The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has chosen ArtsMemphis as one of nine local arts agencies nationwide to receive $250,000 in CARES Act funding. Separately, the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis (CFGM) selected ArtsMemphis to receive a $200,000 capacity building grant from the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund.
Both grants will help the nonprofit arts community combat the financial implications of COVID-19.
In addition to the CARES Act grant to ArtsMemphis, the NEA announced grants of $50,000 each to four Memphis arts organizations: Blues City Cultural Center, Hattiloo Theatre, Indie Memphis, and Opera Memphis.
The NEA recommended grants for direct funding through the CARES Act to 855 organizations across the country. ArtsMemphis and eight other local arts agencies were selected to receive a larger grant of $250,000, joining Boston, Chicago, Lafayette, Colo., Phoenix, Reno, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Tucson. The remaining 846 organizations will receive grants of $50,000.
The CFGM grant is part of a larger block of funding from the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund intended to address community needs, and to provide a wider safety net for the forward progress of the arts sector. “We will redirect these funds as unrestricted support to nonprofit arts organizations in Memphis and Shelby County,” says ArtsMemphis president and CEO Elizabeth Rouse.
A survey of more than 250 Shelby County artists and organizations conducted by ArtsMemphis indicated a total anticipated loss of income across the arts sector of $7.4 million through June 30, 2020. Nationally, according to data released by Americans for the Arts (AFTA) of 17,000 arts organizations surveyed, projected losses through June 30th at $8.4 billion.
This is the second distribution of funds received by ArtsMemphis from CFGM’s Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund since the pandemic forced arts organizations to close on March 16th. ArtsMemphis established the Artist Emergency Fund (AEF) in partnership with Music Export Memphis (MEM) and together they distributed $308,000 to 443 individuals in the Mid-South arts sector.
Plenty to do and see this weekend, from openings to closings.
Opening Friday is Between Riverside and Crazy at Hattiloo Theatre. The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning play throws the old against the new as a retired police officer is faced with eviction from his rent-controlled apartment in New York City. Directed by Ekundayo Bandele. For info, go here.
Lend us your ears: Tennessee Shakespeare is staging Julius Caesar. Directed by Dan McCleary, the classic about political dysfunction, pride, and consequences runs through October 6th. Grab your toga and go here for info.
Think you can handle the truth? This is the final week for Theatre Memphis’ production of A Few Good Men, the powerful Aaron Sorkin play about a court martial and a coverup. Seating is limited this weekend, but a performance has been added tonight, September 25th. Go here for ticket information.
It’s also the final weekend for Germantown Community Theatre’s Barefoot in the Park, the Neil Simon love letter to young lovers. Get tickets here.
At first I blamed the material. And then it hit me: Pearl Cleage’s odd little one act may end with, “This Little Light of Mine,” but A Song For Coretta is a funeral dirge. It presents as the intertwining stories of women standing in line, patiently waiting to pay their last respects to Civil Rights icon, Coretta Scott King. It’s really the allegorical story of voices that have forgotten how to harmonize and of five individual fingers that have forgotten how to make a fist.
For starters, A Song for Coretta isn’t a musical. It’s a play about generation gaps. We meet a proper, older matriarch, full of bootstraps stories, proud to have participated in Civil Rights events with her parents and satisfied with how far her generation has come. King died in 2006, so millennial bashing wasn’t a thing yet, obvs. But the elder is quick to scold anybody younger and ungrateful enough to complain about anything. We’re also introduced to a free-thinking artist and Hurricane Katrina survivor; an ambitious reporter; and a younger, directionless woman from the neighborhood, who’s easy to dismiss but almost impossible to refute.
The secret gag is that this show has very little to do with Coretta Scott King or her husband Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s not about the movement and what’s been won or what’s yet to be achieved. It’s about missing pieces. Things like a common purpose and leaders binding everybody together like glue.
