As COVID cases have continued to rise in Memphis and Shelby County, many local event venues have had to adjust 2020 plans. In a Tuesday press release, Circuit Playhouse, Inc. (CPI) — The Circuit Playhouse, Playhouse on the Square, and Theatreworks at the Square — announced the cancellation of its productions and programs through October. The organization plans to move its 52nd season opening to November.
The move was decided after “consultation with doctors, city leaders, and the theatre’s leadership and board,” the statement reads.
“Even though CPI’s reopening plans for public performances for Playhouse on the Square and The Circuit Playhouse were approved over the weekend, rising COVID-19 numbers, along with testing challenges … and a general sense of apprehension, I believe it is in the best interest and safety of the cast, crew, staff, volunteers, and patrons to postpone production,” executive producer Michael Detroit said in the statement.
This decision means rehearsals, casting, and pre-production of two season openers scheduled for August will cease. According to the release, Detroit and managing director Whitney Jo said “current talent contracts will be honored, despite the financial hardships facing the theatre. Furthermore, Playhouse on the Square staff will remain employed during the suspension.”
All previously scheduled fall shows, including Little Shop of Horrors, Ink, Junie B’s Essential Survival Guide to School, Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Pan, and the Theatre for Youth touring production of Freckleface Strawberry have been canceled, “with the hope of producing them in a future season.”
Digital content, including the Playhouse at Home Series, will continue to be available via playhouseonthesquare.org and CPI’s social media channels.
“CPI thanks its patrons, students, sponsors, donors, and subscribers for their support and encouragement during these uncertain times,” the statement reads. “Intermissions can’t last forever. We will return to welcome our community back to the theatre soon.”
Tony Isbell, director of The Humans at Circuit Playhouse.
Tony Isbell is drawn to certain kinds of plays, those, he says, with natural, honest, and truthful dialogue — and relationships that are “juicy.” So when Michael Detroit, executive producer at Playhouse on the Square, asked him to direct The Humans, Isbell said he’d give it a read. “I immediately fell in love with it. Playwright Stephen Karam has a way with dialogue that is maybe the most naturalistic that I’ve ever read or dealt with.”
The play runs at Circuit Playhouse through September 8th and has lured a remarkable cast.
Jo Lynne Palmer, Christina Wellford Scott, Barclay Roberts, Lena Wallace Black, Brooke Papritz, and Steven Burk tell the story of a family that has gathered for Thanksgiving. It’s a common storytelling device, but the execution of it is far from typical, Isbell says.
“On the surface it seems maybe familiar, like something we’ve seen before,” he says. “It’s like one of those slice of life dramas where we see a family get together and spend time together. There’s a grandmother, parents, grown daughters, and one of the daughter’s new boyfriend. But this is not one of those plays where there’s a big astounding revelation that people then spend the next hour fighting over. There are a lot of smaller revelations that people deal with, like people do in real life.”
For Isbell, this is the heart of the production, the relationships among characters. “I am less interested as a director in a spectacle and you know, cool sets and costumes. I mean, yeah, I like all those things, but I try to provide the best possible ground for actors to really shine and really dig their teeth into something. And these people do.”
They’re a blue collar, lower middle class family, recognizably Irish American Catholic hard-working stock. And there are pressures: an ailing parent, financial stresses, children who have strayed a bit from the church. “The most important thing about this play in one way is the fact that these characters all love each other,” Isbell says. “They have some conflicts, they resolve them, they love each other, they make fun of each other, they laugh with each other, they occasionally cry with each other.”
To know Isbell is to appreciate his passion for theater. He is a co-founder of Quark Theatre (its slogan is “Small Plays About Big Ideas”) and as it embarks on its fourth year, it continues with its mission to get under the skin and make viewers feel and think and react. So while The Humans is not Quark fare, it is very much in that spirit. And you won’t have to wait long for Quark’s first show of the season. The Memphis premiere of Wakey Wakey by Will Eno opens September 20th at TheatreSouth.
For Isbell, having shows bunching up like this is next to normal. “I’ve averaged about three shows a year over the last 40 years,” he says, “which seems unbelievable, but that’s kind of what I’ve done.” That’s a long commitment to directing and acting at venues all around the area, and his devotion was noted last year when he was honored with the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ostrander ceremonies. He is quick to point out that he’s not the only lifetime achiever in The Humans. Jo Lynne Palmer received the award a few years ago and Christina Wellford Scott will take it home this Sunday from this year’s Ostrander ceremonies.
So Isbell is confident that audiences will be drawn in to the play and will take something home. “It will probably leave you questioning some things and will probably have you discussing it with your companion saying, ‘I think this was like this’ and then ‘No, I think it was like this.’ It’ll be that kind of thing.”
The Humans
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. The Circuit Playhouse, 51 South Cooper Street. Call 901 726-4656 or visit the website.
“Nation-wide, it is a period of radical absolutism: unapologetic racism, anti-Semitism, and sexism among a population and leadership struggling with the pervasiveness of one religion (over science) and fighting to prevent immigrants from entering its borders. The government is widely suspected of collusion with foreign adversaries while its own citizens’ rights are drained of protection,” so begins the synopsis to the Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s regional premier of Speak What We Feel, a compiled script subtitled, Shakespeare’s radical response to a radical time.
