Tag: Theatre Memphis

Categories
Cover Feature News

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

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Dixon Hosts Women in the Arts Event

CREDIT: Dixon Gallery and Gardens

Dixon Gallery and Gardens has partnered with Theatre Memphis to honor women who have contributed to the local arts during its first Women in the Arts event this weekend.

The two-day event will bring together women from all walks of life in the art world who focus in all media, including makers, painters, actresses, dancers, musicians, and more, and they’ll lead performances, demonstrations, and dialogues.

Dixon Gallery and Gardens

Women in Arts

Margarita Sandino, director of education at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, says the inspiration for this event came from a brainstorming session between Karen Strachan, Dixon’s youth programs coordinator, and Claire Rutkauskas, community engagement coordinator of Theatre Memphis, who decided it was time to show appreciation for women, who are often under-recognized in the local arts community.

“We loved the idea so much, and it’s gotten really great support,” says Sandino. “It’s important to highlight all their successes, but also, this is a great time to talk about the challenges that women in the arts have in Memphis, from balancing life and work to opportunities. Having all of those things and having a conversation about it is important. So we thought this would be a really great opportunity to do that.”

Sandino says the idea of this event is to talk not only of obstacles, but also to discuss solutions — and it’s important to work from the ground up to get some forward momentum going.

“It starts at a very low level where you have the conversation,” she says. “You meet with people in the community, you listen to what their needs are and try to accommodate them. It’s a slow process, but you have to start.”

Women in the Arts, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Friday, March 6th, 5-8 p.m., and Saturday, March 7th, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

On Stage This Weekend

Plenty to do and see this weekend, from openings to closings.

Opening Friday is Between Riverside and Crazy at Hattiloo Theatre. The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning play throws the old against the new as a retired police officer is faced with eviction from his rent-controlled apartment in New York City. Directed by Ekundayo Bandele. For info, go here.

Lend us your ears: Tennessee Shakespeare is staging Julius Caesar. Directed by Dan McCleary, the classic about political dysfunction, pride, and consequences runs through October 6th. Grab your toga and go here for info.

Think you can handle the truth? This is the final week for Theatre Memphis’ production of A Few Good Men, the powerful Aaron Sorkin play about a court martial and a coverup. Seating is limited this weekend, but a performance has been added tonight, September 25th. Go here for ticket information.

It’s also the final weekend for Germantown Community Theatre’s Barefoot in the Park, the Neil Simon love letter to young lovers. Get tickets here.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Q&A with Cecelia Wingate

Cecelia Wingate

Cecelia Wingate is in the director’s chair again, this time helming the Theatre Memphis production of Mamma Mia! It’s been quite the eventful year for the actor/director/force of nature. In March, she directed 1776 at TM, and then one day in May got what people with a dramatic flair might proclaim as a call of destiny. Wingate had all of 10 days to get to New York to rehearse for a production of Byhalia, Mississippi that would be staged for a month at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The play, written by Memphian Evan Linder, was performed in Memphis in early 2016 and had an award-winning staging in Chicago with Wingate soon after. Broadway producer Jeffrey Finn heard about it and had Wingate come to New York in late 2016 for a table read. That was the last she’d heard about it until she was summoned in May.

After the Byhalia run ended last month, she hustled back to Memphis where rehearsals of Mamma Mia! had already started without her.

Memphis Flyer: How did you work that situation out?

Cecelia Wingate: I approached it the smartest way I knew how, which was to find a damn good choreographer. I had Jeff Brewer as my music director and he always hits a home run, so I knew I was in great hands there. But then there’s the choreography. Let’s face it, people want to come in here and see people do things to that music — they’re not coming for the story. I had to have a dynamite choreographer, so that’s why we went with Whitney Branan, who is so good at what she does. She keeps everything exciting, and what I love about Whitney as a choreographer is she really knows how to tell a story. The two things I left her with when I went to D.C., knowing that they were going to have eight music rehearsals without me and three or four choreography rehearsals, was to (a) tell the story and (b) take the focus where it needs to go. I feel there’s always so much happening in big productions that you have to take the audience’s eye where it’s supposed to go. Those are two things I’d left her with, and she listened to me, so I didn’t have to come in and really change anything.