A lot’s changed since 2006. Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush in the Oval Office, riding in on a wave of hope and change. He’s since been replaced by the overtly racist Donald Trump. In this time the spirit of protest has rekindled and movements like Black Lives Matter, the Fight for 15, and #TakeEmDown901, have restored at least some lost momentum. That spirit was just beginning to smolder again to the moment of King’s death, as America was slid into an era of endless war and rapidly expanding income equality. Long story short: There may be plenty left to learn and laugh over in Cleage’s script, but some if its complaints ring at least a little less true today than they might have, even a few years ago. That’s no knock, but something to consider in production design.
Speaking of … Hattiloo’s flat, storybook set is a good-looking charmer, but maybe too much. It’s a shame, at any rate, that so very little of the designed space is ever really used by the actors. And even two weeks into the run, the show’s cast seemed less than confident with blocking and lines. Even the nicest individual performances were incomplete and the relationships never clicked. A Song For Coretta might clip along with all the quirk of an absurdist farce, but in this environment, it limps forward, wounded by an absence of crispness and clarity.
I didn’t think I liked A Song for Coretta till I sat down and wrestled with it for a while. But the more I struggled the more I came to regard it as a special little gem searching for the right setting and a whole lot of polish. Hattiloo solved one of these wants, but not the other.
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.
From a technical standpoint I could pick Hattiloo’s Raisin to pieces. The set doesn’t look down at heel, it looks slapped together. The presence of living actors insures that the show’s minimal, thoughtful choreography, will sometimes be under-supported by otherwise well-made recordings of a horn-driven, 70’s-era soul-inspired score built to jump off the stage and get up in your life choices. Tracks get the job done though, and, as always, so much of any show’s success depends on material strength and a cast’s ability to leverage it. In this regard everything about Raisin delivers. Music and dancing never undermine the message in this faithfully adapted retelling of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. This story of the Younger family and their struggle to buy an affordable home and possibly start a family business is a subtle, almost generous look at how America and its wealth became segregated. It is a deeply felt family drama that ends with a devastating loss barely tempered with dignity and determination.
Raisin won the Tony Award for best new musical in 1973, and promptly fell off the face of the Earth. A best musical win doesn’t ensure immortality or heavy rotation, but ever since Kiss Me Kate picked up the first best musical trophy in 1949, a win has typically meant Broadway tours, lavish revivals, and some longevity on the regional circuit. Raisin, — a musical described by New York Times writer Clive Barnes as being, “perhaps even better than the [Tony nominated] play” — just went away. Why?
To answer that question we probably have to go down to the crossroads of real estate and money. It surprises people when I suggest that, for all the edgy content that marches across our stages, our regional theaters are still relatively conservative spaces shaped more by donor/subscriber communities than the broader communities they inhabit. There’s only been so much room for black programming in these spaces and while a gut-wrencher like Raisin or Caroline or Change might get produced once in a while we’re more likely to see upbeat revivals of pop-culture touchstones like The Color Purple or sparkly showbiz epics like Dreamgirls. If one must return to the musty old stories, Hansberry’s original drama is accepted canon, and always less expensive to produce than a musical on your second stage.
Thing is, there’s nothing musty about the original, if you pay attention to the whole text, not just the big “amen” lines about not capitulating to people who don’t think you’re fit to share the Earth.
It’s probably fair to say that most folks, liberal and conservative alike, have bought, in some measure, the big lies about segregation and how it continues to exist because people self-select. It’s always been malarkey. Contemporary segregation and urban slums were created by single family housing/industrial zoning, by the Federal government’s refusal to insure mortgages to African-Americans, and the inability of African-Americans to obtain credit via the usual channels. It was advanced by public housing back when public housing was nice and park-like and not for poor people, but for exclusively white workers priced out of areas close to job centers. It was further maintained by restrictive covenants insuring that certain properties could only be sold to white buyers. When courts turned on the covenants Neighborhood associations were created. To buy in you had to belong. To belong you had to be white.