While the setup may sound familiar, the place that’s being described is Elizabethan England. TSC founding director Dan McCleary will be joined onstage by Stephanie Shine, Darius Wallace, Merit Koch, Blake Currie, Nic Picou, Carmen-maria Mandley, and Shaleen Cholera. Together they will explore Shakespeare’s “radical response,” to all these things and more.
Speak What We Feel employs scenes from Richard III, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Coriolanus, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice and Othello.
Here’s a video of McLeary talking about Speak What We Feel:
Radical: Tennessee Shakespeare Gets Active, Playhouse Gets Orwell + More
“Adaptations give us a chance to explore specific narrative threads and shine new light through old windows. In this case, exposing the audience to low grade torture techniques by way of flickering or flashing light, grating inescapable sound, triggering imagery and making us all hold our pee through the intermission-free show, drowns out a more interesting theme struggling to escape a relentlessly bleak event’s sadistic gravity: Are our heroes, villains, allies and enemies all fictional constructs? Have they always been? By the time this idea expresses itself in dialogue, we’re, once again, too agitated to see the elusive bigger picture. Maybe that’s also the point.” [MORE]
“If you want some measure of just how good William Shakespeare was on his best days, look no further than the New Moon Theatre Company’s gag-packed production of Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy teetering at the edge of farce. Jokes can be fragile things, losing their punch with time, as sensibilities evolve. But 418 years after he wrote it down, Twelfth Night’s jokes still land on their feet, and stumble hilariously into pratfall. This latest revival is curiously uneven but still bursts with life and laughter at TheatreWorks.” [MORE]
Those in the mood for something a little less radical and/or Shakespeare related may want to drop in on a completely different kind of classic. Theatre Memphis is staging George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner.
“Sheridan Whiteside’s fall while dining at the home of prominent socialites makes him an unexpected guest for six weeks of recovery. The hosts, however, are most in need of recovery as Whiteside invites in the glamorous and famous as a three-ring circus of comic chaos grows to include a luncheon for homicidal convicts and a complete children’s choir.”
Whiteside is a critic, naturally, and based on Alexander Woollcott, the ostensible leader of New York’s Algonquin Round Table. Whiteside’s played by Memphis actor and director, Jason Spitzer.
What’s the purpose of noise? In propaganda it’s an effective tool. A barrage of information traumatizes us. It tests our will and patience. Noise and competing facts disrupt, confuse, and numb us until basic self care — not even preservation — becomes a mighty instrument of control. It’s slow, low-impact torture, but the cumulative result is stunningly effective. I’m leading with this because weaponized information is a fact of modern life, and the major theme explored in Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s recent adaptation of George Orwell’s landmark novel, 1984. As the story veers away from Winston and Julia’s secret, desperate romance in a broken, paranoid society, and jets down a tunnel of pure horror, this interpretation evolves into an academic lecture on the art and science of manufactured reality.
I appreciate the experiment and visual inventiveness but I’m not always sure what this latest interpretation of Orwell’s cautionary tale hopes to accomplish. Projected fields of text against gray, Bauhaus inspired set pieces are as stunning, as the author’s ever- prescient words: “War is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery.” There are moments when the action on stage at Circuit Playhouse leans in the direction of dance, and all these layers create an environment that’s visually remarkable but at odds with itself. It’s difficult to`communicate how artlessness degrades humanity in an world made of overwhelming artistic gestures. As the long one act plays itself out, Carter McHann’s tremendous, anxiety-core sound design proves almost too effective. It comes on strong but its ability to punctuate and frame the action gets lost in droning persistence.
Propagandists benefit when the crowd numbs out. Theatrical goals are different, so an immersive approach to torture techniques yields mixed results.
Stripping Orwell’s story down to principal characters, with only a handful of secondary voices, robs us of any real opportunity to experience the soul crushing imbalance of individuals flickering in and out of self-awareness inside a monolithic, fear-motivated society. There are glimpses when children rat out their proud, thought criminal parents, but the bigger picture is always out of focus.
For the most part, director Courtney Oliver wrestled this seemingly minimal, but spectacle-heavy show into a matter of substance and relative clarity. Her cast seems uniquely grounded, resulting in honest, humane performances led by Danny Crowe as the show’s protagonist Winston Smith. Even when the text gives actors only a note or two to blow, they blow them fearlessly. Oliver’s prudence is also evident in a stubborn avoidance of contemporary political tropes. She carefully navigates the storm of projected information and noise and lets the adapted work speak, more or less, for itself.
Greg Boller goes sleazy as O’Brien, the inner-party member posing as a gateway to the resistance. Like a good sadist, he tells his victims exactly what he’s doing while he’s doing it. Boller’s mic drop moment is painfully literal, but he delivers a solid crash course in gas-lighting and the mechanics of the long con. So much is made of “Room 101” and O’Brien’s use of torture in 1984, but that’s all endgame — last mile delivery. “We are the dead,” indeed.
Adaptations give us a chance to explore specific narrative threads and shine new light through old windows. In this case, exposing the audience to low grade torture techniques by way of flickering or flashing light, grating inescapable sound, triggering imagery and making us all hold our pee through the intermission-free show, drowns out a more interesting theme struggling to escape a relentlessly bleak event’s sadistic gravity: Are our heroes, villains, allies and enemies all fictional constructs? Have they always been? By the time this idea expresses itself in dialogue, we’re, once again, too agitated to see the elusive bigger picture. Maybe that’s also the point.
