This is not a musical. No ships hit icebergs. Nobody’s king of the world.
Was that a wolf mask? A bat mask? A rat mask? Or a fly? Was it rubber?
Forgive.
Thoughts have been scattered since I sampled Sunday’s matinee performance of Dracula at Theatre Memphis. To combat the glamour, I’ve given myself a mental challenge. I’ll make it through this entire review without using the word “sucks.” Even if it kills me.
Theatre Memphis’ Dracula is all blood, no guts. Still, the lush production gets at least one key thing exactly right. A little well-placed magic goes a long way. Levitation illusions are also a fun way to evoke that steamy point on the temporal map where nineteenth-century spiritualism crashes headlong into the modern age — a time when psychoanalysts unlocked mysteries of the mind while performers like Harry Keller toured the globe performing self-decapitations and floating head tricks.
William McNulty’s script leans into the vampire story’s potential for Jacobean-style splatter and grand-guignol illusion. In doing so, it also opens a portal to the camp dimension. Like the hapless victims of a cruel prank, the cast and crew walk right through.
Dracula’s Got No Bite at Theatre Memphis
We’ve seen so many versions of Dracula since 1897, the year theater manager and pulp author Bram Stoker borrowed the memory of Vlad the Impaler, a brutal prince who butchered Turks and Bulgarians for “the preservation of Christianity,” and transformed him into the shape-shifting prince of darkness we know today. We’ve seen demonic Draculas, sleazy Draculas, sexy Draculas, silly Draculas, groovy Draculas, disco Draculas, and outright campy Draculas. We’ve seen porny Draculas, super–villain Draculas and kid–friendly Draculas who sell breakfast cereal and teach us to count. The fatal flaw with this latest incarnation is that nobody seems to have made a hard, clear decision as to what kind of Dracula this Dracula wants to be.
Dracula’s Got No Bite at Theatre Memphis (6)
Brian Everson’s a trooper but hopelessly miscast in the title role. He’s a go-to actor for light comic leads. Adjectives that come to mind include “able,” “clever,” and “nonthreatening.” Outfitted with a long black wig, and dark, impaleresque facial hair, his Dracula looks like it might have wandered away from the set of What We Do in the Shadows. He’s adopted a broad Draculonian accent and acts in bold strokes more suitable to musical comedy or farce. The pomp and effort makes this blood-craving ghoul funny when he should be scary and the wolf mask thing with “Safety Dance” hair doesn’t help a bit.
Wolf-bat? Flying rat-wolf?
Everson’s got a sound supporting cast. Andrew Chandler is especially enjoyable as the bug and rat munching Renfield. Jason M. Spitzer’s an attentive director, notable for the work he did to inject a much-needed dash of horror into Theatre Memphis’ long-running holiday staple, A Christmas Carol. His Dracula is thoroughly rendered but never scary enough to qualify as horror, mysterious enough to function as suspense, or funny enough to be a comedy. It’s not tricked out enough to be a magic show nor is there quite enough mayhem to call it theater of blood.
Memphis’ namesake playhouse seems to be taking some risks these days but the best adjective I can think of for this show is “safe.” As noted above, Dracula can be a lot of different things. But safe isn’t one of them.
Dracula’s Got No Bite at Theatre Memphis (4)
As the well-known horror classic unfolded in front of me, my mind wandered far and wide. At one point I started trying to think of all the fun spook season shows Theatre Memphis might have produced instead of this Dickensian Dracula. They’ve done such a fine job with monster musicals like Young Frankenstein and The Addams Family. “So why wasn’t I watching the American Psycho musical?,” I wondered, not giving a fig if the flopped Brett Easton Ellis adaptation was ever a good idea or not. All that brutality, misogyny, and 1980’s-style greed would at least be in line with contemporary anxieties. For fresher takes on the old vampire story there’s Little One, Cuddles, and Let The Right One In. There’s an Evil Dead musical and if that’s too far out, Theatre Memphis is more than equipped to explore the psychological terror in dramas like Frozen orThe Pillowman.
With this list of things that might have been, I’ve got nothing left to say. So here we are at the end of the review and I didn’t use “sucks” once. Or even bites. To borrow from Deadpool, that would have been lazy writing. Besides Theater Memphis’ Dracula doesn’t suck or bite. But it doesn’t thrill or chill either. That blows.