As more and more Americans moved out of apartments and into single family homes, the limited amount of property made available to African Americans was typically far more expensive than property being offered to whites. Absent credit, it was sold via a contract system that eliminated equity. One missed payment could result in eviction, with nothing to show for your effort. Families with little discretionary income for upkeep, did sometimes crowd into substandard housing, but decay was always the result of a cruel, deliberately exploitive system backed by customary business practices and law. Though these circumstances are alluded to rather than expressly stated, this is the legal, social and economic environment in which Raisin unfolds, and to get the most out of the musical experience, it’s helpful to divorce ourselves from political myths, and open ourselves to a more complete history.
[pullquote-1] Raisin isn’t about integration or white flight from the urban core. It’s about a family’s struggle to create legacy inside a system designed to prevent it. The family patriarch has died leaving $10,000 in life insurance. Lena, the surviving matriarch wants to sink most of the money into an affordable home in a white neighborhood, not because of the demographics, but because “It was the best [she] could do for the money.” Her son Walter Lee’s a chauffeur who wants to invest the money in a family business — a liquor store. Her daughter, pressing against both race and gender norms, has exchanged faith for science and wants to go to medical school. Glimpsing a bigger world she may choose to get out entirely and move to Africa with her foreign-born boyfriend. In the absence of credit or anything more than sustenance income, all these dreams hinge on one pot of insurance money representing the sum total of one man’s difficult life. Add to this dynamic a white representative of Clybourne Park’s progressive neighborhood association who’s arrived to negotiate a kinder, gentler way to keep blacks out, and you have all the ingredients necessary for an emotionally honest and devastating primer in how everything went wrong.
Raisin‘s story is famously inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes. More crucially it’s informed by the Hansberry family’s personal experience in court, fighting the restrictive legal covenants and members only neighborhood associations. Hers is a deeply sad but open-hearted critique of the American Dream, a Depression-era fiction embraced by President Herbert Hoover to sell the advantages of single family home zoning where ethnic groups were excluded, over crowded apartment-based urban living where anybody might move across the street.
Hattiloo has told this story before, and told it well. Stagecraft notwithstanding, the musical tops it, if only because it gives great source material a beat and sticks it to your brain like a bubblegum hit on the radio.
At the top of the show I plunged my face into my hands — I couldn’t look. Committed, vibrant performances were at odds with cool, canned music. It just looked silly and I was sure I was in for a night of deadly theater. But the commitment was real. It was relentless. It overcame and the result was so much more memorable than I ever could have ever imagined during those cringe-worthy opening moments.
Raisin’s Lena became an almost instantaneous theatrical archetype. George C. Wolfe brilliantly lampooned that archteype in The Colored Museum’s “Last Black Mama on the Couch” sketch. Hattiloo stalwart Patricia Smith never sits on a couch or plays to type. Her Lena shifts from thoughtful, nurturing and wise, to superstitious, impulsive and tyrannical. She struggles to create security for her family without realizing how restrictive security can be — or how tenuous. Smith exudes maternal virtue, but her’s is a nuanced, warts-and-all take on a part the veteran performer could have easily phoned in.
Director Mark Allan Davis gets top shelf performances from an ensemble cast that includes Rashideh Gardner, Samantha Lynn, Aaron Isaiah Walker, and Gordon Ginsberg. But Kortland Whalum’s leave it all on stage take on Walter Lee Younger is really something to see. Whalum feels nothing lightly and his words and songs land like punches — some weak, flailing and ineffectual, some like haymakers. It’s as rich a performance as I’ve seen in ages, just at the edge of too much but never tipping over.
Walter Lee gets swindled, of course. I don’t think that’s a spoiler given the shopworn material. He’s one more casualty of unstable alternative economies created when people are isolated and shut out of the regular economy. The Youngers may be moving into a Chicago neighborhood but in this moment Walter Lee becomes the embodiment of Hughes’ “Harlem,” and the “dream deferred.” Maybe this gifted, young, imperfect black man who’s trying to do all the things he’s supposed to do but still can’t get ahead, will finally dry up like a raisin in the sun. Maybe he’ll fester like a sore or stink like rotten meat or sag like a heavy load. Maybe he’ll explode. In a beautifully manicured interpretation, Whalum gives you the sense it’s all on the table all the time.
Short take: This Raisin has some real problems. Telling one helluva strong story isn’t one of them.