As historic text, 1984 mocks us, predicting a “black mirror” environment of compromised privacy, nationalism and weaponized mass-information. As a piece of contemporary theater, this version of the story is neither agitprop or entertainment. It’s an experience. Whether it’s pleasant or not may prove to be a subject of contention, and probably beside the point.
If you really want to understand what went wrong in America, turn off Fox News. Turn off MSNBC and CNN, too. Also, step away from the internet, unless you’re using it to reserve tickets for Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Sweat. Set in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, a factory town with little else in the way of opportunity, at the moment when the North American Free Trade Agreement allowed factories to suppress reliable wages, make unions virtually pointless, and move to Mexico if labor demanded too much in pay, benefits, or safety regulations. In the same moment, NAFTA wrecked the Mexican farm economy, pushing more immigrants to cross the U.S. border looking for work and ramping up a whole other set of anxieties.
Sweat introduces us to “the regulars”: good ol’ boys and gals who all work or have worked for the factory. Most of them are second- and third-generation employees and visit their neighborhood watering hole to celebrate little victories and drown defeat. Their nightly conversations and struggles show how easily economic anxieties transform into racial anxieties. Sweat touches on the gutting of American labor unions and the factory floor roots of the opioid crisis as workers combat tedium and both physical and emotional trauma.
Sweat focuses primarily on the lives of three female drinking buddies and two of their sons, all of them legacy factory workers. In a heated moment, something terrible happened, making everyone unrecognizable to one another. Nottage’s play is like a weather forecast. She maps the converging pressure systems, as the storm rages harder and harder.
While “Darkness at the Edge of Town,” might make a good alternative title, with heavy doses of Springsteen and a sample of Billy Joel’s painfully honest 1982 hit “Allentown,” Sweat‘s sound design is sometimes a little too on the nose. Otherwise, director Irene Crist’s production for Circuit Playhouse is as rough and right as rolled up flannel sleeves, showcasing strong performances full of heavy hitters like Greg Boller, Jai Johnson, JS Tate, Tracie Hansom, and Kim Sanders, to name a few.
If you’re the sort of person who only sees a couple of shows a year, make this one of them.
Sweat runs through February 17th at Circuit Playhouse.
A long time ago, every member of the Tuck family drank from a hidden forest spring and became immortal, but each one is forever stuck with all the tropes of their frozen age. The parents manage middle-aged ruts and middle-aged spread and snoring marital monotony. Lost love burns like it can only in youth. Teen angst and pimples also last forever. Neighbors also tend to notice when you never age, so be careful what you wish for, and all that.
Life gets even harder if you’re essentially decent folk who know what could happen if people who aren’t decent folk ever get their hands on a spring of eternal life. People like the mysterious Man in Yellow who blows into town with the carnival, chasing rumors of magic and mystery. So what’s an unkillable clan to do when a charming young runaway like Winnie Foster stumbles into the family’s life and onto its secrets?
Carla McDonald
Tuck Everlasting on stage at Playhouse on the Square
For Tuck Everlasting, Director Dave Landis has brought together a terrific cast, and his design team has outdone itself, building a world of green parsley stalk trees and purple “magic hour” skies, where a big round sun (or moon?) is eternally stuck in the rising — or maybe setting — position.
Gia Welch’s voice has never sounded as rich or full or uniquely hers as it does in Tuck. Even though she’s a little too old to convincingly pass for an 11-year-old, her performance as Winnie is never anything short of winning. Welch leads a tight, talented ensemble of local favorites, including Michael Gravois, Lorraine Cotton, and Kent Fleshman. Even if you don’t emerge from the theater able to remember the words to any of Tuck‘s songs — a distinct possibility — the voices follow you home.
Tuck Everlasting runs through February 9th at Playhouse on the Square.
You know what? As long as John Maness wins something, I don’t care about anything else this year. If the Ostrander committee misses all the rest by miles and miles, I’ll be satisfied for the ounce of justice done. Because … holy crap! After this season, the O-committee should consider a “John Maness hardest-working-person in Memphis Theater” trophy. With a roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic married to the soul of a magician and escape artist, he hammers out one unique character after another and vanishes inside them. I mean, who the hell does this guy think he is, Erin Shelton?
Nevertheless, the time has come, once again, for shade to be cast and predictions made in regard to this year’s crop of nominees and nominees that might have been if only the universe wasn’t so frequently unfair. It’s the season when the Intermission Impossible team wonders what it is our tireless, too human Ostrander judges might be smoking. When we ask the one question on every right-thinking thespian’s mind — “WHO GOT ROBBED?”
I want to see J. David Galloway take home the set design for New Moon’s lovely, immersive, and necessarily inventive design for Eurydice. I’ve been frustrated in the past by designers who quote or wink at surrealism when what’s needed is something approaching the real thing. Not every aspect of Galloway’s design was as dreamy as it might have been, but the microbudget masterpiece engaged imaginations, enabling the kind of stage magic money can’t buy.