MF: When Mamma Mia! opened on Broadway, the notices said things like, “You can only wince,” “hokey, implausible and silly,” and “thoroughly preposterous.” And these were from the critics that loved it. So what’s the deal with this musical?

CW: It is not one of my favorite musicals. I’m generally not a fan of jukebox musicals although Jersey Boys I think is the most successful — they found a way to really tell a story. Most jukebox musicals have such a flimsy story, but not Mamma Mia! The difference is that it’s that music, it’s ABBA. I told my cast there is no way that this show should have ever been a hit, much less a smash hit that continues to be here all these years later. But people love it. It just blows my mind. Another reason that I really like it at this particular time is because it’s just fun and a celebration, and God knows we need a dose of that right now. There’s just so much noise out there. It’s great to just get away and not think about the news and just have some fun.

MF: Since March, you’ve directed 1776, you starred in Byhalia, Mississippi, you’re back to direct Mamma Mia! — so what’s next?

CW: I’m going to sit on my ass for as long as I can. I have not stopped, not even slowed down really since before Shrek, and that was two years. So I’m not gonna take anything that I don’t really want to do. I mean, if something else happens with Byhalia, I would do that. I mean, if it does move to New York, but you know, if it does that, it’s probably going to be Kathy Bates or somebody, and that’ll be fine with me.

MF: You retired from FedEx, so you had the time to go to New York for rehearsals and then Washington, D.C., for performances, but it was short notice. Your friends came to the rescue?

CW: I have the best friends in the world, I’m telling you, it is unbelievable. I had three different people at my house and there was always somebody there with my cat. I had a tree struck by lightning that came down. They all came with their chainsaws and cut it and stacked it and moved it, so I didn’t have to deal with that. And my assistant director for this show, Olivia Lee Gacka, was like my house business manager. She had it all down. The most wonderful thing about that experience was getting to step a toe on the Kennedy Center stage, but what was really, really special about that time is the support that I felt from Memphis, Tennessee.

MF: You had a lot of hometown folks see you in D.C.?

CW: I never felt so supported in my life and, and so many people came up there, I can’t even count. I’d been in New York for three weeks rehearsing and that was all fun and busy. And I got to D.C., but once we got officially open and I had free time, I was like, oh, I’m going get homesick and lonesome. But I never did because there was always somebody there.

MF: So you catapulted from one reality to another.

CW: D.C. feels different now, but it’s still such a beautiful city. I was so lucky to be there for five weeks and three days, but I was ready to come home. And then I landed here at 5:16 p.m. on a Monday and got in the car and came straight to Theatre Memphis for this and haven’t stopped since. It’s an exciting, dedicated cast, I’ll say that. It’s been drama-free, which is fantastic. I just hope it’s fun. I hope people have fun and they come with a few cocktails in them and just know that all we’re doing it for is a celebration and the music. And the party.

Mamma Mia! at Theatre Memphis on the Lohrey Stage, 630 Perkins Ext., through September 8th. Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $35, $15 students, $30 seniors 62 and above and military personnel. Call 901-682-8323. Theatre Memphis.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Theatre Memphis stages a screwball classic.

It would seem that Kaufman & Hart’s barb-laden comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner, is woven into the tapestry of Theatre Memphis’ identity. It’s the last play the company staged before leaving its old digs inside the Pink Palace pool house and moving into the custom-built space on Perkins Ext. In 2002, as the company attempted to re-ground itself under new leadership, the screwball comedy was revived, with several original cast members returning to perform. Now, as Theatre Memphis preps for an abbreviated 100th season, and a round of major innovation, Sheridan Whiteside — an unforgettable character inspired by celebrity critic Alexander Woollcott — is back in the spotlight, and as petty and domineering as ever. It’s a first-rate production, too, with Jason Spitzer starring as the titular man. But I’ve got to admit, I don’t entirely get it.

