Tag: Playhouse on the Square

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How Will the Pandemic Change the Arts?

Memphis cultural organizations are planning for an uncertain future.

A recent study published on the Know Your Own Bone website had some information that cultural organizations are studying carefully. The survey asked what it would take to make people feel safe and comfortable in going back to the cultural places we’ve had to give up during the coronavirus pandemic. When can we safely go back to the theater? The museum? The symphony?

The upshot is that there are various factors, and some attractions (theaters, concerts) will have a somewhat tougher time getting people back than others (museums).

The study is being closely examined by those in the culture business. And figuring out how to survive has been an ongoing topic, not just within organizations, but among their leaders. That was made plain in interviews with local heads of these organizations. And every one of them is facing dire circumstances, but every one is planning on surviving.

Ned Canty

Ned Canty, general director of Opera Memphis, describes the problem: “I have said for years that part of what makes opera and other live performing arts special is that you’re in there breathing the same air as the people. Of course, that’s no longer a selling point for any of us.”

It will likely get back to that someday, but for now it’s up to digital technology to make opera special. “We’re doing as much online content as we can,” Canty says.

For example, he says, Opera Memphis has done a Facebook live stream “where we’ve got singers from all over on a Zoom call and you can vote on what they’re going to sing. That kind of thing feels different to people than us just posting something that’s been prerecorded. The idea of something that’s happening right now being different than something that happened previously may sound small, but that’s definitely informed the way that we think about how to create digital content or curate the content that we’ve created in the past.”

Canty says he — and all arts organizations, to some extent — are wrestling with the imminent question: “We are asking ourselves what does a season look like in a time when people don’t want to gather in groups or are not allowed to gather in groups for whatever reason?”

Along with that, he notes that some issues that have been more or less on the back burner of arts groups are suddenly imperative. “The timeline has changed, and we’ve all been thrown into the deep end of the online content trying to figure out, what does this mean?” he says.

“We’ve already learned that there are certain things that we could’ve been doing for years that would have added value for our patrons,” Canty says. “And we haven’t been doing them, in part, because of the time it takes to learn how to do these things and how to do them well — there was never time for that. Well, now we have to learn these things.”

What’s going for any performing arts institution that relies on a gathering of people is the basic human need to see somebody live right where you are. “And the corollary to that is we will always want to share that with someone next to us,” Canty says. “Whether we know that person or not, that increases the value of the experience for everyone. Otherwise, why would anyone go to concerts when they own every album? Why would anyone go to a ballgame when they can watch them on TV and have a much better view? It is a basic human need that will not go away.”

So, all that’s needed is a miracle cure. “We need to be back doing shows and theater soon,” he says. “And that means coming up with a plan in case nobody wants to leave the house or can’t leave the house. What do we do with this period where restrictions have been lifted but people are not yet comfortable?”

Steven McMahon

Steven McMahon, artistic director at Ballet Memphis, says that canceling Cinderella at the Orpheum and postponing summer programming has been tough. But he’s determined to keep bringing dance “with technology as a buffer until we can be together again safely.”

Last week was the organization’s first online performance, and though a bit glitchy, the response was encouraging. Ballet Memphis is having dance classes online on YouTube, and virtual Pilates classes, and wants to do more.

As for the business, McMahon says, “We’ve had to make some difficult but prudent decisions, and while it has been uncomfortable, our long-term sustainability is our greatest concern. We are dedicated to our dancers and, with significant help from supporters, have thankfully been able to honor their full contracts for the season.”

As for the next season, he’s pressing ahead. “I have planned a season that is about joy and hope, two things that I think we will all need when we come through this storm,” he says. “I have had to completely redesign what next season looks like for us, but I promise we will never compromise on quality or originality. Next season looks different, but it looks great.”

Kevin Sharp

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens has one advantage: Much of what people enjoy is outdoors, and when restrictions ease, people are likely to want to find places with spaces.

“We probably will bring staff back from working at home very gradually,” says Kevin Sharp, director of the Dixon. “We will almost certainly start with the gardens team, and they will have a tremendous amount of work to do to make the Dixon presentable again. We have kept everything alive on the grounds, but it is impossible to do much more than that.”

When the gardens are reopened, there will still be cautions. “Even with 17 acres, we may become more explicit about what people can and cannot do on the property,” Sharp says. “Once the museum can reopen, and I have no sense of when that will be — June or July perhaps — we may have to limit access to an agreed upon number of visitors at any given time. We have great exhibitions scheduled this summer and this fall, and I am eager for people to see them, but not if it puts them or the Dixon staff at risk. It all feels manageable, but a lot more complicated and structured than business as usual.”

The Dixon staff, he says, is going through various scenarios regarding education programs, outreach, workshops, lectures, special events, and facility rentals. “Under the best of circumstances,” he says, “maybe all of our programs resume at some point, only with much tighter controls. In a worse situation, we would double down on the virtual experiences we are already creating.”

Sharp says the Dixon has lost some revenues that won’t be recovered, and it’s in an austerity mode as far as spending. “But there is a great deal we can do just by rolling up our sleeves and working together, even if working together means working separately. We will stay that way for as long as we possibly can, and by that, I mean for the duration. Together, we will make things happen.”

Debbie Litch

Theatre Memphis was in the unusual position of already being dark as this pandemic came into being. Its 100th anniversary season begins this fall, and it closed down in January to begin a renovation and expansion of its facility. That work continues, and Theatre Memphis hopes to open Hello, Dolly! as scheduled in late August.

But, as executive producer Debbie Litch says, changes have already begun: “We have completed the virtual auditions for our first three shows of our 2020-21 season including Hello, Dolly!, The Secret Garden, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The process was totally new and different, but successful.”

The rehearsal process is likely to be different, with a limit on the number of people allowed to rehearse at one time. “Safety is always a top priority at Theatre Memphis for our staff, actors, volunteers, and patrons,” she says.

Litch says that preventive measures are being incorporated even as the revamped facility comes together. “It will allow for more distancing between patrons with additional restrooms and sinks, multiple entrances, and expanded spaces in the lobby, as well as a new south corridor and porte-cochère,” she says. Before opening, the building will undergo a deep cleaning.