[pullquote-1] That said, bigger, better-funded companies still have advantages in design categories and I suspect the judges may prefer Jack Yates’ outstanding work on The Drowsy Chaperone or the ordinary otherworldliness of Tim McMath’s design for Fun Home at Playhouse on the Square.
But what about the eye-candy that was An Act of God (also Yates)? What about 12 Angry Jurors, an environment so real yet another confounded patron tried to use the onstage bathroom (also Yates)? If it sounds like I’m arguing for more Jack Yates nominations, maybe I am. But I’m also making a case that there’s been some good design this season, and given a different set of sensibilities, this category might have swung another direction entirely. There might have been nods for the elegant emptiness of Bryce Cutler’s Once, at Playhouse on the Square, or the grubby, unfussy realism of Phillip Hughen’s design for The Flick at Circuit Playhouse. I look forward to seeing how this category evolves as New Moon continues to mature, and smaller Memphis’ companies leverage thoughtfulness against more tangible resources.
Falsettos.
It’s wrong that Mandy Heath wasn’t nominated for lighting Falsettos but I can live with the slight as long as she wins the prize for Eurydice. That’s really all I have to say about that.
Once is a stunt musical — and what a terrific stunt! It’s part concert, part narrative drama, with the actors doubling down as their own orchestra. The three-chord score’s not Sondheim but casting players who are also, well… players isn’t easy. And pulling off a piece musical theater where the songs feel more like barroom romps than show tunes, requires a different kind of sophistication. I suspect the thrice-nominated Nathan McHenry will take this prize. He should take it for Once.
Who got robbed? Maybe nobody this year.
For excellence in sound design there are a few nominees, but really only one choice. Joe Johnson’s dreamy original score for Eurydice didn’t enhance the designed environment. It completed it.
I was happy to see choreographers Ellen Inghram and Jared Johnson nominated for the wit and wisdom permeating their work on Falsettos. It would be nice to see them win over the flashier entries in this category. No robberies here.
When it comes to the non-musicals, best female lead and supporting roles are almost always the toughest category to call because year after year they are overstuffed with contenders. While Kim Sanders was her usual perfect self in both A Perfect ArrangementandLaughter on the 23rd Floor, the double nomination in the supporting category may not double her odds against commanding, emotionally wrenching turns by Jessica “Jai” Johnson inRuined and Erin Shelton in All Saints in the Old Colony. Kell Christie was the best Emelia I’ve ever seen and a perfect match for John Maness’ woman-hating Iago in New Moon’s Othello.Any other year Christie would be my #1 pick. She’s a longshot compared to Shelton and Johnson and I’m hard pressed to say who’s more deserving of the honor.
Opera 901 Showcase
Who got robbed? Although FEMMEemphis’ productions aren’t under consideration, basically the entire cast of Collective Rage. Quark’s similarly out of the running but in the young company’s very adult production of The Nether, young Molly McFarland stood shoulder to shoulder with grownup co-stars and delivered a brave, polished performance. As the youngest of the Weston daughters in Theatre Memphis’ tepid August: Osage County, Emily F. Chateau was damn near perfect — as fragile as Laura Wingfield’s glass unicorn and as likely to cut you if broken. ROBBED AS HELL!
Anne Marie Caskey does consistently professional work but she seemed miscast in Theatre Memphis’ not altogether successful production of August: Osage County. Ostrander loves Caskey (as do I) and her inclusion here might seem less bewildering if not for the absence of Michelle Miklosey’s pitch perfect Eurydice Tracy Hansom’s good old fashioned curtain chew inStage Kiss. Were I one of these two ladies, I’d take The Oblivains strong advice and call the police. Because, ROBBED! OMG ROBBED!
Some of the best female leads this season did their thing just outside Ostrander’s natural reach. Jillian Baron and Julia Baltz were equally badass in FEMMEmphis’ Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief. But let’s be real. All this talk of robbery is purely academic because each of these fantastic performances paled next to to Maya Geri Robinson’s larger-than-life depiction of a Congolese Mother Courage in Ruined at Hattiloo. And Robinson’s performance may have only been the season’s second best. I can’t say with any confidence that I’ve ever seen an actor own a show like Morgan Watson owned Sunset Baby, also at Hattiloo.
Emily F. Chateau. The F stands for F-ing ROBBED!
The list for Best Supporting Actor is strong. It’s so strong I’m picking Bertram Williams for Ruined even though I started this column cheering for John Maness in anything. The list of nominees might also have included nods to Jeff Kirwan for his performances in New Moon’s Buried Child, Eurydice or both. It’s worth noting (yet again) that every performance in All Saints in the Old Colony approached a personal best and Marques Brown was ROBBED!
I don’t know what the theater judges had against Buried Child but James Dale Green’s Dodge is a glaring best actor omission. So is Emmanuel McKinney, who gave a knockout performance as Muhammad Ali in the uneven Fetch Clay, Make Man. Both of these men should post on Nextdoor.com right away to let everybody know they were ROBBED! Once that’s been done, can we please all agree to give this year’s prize to John Maness? And can we go ahead make it for everything he touched this season? I say this with deep appreciation for and apologies to All Saints’ Greg Boller and Jitney’s Lawrence Blackwell who both delivered special, award-worthy performances in a season where the competition happened to be a little stiffer than usual.