As a fan of the author’s, and to a lesser extent, the play, I didn’t really get the point of reviving this gossipy, name-dropping tour of vintage celebrity culture 17 years ago, and it’s not like the material is any fresher today. Still, it’s a clever thing and expertly staged. The Man Who Came to Dinner is an archetypal romantic comedy dipped in satire, but for maximum enjoyment, more than a little cultural literacy is absolutely required. That’s not a bad thing, but those not dialed into Woollcott’s world of the rich and famous may sometimes feel left out of the conversation.

Come in and stay awhile.

There’s not much plot to The Man Who Came to Dinner, but so much goes on it can be difficult to keep up. Guests drop in and out. Thousands of cockroaches escape their enclosure. A wacky penguin rampage adds to hilarity. It all begins with a fall Whiteside suffers while visiting a private residence for dinner. The mouthy critic is misdiagnosed, told not to leave the house and to move as little as possible until he’s better. So, sparing no pomposity or expense, he proceeds to take over his host’s suburban home and ruin his secretary Maggie’s romance for fear that she’ll leave him.

Spitzer, who starred in The Drowsy Chaperone at Theatre Memphis, seems to be specializing in “man in chair” roles. This time around, his chair has wheels, but if you liked Spitzer in the musical, you’ll love him for similar reasons here. Kinon Keplinger is likewise fine as a stand in for British playwright and showman, Noel Coward. The same goes for Emily F. Chateau, as Whiteside’s indispensable assistant and confidant Maggie, and Jai Johnson as Lorraine Sheldon, a lovestruck starlet looking for a good script. The whole ensemble is first rate, with several terrifically quirky character turns by local favorites like Barry Fuller and Louise Levin.

One hundred years is a long time, and a little comfort food in the face of change may not be a bad thing at all. Even if The Man Who Came to Dinner doesn’t have much to say in 2019, it doesn’t say it with gusto and real panache. And maybe, for a community in mourning, there’s more going on at Theatre Memphis than meets the eye.

Beloved Memphis actor John Rone’s first performance at Theatre Memphis was in The Man Who Came to Dinner, prior to its move to Perkins. He also performed in the revival, where, during a blistering Memphis day, he famously quipped, “If you think it’s hot up there now, wait till I do my number in act 2.” Rone, who recently retired from Rhodes College after 40 years of service and who died earlier this year, was also a director, and committed fan of Memphis theater. On Saturday, April 27th, a group of Memphis actors walked onto the set of The Man Who Came to Dinner to share stories about Rone and memorialize him with scenes from past productions. The house was packed for the perfect sendoff. He truly was “the man,” and whether it’s your cup of tea or no, TM’s latest take on The Man Who Came to Dinner is every bit as elegant and wicked as he was.

The Man Who Came to Dinner is at Theatre Memphis through May 12th.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Radical: Tennessee Shakespeare Gets Active, Playhouse Gets Orwell + More

Twelfth Night

“Nation-wide, it is a period of radical absolutism: unapologetic racism, anti-Semitism, and sexism among a population and leadership struggling with the pervasiveness of one religion (over science) and fighting to prevent immigrants from entering its borders. The government is widely suspected of collusion with foreign adversaries while its own citizens’ rights are drained of protection,” so begins the synopsis to the Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s regional premier of Speak What We Feel, a  compiled script subtitled, Shakespeare’s radical response to a radical time.

While the setup may sound familiar, the place that’s being described is Elizabethan England. TSC founding director Dan McCleary will be joined onstage by Stephanie Shine, Darius Wallace, Merit Koch, Blake Currie, Nic Picou, Carmen-maria Mandley, and Shaleen Cholera. Together they will explore Shakespeare’s “radical response,” to all these things and more.

