Tag: Circuit Playhouse

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup

At a gala party last night at the High Cotton Brewing Company, Indie Memphis announced the lineup for their 17th annual film festival, which will be held October 30 to November 2. More than 40 feature length narrative and documentary films, as well as dozens of short subjects, will screen over the course of the four-day festival.

John Carpenter’s They Live

Four classic films will receive gala anniversary screenings. Director Michael Lehman and writer Daniel Waters will be on hand when Heathers, the 1989 black comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, will celebrate its 25th anniversary at the festival.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup

Friday night of the festival is Halloween, so it is appropriate that the work of one of America’s greatest horror directors, John Carpenter, will be honored with two gala screenings, beginning with his 1988 science fiction classic They Live, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (3)

At midnight, Carpenter’s Halloween will screen. A direct descendant of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jamie Lee Curtis’ film debut defined the 80’s slasher genre and holds up better than ever today.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (2)

The festival will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the best documentaries ever made, director Steve James’ Hoop Dreams.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (4)

Hometown filmmakers are well represented at the festival with three narrative features: Chad Barton’s comedy of filmmaking errors Lights, Camera Bullshit; Anwar Jamison’s workplace comedy 5 Steps To A Conversation; Marlon Wilson and Mechelle Wilson’s Christian drama Just A Measure Of Faith. The sole local documentary is Pharaohs Of Memphis, director Phoebe Driscoll’s history of jookin’.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (5)

Twelve films will compete for Best Narrative Feature, including the Brooklyn heist comedy Wild Canaries, Onur Tukel’s vampire comedy Summer Of Blood, the time travel drama Movement & Location, and the Texas-based crime drama Two Step.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (6)

The thirteen films up for Best Documentary Feature include the kenetic sport doc American Cheerleader; The Hip Hop Fellow, tracing producer 9th Wonder’s experience as a teacher at Harvard; Man Shot Dead, an intimate history of a family torn apart by an unsolved murder; and Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back, about Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali’s fight to keep the heavy metal dream alive.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (7)

Other notable films include Sundance winner Whiplash, a music drama starring Miles Teller as a young jazz drummer and J.K Simmons as his demanding teacher, and The Imitation Game, an early Oscar contender starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the eccentric British codebreaker whose work in World War II led directly to the invention of the modern digital computer.

Indie Memphis Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup (8)

The festival, which will also include numerous panels, special events, and parties, will take place in venues around Overton Square, including Playhouse On The Square, Circuit Playhouse, the Hattiloo Theater, and Malco’s Studio On The Square. The Memphis Flyer will have an in-depth examination of the festival as the cover story for our October 30th issue. Go to indiememphis.com for details on how to buy passes for Memphis’ greatest film weekend.

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Theater Theater Feature

Hattiloo and Circuit Tackle Race, Theatre Memphis does Charles Addams Proud.

God, how I love that new theater smell. And so far I love just about everything else about the new Hattiloo, too, from the lobby experience to theater seats that don’t turn into torture devices halfway through a long show. There’s also a lot to love about Stick Fly, Hattiloo’s second production in its new digs, although Lydia R. Diamond’s promising drama has pacing issues and the same kinds of lighting glitches that have always plagued Hattiloo productions.

It’s ironic how Stick Fly aims for subtlety while spelling out all its formal conceits by inserting subtext directly into the mouths of the play’s childish but well-educated characters. Angry confrontations are artificial devices, we’re told as Kent “Spoon” LeVay, a young, gadfly of means discusses narrative strategies in his soon-to-be published novel. It’s a message from the playwright, and expectations should be adjusted accordingly. Likewise, the show’s title is explained in detail in a conversation between Taylor, the young entomologist, and Joe, a randy older neurosurgeon. It suggests that audiences might take a more cerebral and less emotional look at the show’s characters, like scientists monitoring flies glued to the end of a stick. Get it?

Stick Fly is an inverted Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner for a generation that fancies itself post-racial but isn’t. It tells the story of two brothers from an affluent African-American family who bring their girlfriends —one black, one white — home for a long weekend where things are said and secrets are exposed.

Director Erma Elzy allows too much time to elapse between scenes, and what should be a superior show oozes along at a somewhat monotonous pace.

Jai Johnson and Emmanuel McKinney are both engaging as young lovers Taylor and Spoon. So too are Hattiloo vet Bertram Williams and Kilby Yarbrough as Flip and Kimber, the play’s slightly older interracial couple.