I take it from the sheer number of nominations in the category of Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, the Ostrander judges liked Fun Home. Me too. But maybe not enough to give any category a near sweep. Especially when it might be appropriate to co-nominate Fun Home’s small and medium Alison in order to make room for Falsettos’ Jaclyn Suffel and/or Christina Hernandez who were both ROBBED!
Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’
A taste of Once‘s pre-show jam. Like I said, Ostrander very clearly likes Fun Home this year with the odd exception of adult Alison, Joy Brooke-Fairfield. So, individual nominations aside, I’m predicting a joint win for the two Alisons. Of course Annie Freres was a force of nature as the title character in The Drowsy Chaperone. All else being equal, she was probably the most outstanding nominee in a field of outstanding nominees.
Best Female Lead in a Musical is a heartbreaker category because everybody nominated is ridiculously talented. Nobody in town has pipes like Dreamgirls’ Breyannah Tillman, who’s also proving to be a formidable actor. But Emily F. Chateau also had an amazing year and may have been better in Falsettos than she was in August: Osage County. Gia Welch is a precocious powerhouse. She was great in Chaperone, but might also have been nominated for work on 42nd Street or Heathers. Meanwhile, Once’s Lizzy Hinton and Shrek’s Lynden Lewis occupy opposite corners of this playing field. The former helped build a complete world out of song and mirrors.The later was almost buried in spectacle but made heart and soul so much more important than green makeup and ogre costumes.
Let me let you in on a secret: Like Lena Younger’s striving son Walter, Patricia Smith was ROBBED! She should have gotten a nod for her work in the musical adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. I’m gonna talk about Raisin later on in this seemingly endless column, but frankly, that whole cast might want to call a personal injury attorney because they were dealt a disservice up front then ripped off by out appraisers!
Given all of Fun Home’s nominations in other categories, the omission of Joy Brooke-Fairfield feels oddly pointed. Fun Home’s a show that might challenge traditional gender divisions in these kinds of awards and when I didn’t see the older Alison included in this category, I so I double checked the whole list to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. But there was no Joy to be found anywhere, and that sentence is every bit as sad as it sounds. ROBBED!
I’d like to see Joshua Pierce win the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical category for Theatre Memphis’ superlative take on Falsettos. But I missed First Date and Dreamgirls this season and, truth be told, I don’t understand Shrek’s appeal. Too disoriented by this category to make a fair call. That almost never happens. Y’all tell me.
Best Leading Actor in a Musical is yet another heartbreaker category. Shrek’s never going to be my thing, but it’s very clearly Justin Asher’s, and he was a mighty fine ogre, loving every second of big green stage time. Stephen Huff was so at home in Fun Home it’s now almost impossible for me to imagine anybody else in his role. And I kinda feel the same about Jason Spitzer’s near definitive take on The Drowsy Chaperone’s Man in Chair. But I’ve gotta say, having been underwhelmed by his pitchy turn in Heathers, I was most impressed by Conor Finnerty-Esmonde’s take on the hard-luck musician in Once. But when I filter out personal taste in music and storytelling and just let myself focus on the difficulty and potency of the performances represented here, one actor’s work really stands out. Villains are fun to play but nothing’s harder than a complex character who’s hard-to-like but can’t be allowed to become a villain. Cary Vaughn, in his finest of many fine performances, plowed through Falsettos like a steamroller. Still standing. Still applauding this entire cast.
Eurydice — Awfully good looking.
But what about Kortland Whalum? Where is his name? I’ll be the first to admit, Raisin was tragically underproduced. The scenic environment felt unfinished, and in an intimate space like Hattiloo, nothing sucks the soul from musical performances like warm bodies performing to cold tracks. But somehow, in spite of everything the actors had working against them, Raisin’s cast collectively overcame. I can’t blame the Ostrander for not rewarding the production, but when you factor in the odds against, no cast was more ROBBED than this one. I’ll brook zero argument: No actor deserves to this category half as much as Whalum. Folks are welcome to disagree on this point, but folks who do are flat wrong. ROBBED!
If Jamel “JS” Tate doesn’t win Best Featured Performer in a Drama for Jittny I’m personally calling in the FBI. Annie Freres is likely to win Best Featured in a musical for her flashy roll-on as the Dragon in Shrek. Or maybe it will go to Breyannah Tillman, who stuck the landing in her role as The Drowsy Chaperone’s show-stopping aviatrix. But James Dale Green stopped time with nothing but his weatherbeaten tenor, a strummed mandolin, and a compelling story to tell. That sounds like a winner to me. Who got Robbed? Once’s Chris Cotton, that’s who.
I’m totally happy if the Ensemble award goes to All Saints in the Old Colony, Falsettos, Fun Home, Jitney, or A Perfect Arrangement. All are deserving, though Jitney may be just a little bit more deserving than all the rest. But how in the blankety-blankblanblank did Once not make this list? The cast doesn’t just act together, they also make music together — acoustic music. Music largely unaided by electronics and amplification. Music so thoroughly human it connects past and future like a time machine made of skin, bone, wood and string. I’m happy if the award goes to any of the fantastic nominees, but no matter who wins the judges lose on this account. Once was the season’s ultimate ensemble show, and POTS’s ensemble crushed it. The pre-show hoedown was worth the price of admission. BOO!