And the process of attending the theater will be different. “We will adhere to six-foot-separation lines at the box office, will call, restrooms, and concessions,” she says. “We will ask our bartenders, box office, ushers, and house managers to wear masks.”

Litch is unsure just how the seating arrangements will change. “We will adhere to the rules if we must space and limit our seating,” she says. “Then we will have to look at adding performances so we can accommodate our patrons during a popular musical production and A Christmas Carol. If that is the case, then I will have to contact the performance rights agencies to see if they can adjust the royalties based on attendance rather than number of shows, which could cause a considerable increase in royalties per show.”

She says, “We are cautiously hopeful that we can proceed with a new or revised regimen in place and look forward to our 100th-anniversary celebration season.”

Ekundayo Bandele

Hattiloo Theatre has had to cancel shows, summer youth programs, and reduce staff. It’s a blow, but founder Ekundayo Bandele has always had the long view and he’s trying to otherwise make the most of the shutdown. He’s been positioning Hattiloo as a significant regional black theater, noting that a third of Hattiloo’s audience is from outside the Mid-South.

With the usual performance avenues shut down, Bandele has been getting creative with virtual performances and virtual programming to expand that by a third. Part of that is having a series of Zoom panel discussions on aspects of black theater with nationally recognized actors, directors, writers, and academics (the second one is Wednesday, April 22nd).

It’s a natural extension of what Hattiloo has long done: promoting discussion in the community and expanding its offerings. “We plan to draw more attention to Memphis by commissioning new works,” Bandele says. “Typically we’ve just done established plays, but we’ve now commissioned a play by Jireh Breon Holder, and if you want to to see it, you’ve got to come to Memphis.”

Commissions and bringing in celebrities into the programming is part of Bandele’s long-term plan to increase the stature of Hattiloo on the national scene. As problematic as the pandemic shutdown is, he says, “It’s given us time to look at what we set in motion, look at how can we better implement what we’ve already set in motion, and then what are some of the other tools that we have that can complement what we are putting in motion.”

Peter Abell

The Memphis Symphony Orchestra is shut down for now, but not silent. Peter Abell, president and CEO, says, “It’s certainly new territory for those of us whose perceived existence is about gathering people together as a core element. It’s forced us to really think through the important elements, which are artists connecting with people, with communities, with organizations through their skills and their talents. That’s really what we’re about.”

He says playing on stage is what everyone loves to do, and he believes the time will come when the MSO will do concerts again. “Our goal is to just stay as flexible as possible.”

Abell says conversations are ongoing, with musicians, the MSO’s partners, Ballet Memphis, Opera Memphis, and other arts groups, including symphony organizations around the country.

“We haven’t totally come to terms with what that looks like from a long-term perspective,” he says, “but we are pretty clear that our focus is on supporting the musicians. Very early we decided that we would pay the musicians’ contracts for the remainder of the season.”

And it is the MSO musicians, he says, who are coming up with creative ideas on how to stay connected. “We published a virtual performance of Rossini’s William Tell Overture finale, available on the MSO’s Facebook page. Every musician recorded their part, usually on their iPhone camera, and emailed it back. It was all synced up with Robert Moody ‘conducting’ it from his home.”

Music education is a top priority of the MSO, and that’s getting some reconsideration along with everything else. “How can we support traditional music education, the orchestra experience?” Abell asks. “We have a pretty big focus on early literacy through a program we do called Tunes & Tales. A lot of that’s going to be able to continue on maybe a little different look in the way we present it.”

So the planning goes on with an eye toward filling up a concert hall again. “They say absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Abell says. “So hopefully there’ll be a time when people just can’t get a ticket ’cause everyone wants to go.”

Michael Detroit, executive producer at Playhouse on the Square, says the organization has long been fiscally responsible, which is helping weather drastic changes wrought by the coronavirus.

But the stark fact is that the usual earned income has gone away, and that’s what was used toward paying employees, getting materials, keeping the lights on, and so forth. Playhouse gets grants and donations, but it is ticket sales, classes, and rentals that make up the majority of the budget.

“We’ve been hit pretty hard,” Detroit acknowledges. But to get through it, he got with Whitney Jo, managing director, and decided first that nobody would be laid off — there are 40 full- and part-time employees — and that contracts would be completed. “We shut down three shows that were in the middle of production — up on the stages — and that was a huge hit to our finances,” he says. We ended up canceling two more. We canceled two education programs. We postponed three shows. We postponed three other education programs. And we canceled our largest fundraiser of the year, the art auction.”

Detroit says that they’ve been undertaking financial planning and projections to calculate the various possibilities. Similarly, they have a plan if they can open in June, or if not, then a plan for July, and so on. “We’ve got the programming, we just need to know when to turn it on,” he says. There are committees that meet daily, and there are meetings with other arts groups, all to find a way through the shutdown.

He says that there won’t be any streaming of performances because none of what they do is in the public domain. “And even if we were allowed to stream something,” Detroit says, “the technology involved needs to be learned and we don’t have that capacity.”

POTS is doing Facebook live events, which are more about marketing, so it can be ready when the doors open again. And when that happens, things will be in place for the new normal. “People will be spread out in the theater,” Detroit says. “So instead of a sell-out being 347 seats, that will probably be, you know, 170 or whatever. And we’ll space one or two seats apart. We’ll have some spacing things done in our lobbies so people don’t have to stand on top of each other. The big thing is going to be when they have a cure for this. That’s when everybody’s going to feel comfortable being next to each other and hugging each other and shaking each other’s hand. But that’s not going to be for a year. So we’ll keep taking it day by day just like everybody else.”

Emily Ballew Neff

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has seen many changes in its 104-year history. Executive director Emily Ballew Neff says, “History tells us that after 9/11 and post-2008, whenever there is a cataclysmic kind of change, that people yearn more than ever for cultural experiences, and that visitation to art museums goes way up. Art connects us to what it means to be human.”

The desire to come back to the museum is assured, but the challenge is how to best do it. “When is it ethical and safe to reopen and what does reopening look like?” she asks. “That means doing a lot of scenario planning, and there’s a lot of uncertainty right now as we try to figure that out and look at the different models.”

The approach, she says, requires being nimble. The Brooks had to furlough several of the staff, and its biggest fundraiser in May had to be postponed. Reopening will be on a schedule set by the virus and a hoped-for vaccine.