The evening’s best moments come courtesy of Venise Settles, who plays Cheryl, the daughter of the family maid whose mother has just dropped a bombshell. Settles is the kind of performer who never has to say a word — everything you need to know can be read in her posture and in her eyes. She’s a scene-stealer in a play filled with accomplished performers doing very good work.

Stick Fly is at the Hattiloo through September 14th. Hattiloo.org

The Addams Family had name recognition and an A-list cast. That kept if from being a complete Broadway dud when it opened on Broadway in 2010. Reviews, on the other hand, were justifiably brutal. Ben Brantley described the show as “a collapsing tomb” in his column for the New York Times. “Being in this genuinely ghastly musical must feel like going to a Halloween party in a strait-jacket or a suit of armor,” he wrote. “Sure, you make a flashy first impression. But then you’re stuck in the darn thing for the rest of the night, and it’s really, really uncomfortable.” That was truly about the size of it.

By the time The Addams Family hit the road for its first American tour, it was almost a different show. There were new scenes and songs, and everything was much improved. It is safe to say that Theatre Memphis’ richly detailed run through one of history’s ookiest of musicals is much, much better than what happened on Broadway. From its eye-popping design to a spectacular ensemble and leading actors that are uniformly quirktastic (and clearly having a blast), this is one of the better musicals Theatre Memphis has produced in recent memory. Much better even than Young Frankenstein, which did very well at this year’s Ostrander Awards.

Maybe there’s something to the idea of being “better off dead.” Rob Hanford and Emily Chateau, the sexless love interests from last season’s revival of The Music Man are reunited for The Addams Family and generate considerable heat as the ghoulish Morticia and Gomez. It’s also a joy to see Wednesday torturing Pugsley, but nothing in this world is better than watching John Hemphill’s Uncle Fester professing his love to the moon.

Puppetry and special effects only seal the deal. Expect big lizards, big spiders, and big fun.

The Addams Family is at Theatre Memphis through September 14th. Theatrememphis.org

Forgive me if I can’t get very excited about Best of Enemies, a superficial, weirdly sentimental play about American racism in the 1970s. This true story shows how a Klan leader and black civil rights activist moved past their differences to become good friends. Just like Old Hoke and Miss Daisy. And American police departments and black men generally.

The real life Ann Atwater and C. P. Ellis met in 1971 during a series of public meetings related to the court-ordered desegregation of schools. Their story of struggle, loss, and redemption is a readymade movie of the week, full of sound and fury signifying not too much. Even a great cast like the one assembled at Circuit Playhouse can’t breath real life into this predictable fable of opposites forced together.

Best of Enemies is a “feel good” story about race in America, reinforcing an idea that the ongoing struggle is one between extreme viewponts, making racism a condition that fades like a ’60s-era Polaroid. Only, it’s not the Klan’s fault that the average net worth of an African-American household is still a fraction that of the average white household. That’s the kind of “not racism” that happens in the enlightened world where the bad old ways are something colorblind people only experience in plays like Best of Enemies. That’s also the territory where you’ll find real life dramas that matter.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Three Questions with Jerry Torre of Grey Gardens (and three more with Carla McDonald)

Jerry Torre

  • Jerry Torre

Jerry Torre was 16 in the Summer of 1974, when he ran away from home and found employment as a gardner on oil billionaire J. Paul Getty’s East Hampton estate. That same year the young man Little Edie Beale called “The Marble Faun,” stumbled across Grey Gardens, and into pop culture history when his visits to the decaying mansion were captured by the Maysles Brothers in their famous 1975 documentary. Drew Hampton is currently playing Torre in the musical version of Grey Gardens, which is on stage at Circuit Playhouse through April 17, but here’s what the original “Marble Faun” had to say about life at Grey Gardens, and its various translations to the stage and screen. And if this interview isn’t enough Bouvier/Beale to quench your thirst for staunch characters, there’s a second interview with Grey Gardens star Carla McDonald below the fold.

Intermission Impossible: Your proximity to the Beales makes you a fair judge: of all the versions of Grey Gardens we’ve seen in recent years, which one is most accurate in getting who the Beales were and what life was like in their peculiar corner of the universe?

Jerry Torre: The First film Grey Gardens [the documentary] is my choice with the two films. The conditions of the mansion were actually improved upon before this. Yet it does take the viewer into a brief understanding of the personalities, living conditions, and complexities of the women.