When August Wilson wrote Jitney in 1979, he hadn’t yet decided on his master plan to chronicle the modern African-American experience by penning one play for each decade of the 20th century. Maybe that’s why, of all Wilson’s Pittsburgh plays, the 1977-set work is, perhaps, the most completely and unselfconsciously of its time.The looks, textures, and sounds echoing inside of Becker’s illegal gypsy cab company couldn’t exist in any other decade. Conversely, Jitney‘s themes of legacy, family, inequity, perpetual war, and the roots of violence remain timeless, even as the recent ride-sharing revolution created by Uber and Lyft, threatens to dull some of the play’s edge with false familiarity.
When Becker’s drivers, who work for low pay inside a community that’s been shut out by highly regulated cab companies, say “brown car,” or “red Chevy,” into the pay-phone receiver, their terse instructions mirror the experience of using modern rideshare apps. To fully appreciate what Wilson’s done with this play, it’s imperative to understand that, while this behavior is normal and honorable, it’s also technically subversive, and the playwright has done much more than deliver a handful of funny, touching character studies. He has, with very little attention paid to the more shopworn tropes of white bigotry, created a photo negative of Kaufman & Hart’s screwball comedy You Can’t Take It With You, while painting an extraordinary, humor-infused portrait of an American alternative economy created by racist exclusion.
Too often “alternative economy” is treated as a synonym for drug dealers and prostitutes. But for every person working the vice beat, there’s a clutch of shade-tree mechanics, impromptu restaurateurs, door-to-door lawn care professionals, handymen, and skilled and unskilled folks working maintenance for their landlords in exchange for rent forgiveness. Other than the friendly neighborhood numbers man Shealy (played to the deep purple hilt by Jamel Tate), and Philmore, a hotel bellman with a gift for blowing money (Marcus Cox), these are the flawed, striving, and surviving characters Wilson wants us to know better.
Jitney introduces us to Becker, a retired mill worker who has a house, a loving wife, a small pension, and a small underground car service threatened by gentrification. He also has a son, Booster (Steven Fox) who went to jail because he killed the rich white woman who falsely accused him of rape in order to make some truth out of the lie he was going to pay for anyway.
More subtly, Jitney tells a story of black wealth (or lack thereof), and inherited values, in a system where poverty’s exacerbated by bad faith policies that make it hard to own anything of value, let alone keep it for your whole life or pass it down to your children.
As Becker, Lawrence Blackwell projects a quiet, towering decency at odds with an inability to forgive his son. It’s a rich, unfussy performance the scope of which can only be realized just before the final blackout, when tragic endings transform into a new, uncertain beginnings. Even in his absence Becker’s the boss — a respected patriarch judging, sheltering, and defending his weird extended family like a Bible hero.
Hattiloo’s Jitney was directed by Steve Broadnax and boasts a terrific ensemble of character actors including TC Sharpe as Turnbo, a volatile gossip, and Paul Arnett as the level-headed Korean war vet Daub. Bertram Williams Jr. plays Vietnam vet Youngblood, who’s managing flashbacks and working multiple jobs to buy a home for Rena, his kid’s mom (Dawn Bradley).
As Fielding, a one time clothier to kings of the jazz age transformed by time and addiction into a feeble mooch, Jesse Dunlap is outstanding. Wilson’s written the character as a walking, talking blues song and clown role in the noblest sense. Fielding’s full of history, wisdom, and value but wrecked by fate and appetite, and Dunlap owns it all — the good, the bad, and the incorrigible.
Fences is Wilson’s most celebrated work. And casual theater fans probably know The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and maybe Seven Guitars or Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. With good humor and a begrudging but real sense of hope, the lesser-known Jitney shows us the human underpinnings of so many things even woke America is still awakening to. Attention must be paid.
Jitney at Hattiloo Theatre through May 13th. $22-$30, hattiloo.org
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.