Speak What We Feel employs scenes from Richard III, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Coriolanus, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice and Othello.

Here’s a video of McLeary talking about Speak What We Feel:

Radical: Tennessee Shakespeare Gets Active, Playhouse Gets Orwell + More

2+2=5

While we’re on the topic of radical things, 1984 continues at The Circuit Playhouse this weekend. From the review: 

“Adaptations give us a chance to explore specific narrative threads and shine new light through old windows. In this case, exposing the audience to low grade torture techniques by way of flickering or flashing light, grating inescapable sound, triggering imagery and making us all hold our pee through the intermission-free show, drowns out a more interesting theme struggling to escape a relentlessly bleak event’s sadistic gravity: Are our heroes, villains, allies and enemies all fictional constructs? Have they always been? By the time this idea expresses itself in dialogue, we’re, once again, too agitated to see the elusive bigger picture. Maybe that’s also the point.” [MORE]

And while on the subject of Shakespeare, Twelfth Night continues at Theatreworks.
From the review: 

“If you want some measure of just how good William Shakespeare was on his best days, look no further than the New Moon Theatre Company’s gag-packed production of Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy teetering at the edge of farce. Jokes can be fragile things, losing their punch with time, as sensibilities evolve. But 418 years after he wrote it down, Twelfth Night’s jokes still land on their feet, and stumble hilariously into pratfall. This latest revival is curiously uneven but still bursts with life and laughter at TheatreWorks.” [MORE]

Those in the mood for something a little less radical and/or Shakespeare related may want to drop in on a completely different kind of classic. Theatre Memphis is staging George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Via Theatre Memphis: 

“Sheridan Whiteside’s fall while dining at the home of prominent socialites makes him an unexpected guest for six weeks of recovery. The hosts, however, are most in need of recovery as Whiteside invites in the glamorous and famous as a three-ring circus of comic chaos grows to include a luncheon for homicidal convicts and a complete children’s choir.”

Whiteside is a critic, naturally, and based on Alexander Woollcott, the ostensible leader of New York’s Algonquin Round Table. Whiteside’s played by Memphis actor and director, Jason Spitzer. 

Spitzer v Woollcott

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Pressure Wash: “The Clean House” Is a Complicated, Compassionate Joke

Dead. “I’m dead.” It’s a thing we say now, on the internet, when things strike us as being uniquely funny. “I’m so dead,” we say. Maybe we don’t laugh, but it slays us nonetheless, as jokes have slain people throughout the ages in spite of laughter’s reputation for being “the best medicine.” “Dying of laughter” is an old idiom and the language of comedy is largely borrowed from the world of violence,mayhem, and harm. Comics “knock us dead.” Audiences “bust a gut,” and so on. And while I can’t say Theatre Memphis’ production of Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House “kills,” exactly, it may stab you in the heart repeatedly with a scalpel. 

There’s a moment near the top of The Clean House when Lane, a nondescript white doctor in white clothes in her nondescript white-on white-home, tells Matilde the Brazilian maid in her black livery, she’s an “interesting person.” It’s not a complement. The nondescript white doctor, sympathetically revealed by Tamara Wright, didn’t hire an interesting person, she hired a cleaning lady who needs to get to work whitening up the grubby space or get another job.  Ruhl’s heart has never seemed larger than it does in this compassionate piece from 2006, but her metaphors have seldom been more ham-fisted either. Appropriating the kind of magical realism associated with certain strains of South American literature The Clean House essays the relative merits of tidying up. It’s themes are Buddhist adjacent, showing how the noblest desire to order a chaotic world results in sadness. It’s a sly and deceptively poetic play about embracing the messes we make in the hallway between love and death, and maybe a little self-serving in that regard. It’s the kind of work that will likely divide audiences, leaving them delighted and warm on the inside or bored and baffled.