“[When there is a] vaccine is when everyone will feel, I would imagine, 100 percent comfortable being in larger crowds,” Neff says. “So we’re looking at everything from limited galleries being open and the experiences that go along with that. We’re asking if we need to have the infrared thermometers. Do we need to be looking at how the grocery stores do it for their older patrons, having a separate opening time for seniors? We’re always balancing the safety, ethical, and accessibility questions.”

Neff acknowledges that a crisis like this forces an organization to look afresh at its practices. “For example, our digital platforms were not as robust as they needed to be,” she says. “We needed to pivot quickly because that is the way we reach our audiences now. You’re having to balance those shifting priorities, and do it quickly with minimal resources.”

Meanwhile, museum-goers might expect fewer traveling exhibitions for now. “There’s a sort of ballet dance that happens behind the scenes of an art museum that has to do with the crating, the shipping, the insurance, the courier trucks, the security, and the people to do that. And so that is definitely going to slow down, and some instances stop, at least in the short-term.”

Instead, look for more exhibitions from the museum’s permanent collection. “We’ve always wanted to do a lot of collection remixes and use the time before moving Downtown into a new building [planned for 2025] to continue the evaluation of the collection as we’ve done the past couple of years, but also experiment with a number of different installation ideas.”

Education is a crucial element of the Brooks’ existence, and Neff says they’ve been moving on that front. “The short-term impact is that everything planned for this period is moving online,” she says. “This past week we had home-school day, but that obviously had to move online. So did all of the materials, all of the planning that went into that, all of the preparation, all of the curriculum. And we have a very robust home-school program that is now available online.” Those short-term moves will likely become long-term as well while the museum works with school systems to scope out the future. — Jon W. Sparks

Indie Memphis (and Film Festivals)

One of the great unknowns of the post-pandemic world is what the film and theater industries will look like. As a business designed around gathering large numbers of people together for a shared experience, movie theaters were among the first closures, and could be among the last venues to come back online. One problem is that even if a movie theater owner has good reason to believe it is safe to reopen, they couldn’t do it easily, since all the Hollywood studios and national film distributors have pulled their planned offerings, either delaying release dates or prematurely pushing films to streaming services.

Plans to reopen the theater chains will have to be coordinated at least regionally, more likely nationally. Memphis-based Malco Theatres declined to comment for this article.

Film festivals like Indie Memphis face both a dilemma and an opportunity. From the industry perspective, the traditional idea of a festival is to get films in front of an audience of cinephiles in order to gauge their potential for wide release and to make a case for purchase by distributors. For the audience, it’s a chance to see next year’s hot movies today, and to see stranger, more niche, or cutting-edge work. The close mixture of artists, pros, and audience members at screenings, panels, and parties is crucial to the festival atmosphere — but it also presents opportunities for coronavirus transmission. Sundance, for example, which is held in Park City, Utah, in January, is notorious for “the festival flu.”

For Indie Memphis, which hosts year-round programming, the timing of the pandemic was particularly bad. Last year, the festival announced a partnership with Malco Theatres to take over a screen at Studio on the Square that would expand the festival’s weekly arthouse and indie screening programs to seven days a week. Indie Memphis executive director Ryan Watt says they were busy preparing the Indie Memphis Cinema when the shutdowns began. “We were days away from announcing a campaign leading up to opening night. And we were planning on April 9th, so in early March, we realized this might not even happen.”

So, Indie Memphis, like the rest of the country, pivoted to living online. “Most of the Hollywood movies have been delayed,” says Watt. “But the smaller, niche, arthouse titles, foreign films, and documentaries decided it doesn’t make any sense to delay. They might as will find a way to get the movies available online in some capacity.”

Easier said than done for festivals and cinemas whose business model and copyright management regimes are designed around the in-person experience. That’s where an innovative company with deep ties to Indie Memphis stepped up.

Iddo Patt

Eventive grew out of a need in the film festival world for a better ticketing system, says founder Iddo Patt, a Memphis-based filmmaker, producer, and longtime Indie Memphis board member. “The basic problem was that the festival sold passes, but also wanted to sell single tickets to the movies. But you had no way of knowing which pass-holders were coming to what movies, so you had to set aside a certain number of seats.”

The information disparity would sometimes lead to films that were marked as “sold out” playing to half-empty theaters while frustrated, would-be audience members stewed in the lobby. “The idea was,” says Patt, “could you make a virtual punch card that would let somebody who bought a pass reserve a ticket to a movie, and then you could also sell tickets to the movie directly to people who only wanted to buy single tickets, and they would all come out of the same place?

Theo Patt

“It seems pretty straightforward, but it’s not simple to implement. So I asked my son Theo, who at that time was was 15 years old but a very serious computer programmer already, if he could find us something that we could use that would do that. He said, ‘There’s nothing off the shelf, but I will build it for you guys.’”

Indie Memphis launched the ticketing system that would come to be known as Eventive in the fall of 2015. It was a game-changer. It not only allowed the festival to keep better track of their box office, but also allowed festival-goers an easy way to plan their experiences. “The way he built it, it wasn’t just that it did the tickets, but it also displayed the online schedule of events and films and basically created a whole customer-facing website,” says Patt. “People loved it. So in 2016, Theo re-architected the platform to be functional for multiple festivals.” The Patts had to figure out how to cope with growing demand for a product they didn’t expect to catch on. “The next year, [Theo was] heading into his senior year. So I had to think about, how is this thing gonna continue without being a burden to him while he’s in college?”

Patt met with a number of software companies to gauge interest in the nascent product. “They said, ‘You have a mature and highly developed platform here, and there’s nothing else like it. What you really need are sales.’ So in 2017, we decided we would turn it into, essentially, a free-standing product that was available to everyone.”

Eventive formally launched with a presentation at the January 2018 Art House Convergence conference. Demand surged immediately. “We went into this year with 118 festivals and art house cinemas around the world using the platform,” says Patt.

By March, Theo was studying Computer Science at Stanford University and Iddo was traveling the film festival circuit signing up new customers and helping new users implement the system. Iddo says he was driving from New Orleans to Memphis when he realized the world was about to change. As the wave of cancellations crashed and Theo was sent home when Stanford closed down, the duo tried to figure out how to translate the festival experience online. “How can we take this infrastructure that we built and connect it with some kind of streaming option that we can offer our partner festivals, just to continue to be able to show movies to folks? We looked at the platforms that were out there and pretty quickly realized that there was nothing that would work to provide us a seamless customer experience — an Eventive-level experience.”