Intermission Impossible: What’s it like to see your love of corn immortalized in song?

Jerry Torre: When I did hear the song “Jerry likes my corn” I was in awe of the interpretation’s gravity into our relationship through a song. It captured what I had known about our relationship: a moment in our life at Grey Gardens. One of concern. I’m honored with [the] tender interpretation of our relationship. There was a young boy who shared the simplistic joys of caring about one’s dear friend. Mrs.Beale was a mother to me. Only a few days into our relationship and I knew that I was home.

Intermission Impossible: Does the world’s seemingly unending fascination with the Beales surprise you? What do you think it is that keeps people coming back for more?

Jerry Torre: Once I shared my thoughts on [the documentary] Mrs.Beale looked at me [and said], “Years into your life people will find our relationship to be one of interest.” It has been 35-years since. It is one very fascinating event. One that begins with a grand old mansion on the East end of Long Island where estates have great history. When I walked into the mansion my very first day I felt the history of a family. Of a place where time had stopped. There were no people quite like Mrs.Beale and Edie. Their appeal lives on. One of individual expression in ones own choice of lifestyles. The appeal is one of individuals who seek to live.

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Theater Theater Feature

Dark Shadows

Although it features works by some of my favorite playwrights, I’ve never had much use for British author and essayist Kenneth Tynan’s notoriously naked theatrical revue Oh! Calcutta!. But before he wrote for the stage, Tynan wrote about it. He was an infamous theater critic, and, as anyone who ever found themselves impaled on one of his spiky metaphors might tell you, he could be as fearsome as they come.

He was my kind of critic in both his florid praise of good work and his cruel condemnation of the willfully mediocre. And I’m not ashamed to admit that watching Jerry Chipman’s no-nonsense take on Tynan in Circuit Playhouse’s nearly superb Orson’s Shadow gives me the sort of special joy I can usually only experience when I’m alone with a porno magazine.(That’s a special inside joke for the true-blue Tynan fans among us. You’re welcome.) And Chipman’s not even the best part of the show.

Orson’s Shadow, actor/playwright Austin Pendleton’s darkly comic meditation on fame and decay, is a rare beast indeed. It’s the fictionalized account of a meeting between well-known historical characters that doesn’t go out of its way to cram a lifetime’s collection of quotes into the span of two hours.

It is set in 1960, amid the rehearsals for a production of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, which was directed by Orson Welles (Nate Smith) and starred Laurence Olivier (Tony Isbell) and his post-Vivien Leigh paramour Joan Plowright (Mary Buchignani). Tynan was the conduit that brought these monstrous, and monstrously fragile, egos together. And Pendleton makes the entire experience exquisitely painful.

Orson’s Shadow begins in Dublin with Tynan dropping in on Welles, who’s performing the role of Falstaff in his unsuccessful play Chimes at Midnight, a revisionist take on Shakespeare’s Henry cycle. Welles, who has grown immensely fat and bitter over his exile from Hollywood, refuses to acknowledge the obvious: that he’s playing to empty houses. He even grows furious at the mention of his most famous film, Citizen Kane, which he describes as having “directed from my highchair.” Although he’s contemptuous of Olivier for having turned Henry V into a “scoutmaster” and Hamlet into a “bad Joan Crawford movie,” Welles will do anything to bolster his ego and make enough money to self-finance his little filmmaking habit. He agrees to go to London with Tynan, convincing himself, eventually, that he’s the only man for the job.

Isbell’s performance as Olivier may represent the most detailed work of the hard-working actor’s career. He’s the perfect blend of vanity, fussy insecurity, and “animal alertness,” and never once does it seem like he’s attempting an outright imitation. Likewise, Irene Crist is convincing as the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Olivier, whose grasp on sanity is tenuous and at times quite terrifying. Buchignani’s performance is solid, as usual, though Plowright’s character is a sweet, reasonable bore compared to the rest of Pendleton’s menagerie. As Sean, the play’s only non-celebrity character, Buchignani’s real-life husband John Hemphill is the very definition of fifth business.