Uncertainty Principle: The principle that the momentum and position of a particle cannot both be precisely determined at the same time. — Google.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl:Exists solely “in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” — Wikipedia.
How nice it is for fans when these sorts of harmonics occur between shows in a local theater season. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which opened last week at Playhouse on the Square, is a spectacle-driven event, faithfully adapted from Mark Haddon’s book by British playwright, Simon Stephens. Heisenberg, which opened the same weekend at Theatre Memphis, is a a spectacle-free example of the kind of work Stephens does when he’s doing his own thing. In the case of Heisenberg, “his own thing” is also a little like Tom Stoppard’s thing, but shorter, maybe a wee bit duller, and way less pleased with itself.
None of the above is a complaint, mind you. But be warned: Heisenberg is not a play about the famously conflicted WWII physicist tasked with developing a nuclear weapons program for the Nazis. Beyond the title, his name is never mentioned and the metaphor, at the heart of Theatre Memphis’ sturdily built production, is pretty basic: It’s difficult to take the full measure of a person or relationship in any time-isolated circumstance. It’s harder still to predict where the players may end up when the curtain comes down. The story is a romance, of sorts, with just a hint of suspense woven into the fabric. It introduces us to Alex Priest, a reserved, 75-year-old Irish-born butcher living in London, whose life is turned upside down by a motormouthed American woman with ulterior motives.
Alex is shocked when a complete stranger sneaks up on him at a train station and kisses him on the back of the neck. Georgie Hardeman swears it was a case of mistaken identity, but she sticks around the station anyway, launching an awkward, distinctly one-side conversation. It’s the beginning of an unlikely and complicated relationship between a mouthy 42-year-old woman and a quiet but soulful septuagenarian who loves music like John Cusack in High Fidelity and takes long walks around London with nothing but his headphones for company. Stephens’ script toys with the idea that we can never tell where a story will go, but we can be pretty sure from the onset that Georgie— a confessed fabulist — is either going to swindle Alex or the two lonely characters are going to fall in love and/or teach one another valuable life lessons. Or maybe some less expected combination of all of the above.
Like the sensitive young protagonists of a certain kind of movie, Alex is coping with losing his parents. He’s also managing the trauma of true love lost. The only real difference between Alex and the sensitive but stunted male leads in coming of age fantasies like Elizabethtown, or 500 Days of Summer, is that, by the time Georgie shows up in his life, Alex has been making the most of his arrested development for 60 years or so. And he’s pretty good at it.
In many regards, Georgie is a “manic pixie dream girl” straight out of central casting, but aged to middle years — like a slightly broken refugee from Mama Mia. Unlike the cinema archetype she so closely resembles, Georgie, a school administrator by profession, has been doing her quirky carpe diem schtick long enough to have a backstory. This includes an adult son who hates her free-spirited ways and has abandoned her for the USA where he hopes to put down roots. Differences aside, the results here are very much the same as they always are with the MPDG type. She storms into Alex’s life like a 42-year-old Kirsten Dunst, and the sheer force of her quirk draws him into an unexpected, sometimes dangerous, and certainly uncharacteristic adventure that results in sexual and personal awakenings and second chances.
As Georgie Natalie Jones comes on like a weird tornado, winding and smashing her way into Alex’s personal space. It’s a strong, detailed performance that hints at the kind of work Jones might have done as Maggie the Cat had she been given more to work with in Theatre Memphis’ 2017 production of Cat on a Hot in Roof. In a dynamic similar to Cat‘s, Georgie’s would-be squeeze doesn’t always have much to say. In Irene Crist’s tightly directed production, Alex is always present, no matter how hard Jones monologues.
Alex is another familiar type. He’s a classic salt-of-the-earth guy with the soul of a poet/philosopher. He’s a sensitive butcher who likes knowing that animals have seams and are put together just like ready-to-wear. He’s never experienced life outside of London, but he can tango like a champ. He’s got a big heart, a bigger record collection, and grand ideas about the universe, if only somebody would ask him to share.
There’s not so much salt and vinegar in Jerry Chipman’s butcher. His routines seem less habitual than duty-bound, just at the edge of dharma. He blushes and giggles his way through the awkward stuff in a sweet, complete performance that’s maybe a little too passive for a little too long.
Jack Yates’ set is an elegantly abstract object lesson in economy, utility, and how to frame characters in a small, intimate drama. It’s likely my favorite thing the resident designer has ever done in Theatre Memphis’ smaller black box space.