Once again, the problem is more complex than it sounds on first blush. “It is very, very important to strictly protect the film, and to protect it in a way that there’s not somebody unlocking it with a password or a code or whatever,” says Patt. “The content protections are actually built into the system, and the event organizers are able to strictly limit the availability dates. The film festival model is based on filmmakers and distributors giving festivals films for free or for a nominal rental fee, and the film festival brings in an audience. But the idea is that the audience is there for a defined period of time with a limited number of seats in a particular place. We wanted to give the festivals the ability to sort of replicate that model.”

In a matter of weeks, Theo had cranked out the new code and Iddo was wooing clients. By early April, the Indie Memphis Movie Club served as a test case, and they scored a major coup by convincing Sony Pictures Classics to entrust the new platform with their new release The Traitor. By last week, Eventive had signed up 20 festivals that had previously canceled to shift to the new online platform. This week, the Oxford Film Festival will become the first to use the Eventive system to take place fully online.

Indie Memphis’ Watt says everyone has been pleased with the new system’s performance so far, and they will soon be using Eventive exclusively for weekly Movie Club screenings. He says the organization’s annual film festival will take place as scheduled in late October, but depending on the prevailing epidemiological conditions, it may be an online festival or some blend of live and virtual events. But given the considerable effort being thrown into the innovative new systems, Watt believes the online component will be a staple of film festival life going forward. “We want to get to a point for the user where the Indie Memphis platform will be one more thing — like Netflix — that they’re just used to.” — Chris McCoy

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News News Blog

Former Employee in Federal Suit Against Playhouse on the Square

CREDIT: leannakeyes.com

leannakeyes.com

Keyes

The curtain is about to rise on another act in the legal drama surrounding Playhouse on the Square (POTS) during the heyday of its since-retired founder and executive producer, Jackie Nichols.

Leanna Keyes, a former production manager at POTS, has filed suit in federal court, charging the company with “retaliatory” termination of her services following her role in addressing “allegations of sexual assault” against Nichols.

Amid accusations by several women of past sexual improprieties, Nichols, who is generally credited with having been of seminal importance in the general culture and development of drama in Memphis, took voluntary leave of absence in January, 2018, and in March of the same year formally resigned his position.

The resignation occurred following the completion by the law firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson of an investigation of the charges against Nichols. The investigation, whose results were never made public, was requested by the executive board of POTS.

The Playhouse, under its assumed name of Circuit Playhouse, Inc., is defendant in the current suit by Keyes, who asserts that she was dismissed after “a perfunctory review because she did not fit in the ‘family culture’ of the theatre company, which ‘family culture’ was to tolerate unlawful employment practices and protect predatory sexual assaults.”

Keyes seeks “that a jury be empaneled to hear and decide all issues set forth or fairly raised herein and requests a judgment granting the following relief against the defendant: compensatory damages in the amount of not less than $750,000.00; pre- and post- judgment interest; punitive or exemplary damages in the amount commensurate with defendant’s ability to pay and to deter future misconduct; litigation costs and attorneys’ fees to the extent allowable by law; and any and all other legal and equitable relief that this court may deem just and proper under the circumstances.”

In her first month of employment after being hired by the Playhouse in November 2017, Keyes was “touched inappropriately by a senior staff member,” the suit says, and was “warned … of Jackie Nichols’ predatory behavior and told … specifically not to be alone with him.” Later, she learned of specific public accusations of sexual improprieties against Nichols and, along with “another newly hired staff member, Mr. William Gibbons-Brown, undertook an informal investigation with [POTS] interns and staff.”

Keyes would later prepare a series of demands and goals pertaining to the work environment at POTS and presented them to the Playhouse board on behalf of some 30 interns and staff members. Subsequently, according to the suit, “Whitney Jo and Mike Detroit called an all-staff meeting where they announced that Jackie Nichols had taken a voluntary leave of absence and advised all staff members of the Handbook’s prohibition on any discussion of Playhouse business.”

Though she was never subject to negative evaluations or disciplinary action, the suit alleges that Keyes “noticed that Mike Detroit and Whitney Jo began ignoring and marginalizing her within the workplace.” In February 2018, in the wake of her three-month evaluation period and after completing work on the production Once, Keyes was given a “perfunctory” review and was told “that she did not fit ‘family culture’ of POTS and was presented with her termination letter.”

Keyes went on to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on February 27, 2018 and was issued a “right to sue letter” by the EEOC.

Her suit alleges that “as a result of Defendant’s conduct in terminating Ms. Keyes’ employment, Ms. Keyes has suffered — and will continue to suffer — lost income, lost fringe benefits, damage to her reputation, humiliation, loss of economic advantage and has incurred expenses in searching for replacement employment.”

One count of the suit alleges that Keyes was subjected to a “hostile work environment.” A second count attests to an “unlawful retaliatory discharge.”

Keyes is represented in her action by Bruce Kramer, Jake Brown, and Melody Dernocoeur of the Apperson Crump legal firm.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Playhouse On The Square Invites You To The Cabaret

The cast of Cabaret, Playhouse on the Square

“No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret”
— “Cabaret”

I posted some thoughts about Cabaret‘s nearly infuriating relevance last week. It was a kind of preview for Playhouse on the Square’s opening. Only, instead of looking behind the scenes, it went behind the text to ask where all the Nazis came from. And, by extension, I wanted to know where America’s Nazis went when the U.S. entered WWII and the national narrative turned against them.

As musical theater rollouts go, it was a pretty bleak exercise. But even a week ago, I don’t think I could have anticipated the kinds of headlines I’d wake up to on the morning I sat down to write the review. Twitter was full of news about racism, misogyny, drunkenness, sexual exhibitionism and drug use inside Tennessee’s GOP leadership — rot in the head of an organization so grotesque it wouldn’t hear, let alone approve, a 2018 proposal to condemn Nazis and white supremacy. But the headline that really got my attention was this: “Man Patrolling With Border Militia Suggested Going ‘Back To Hitler Days.”
“Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them?”  Armando Gonzalez was quoted as saying. “We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber.”