What shouldn’t divide audiences is the solid vision put forward by director Leslie Barker’s creative team, and a remarkable collection of thoughtful, lived-in performances

Ruhl’s work and influence has grown so familiar that her trademark idiosyncrasies barely feel like idiosyncrasies at all. Still, time and quickly evolving perspectives may also make one of the play’s more elegantly prepared storylines, a little hard for some to swallow. Lane’s husband Charles, who’s also a doctor, falls in love with Ana, an older, exotic mastectomy patient. He subsequently undertakes a brutal hero’s quest into the arctic to save Ana’s life and show the purity of his intentions. Although he’s not Jewish, Charles claims personal exoneration from any  wrongdoing due to an esoteric Hebrew law regarding soulmates he heard about on NPR, and sincerely wants his jilted (and not having it) wife to rejoice and share in his newfound happiness. Sweetly portrayed by Chris Cotton, Charles is helpless — swept up in an overwhelming love spell he can’t understand or control. It suits the play’s tone, but tangos at the edge of current sensibilities regarding masculine misbehavior. 

The show revolves around Matilde, the cleaning lady who’s depressed by cleaning. She’s also in mourning for her parents, whose perfect love ended badly. Dad was the funniest man in his village in Brazil, and mom was his equal. When she died laughing at one of his jokes he took his own life. Now Matilde wants to be a comedian, and Ruhl’s play functions like a preview of some future network sitcom she’ll star in. Jaclyn Suffel’s formidable in the role, leading us through the dreamy script like a modern day Sabina, the maid, and most memorable character from Thornton Wilder’s Skin of Our Teeth. It’s a mature, effortlessly commanding turn in a role that often demands the impossible. I’ll get back to this in a minute.

A lot of The Clean House reminds me of Wilder and Skin of Our Teeth. No dinosaurs come tromping through the theater, but the story’s no less magically weird or mythological in its depiction of family, or its focus on origins and eschatology.  Only this time, for Ruhl, it’s all personal.

Matilde’s inability to clean is balanced by Virginia’s compulsion to straighten, dust, vacuum and organize. Virginia is Lane’s sister. She’s a damaged soul made of right-sized expectations, and she wants a relationship with her busy, distant sibling so badly enters into a bargain with Matilde to do the depressed maid’s work, just to get a toe in the door. Virginia’s tragic cheerfulness is stretched to the point of psychopathy, and Aliza Moran walks a tightrope in presenting a deeply silly character who’s just a little too fragile to laugh at. It’s the show’s dilemma in a nutshell.

The Clean House‘s narrative strategy also reminds me, at times, of some of the more vexing routines devised by stand up comic Andy Kaufman who was always more prankster and performance artist than gag-man. It’s a show about the power of jokes where all the jokes are whispered or spoken in a language most English speakers won’t understand.  “It doesn’t work in translation,” Matilde explains at one point. Honest laughs happen throughout, but the literary force of dangling the play’s jokes just beyond reach doesn’t translate — and that’s okay. Like Kaufman, Ruhl sometimes tests an audience’s patience while she’s resetting their expectations. This is why Suffel’s performance is so key. As the show’s narrator, she frames the important stuff, and ushers us through the rough spots even though she’s sometimes armed with nothing but a brow crinkle or a little weaponized side-eye.

I’ve got to say, it’s nice to see Christina Welford Scott set free, both as Matilde’s mother who dies laughing, and as Ana, the “home wrecker,” who thinks that sounds like a marvelous way to go. I sometimes think Scott — a local treasure if there ever was one — gets cast in some shows because directors see her in great roles, not because they see great roles in her. That’s not to say she doesn’t deliver in serious leading parts that call for lots of seriousness and crying. But Scott’s capacity for real greatness is most evident when the challenges are physical and fun. Get this woman laughing or clowning or dancing lighter than air and she’ll rip your goddamn guts out. Here she’s cast as a classic “mysterious” femme fatale, but with a variety of subtle, deeply satisfying twists.  Her death (not a spoiler) is full of life, and hung all around with joy and agony.