Katori Hall has good lines. Hall’s the playwright behind Hurt Village and Hoodoo Love. She won an Olivier for The Mountaintop, which ran on Broadway with Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett in leading roles. She’s also the newly appointed artistic director for the Hattiloo Theatre. “I bleed barbecue sauce,” she said last Friday, stressing her Memphis bona fides and enchanting a near-capacity crowd of invited guests come to welcome her to the new gig. It was a homecoming of sorts for the Craigmont grad (and Columbia, and Harvard) who regards Lynn Nottage as her mentor and whose latest play Pussy Valley is being developed as a streaming series for STARZ.
Friday’s opening night performance of Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning drama Ruined was preceded by a reception celebrating Hall’s arrival and the announcement of a new vision for the Hattiloo. Together with the company’s founder, Ekundayo Bandele, Hall wants to transform the Overton Square playhouse into a small professional company with a national reputation for developing actors and fostering emerging writers.
Ruined is a strong opener and evidence of what the ambitious but inconsistent Hattiloo is capable of. Under the direction of Shondrika Moss-Bouldin, it’s the most satisfying, fully realized thing the company’s done since Tony Horne’s vividly imagined production of Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand last season. When Nottage’s Congolese Civil War drama is on, it’s on fire.
Set in Mama Nadi’s bar in a bleeding and brutalized mining town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ruined borrows knowingly and well from shows like Cabaret and Mother Courage and Her Children. Mama is a businesswoman selling cigarettes, whiskey, and other goods and comforts to the soldiers, militiamen, miners, and dealers on all sides of a shapeshifting conflict. She buys other kinds of merchandise, too — rescuing two women, Sophie and Salima, from sexual torture that scars them physically and wrecks them socially. She rescues them and puts them to work entertaining soldiers indistinguishable from the ones who ruined them.
Mama’s protection is a mixed blessing that comes at a price for women still coping with sexual trauma, particularly for Sophie, who becomes a popular singer at the bar, with a head for business and petty larceny. But touchy, insistent soldiers cause panic and paralysis, putting her on a collision course with Mama’s business side. She will ultimately fare better than Salima who arrives with a secret she knows she can’t keep hidden.
Ruined starkly considers the rape and the sexual mutilation of women as weapons and tactics of war. These nightmares are brought to vivid life by 2017 Ostrander nominee Jessica “Jai” Johnson and Kiah Clements as Salima and Sophie.
As Mama, Maya Robinson leans heavily on strong comedy chops. The humor softens Mama’s hard edges but not too much. It’s a rich performance, and her scenes with Bertram Williams Jr. — a supplier and would-be romantic interest — keep hope alive in a violent place. Williams, it should be noted, has been performing with Hattiloo since the beginning and has transitioned from serviceable leading man to commanding presence who gets better with each new role.
Americans are isolated, largely untraveled, and tend to think of foreign conflicts as somebody else’s problem. But globalism means the violence is usually closer than you think. When you watch a production of Ruined, you’ve got to know that the modern technology everybody enjoys has funded war in the Congo. Cell phones funded it. Laptop computers funded it. Video game consoles funded it. That’s not what the show is about, but the brutality has context. Coltan, the rare mineral found in abundance in the Congo and used as currency in Ruined, is that context. Recommended.
Once a Memphis underdog, the Hattiloo found its niche by offering something no one else in the city could provide: quality live theater performances aimed primarily at African Americans. Mastermind Ekundayo Bandele leveraged his success on Marshall Avenue into a brand new theater facility in Overton Square. Now the hands-on impresario is returning to Marshall with a new endeavor: the Baobab Filmhouse.
Set in the Hattiloo’s former black-box space, the 42-seat theater is a labor of love. “I installed all of the seats,” Bandele says. “My wife and I have been in here for the past month building and painting.”
Bandele’s Baobab
Like the Hattiloo, Baobab Filmhouse is intended for an overlooked population. “My impetus was the Academy Awards, when no blacks were nominated this year,” Bandele says. “There are so many great black films out there — they may not be mainstream, many of them are indie. So my goal is to share those great films made not just by black Americans, but by blacks worldwide. We’ve got films coming out of Zimbabwe, Toronto, Jamaica. We want to provide a platform for people to come see great black film.”
