Tag: Lord of the Flies

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Theater Theater Feature

Memphis theaters confront a variety of hideous creatures.

CREDIT: Bill Simmers

Daylight saving time may have sprung us forward Sunday, but even so, it’s getting darker out there all the time. Almost every production on stage in Memphis right now toys in some way with concepts of ugliness, scars, and deformity. In Lord of the Flies, schoolboys turn into murderous beasts when they’re marooned on an island. Violet’s about a girl whose face was scarred by an axe. Based on the true story of the conjoined Hilton twins, Side Show tells a circus story populated by a cast of “human oddities.” Blackbird‘s a tiny piece of chamber theater subjecting audiences to 90 painfully awkward real-time minutes as a victim of child sexual abuse confronts her abuser at his workplace. Everything’s ugly, and beautifully done.

There are moments in Playhouse on the Square’s chillingly austere take on William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies when the story’s opposing gangs threaten to stage a Pat Benatar video or square off in a Jets vs. Sharks dance-off. The sequences — impressive as they are — create tonal inconsistencies in a strong show. It works but never as cohesively as it might.

Lord of the Flies is the definition of an ensemble show. Director Jordan Nichols brought together an age-appropriate cast of (mostly) teens, capable of addressing the story’s heart and its horror. Golding’s violent parable of tribalism and unraveling democracy is encumbered by a bit of post-colonial savage vs. civilization bias, but its story of marooned British schoolboys playing naked dominance politics rings as true as ever. The kids nail it.

In one of the evening’s more effective movement numbers, the cast becomes a living, breathing evolution chart going one way first, then full on reverse. It’s too brutal and too beautiful and probably too on the nose. It’s also a perfect bullseye.

Lord of the Flies at Playhouse on the Square through March 26th

Violet‘s the best Tony-nominated musical nobody’s ever heard of. Based on Doris Betts’ short story The Ugliest Pilgrim and buoyed by a collage of authentic Americana sounds, Violet tells the story of a hardened young woman who’s pinned her hopes and dreams on a Tulsa faith healer. It’s a road trip story prominently featuring one hot, transformative night in Memphis. In a short-feeling 90 minutes, Violet tackles big ideas about race, class, beauty, and faith with none of the usual “put it on Jesus” cliches. Germantown Community Theatre’s production of Violet boasts some extraordinary voices and some not-so-extraordinary voices, but it’s all honesty and heart. Nichol Pritchard’s Violet is someone everybody knows. Hers is a standout performance.

Violet composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) dove deep into American roots music and delivered an unpretentious country-, blues-, and bluegrass-laden score, where Bo Diddley beats meet big Broadway ballads.

Violet at Germantown Community Theatre through March 26th

If you like good acting, go see Blackbird. If you like stories that are so overloaded with emotional twists, you’ll spend the rest of the night unpacking it all, go see Blackbird. This first production by Memphis’ Quark Theatre is one hell of an introduction. Tony Isbell and Fiona Battersby play Ray and Una — a sexual predator and his one known victim. Their unexpected reunion in Ray’s workplace keeps audiences squirming, cringing, and trying very hard to look away (and failing) for 90 intense minutes.

Blackbird at TheatreSouth through March 26th

Side Show‘s got it all — great voices, great design, and a great story to tell. It doesn’t really capture the hell conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton lived through and only hints at a life where every relationship is abusive, reducing a horrible existence to so much irony and failed romance, but for all of its missed opportunities, this circus musical cuts to the core of everyday insecurity. Who hasn’t felt like everybody was staring at them and asked “Who will love me as I am?”

With the simplest gestures, Theatre Memphis’ designers have turned the entire main stage space into a big top. The effect brings everybody into the same big tent for the show’s duration.

Side Show at Theatre Memphis through April 2nd

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Sports Sports Feature

NBA Chaos Theory

“This is why we can’t have nice things.” That’s the first thought I had when I read Marc Stein of ESPN’s tweet dropping the bomb no one (save for maybe Chris Wallace) saw coming: Jason Levien and Stu Lash were on their way out of the Grizzlies organization. The Grizzlies had just finished up a tumultuous season: 50 games won despite injuries; a first-year head coach; long stretches of uninspired, lackluster play; and a barrage of Zach Randolph trade rumors.

Throughout the season, we learned a few things: Dave Joerger, despite his flaws and growing pains, is undeniably a decent coach. (Before you write those angry Lionel Hollins letters, please note that I said “decent.”) Levien, Lash, and John Hollinger proved they could make smart basketball decisions that also took the franchise’s long-term financial health into consideration. On the business side, the team has never been in better shape. ESPN ranked the Grizzlies the #1 Franchise in Professional Sports for a reason.

All of that isn’t necessarily gone, but it’s certainly been jeopardized. Controlling owner Robert Pera has shown some of the smartest guys in the business the door, allowed Joerger to interview for the Minnesota Timberwolves’ coaching job, and has said absolutely nothing about what he’s thinking or where the team is going. Not that he has to, of course. The fact remains, though, that the only people talking about what’s going on are people who were just shown the door, and thus 1) don’t know what’s happening with the team any longer and 2) are, shall we say, motivated to paint what has already happened as the lashings out of a crazy person.

Not that we know whether Pera is a crazy person or not. It’s entirely possible that he is, but it’s entirely possible that he has a carefully thought-out master plan that will take the Grizzlies from good to great. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The onus is now on Pera to regain the trust of the fan base and prove that he knows what he’s doing. Trust takes time to build and no time at all to destroy. There’s every reason in the world to think the Grizzlies are transforming into the Knicks right before our eyes: an owner who wants to call shots he shouldn’t be calling and who lacks the self-awareness to know when to stand back and let the basketball people do their jobs. That works in New York, where the Knicks have a license to print money. That goes a long way to cover up inept management. It doesn’t work in a small market, where the team has to break even to be viable, and a big part of breaking even is careful management, both of the business side and the basketball side. The Grizzlies’ fan base is still young and relatively fragile. A detour back to the broken-foot-Pau days may not permanently damage that relationship between team and city, but it won’t help.

There are on-court things to consider, too. How does this affect Zach Randolph’s decision-making regarding his player option this summer? If Pera makes the wrong moves, will Marc Gasol want to stay around next summer? If the wrong head coach is brought in, will that coach be able to manage the personalities in this locker room? It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the good things the Griz have built over the past five years are washed away by a bad hire or two.

It could work out, of course. But at the very least, the power structure of the Grizzlies’ unwieldy ownership group has been upended, and relationships there may be damaged beyond repair. A promising front office has been partially dismantled, and a promising young coach has been shown the door, possibly because a player or two didn’t like him (but then, we don’t really know what the players said in those secret season-ending interviews with Pera). At the very least, instability has been injected into a situation where it didn’t seem like there was any, and Pera has taken his basketball team from a smart situation set up for success to, well, who knows?

It was already going to be an important summer for the Grizzlies, but it was only supposed to be roster decisions that determined the future direction of the team. Now there is no direction visible, and all of us get to sit and watch and wait for the Grizzlies to be remade in some image. But whose will it be, and how will it shake out? That’s up to Robert Pera, for better or for worse.