That’s a lot to deal with at the top of a review, but hard to ignore given Cabaret’s subject matter and Playhouse on the Square’s sometimes very brave and sometimes ragged interpretation of material that stubbornly refuses to become nostalgia.

As taught in schools, history is the story of great men, noble ideas, and the march of progress. But history is a horror show that we live inside and can’t escape. It’s a theme we see even in mainstream entertainments these days, and in that vein, Cabaret director Dave Landis effectively takes us “back to the Hitler days.”  His Cabaret bends the all the weirdness and decadence of Berlin’s club scene toward hallucinogenic nightmare. 

Inspired by I Am A Camera, I’ve previously written how Cabaret, shows three snapshots of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power: a sentimental Berlin, a decadent Berlin, and the Berlin where Nazis multiply and metastasize. The first pictures win out hearts and other parts before the last one comes into focus.

We experience these pictures through the eyes of Cliff (Donald Sutton), a writer visiting Weimar Germany, looking for inspiration. The young American gets more than he bargained for when he comes into the orbit of British expatriate and club singer Sally Bowles. With lighting that lands on the audience like a cutting remark and action that breaks the fourth walls at will, this interpretation of the book borrows ideas from expressionist theater, vintage German agitprop and probably Babylon Berlin, but with a considerably smaller budget.

As Bowles, Whitney Branan is more Lotte Lenya than Liza Minnelli. She lets her voice go ugly, and I mean it in the best way possible. She slings sound like a hammer or a razor. It’s the perfect tool for a character who flourishes in the midst of disaster because she’s more Mother Courage than meets the eye.

Though sometimes incomprehensible as he spits out too many words too fast in a thick German accent, Nathan McHenry’s intentions are never unclear. As the emcee he welcomes the audience like a good horror host, and ushers them back and forth across Cabaret‘s intersecting storylines, on journey all the way to hell. It’s an impressive, athletic performance, but it’s Playhouse stalwart Kim Sanders who emerges from the chorus to deliver Cabaret’s crushing blow. She leads the cast through “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” an infections, inspirational number that begins so sweetly, and ends with the earth shifting hard on its axis. From nowhere so many Nazis emerge. Only they don’t really come from nowhere; they were there all along.

Playhouse On The Square Invites You To The Cabaret

The film version of Cabaret achieves a special kind of clarity. Berlin’s Nazis aren’t hidden at the beginning, they’re just pushed to the margins and not taken seriously. Then suddenly they’re everywhere. They’re everybody. It’s a strong blueprint for negotiating any narrative vagaries in the stage musical’s book.

What it lacks in this level of subtlety, Playhouse on the Square’s production counters with the somnambulant urgency recently described by the Twitter parody/tribute account Werner Twertzog: “Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.”

I sat in a box seat far house left, and so many of this Cabaret’s more intimate moments took place far stage right. That means there’s a lot about this show I really can’t discuss with any authority, because my view was so badly obscured. This won’t be a problem for most audience members, but for me it was enough of an issue to cut the review short. What I saw was thoughtful and provocative. What I couldn’t see at least sounded like a close match.

It’s so easy to fall for Sally Bowles – to buy into her spiel about the short distance from cradle to tomb, and carpe diem, and all that. “Come to the Cabaret,” she belts like a carnival barker, pitching all the attractions. Only Elsie, the former Chelsea flatmate Bowles valorizes in the musical’s title song, didn’t win a prize by dying blissfully ignorant. Nobody won anything by ignoring their prophets of doom, certainly not the people Elsie’s happy corpse left behind in the soup.

I don’t always know why we go to the theater anymore. I don’t think it’s to serve any of the old civic functions, but maybe it is sometimes. It’s certainly not for any kind of meaningful moral instruction or else all those money-printing productions of A Christmas Carol would have fixed us up pretty good by now.

Escapism’s high quality these days, relatively cheap,  and almost always at our fingertips. But if Hamlet’s right and plays really are conscience catchers, many playgoers will see themselves inside the Kit Kat Club when the show’s grimy, accusatory lights come up over audience. That’s the kind of Cabaret this is. But if it doesn’t move them to do more than renew their season subscriptions, we’d might as well start celebrating. Right this way, your table’s waiting.  

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — “Cabaret” Remains Stubbornly Relevant

“We are Americans, and the future belongs to us.” — POTUS.

Inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s story “Goodbye to Berlin” and the subsequent play I Am a Camera, the Kander & Ebb musical, Cabaret, shows three distinct snapshots of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. First, there’s a sentimental Berlin, where a little old German landlady and a little old Jewish grocer might laugh and make loving, bawdy metaphors over a bowl of fruit. There’s also a decadent, enticing Berlin, where transvestites and taxi dancers guzzle gin and dance in a sleepless celebration of flesh. And then there’s the Berlin where Nazis multiply and metastasize like cancer cells. It’s the last snapshot I want to focus on.

Where did all those Nazis come from? Hitler took inspiration from many places, but was a particular fan of American Industrialist Henry Ford, who acquired a weekly periodical called The Dearborn Independent, transforming it into a vehicle for his virulent brand of anti-semitism. Indeed, the ceaseless, almost century-long campaign against “liberalism” in media — a complaint whose ubiquity has made it conventional wisdom, undermining virtually all trust in American information workers — is essentially a politically refined twin of Ford’s fear-mongering against, “the international Jew,” who controls the news and entertainment industry.

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant

Ford’s anti-semitism wasn’t unique for the time but, as the man who created America’s automobile industry, he was uniquely credible and the power and influence he wielded was extraordinary. Before The Independent was shuttered amid lawsuits stemming from the paper’s relentless defamation, it had become the second-largest circulation periodical in America. Ford’s message about the threat of Jewish influence was carried forward by America’s own Nazis, the German American Bund who, in spite of having been highly active and organized in the run up to WWII, have been virtually wiped from the public memory. The Bund protested for pro-Nazi media and their rally at Madison Square Garden filled the house. In short, while few images define how America sees itself like Jack Kirby’s cartoon of Captain America punching Hitler in the face, the real story’s more like a comic book plot than the big cultural myth. Our Nazis went underground, and stayed undefeated. They didn’t have to reintegrate into the American fabric, because they were already part the American fabric. At some point it became impolite to make even the most appropriate Nazi comparisons, because the horror of the Holocaust was incomparable, a fact lending cover to the movement’s provenance and evolution.