Nate Smith gives the show’s weakest performance in the role of Welles, but it’s hardly the actor’s fault. After all, Welles was 26 when he wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane. Orson’s Shadow is set 20 years after Kane‘s premiere, and Smith, a smart, award-winning actor with a particular gift for inventive comedy, is merely 22. Compared to his more age-appropriate castmates who wear their roles like a favorite pair of bedroom slippers, it’s obvious that Smith suffers from an abundance of youth. The harder he pushes to make us believe he’s Welles, the less we believe him. This potentially fatal casting flaw is never more than a minor annoyance in an otherwise outstanding production.

Directed with a nearly invisible hand by Pamela Poletti and designed by Bill Short with some subtle nods to several famous films, Orson’s Shadow is easily one of this season’s most satisfying productions. More like this one, please.

Orson’s Shadow at Circuit Playhouse through July 6th

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Theater Theater Feature

Hand Me Downs

Once in every generation, a play comes along that’s every bit as cloying and improbable as its title suggests. Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy — currently on stage at Circuit Playhouse — is just such a play.

Blind with grief over the loss of his wife, poor, uneducated but hard-working George Crump chases an address marked on a bottle of “elixir” and moves his family from rural Florida to Brooklyn to be closer to his new god, “Father Divine” (who actually lives in Philly). There he raises two precocious daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, according to “Sweet Father’s” strict principles of celibacy and anti-secularism until Aunt Lilly shows up, bags in hand. Lilly’s the late wife’s hot and still-unmarried sister, whom George used to fool around with back in the day. She’s a tragic bon viviant who hangs out in Harlem and talks about revolution but drinks all day and passionately espouses her belief that a smart, well-dressed black woman hasn’t got a chance.

Enter Gerte, the white, superficially sexless German immigrant George meets and immediately (and chastely) marries after sharing cookies (metaphor) on the subway (metaphor). Personalities clash, exposing the hazards of having too much faith and the disaster of having none at all.

Everybody struggles hard but ends up more or less okay except for poor Lilly, who ends up dead and “full of holes” (metaphor). Told from the unreliable perspective of Ernestine, a sophisticated verbal prankster who wishes her life was more like a Hollywood movie, Crumbs is a show with all the depth, subtlety, and clunky dialogue of an ABC “After School Special.” But for all its weird pretensions and goofy, writerly flourishes, it’s also an actor-driven piece, and Circuit’s uniformly excellent cast makes this yawn of a play much, much better than it probably deserves to be.

Keith Patrick McCoy does honest work as George, but the actor’s greatest asset — his deep resonant voice — is also his worst enemy. No matter how common his character, McCoy always sounds like a trained voiceover artist reciting Shakespeare. Crystin Gilmore, on the other hand, disappears into Lilly, making the tough old Commie feisty, foxy, and impossibly frail in the same breath. As a pair of completely dissimilar sisters, Kristi Steele (Ernestine) and Maya Geri (Ermina) do such beautifully detailed work they can almost make you forget about the play’s impossible tangle of sappy sentiment and mixed political messages.

When President Bush considered America’s cultural divide and spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” not so very long ago, he wasn’t saying anything new, nor was he passing along a bit of conventional wisdom exclusive to tough-loving white conservatives. The president’s clever catchphrase echoed both the preaching style and philosophy of the Reverend General Jealous Divine, an African-American cult leader frequently referenced in Nottage’s play but never fully identified.

Before there was a George W. Bush (or an L. Ron Hubbard, for that matter), there was the almighty Father Divine, who proclaimed himself a god on earth, sold the power of faith and positive thinking to America’s poor, and damned mid-century social reform for promoting — yes — the soft bigotry of low expectations. Divine rejected out of hand the very idea that he could be labeled as African American, or black, or a part of a “downtrodden race,” or defined as anything other than a person of value. He preached that with enough positivism (and the occasional donation), reality will bend.

A black-and-white photograph of this saintly charlatan dominates the set of Crumbs From the Table of Joy, much as the portrait of Tennessee Williams’ famously absent father figure dominates the set in The Glass Menagerie. Exactly like it, in fact.

From its mannered bebop poetry to its quirky character development,Crumbs borrows too much from Williams’ iconic memory play to be purely coincidental, and yet the plays could not be more unalike. If The Glass Menagerie is an indictment of American class distinctions and the monsters they ultimately make, Crumbs is an apology for them. Where Williams self-consciously used the sentimental tropes of melodrama to editorialize, Nottage uses memory as a device to build a genuinely sentimental melodrama. And apparently, a very actable one.

Through April 1st