I have a mixed relationship with The Clean House. I get tired of both its sense and its nonsense for long stretches. But the more I think about its individual parts, the more I find to recommend about the whole complicated dust bunny of a play — this morbid joke built on sixes not threes. So, I’m throwing caution away, embracing my messy feelings, and calling it a win for everybody involved. Well, everybody except for the poor guy snoozing on the front row. 

Or maybe he was just dead? 

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Expansion, Upgrades Result in Abbreviated Season at Theatre Memphis

Theatre Memphis’ 100th anniversary is on the horizon and big changes are afoot. But first, a somewhat smaller 2019-20 season. When TM hosts its grand re-opening in August, 2020, patrons will enjoy expanded restrooms and common areas, additional service areas, and more.

And if the new season is somewhat abbreviated by the renovations, it’s also crowd-pleasing. Mamma Mia! AND Cats back to back on the main stage with only A Few Good Men in between?  That should fill seats and make people very thankful for the expanded bathroom facilities to come.

Mamma Mia!

Cats at Theatre Memphis, 2006

August 16 – September 8, 2019
Set on a Greek island and to the music of the international pop group ABBA, a young girl plans her wedding while trying to discover who of three men may be her father … all to the distress and ultimate joy of her mother.

Cats
October 11 – November 3, 2019
Based on the book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, will follow in the season line up with striking choreography and memorable tunes by Andrew Lloyd Webber. In this most-loved musical the scene is set in a large rubbish area which, after dark, becomes alive with cats of all types, shapes and sizes gathering for the Jellicle Ball, during which one cat will be allotted an extra precious life. Cats is heralded as one of the longest running shows on Broadway and includes the remarkable tune, “Memory”.

A Christmas Carol
December 6 – 23, 2019
A special holiday offering in December for the 42nd consecutive year at Theatre Memphis.
—————————
Little Women
Returning to the Next Stage
July 10 – 21, 2019
A sold out run during the 2018-19 season prompted the return of the classic which has been adapted and directed by Jason Spitzer. Though not part of the season membership, members will be afforded discounts on the adult full price ticket.

A Few Good Men.
September 13 – 29
Next Stage
An apathetic military lawyer is assigned to the case of two Marines charged with the murder of a fellow squadron member at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. An Internal Affairs legal ace thinks there is something amiss and pursues justice as the defendants refuse a plea bargain. The facts come out and lead to a court martial courtroom showdown that exposes the truth.

Ruthless! The Musical
November 8 – 23, 2019
Next Stage
[Ruthless!] satirize[s] old movie classics like The Bad Seed and All About Eve. The plot reveals a talented eight-year-old, Tina, who declares her show biz ambition. Enter Sylvia St. Croix, an overbearing, sleazy talent agent with a secret who encourages her to audition for the school play. Tina “accidentally” hangs her major rival to get the part … only to be sent up the river and swept aside by her mother, Judy Denmark, who finds her own voice and soars to stardom. Once Tina is released from incarceration, she returns for her own revenge with dreams of a comeback and more murderous

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

1776: Theatre Memphis Makes History With a Solid Revival

“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace — two are called a law firm — and that three or more become a Congress.” — John Adams opening remarks in 1776. The musical, not the year. 

Like the nation whose birth it celebrates, 1776 is an extraordinary creation — the most delightful musical stuffed inside the most contentious play, wrapped in an endlessly urgent history lesson more truthy than accurate. It’s a miracle, of sorts, famous for containing the longest scene in any musical without singing, choreography, or a single note of music played. Also, like the nation it celebrates, 1776 is complicated, built on enough deception, prioritizing drama over all else, that it’s probably a good thing to knock the dust off from time-to-time and re-evaluate.