As long as I’m complaining about the judges, OMG! Why is Tony Isbell nominated for excellence in direction of a drama for Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf? Don’t misunderstand, I come to praise this year’s lifetime achievement honoree, not to dis him. Isbell absolutely should have been nominated in this category, but for his work on The Nether (not eligible). Or his work on Years to the Day (also not eligible). Or maybe even his work on Stage Kiss (eligible and solid but fuck-you ignored). I’d go so far as to say he got ROBBED! in spite of bing nominated. This insubstantial work is a jarring inclusion next to Dr. Shondrika Moss-Bouldin’s unflinching approach to Ruined and the inventiveness of Jamie Boller’s Eurydice. Not to mention the hyper-detailed character development, and ensemble work Jeff Posson oversaw for All Saints in the Old Colony and the flawless world-building of Steve Broadnax’s Jitney. I’m calling this one for Posson, but it could go in almost any direction.
Best production of a drama? I like Jitney, though I’ve not pegged it as a winner in many other categories. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that’s the case here, though the parts were also quite good. Should All Saints in the Old Colony win, it’s every bit as deserving and, being a new script and the underdog here, maybe even more deserving.
I’m betting the darkhorse for excellence in Direction of a Musical and calling this one for Jerry Chipman and Falsettos. Everything else was bigger or flashier or more current in some way or another, even the stripped down Once. But life’s about balance, and Chipman’s production had nary a hair out of place that wasn’t supposed to be out of place.
Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’ (2)
Looking at the nominee spread, my gut tells me Fun Home was the judges’ favorite musical this season, and why wouldn’t it be? It was flawlessly cast, and beautifully performed. But this wasn’t the best work I’ve seen from director Dave Landis. I saw the performance with two companions. One wept openly, responding to the story and the characters. The other complained all the way home about the musical’s almost complete lack of action and visual/physical dynamics. I became the most unpopular person in the car when I said I thought they were both 100-percent right to feel the way they felt. Up to this point I’ve been #TeamFalsettos but I’m calling this one for Once. The other shows were great, but they were shows. Once was an event.
“Theaters not actively engaged in creating new material are passively engaged in their own obsolescence.” — Me.
Yeah, I totally quoted myself, but there’s not much I believe more than that. It’s one of the reasons I think the Ostrander Awards for Best Original Script and Best Production of an Original Script, may be more important than nice. In the future, judges might even consider beating the bushes a little on this front, and looking beyond the usual qualifying companies. All Saints in the Old Colony is a fantastic new script. It will win these categories, and it will know productions and awards beyond Memphis. But now would be a good time for all the folks who contributed words and music to Opera Memphis’ all-original 901 Opera Festival to cancel their credit cards because they have been ROBBED! OM might not be under consideration, but if we’re looking for superlatives, I can’t recall a more impressive example of new musical theater in the 901. Not
Tony Isbell in ‘Red’
since OM’s 2014 production of Ghosts of Crosstown heralded the rebirth of a neighborhood.
That may not cover every category, but it’s all I’ve got for now. Who did I forget?
Also, stay tuned for a Q&A with lifetime achievement honoree Tony Isbell.
I’ll have fuller reviews of all these plays available shortly. In the meantime I just want to encourage everybody to take advantage of an opportunity to go to the theater on a weekend when you’ll have to try extra hard to see a bad show. The mix of musicals, dramas, classics and world premieres makes for an especially rich spread. So if you’ve got a hole in your schedule this weekend, fill it. If you’ve got plans, cancel at least one. Whether you’re already a theater lover or just a little bit curious any all of these pieces will satisfy.
Once at Playhouse on the Square
Take a peek at this seconds long video. I’ll wait.
You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’
That clip’s from the pre-show. You know, the half-hour or so after audience members are allowed into the theater but before the show actually starts. It’s the (mostly) full cast of Once having a fiddle-sawing, guitar-picking, mandolin-strumming, box-beating, foot-stomping, tin whistle-tooting jam session. It’s fantastic and they carry the joyful Celtic momentum into this bittersweet Irish ballad of a musical that invests far more in the power of live music and honest theatrical performance than it does in Broadway spectacle.
Once is the story of a depressed young songwriter who lives with his old Da above the shop where they make Hoovers that don’t suck suck proper again. His girl’s left him for New York, and nobody’s listening to his music except for the struggling Czech immigrant who becomes his muse and chief motivator.
The ensemble’s amazing but the secret star of this Once is simple wooden stage that looks like it was designed not to impress visually but to maximize the warm sounds of acoustic instruments and lightly amplified human voices. It’s a little like hearing guitars played inside a bigger guitar. It’s hard not to get swept up in the songs, and swept away by the story.
Highly recommended. Sunset Baby at The Hattiloo
You want to see one really great performance? Oh baby. Decked out in fuck me boots and the war paint of a woman who lures Johns into her car in order to rob them Morgan Watson’s Nina is as hard and multifaceted as cut diamonds. It’s hard to eclipse actors as strong as TC Sharp and Emmanuel McKinney, and they both hold their own as Nina’s long absent father and gangsta boyfriend respectively. But whether she’s rolling her eyes and saying, “I love you,” or holding forth on what it really means to be “children of the revolution,” it’s hard to take your eyes off Watson long enough to look at anybody else in a tight, terrific ensemble.
