. If August is any indication of the kind of work they do, it will definitely be worth the trip!
2. Betty’s Summer Vacation. I didn’t get a chance to blog about this OU School of Theater production of Christopher Durang’s satire on contemporary media. This website provides some interesting information about the play and Durang’s vision in writing it. I particularly liked the play’s comic satire. All of the performances in the local production were great, but one really stood out: Shelley Delaney, a faculty member in the School of Theater, starred as Mrs. Siezmagraff, the owner of the beach house that Betty and three other college-aged people rent for their vacation. Mrs. Siezmagraff is a rather off-beat character whose comic antics ultimately become kind of tragic, and Delaney played the part perfectly. It was an excellent production.
3. Spring Awakening. We also saw this musical in New York. This is a different kind of musical; it took me a little while to warm up to it. But ultimately, I’m a sucker for musicals so I did warm up to it. Here’s my review of the plays we saw on that trip.
4. The Seafarer. This is another play we saw in New York. I was expecting more of this play — I expected to like it even more than I did. I enjoyed it, but based on the reviews it was getting I thought it would really knock me out. It didn’t do that, but I liked it. Here’s my review of the plays we saw on that trip.
5. The Drowsy Chaperone. This was the only London production we saw last year that I liked. It’s more a traditional musical than Spring Awakening, and I enjoyed parts of it immensely. I can’t help but put it lower on my list than SA due to its lack of boldness in depicting gayness and gay men’s love of musicals. I’ve already reviewed it too.

While I like these plays, they’re not as strong as the ones on my list from 2006. We won’t be going to London this year, and we may not make it to New York either.  However, we do hope to make a trip to the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival this summer and there are always terrific local productions to see.  So I should have theater to write about this year.

One Response »

In addition to August: Osage County, PJ and I saw three other plays while we were in NYC this month: Things We Want, The Seafarer, and Spring Awakening. Here is a brief review of each play.

We saw Things We Want on the first evening we were in NY. It’s playing at the Acorn Theater, part of The New Group, an Off-Broadway company. The play was written by Jonathan Marc Sherman, was directed by Ethan Hawke, and stars Peter Dinklage, Paul Dano, and Josh Hamilton.

The play is about three brothers. Dano plays the youngest brother, Charles, who has quit college and returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend. His older brothers still live in their parents’ apartment. Hamilton plays the oldest, Teddy, who works for a self-help guru. Dinklage plays Sty, an alcoholic. With Teddy gone on a business trip, Sty decides to set Charles up with a neighbor, Stella, played by Zoe Kazan. The first act introduces us to these four characters; act 2 picks up exactly one year later, showing us what’s become of them. Not to give too much away, but just about everyone’s fortune has changed over the course of the year. Thus, the play examines these brothers’ relationship as the dynamics of who is happy and who isn’t changes.

We soon learn that their parents’ each committed suicide by jumping out of one of the apartment’s windows. This window becomes a focal point of the play, as each brother at one point or another contemplates jumping out himself or the consequences of their parents’ deaths. Ultimately, the play forces its character to decide whether life is in fact worth living.

Another motif in the work is the guru’s system of prime numbers: 7-5-3-1, which stands for the 7 chakras, the 5 sense, the 3 words that sum up the 1 thing you most desire in life. Each character is faced with figuring out what that one thing is (even if the guru’s system turns out to be bogus).

(more…)

One Response »

While in NYC last week, PJ and I saw Tracy Letts‘ new play, August: Osage County at the Imperial Theatre. This production transferred from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago with most of the same cast. It’s a great play, the best one we saw while we were there.

August is ostensibly a family drama, the Weston family to be exact, set in Osage County, Oklahoma. The play begins with a scene in which the Weston patriarch, Beverly, played by Dennis Letts (the playwright’s father), hires a housekeeper, Johnna Monevata, played by Kimberly Guerrero. He and his wife, we learn, need a housekeeper because he drinks and she takes pills. It turns out that his wife, Violet, played by Deanna Dunagan, takes a lot of pills. A lot. Johnna, who is Native American, needs the work, so she accepts the job and the play gets underway.