Cecelia Wingate’s known for staging monster musical extravaganzas. What surprised me most about her very fine production of 1776 for Theatre Memphis, was just how conventional it is, erring on the side of magnificent. The lush, 18th-Century costumes are so thoughtfully detailed they often say as much about characters as the actors wearing them. That’s saying something given a mostly superb cast. Though it’s hardly palatial in spirit, the gleaming, brightly-lit set works at cross purposes, making the emerging nation seem too solid and formidable — less the worn-out crazy quilt with no chance in hell of weathering the coming storm. We hear it’s “hot as Hell,” in Philly, but take away the fans and complaints, and not much else in the breezy space says so.

It seems critics can’t write about 1776 these days without some comparison to its kindred Tony-winner, Hamilton. I won’t do that, but will say that between the hotly-paced Hamilton and a faintly iconoclastic interpretation of 1776 staged by The Encores! in 2016, one might hope for a touch more currency and self-awareness.

I’m almost afraid to give John Maness another glowing review. People will think he’s paying me. But Maness’s growing reputation as a dramatic actor who vanishes into his characters, obscures the fact that he’s always been a solid musical theater performer as well. When Hedwig and the Angry Inch finally made it to town, Maness took the title role and rocked it just right. Now older, and more furrowed, his John Adams is a firebrand, full of righteous fury — always just at the edge of caning somebody on the floor of Congress.

Adams’ character — a blending of John and his second cousin Samuel — doesn’t quite mesh with reality. Though he had adversaries in Congress (even among allies), the man from Massachusetts wasn’t universally regarded as obnoxious and disliked until after his presidency. Independence was the popular choice in the year of our show, and Adams was a tireless, vocal advocate.  Maness translates the alleged obnoxiousness into impatience at the edge of impertinence, and, excepting turns by Lydia Hart’s’s Mrs. Jefferson and Kevar Maffitt’s Rutledge, he’s seldom the second most interesting thing on stage.

Wingate’s 1776 — a story about uniting the American colonies to declare of independence — struggles a bit with antagonists. Though he has been absent from Memphis for a long time, I know Brian Helm to be a fine and committed actor who relishes physically demanding roles. As Dickinson, a patriot whose intellectual reservations are amplified for dramatic purposes, he’s the face of opposition. As one of the show’s two principal “bad guys,” he makes the case for wealth, tradition, and security over independence, leading Congress’s anachronistic right-wing through the song “Cool, Considerate Men.”

1776 landed on Broadway in 1969, a year after the infamous televised debates between arch-liberal Gore Vidal and arch-Conservative William F. Buckley Jr. On the page, Dickinson’s gravitas mixed with cool certitude calls to mind the latter, who once dryly claimed, “It’s terribly hard to stand carrying the weight of what I know.” Helm’s more scheming and excitable interpretation is more reminiscent of radio pundits like the late Mike Fleming, or a stiffer Rush Limbaugh. It makes the debate at the heart of act one less dynamic, and more shrill than it might be, as he seeks to match and top Maness’s Adams rather than own him. This less poised depiction yields the floor, and principle antagonist role, to the reliably excellent Maffitt,  who delivers a cooler, more self-sufficient vision of Rutledge, the pro-slavery representative from South Carolina whose eerie, musical lesson in triangle trade makes a case that implicates every man in congress with the shameful practice. But does it also implicate itself? The script? 50-years worth of audiences, swept up in light nationalism? 

Theater Memphis serves up charming, humanizing portraits of America’s best known founding fathers like Ben Franklin (Jimbo Lattimore) and Thomas Jefferson (Sean Carter). It does a somewhat better job bringing in lesser known figures like George Washington’s messenger and a hard-drinking representative from Rhode Island who never met an idea too dangerous to talk about. As Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson, Edna Dinwiddie and Hart show two distinctly different ways to keep the home fires burning while the menfolk, “Piddle, Twiddle, and Resolve.”  The ensemble is built on solid foundations, and the voices collected for this production blend gorgeously, lifted by a tight orchestra.