As a side note, the famous image of Captain America punching Hitler came out a year before America entered into WWII. Not only was America not at war with Germany when Kirby drew the image, 75 percent of the the US opposed war with the Nazis.

Germans were devastated by WWI. Crippled by debt and a deadlocked parliament, the country was ripe for a despot like Hitler. In much the same way economic anxieties in the U.S. have been channeled into racial tension, creating a permanent American underclass, Germany was looking for somebody to blame for its struggles and disgrace. Decadent Weimar culture made an easy target, and Henry Ford’s international Jew made an easy scapegoat. While focusing on Berlin’s Kit Kat Club, and those inside the orbit of British singer and bon vivant Sally Bowles, Cabaret seeks to answer what have long been regarded as unanswerable questions: How could it happen? And where did the monsters come from?

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant (3)

They didn’t come from anywhere, of course. They were already there, waiting for representation. They were waiting for a leader to say out loud the kinds of things they were already whispering to their children. America always had Nazis — lots of them! They didn’t come from anywhere, and they didn’t vanish when conscription made certain views seditious. They just went back to being good folks, if a little more conservative than most. All they’ve ever needed to activate was a little representation.

I haven’t seen Playhouse on the Square’s Cabaret revival yet, but plan to be in the audience opening night. Broadway’s book is different than Bob Fosse’s nearly perfect film, and how the material is interpreted and contextualized matters. Thematically, it couldn’t have arrived at a more appropriate time. Again.

Here’s a video preview created by Playhouse on the Square. Have a look. 

Tomorrow Belongs to Nazis — ‘Cabaret’ Remains Stubbornly Relevant (2)

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

POTS 2019-’20 Season Revives Memphis, Showcases Kinky Boots, Go-Gos

Playhouse on the Square‘s 2019-2020 Season Revives the musical Memphis, while showcasing popular Broadway fare with 1980’s music tie-ins. Kinky Boots, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” singer Cyndi Lauper, opens the season, a season that also features The Go-Gos unusual jukebox  show Head Over Heels.

The ’19-’20 season folds in classics like Little Shop of Horrors and Ain’t Misbehavin’, with world and regional premieres.

Via Playhouse on the Square:

KINKY BOOTS
By: Harvey Fierstein Lyrics by Cyndi Lauper

August 9 – September 1, 2019 @ Playhouse on the Square

Based on the 2005 British film of the same name and scored by Cyndi Lauper, Charlie has inherited a shoe factory from his father. It sounds like a great deal, except the factory is failing and on the way to being shut down. Enter Lola, a cabaret performer and drag queen, who sees what Charlie can’t – and it’s all in the heel.

THE HUMANS
By: Stephen Karam

August 23 – September 8, 2019 @ The Circuit Playhouse

Thanksgiving in a run-down, Chinatown apartment isn’t the usual setting for the Blake family. But Brigid and new boyfriend Richard insist. A family get together is a great time to reconnect with those you love – or complain about religion, career choices, and why you spend money on organic vegetable smoothies. For this family, it is somewhere in between.

ON GOLDEN POND
By: Ernest Thompson

September 20 – October 6, 2019 @ Playhouse on the Square

Norman and Ethel Thayer are living out their golden years, enjoying summers at the family lake house. As with most homes, you find there are always things in need of repair. As you get older, you may find the same can be said for relationships as well.

HEAD OVER HEELS
By: James Magruder / Lyrics By: The Go-Go’s

October 4 – October 27, 2019 @ The Circuit Playhouse

Charged with the unmistakable, iconic music of The Go-Go’s, the kingdom of Arcadia goes on a daring quest to do whatever it takes to protect their famous “Beat.” On their journey they will find love, deceit, and misinterpreted prophesy. Will the kingdom of Arcadia be saved? “Our Lips Are Sealed.”

PETER PAN
Based on the Book By: J. M. Barrie
Lyrics By: Carolyn Leigh Betty Comden and Adolph Green / Music By: Mark Charlap and Julie Styne

November 15 – December 29, 2019 @ Playhouse on the Square

Life will never be the same for Michael, John, and Wendy Darling after Peter Pan visits their nursery window offering to take them to the magical world of Neverland. They meet the Lost Boys, spritely fairy Tinkerbell, the beautiful princess Tiger Lily, and the evil Captain Hook. The conflict between Peter and Hook takes center stage as the magical adventure turns dangerous and teaches everyone the true power of friendship.


JUNIE B. JONES THE MUSICAL
Book & Music By: Marcy Heisler / Lyrics By: Zina Goldrich

November 22 – December 22, 2019 @ The Circuit Playhouse

It’s Junie B.’s first day of first grade, and a lot of things have changed for her: Junie’s friend, Lucille, doesn’t want to be her best pal anymore and, on the bus, Junie B. makes friends with Herb, the new kid at school. Also, Junie has trouble reading the blackboard, and her teacher, Mr. Scary, thinks she may need glasses. Throw in a friendly cafeteria lady, a kickball tournament and a “Top-Secret Personal Beeswax Journal,” and first grade has never been more exciting.

THE TWELVE DATES OF CHRISTMAS
By: Ginna Hoben

November 29 – December 22, 2019 @ The Memphian Room

One moment you’re headed into the holidays with your cute dress, new bling, and an adorable fiancé. But when you catch him kissing another girl at the televised Thanksgiving Parade, things change. Watch Mary navigate life in the dating world where romance ranges from weird and creepy to absurd and comical. Will she be able to answer the question: What do the lonely do at Christmas? Or will she have us all thinking love stinks?

WHEN WE GET GOOD AGAIN
By: James McLindon

January 10 – January 26, 2020 @ TheatreWorks

When brilliant, idealistic, but poor college student Tracy is tempted by a lucrative job selling term papers to her classmates to pay her tuition, she begins to wonder: Is it ever okay to put being good on hold?