I’ve admittedly fallen for a few manic pixies, but, for being a committed Harold & Maude guy, fantasies about older men and eccentric younger women have never turned my ticket. All else aside, Heisenberg is still that. But clocking in at about 90 minutes, it’s too brief to bog down and, if it sometimes feels a little familiar, I can’t complain about a show that invites us to think a little harder about uncertainty and the limits of information without making the physics lesson too dense, too dark, or too self-congratulatory. Good show!
Correction: An earlier draft misidentified Georgie Hardeman as Katie Hardeman.
What does it mean when a musical about newspapers and unions is way more popular than newspapers and unions? I honestly don’t know. And I don’t really know where to start with my review of Theatre Memphis’ production of Newsies other than to say it’s a technically outstanding interpretation of the famously failed Disney film that found a more natural home on Broadway. The ensemble is first rate. The singing soars. The choreography is energetic and stunty. The kids (and baby-faced grownups) playing the “Newsies” are especially good and John Hemphill and Kent Fleshmen make perfect comic and villainous foils.
What’s not to love?
For me, it’s the irony. See, striking newspaper delivery kids were they primary means of distribution for afternoon papers. Their after-school labor helped to make Joseph Pulitzer very rich. Although the strike did win the newsies some concessions, they are all still crushingly poor when the curtain comes down. They’ll be paid no more for their labor. They still have to invest more up front. They still take a hit on every paper they sell. But Pulitzer, knowing a good deal when he hears it, subsidizes their risk and incentivizes productivity by agreeing to buy back unsold issues. Although the result was favorable and the Newsboy strike is an important moment in American labor history, in the post-labor 21st century it’s hard to see Newsies as anything but nostalgia. Or a cynical artifact of American capitalism celebrating values and systems we don’t officially like anymore. Values and systems our elected representatives had been busy starving and stamping out for more than a decade by the time Disney released the original flop film in 1989.
To be fair, Disney grabbed good headlines recently for making $15/hour the new minimum wage in its parks. It’s a good, overdue decision that’s earned praise from affiliated unions that, though diminished, continue to press for better wages and working conditions. Well, from the unions MouseHouse hasn’t stealth-busted, anyway.
Theatre Memphis’ Newsies got a well-deserved standing ovation opening night, but looking around at all the gray hair, pale faces, conservative suits and Marsha Blackburn supercuts, I couldn’t help but wonder what this demographic was clapping for. It couldn’t possibly be for a story about disruptive, production-choking protest. The Newsboy strike famously shut down a bridge, after all, and we all know how Memphis’ privileged classes feel about that sort of thing. Maybe they were just applauding the unpaid talent sweating guts out to entertain? Or depictions of the use of law enforcement as the strong arm of big business, quelling dissent and making compromise more appealing? Or the plebe-appeasing triumph of capital inherent in the musical’s happy ending? Or maybe it was just habit.
See, in the current political and economic environment a proper telling of this story shouldn’t entertain, it should incite.
Allow me to double down on my opening comments. Theatre Memphis’ Newsies is perfect and polished in the ways musicals at the East Memphis playhouse often are. Fans of the film, and earlier iterations of the stage show won’t be disappointed. Voices are strong, the acting is professional and featured dancers (high) kick ass. Costumes are appropriate and scenic and lighting elements serve the material well. Even if the book and music underwhelm, the production may yet inspire.
That’s not nearly enough, but I’ll take it. Junk continues…
For a different take on business in America, Junk continues its run at Circuit Playhouse. From the Review…
To build on an idea put forward by addict/philosopher William S. Burroughs, Junk needs swagger like a junkie needs junk. It also needs the raw, biological urgency of addiction. Though Ayad Akhtar’s script is a trope-eschewing, drug-free zone compared to most mythic tales of corporate greed in the 1980s, Circuit Playhouse’s earnest production joneses hard for the wild eyes and religious fervor so vividly described in the play’s opening moments.