 When it comes to critique, it’s sometimes said that “everything before the ‘but,’ is BS.” Can’t disagree. I’m sure regular readers sense a “but” coming and, of course, they’re right. See, 1776 makes a virtue of compromise at any cost, and as we know, the cost was human bondage and chattel slavery. As considerate as the script may be, sounding bells over the struggle for common ground feels off in 2019, as the last campaigns of the American Civil War play themselves out in proxy battles over Confederate iconography. Where some may see currency in these debates, I tend to see continuity, and even affirmation. But — and you knew it was coming — I don’t think we need to put 1776 away just yet. If anything, it’s probably not revived as often as it might be. But (yes, another one) we know how the story ends. Furthermore, we know where it goes after it ends and where it goes wrong. So maybe in 2019, it might be more interesting to strip 1776 down than to dress it up.

To summarize: Great voices? Check. Good acting? Check. Profound wig game? Double check. Given Theatre Memphis’s reputation for razzle dazzle, Ellen Inghram’s choreography is uncharacteristically subdued. The acting is top-shelf, from Bill Andrews as John Hancock to Helm, whose questionable use shouldn’t be mistaken for bad work. Songs stuck in my head for decades never sounded better, from the lusty, “He Plays the Violin,” to the mournful “Mama Look Sharp.” Maybe, like the nation whose birth 1776 celebrates, I was just expecting too much.

   

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Can You Spell Fun? Theatre Memphis Hosts a Lively Bee

The midterm elections are over — hooray! But nobody’s catching a break from our national shit-show. The race for 2020 is on like Fox News in a waiting room! Jeff Sessions is out as Attorney General! The Constitutional Crisis Clock is now set at one minute ’til midnight. Everything only gets worse. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Maybe spend some time in a place a little more like Norman Rockwell’s America? Only funny?

Can You Spell Fun? Theatre Memphis Hosts a Lively Bee (2)

I’ve seen The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee too many times. The jokes shouldn’t work. But they do. The Tony-winning one-act combines all the elements of a traditional musical with all the unexpected surprises of improvisation and audience participation. It’s the rare show that can be exactly the same from night to night while providing a completely different user experience from audience to audience

The musical’s characters represent a broad spectrum of adolescent privilege and insecurity. Chip’s been told he’s not so smart. Olive made friends with a dictionary because her parents were never there for her. Even perfect Miss Marcy Park who plays piano, twirls baton, speaks six whole languages, and spells like a champion is struggling with the personal cost of overachievement. Angst, acne, and unfortunate erections are on parade. It’s only a fraction of the freaky, geeky goodness packed into one of the most purely entertaining musical comedies of the past two decades.

Theatre Memphis

Winners all.

Bee‘s an actor-driven show. It’s the kind of thing a solid company of players could do well with almost no physical resources. But that’s not how Theatre Memphis rolls. It’s certainly not how director Cecelia Wingate (usually) rolls. This one’s a monster of detail with Jack Yates’ immersive set dropping audiences on the sidelines in a school gym so convincing you can practically smell the tube socks. Lighting designer Mandy Heath skillfully, and unobtrusively illuminates a good, old, cutthroat American spelling bee. If you ever went to school, you know all these kids. And you know right away, there will be blood. And hugs. And juice boxes.

Something about this modest ensemble show always brings out the best in character actors. Theatre Memphis’ production is no exception. Jenny Madden, Jimbo Lattimore, Jared Johnson,  Ryan Gilliam, Javier Peña, Nichol Pritchard, and Miranda Tonkin all give fun, first-rate performances. But there’s a little something extra that happens between Kevar Maffitt’s unapologetically weird William Barfee and Jenny Wilson’s nearly spectral take on poor Olive Ostrovsky, who seems to have fled some awful story narrated by Lemony Snicket. He’s over-the-top. She’s just barely there. Together they’re perfect.       

Did I mention at any point that everything is awful? Because that’s not correct. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is anything but awful. If anything, it’s an antidote for awful. While you’re watching it, anyway.
  

Can You Spell Fun? Theatre Memphis Hosts a Lively Bee