Baobab opens this Friday with CRU, a 2014 film by director Alton Glass that traces the ripple effects of a single car accident on the lives of a group of friends. A new film will start every two weeks, with each offering running for a month in a staggered schedule to fit on Baobab’s single screen. Next up is The Tested, which Bandele calls “A timely film, because it deals with a white police officer killing a black teen. It’s not only about how the black community deals with it; it’s about how the white officer deals with it.”
Other future offerings include the Chris Rock vehicle 2 Days in New York and Charles Burnett’s classic Killer of Sheep. “We have films lined up all the way to next March,” Bandele says. “I think it’s going to be a good addition for our city.”
Before reviewing the Hattiloo’s fun but flawed production of Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, I’d like to say just a few words about a special event that happened this past weekend on the Rhodes College campus. Students and community actors who performed in each of the McCoy Theatre’s 35 seasons returned to Memphis to honor retiring theater professor Julia “Cookie” Ewing. The surprise party/cabaret packed the theater and included a live performance by an ensemble comprised of 43 alumni. Ewing’s the kind of committed, challenging educator who inspires good students to be better students — and better people while they’re at it. She was my faculty advisor. She’s never stopped being my teacher. The abundant love and legacy on display this weekend evidenced Ewing’s virtuoso performance as a mentor to generations. Standing O.
Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet shows incredible potential, but is undermined, ultimately, by an inattention to technical detail. A fine group of actors have come together to present the last chapter of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s deceptively challenging “Brother/Sister” trilogy, and with the help of director Dennis Darling, these actors share many fine moments together. Unfortunately, on the night I attended, all those moments happened in near darkness, obscuring faces and hiding the twinkle and the terror in the actors’ eyes. There was no front lighting to speak of and very little texture in either the lighting or scenic design. It’s a superficial problem, but one that makes it difficult for me to wholeheartedly recommend a piece of theater I’d normally want to stand up and cheer about.
McCraney’s a certifiable wunderkind who writes stylized family dramas overlaid with ritual. His sense of community calls to mind the August Wilson canon, but, formally speaking, the two writers couldn’t be more dissimilar. McCraney’s scripts borrow from African mythology, with dialogue so musical his characters sometimes have no choice but to burst into full-throated song. In many regards, Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet is the most conventional play in a set that includes In the Red and Brown Water and The Brothers Size. But it’s hardly conventional. Dream sequences weave in and out of an already dreamy narrative while ghosts and confused lovers follow one another through a swampy Louisiana landscape. In some regards, it’s a lot like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but with all of the old fairytale’s original mystery and danger restored.
Marcus tells the story of a young man’s sexual awakening and an accompanying compulsion to learn more about his father. Marcus is “sweet” — a euphemism for effeminate. Maybe he’s gay. Maybe it’s more complicated than that. At any rate, the curious young man is trying to learn the secret codes that exist in a tightly knit African-American community where homosexuality is kept on the DL. He wants to make connections, not only with new friends and lovers, but with history and also to some much bigger ideas. You don’t need to be familiar with the other “Brother/Sister” plays to follow the action, but the show will be richer for those who are. It will be richer still for those who go the extra mile to learn about all the African thunder gods and gender-bending trickster deities McCraney alludes to throughout.
Cameron Yates is so vulnerable as Marcus — able to stop hearts with his quiet reticence and warm them again with shy, schoolgirl laughter. He’s strongly supported by Mary Ann Washington (Oba), Hannaan Aisha Ester (Shaunta Lyun), Derrick Johnson (Shua/Oshoosi Size), and an able ensemble cast that is collectively responsible for some of the season’s most satisfyingly human interactions. What’s surprising, though, given director Darling’s background as a musician and conductor, is how all of these interactions occur in the context of a production wanting for shape and dynamics.
I get that much of Marcus’ action occurs at night. The challenge is to create the illusion of evening and shadow while still framing the characters and punctuating the action with light. But instead of blossoming into the bright sunflower it’s supposed to be, this production just kept audiences in the dark.
Carla McDonald 