Sunset Baby’s set after the death of a one time Civil Rights icon named Ashanti X who had struggled economically, becoming a less than inspiring crack addict in later years. Now that she’s dead her papers are worth more than she ever was and Nina’s long-estranged father shows up looking to get back into his daughter’s life. And for letters Ashanti X had written to him while he was in prison.
Sunset Baby is a GenX story looking at lives shaped by a stalled Civil Rights movement, when protest gave way to politics, and old heroes became fringe figures and outlaws. It’s a little play telling a big story.
Highly recommended. All Saints in the Old Colony at TheatreWorks
Here’s an excerpt from my review of a great fookin’ world premiere launched right here in Memphis.
All Saints in the Old Colony feels like Homokay’s New England-flavored answer to Katori Hall’s housing project drama Hurt Village. The Old Colony, Boston’s second oldest housing project, has changed quite a bit in recent years, but was once a dense cluster of brick towers populated by poor Irish families. As with Hurt Village, All Saints is set against a backdrop of gentrification and change. It tells the story of Kier, an Irish-born immigrant and disabled dock worker who, in the absence of parents, raised his siblings as best he could, making hard decisions that still haunt his malnourished, whiskey-soaked brain.
Carla McDonald
All Saints in the Old Colony: real people, real problems
More specifically, it tells the story of an attempted intervention where the whole family comes together — including sister Fiona who was given up for adoption at an early age — to help Kier into a healthier lifestyle. But, in the words of playwright Sam Shepard, whose work is also reflected in All Saints, there’s no hope for the hopeless. Opportunities for temporary escape abound, but for these siblings normalcy will always be relative, and there’s no hope that these four — five, counting an offstage brother too unforgiving to appear — will ever find peace, let alone happiness.
Highly recommended.
Fences
Theatre Memphis’ second production of Fences is another good opportunity to revisit favorite topics like exceptionalism and how badly our legacy playhouses serve Memphis’ communities of color, and how productions like this first-rate go at an August Wilson classic are the very thing we talk about when we talk about exceptions proving the rule. But I’ve buried the lead, so put those thoughts on hold long enough to consider this: No matter how overexposed Fences may be relative to some of Wilson’s consistently strong oeuvre this perfectly cast and lovingly-staged production is something you’ll want to see. Maybe more than once.
Highly recommended.
You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’ (2)
Perfect Arrangement
This is the only one of the bunch I haven’t seen yet, but it sounds awfully intriguing. Here’s how the folks at Circuit Playhouse are describing it.
It’s 1950, and new colors are being added to the Red Scare. Two U.S. State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. There’s just one problem: Both Bob and Norma are gay and have married each other’s partners as a carefully constructed cover. Inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, madcap classic sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two “All-American” couples are forced to stare down the closet door.
Verdict: We’ll have to wait and see, but it better be good because the competition is stiff.
Pageant: The Musical, a beauty pageant-based show featuring six contestants (all played by men in drag), opens at Circuit Playhouse this weekend.
In the show, the contestants are competing for the title of Miss Glamouresse in the categories of best swimsuit, talent, gown, and spokesmodel, and since the judges are selected from the audience, no two performances are the same.
Pageant runs March 11th through April 9th, but there will be a special preview show on Thursday, March 10th benefitting the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center’s youth services programming.
Tickets to that fundraising performance are $45, and that includes a cocktail hour reception from 7 to 8 p.m. The show begins at 8 p.m. that night. For tickets to that performance, go here.
Kevin Jones is an actor’s actor. Before leaving Memphis for New York, he did a little bit of everything, from Shakespeare and Shaw to Tennessee Williams and A Tuna Christmas. He wrote and performed original works, took part in holiday shows at Theatre Memphis, and even engaged in a bit of Gross Indecency at Playhouse on the Square. This week, Jones returns to Memphis to help an old friend and perform his critically acclaimed one-man version of Charles Dickens’ AChristmas Carol.
The old friend in question is David Foster, another of Memphis’ most prolific and prized actors. Foster is an uncommonly versatile actor best known for standout roles in musicals like Next to Normal, Ragtime, Assassins, and his award-winning dramatic turn in the Horton Foote play Dividing the Estate. Foster’s arched-eyebrow performances as Crumpet, the inappropriate elf, in David Sedaris’ SantaLand Diaries were definitive. Only Sedaris himself does it better. On a good day. Maybe. When Foster took time away from the stage, and from his day job cutting hair, to fight a tough battle with cancer, he was determined not to let the illness define him. But Jones is hard to resist, and his proposal was a unique opportunity to help Foster help himself. Donations from this free performance all go to cover the cost of Foster’s chair rental at La Nouvelle Salon.
“I’m calling the event, ‘Put my BFF back to work,'” says Jones, describing an act of kindness that might appeal to old Scrooge both before and after his miraculous conversion. “If we can cover the chair rental, he gets to keep 100 percent of what he makes while he’s getting back on his feet.”
Jones, who often played Scrooge’s nephew Fred in Theatre Memphis’ annual Carol, is drawn to the enduring story because of its message and possibilities. His performance is lifted directly from Dickens’ own reading text, with only a few amendments.