MEMPHIS: THE MUSICAL
By: David Bryan and Joe DiPietro

January 17 – February 8, 2020 @ Playhouse on the Square

In the 1950s, on the downtown streets of Memphis, TN, Rock and Roll was born. The marriage of downtrodden blues, uplifting gospel and forlorn country made way to a genre of music that would, one day, speak to the soul of the entire world. But for now, in a seedy bar on Beale, this music has spoken to the soul of a local country-boy. The girl that the sound has come from has stolen his heart. Will the objections from their families or the challenges of society be too much for the couple to withstand? Or will Huey and Felecia let nothing steal their rock and roll?

INDECENT
By: Paula Vogel

January 24 – February 16, 2020 @ The Circuit Playhouse

In 1923, a Jewish theatre troupe produced a controversial play on Broadway that led to the entire company being arrested on the grounds of obscenity. Playwright, Paula Vogel, recounts the controversy surrounding this play and the lives of the actors who created it. Indecent questions the fear of love, the joy of making art, and the courage to do so during the rise of Nazism.


THE BOOK OF WILL
By: Lauren Gunderson

March 6 – March 22, 2020 @ Playhouse on the Square

When a poor rendition of Hamlet is performed three years after the death of William Shakespeare, it is obvious to his friends – someone should put his work to pen – and save the words of the world’s greatest playwright. But to make one, they’ll have to battle an unscrupulous publisher, a boozy poet laureate, and their own mortality, to create Shakespeare’s First Folio.


SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK, LIVE!
Book by: George Keating, Kyle Hall, and Scott Ferguson
Lyrics by: Bob Dorough, Dave Frishberg, George Newall, Kathy Mandry, Lynn Ahrens, and Tom Yohe

March 14 – April 4, 2020 @ The Circuit Playhouse

“Get your thing in action” and relive the glory days of Saturday Morning’s iconic cartoon series. Tom is ready to start his first day as a schoolteacher. The only problem is he is scared to death! Watch as characters from the classic series come to life, reminding Tom the best way to learn has always been with music and an imagination. With memorable songs “I’m Just a Bill,” “Inter-Planet Janet,” and “Conjunction Junction” you will want to scoot down front and grab a big bowl of cereal.

AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’
By: Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr.

March 13 – April 5, 2020 @ The Circuit Playhouse

A revival of this tribute to the Harlem Renaissance and the black musicians that defined a significant era in American music comes home to The Circuit Playhouse. Through the 1920s and 1930s hits like “T Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness,” “Your Feet’s Too Big,” and “Fat and Greasy” filled Manhattan nightclubs and caused a spark across the nation! Join us as we get the joint jumpin for one of America’s favorite musicals.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
By: Howard Ashman

May 1 – May 24, 2020 @ Playhouse on the Square

When a “Mean Green Mutha From Outaspace” lands in your flower shop, what do you do? Feed it people of course! Hapless flower shop worker, Seymour, only wants the love of his life to notice him. When his little blood sucking plant grows to become the talk of the town, Seymour will get more than he bargained for.

DAYS OF RAGE
By: Steven Levenson

April 17 – May 10, 2020 @ The Circuit Playhouse

It’s October 1969 and five 20-something idealists find themselves in the middle of a country divided. Living together in a house in Upstate New York and confident in the knowledge that they are the only generation to ever take up the resistance, they retaliate against society by denouncing monogamy and other capitalist notions. But when they admit a mysterious newcomer to their collective, the delicate balance they’ve achieved begins to topple. It’ll be six and a half years until the Vietnam War ends but their fight is just beginning.

SOMETHING ROTTEN
By: John O’Farrell and Karey Kirkpatrick

June 19 – July 12, 2020 @ Playhouse on the Square

When Nick and Nigel Bottom decide their theatre troupe rivals that of William Shakespeare the best way to beat him is to hire a soothsayer and write a musical about Eggs… right? This Tony Award-winning romp is a love story to all things theatre!

MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN
By: Jonathan Norton

June 5 – June 28, 2020 @ The Circuit Playhouse

In 1963 Jackson, Mississippi, the stirring of Civil Rights is beginning to rally a nation of long oppressed people. But on a particular street, which is home to a civil rights pioneer, not everyone is pleased to see it begin.

ST. PAULIES DELIGHT
By: J. Joseph Cox

July 10 – July 26, 2020 @ TheatreWorks at the Square

When Paul learns his estranged aunt has passed away, he holds a wake for her that doubles as a testing ground for his exquisite, big gay wedding. A day-of shift in plans leaves Paul’s life in shambles, forcing him to confront burying his definition of family along with his mysterious aunt.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

On stage: Sweat and Tuck Everlasting.

CREDIT: Carla McDonald

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.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Eternity on Stage: Tuck Everlasting is Lush & Lovely

CREDIT: Carla McDonald

Carla McDonald

Tuck Everlasting at Playhouse on the Square

Tuck Everlasting‘s never going to be my cup of magical realism, but I’ve got to admit, it’s an awfully pretty thing. And it’s also nice to see a story about regular people struggling with the ups and downs of eternal life for a change instead of another bunch of hot vampires. Here’s how it all plays out: 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 only can 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? 

Tuck Everlasting is too much like Playhouse on the Square’s favorite and most frequently revived show, Peter Pan — with actor Curtis C’s flamboyantly malevolent Man in Yellow filling in for Pan‘s flamboyantly sinister Captain Hook. Both musicals tell the story of strong young women who ultimately reject immortality and a magical life outside of time and decay. Only Tuck abandons all of Pan‘s high flying fairy mayhem, swashbuckling pirates, and general sense of deviltry for mundane concerns and long conversations about the meaning of life and death, with lyrical dance passages illustrating the same.

Is Tuck Everlasting magical enough to make a good fairy tale? Maybe not. Nobody flies or spins flax into gold. A deep sincerity undercuts the story’s Twilight Zone-like ironies, and conflicts never test the play’s subjects enough to pass for allegory. The musical’s songs are almost instantly forgettable, and the book’s more sweet than convincing. But director Dave Landis has assembled a  terrific cast and his design team has outdone themselves, building a world of green parsley stalk trees and purple “magic hour” skies, where a big round sun is eternally stuck in the rising position. Or the setting position, hard to say. 
Carla McDonald

Tuck Everlasting at Playhouse on the Square

Gia Welch’s voice has never sounded as rich or full or uniquely hers as it does in this show. If you’ve read previous previous reviews of the young artist, you’ll know that’s no small compliment. 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 — these voices follow you home.