We’ve seen stories like Junk before. Salesmen, The Maysels Brothers 1969 documentary about door-to-door Bible peddlers, was a study in the rich, racist language of predatory business in America. That inspired David Mamet’s prescient real estate drama, Glengarry Glen Ross. The Wolf of Wall Street was a blurry, sweat and semen-drenched Polaroid of excess and, in a similar post-party vein, The Big Short was quirky, disruptive, and as entertaining as it was educational. On stage, there’s been Enron and Serious Money and I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention Gordon Gekko’s succinct “Greed is good,” monologue from 1987’s Wall Street, an original period artifact that’s still as quotable as it ever was. But Junk, the story of game-changing junk bond king Robert Merkin, has no use for quirk, color, or succinctness. It’s all sprawling sincerity and shades of gray with one thing logically following another with all the intrigue and suspense of a single-file domino tumble. Junk‘s script leans on narration, biasing “tell” over “show,” and Circuit’s translation from page to stage does little to correct the imbalance. (Continue reading).
Hattiloo takes a look at the “school to prison pipeline” with the play Pipeline.
From press materials:
“Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have. When a controversial incident at his private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent.”
•The popular musical Nunsense opens at Germatown Community Theatre.
•Emerald Theatre Co. presents Gaydar, its third annual original 10-minute play festival
Gaydar.
•Tennessee Shakespeare opens Two Gentlemen of Verona. This is also the best bargain in town thanks to Tennessee Shakespeare’s Free Shakespeare Shout-Out Series which kicks off this month with 11 performances in nine different indoor and outdoor locations. It’s a 75-minute show and no tickets or reservations are required.
•Quark Theatre opens The Typographer’s Dream at Theatre South. You can read the preview here.
You know what? As long as John Maness wins something, I don’t care about anything else this year. If the Ostrander committee misses all the rest by miles and miles, I’ll be satisfied for the ounce of justice done. Because … holy crap! After this season, the O-committee should consider a “John Maness hardest-working-person in Memphis Theater” trophy. With a roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic married to the soul of a magician and escape artist, he hammers out one unique character after another and vanishes inside them. I mean, who the hell does this guy think he is, Erin Shelton?
Nevertheless, the time has come, once again, for shade to be cast and predictions made in regard to this year’s crop of nominees and nominees that might have been if only the universe wasn’t so frequently unfair. It’s the season when the Intermission Impossible team wonders what it is our tireless, too human Ostrander judges might be smoking. When we ask the one question on every right-thinking thespian’s mind — “WHO GOT ROBBED?”
I want to see J. David Galloway take home the set design for New Moon’s lovely, immersive, and necessarily inventive design for Eurydice. I’ve been frustrated in the past by designers who quote or wink at surrealism when what’s needed is something approaching the real thing. Not every aspect of Galloway’s design was as dreamy as it might have been, but the microbudget masterpiece engaged imaginations, enabling the kind of stage magic money can’t buy.
[pullquote-1] That said, bigger, better-funded companies still have advantages in design categories and I suspect the judges may prefer Jack Yates’ outstanding work on The Drowsy Chaperone or the ordinary otherworldliness of Tim McMath’s design for Fun Home at Playhouse on the Square.
But what about the eye-candy that was An Act of God (also Yates)? What about 12 Angry Jurors, an environment so real yet another confounded patron tried to use the onstage bathroom (also Yates)? If it sounds like I’m arguing for more Jack Yates nominations, maybe I am. But I’m also making a case that there’s been some good design this season, and given a different set of sensibilities, this category might have swung another direction entirely. There might have been nods for the elegant emptiness of Bryce Cutler’s Once, at Playhouse on the Square, or the grubby, unfussy realism of Phillip Hughen’s design for The Flick at Circuit Playhouse. I look forward to seeing how this category evolves as New Moon continues to mature, and smaller Memphis’ companies leverage thoughtfulness against more tangible resources.
Falsettos.
It’s wrong that Mandy Heath wasn’t nominated for lighting Falsettos but I can live with the slight as long as she wins the prize for Eurydice. That’s really all I have to say about that.
Once is a stunt musical — and what a terrific stunt! It’s part concert, part narrative drama, with the actors doubling down as their own orchestra. The three-chord score’s not Sondheim but casting players who are also, well… players isn’t easy. And pulling off a piece musical theater where the songs feel more like barroom romps than show tunes, requires a different kind of sophistication. I suspect the thrice-nominated Nathan McHenry will take this prize. He should take it for Once.
Who got robbed? Maybe nobody this year.
For excellence in sound design there are a few nominees, but really only one choice. Joe Johnson’s dreamy original score for Eurydice didn’t enhance the designed environment. It completed it.
I was happy to see choreographers Ellen Inghram and Jared Johnson nominated for the wit and wisdom permeating their work on Falsettos. It would be nice to see them win over the flashier entries in this category. No robberies here.