Theresa Rebeck’s comedy Seminar has all the f-words covered. It’s got frontal nudity, ball-sucking fornication, flamboyance, good old-fashioned f-bombs (duh), and plenty of additional four-letter words, all expertly flung with venom to spare. It’s a light comedy about unbearably heavy people that stakes out previously uncharted territory somewhere in the vast DMZ separating David Mamet and Neil Simon. I was particularly reminded of a comically damning line hurled in Nicky Silver’s play Beautiful Child, when it’s discovered that Silver’s protagonist is having an affair with his secretary: “You’re past cliché and into archetype.” Similarly, Seminar‘s broadly drawn characters flirt with cliché, but rapidly transcend it.
Seminar often reads like a truly inspired first draft, resplendent with cringe-worthy lines like, “Don’t make me hit you with this Buddha.” Thankfully, director Irene Crist has assembled a cast compelling enough to weather the worst. Morgan Howard hides her soul, but bares other things as Izzy, a promising student who lives the life she writes about. Julia Masotti gives a thoroughly winning performance as Kate, who, like the real-world playwright, Sarah Kane, hides behind a gay male alias to test for bias in her editor/tormentor’s stinging criticism. But from his first rude appearance, this show belongs to Playhouse on the Square’s associate producer, Michael Detroit. His performance as Leonard, a dirtbag editor with a heart of gold (sort of), will earn an Ostrander nomination, at least, and probably the prize. Write it down.
Seminar is at Circuit Playhouse through June 21st.
The Hattiloo is nearing the end of its first season in its custom-built space on Overton Square, but technical issues that have plagued the company since its earliest days linger on. This time around, there were jarring mic issues marring the first third of Simply Simone, a small but mighty musical revue about artist, activist, and bon vivant Nina Simone.
Keia Johnson, Rhonda Woodfork, Tymika Chambliss, and Jackie Murray all play Simone at different ages and stages of her career. They are, by turns, naive, worldly, wise, and wanton. And by the time this rhythmically gifted quartet was through singing, dancing, clapping, monologuing, and stomping out beats on the floor with their fists and heels, I felt like I’d spent the evening with one singular, complicated, and completely captivating personality. Highlights include the company’s spirited run through “Mississippi Goddam” and a seething take on Billie Holiday’s lynching ballad, “Strange Fruit.”
Simply Simone is a little show that delivers an oversized wallop. Catch it if you can.
Simply Simone is at The Hattiloo through June 28th.
The Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s hoodoo-inspired take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a triumph of stagecraft, although there’s something eerily robotic about some of the more heavily choreographed human characters.
The duke has a wise line in Midsummer about how nothing can be amiss when simpleness and duty attend it. And, true to the Bard’s words, this production’s sourest notes are a result of praiseworthy ambition that is dutiful but not simple. Actors have learned to play the accordion, washboard, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and a variety of other instruments in order to capture the sonic flavors of the Louisiana bayou. When it’s off, it can make you clinch up a bit, but when it works, it brings the magic this show demands.
Oberon has been imagined as Papa Legba, and it’s a role Phil Darius Wallace was born to play. The force he projects as Duke Theseus and Oberon the fairy king is matched by Stephanie Weeks who is delightful in her dual role as the earth mother Titania and Hippolyta, the tough-as-nails warrior queen. Noah Duffy’s broom-wielding, accordion-squeezing, shape-shifting Puck is this Midsummer‘s most complete creation.
The Athenian actors commonly known as “the mechanicals” deserve a special shout-out for their fully committed, sometimes awkward musical efforts. As Nick Bottom, G. Valmont Thomas is as tender an ass as one might hope to meet on a summer’s day.
It’s likely that this imaginative Midsummer will tighten up with repetition. Its shortcomings are, at every turn, outweighed by a willingness to do the hard thing and take smart risks. It also represents the beginning of what could grow into an interesting, mutually beneficial partnership between Memphis’ only professional, classical theater company and the University of Memphis’ Department of Theatre and Dance.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company Presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the University of Memphis through June 21st.
Cole Porter’s been all over Memphis. No sooner does Kiss Me, Kate close at Playhouse on the Square (POTS) then Anything Goes opens at Theatre Memphis. Both antique scripts are plagued by racial stereotyping, but the Chinese minstrel show near the end of Anything Goes is especially hard to watch in the second decade of the 21st century. Unlike POTS’ musically lush, perfectly paced romp through Shakespeare’s most misogynist material, Porter’s shipside farce never builds much steam.
Director Amy Hanford’s production contains one spectacular tap number, and veteran actor Barry Fuller is a joy front to back as a dimwitted gangster on the lam. But this production is long on sparkle and shine and short on dynamics and character development. Its best moment is a cheeky duet between Fuller and Whitney Branan, who proves in this one scene that all she needs to be convincing in the role of nightclub singer Reno Sweeney is a grounded actor to play off of. Too bad for the gifted Branan, that doesn’t happen often enough.
Even with its temporal baggage, Anything Goes is the kind of show Theatre Memphis tends to knock out of the park. Beyond the top-notch technical elements and the tap dancing, the details in this show just didn’t seem to get much love. And that, as we all know, is where the devil lives.
Anything Goes is at Theatre Memphis through June 28th.
Photo courtesy of Circuit Playhouse, Inc. 
Jon W. Sparks 
Carla McDonald 
Carla McDonald 