This is the part of the review where I remind readers that I’m not not the target audience for most family musicals, and Tuck Everlasting‘s no big exception. The show presents like a philosophical meditation on the meaning of life then opens and closes like a Hallmark card with no personal inscription. Thankfully, POTS’ creative team has built a production so lush and lovely it’s easy to watch and listen to even if you can’t bring yourself to care about any of the characters or what they choose to do with their time, magic water, and pet toads. 

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Never Land: “For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday” Opens at POTS

“We’re orphans,” a mature Wendy wails to her siblings, who aren’t getting any younger. Their dad has just died, finally. They were all there to share the  passage, and assure him he’d given them each other to lean on. But there’s nobody “standing sentry” between the children and death now, and that’s the premise from which this story unwinds. Sort of. It’s a little unclear, since dad’s prankster ghost, and his ghost dog, wander aimlessly in and out of scenes like the invisible dead people in one of Bill Keane’s Family Circus cartoons.

Sarah Ruhl’s short play For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday isn’t the stuff holiday classics are made of. Playhouse on the Square’s seasoned cast finds the show’s poignant moments, and hardcore local theater fans may get a little verklempt to see Memphis favorites Ann Marie Hall and Emily Peckham fly in the show’s last movement. But there’s an awful lot of runway before takeoff. There’s a lot of content about death, aging, more death, political squabbles, and nagging reminders that time flies, which is the last thing anybody wants to think about when they’re watching iffy theater. But for all of the brave cast’s best efforts, For Peter Pan … seldom soars and it’s anything but uplifting. And for clocking in at under 90-minutes, this brief encounter is also an endurance test. 

Ruhl is always surprising. She subverts expectations and breaks rules. The grim-spirited one-act, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, finds Ruhl in an autobiographical mood, and uncommonly prosaic. Her play takes us from the theater where we’re watching the play in real time, to a hospital room in the 1990’s as five children watch their dad die a less-than-easy death, to an Irish wake, and finally to Neverland, where adults act out disjointed bits of the Peter Pan story like children improvising on a playground.

Playhouse on the Square has produced Peter Pan 27 times over its 49 years of existence. If the company has a signature piece, it’s the musical adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s famous story — a dark fantasy of pirates, fairies, and a developmentally arrested narcissist with superpowers and a history of luring young girls and boys off to Neverland. The century-old story has always been popular, but a brightened version burrowed its way into the psyche of the “Forever Young” generation when Broadway actress Mary Martin flew into homes across America by way of live TV broadcasts on NBC. For Peter Pan… was written as a birthday gift for Ruhl’s actress mother who played the crowing leader of lost boys when she was a teenager, and who met Martin during the older actress’s high-flying heyday. It’s a faintly Jungian interpretation of the post-Martin Pan that shows up in the play’s unsatisfying final movement.

Never Land: ‘For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday’ Opens at POTS (2)


For Peter Pan… asks several versions of the ultimate question: What happens when we die? But the play and its characters seem more concerned with the penultimate question: When do you consider yourself a grownup? Most of us, of a certain age, are familiar with the phenomenon of living with minds as nimble, silly, and ready for adventure as they ever were, housed in bodies that creak just thinking about exercise. This is the kind of bittersweet prank on humanity Tennessee Williams regularly twisted up into literate, deeply surreal tragicomedy. But Ruhl,  a writer who does literate and surreal as well as anybody, can’t quite seem to land this one. Without the aid of pulleys and wires (and the best local actors you can find) it might never get airborne in the first place.

For Peter Pan… is a bit like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town crashed into Luigi Pirandello’s famous meta-rehearsal, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Much of the show’s content revolves around the relationship between creations and their creators. The pivotal central characters rehearse their adult roles, while searching for a plan. There’s so much possibility here, but almost none of it’s been fleshed out.

To be fair, I don’t think #AARPAN (as the cast has taken to hashtagging it) was ready to be reviewed on the night of its preview performance at Playhouse on the Square. Then again, I’m not sure slickness or polish will have anything to do with whether or not For Peter Pan… finds an audience. Director Tony Isbell has assembled a first-rate cast and the show will improve with repetition. But like a kid who won’t mature, this story also lacks is a plan. And like those same kids, that’s only charming for a short time.

Like Isbell, most of the actors in this ensemble have shown both an incredible commitment to the local theater community, and a strong independent spirit. Whether they’re working in the spotlight, or just offstage, Hall, Sam Weakly, Gordon Ginsberg, Mark Pergolizzi, and Emily Peckham all have a history of taking risks. The good that happens in this show is a direct result of their vulnerability, generosity, etc.

Audiences will no doubt connect with For Peter Pan‘s most humane moments. That’s no guarantee that anybody will leave the theater crowing. 

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and “Who Got ROBBED?!?!”

Maness 4-ways.

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 Arrangement and Laughter 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 in Ruined 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 in Stage 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.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

In Praise of “Love and Murder” at Playhouse on the Square

Michael Gravois, Kristen Doty

It’s pointless to refer to “the death scene” in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. The musical farce at Playhouse on the Square has eight or maybe nine of them, and every one of the characters who goes in extremis is played by the exceptional Michael Gravois.

The stage veteran throws himself brilliantly into the silliness, playing members of the D’Ysquith family who stand in the way of a greedy outcast whose mother married for (shudder) love and was therefore kicked out of the clan’s good graces.

Nonetheless, if certain of Monty Navarro’s relatives should die (the quicker the better), then he’ll be a duke with a wife, a mistress, and most importantly, money. But we really love to watch as Gravois bursts on stage as one of the royal relatives, expires, and then reappears moments later inhabiting the character and costume of another doomed relation.

In Praise of ‘Love and Murder’ at Playhouse on the Square

Holding forth as the initially guileless Monty who embarks on a comic Breaking Bad as the bodies accrue, is Ryne Nardecchia, who played the role in the national tour and is flawless. Adam Cates directs and choreographs, and he, too, worked on the Broadway version and the national tour as associate choreographer.

It’s a thoroughly delightful escape, smartly produced, and scads of fun. If the orchestra would ease up a wee bit from time to time to let the singers be heard, it would be even better.