The cast of August is rather large, and you need a flow chart to keep track of everyone. Conveniently, the playbill provides one (right click on the image and click on “view image” to see a larger version):

The drama begins in the second scene, in which we soon learn that Beverley has disappeared. The rest of the play traces the effects of this disappearance on the Weston family as each of the now grown children returns home to help their mother cope with the situation. Each of these daughters has problems of her own.

(more…)

One Response »

While we were in London last week, PJ and I saw two musicals and a play: The Drowsy Chaperone, Mary Poppins, and In Celebration. Last year, we saw three really great productions in London: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park, The Seagull at the National, and Billy Elliot the Musical. So we had high hopes for this year’s trip. Unfortunately, we were mostly disappointed.

Let’s start with the good: The Drowsy Chaperone was excellent. The musical centers on the Man in the Chair, a middle aged theater queen (yes, he’s a theater queen regardless of whether he’s gay or straight) who plays the cast album of his favorite musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, a fictional musical that comes to life as he listens to the album.

The production stars one of its creators, Bob Martin, who won a Tony Award for its book. He fills the part perfectly. He imbues the Man in the Chair with both humor and pathos, a difficult task to pull off. As the production progresses, we learn more about the Man, who serves as both leading man and narrator. What distinguishes this musical is its postmodern crossovers between the Man in the Chair and the inner musical. He both narrates the action and, because it is taking place in his little apartment, takes part in it (to a degree). Rather than being gimmicky, this back and forth really works.

Here’s a brief glimpse of the musical and a discussion about it from London t.v.:

As this clip points out, the show is ironic and depicts the characteristics of 1920s musicals in both a loving and satiric way. We see their sexism, racism, and (to a degree) homophobia at the same time that we see why someone might love them. This is a musical that loves musicals even while it can point out some of their flaws.

The London star of the show is Elaine Paige, famous (in part) for originating such roles as Grisabella the Glamor Cat in Cats, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, and Eva Peron in Evita on the London stage. She is a hoot in the title role, the chaperone who is tasked with keeping the bride away from the groom until their wedding ceremony, a task made all the more difficult by the fact that she gets drowsy when she drinks and she drinks like she’s Karen Walker‘s best drinking buddy.

(more…)

Leave a Response »

Since Sunday is Oscar night, I thought I would include a series of posts this week about my favorite movies, music, books, and plays of 2006.

I’ll start with plays. Considering that I live in the middle of a national forest, I saw a surprising number of plays in 2006, including ones in here in Athens and in London, Oxford, and New York. Here are my top five plays of the year:

1. Billy Elliott the Musical: PJ, my sister, and I saw it in London in July. As the title suggests, it is a musical version of the film Billy Elliott. I love the movie, so I was a bit wary of seeing the play. It was great. Elton John’s music was excellent — I especially like the number “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher.” The acting was also wonderful — the actor playing Billy Elliott was fantastic! And the writer did a great job of adapting the film’s plot to the stage; I thought they did an especially good job with the grandmother. She has a great song in the first act that helps inspire Billy to dance. It’s definitely worth seeing when it comes to America.
2. The Little Dog Laughed: Since I’ve already blogged about this play, I’ll just refer to my earlier comments. Unfortunately, this play is closing soon (if not already), but it’s really great. Apparently, it had trouble finding an audience, which is too bad. Julie White is amazing!
3. The Seagull: We saw this in London this summer too. It starred Juliet Stephenson. She was great and the production was excellent. I was especially impressed by the set design. It was amazing, but it was also obviously difficult to arrange between scenes — the audience often had to wait a few minutes for them to rearrange everything, which wasn’t always good for the theatrical flow. But overall the production was very good.
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: I hate this play, but the production we saw in the park in London this summer really made me forget that fact. I think that warrants a shout out! I especially liked that this production imagined the fairies as goth-punk kids. It really worked.
5. Man of La Mancha: I’ve also written about this already, so I’ll refer to my previous comments again. Even though it’s a traveling company, I liked what they did. Besides, if you live in a national forest, you can’t be too picky about the theater that comes to town!

Hopefully, 2007 will be as theatrically successful as 2006 was. Whether it is or not, I’m sure I’ll write about it eventually! (P.S. The worst production I saw this year was an outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice in Oxford. It was laughably terrible!)

Leave a Response »