When it comes to the non-musicals, best female lead and supporting roles are almost always the toughest category to call because year after year they are overstuffed with contenders. While Kim Sanders was her usual perfect self in both A Perfect ArrangementandLaughter on the 23rd Floor, the double nomination in the supporting category may not double her odds against commanding, emotionally wrenching turns by Jessica “Jai” Johnson inRuined and Erin Shelton in All Saints in the Old Colony. Kell Christie was the best Emelia I’ve ever seen and a perfect match for John Maness’ woman-hating Iago in New Moon’s Othello.Any other year Christie would be my #1 pick. She’s a longshot compared to Shelton and Johnson and I’m hard pressed to say who’s more deserving of the honor.
Opera 901 Showcase
Who got robbed? Although FEMMEemphis’ productions aren’t under consideration, basically the entire cast of Collective Rage. Quark’s similarly out of the running but in the young company’s very adult production of The Nether, young Molly McFarland stood shoulder to shoulder with grownup co-stars and delivered a brave, polished performance. As the youngest of the Weston daughters in Theatre Memphis’ tepid August: Osage County, Emily F. Chateau was damn near perfect — as fragile as Laura Wingfield’s glass unicorn and as likely to cut you if broken. ROBBED AS HELL!
Anne Marie Caskey does consistently professional work but she seemed miscast in Theatre Memphis’ not altogether successful production of August: Osage County. Ostrander loves Caskey (as do I) and her inclusion here might seem less bewildering if not for the absence of Michelle Miklosey’s pitch perfect Eurydice Tracy Hansom’s good old fashioned curtain chew inStage Kiss. Were I one of these two ladies, I’d take The Oblivains strong advice and call the police. Because, ROBBED! OMG ROBBED!
Some of the best female leads this season did their thing just outside Ostrander’s natural reach. Jillian Baron and Julia Baltz were equally badass in FEMMEmphis’ Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief. But let’s be real. All this talk of robbery is purely academic because each of these fantastic performances paled next to to Maya Geri Robinson’s larger-than-life depiction of a Congolese Mother Courage in Ruined at Hattiloo. And Robinson’s performance may have only been the season’s second best. I can’t say with any confidence that I’ve ever seen an actor own a show like Morgan Watson owned Sunset Baby, also at Hattiloo.
Emily F. Chateau. The F stands for F-ing ROBBED!
The list for Best Supporting Actor is strong. It’s so strong I’m picking Bertram Williams for Ruined even though I started this column cheering for John Maness in anything. The list of nominees might also have included nods to Jeff Kirwan for his performances in New Moon’s Buried Child, Eurydice or both. It’s worth noting (yet again) that every performance in All Saints in the Old Colony approached a personal best and Marques Brown was ROBBED!
I don’t know what the theater judges had against Buried Child but James Dale Green’s Dodge is a glaring best actor omission. So is Emmanuel McKinney, who gave a knockout performance as Muhammad Ali in the uneven Fetch Clay, Make Man. Both of these men should post on Nextdoor.com right away to let everybody know they were ROBBED! Once that’s been done, can we please all agree to give this year’s prize to John Maness? And can we go ahead make it for everything he touched this season? I say this with deep appreciation for and apologies to All Saints’ Greg Boller and Jitney’s Lawrence Blackwell who both delivered special, award-worthy performances in a season where the competition happened to be a little stiffer than usual.
I take it from the sheer number of nominations in the category of Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, the Ostrander judges liked Fun Home. Me too. But maybe not enough to give any category a near sweep. Especially when it might be appropriate to co-nominate Fun Home’s small and medium Alison in order to make room for Falsettos’ Jaclyn Suffel and/or Christina Hernandez who were both ROBBED!
Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’
A taste of Once‘s pre-show jam. Like I said, Ostrander very clearly likes Fun Home this year with the odd exception of adult Alison, Joy Brooke-Fairfield. So, individual nominations aside, I’m predicting a joint win for the two Alisons. Of course Annie Freres was a force of nature as the title character in The Drowsy Chaperone. All else being equal, she was probably the most outstanding nominee in a field of outstanding nominees.
Best Female Lead in a Musical is a heartbreaker category because everybody nominated is ridiculously talented. Nobody in town has pipes like Dreamgirls’ Breyannah Tillman, who’s also proving to be a formidable actor. But Emily F. Chateau also had an amazing year and may have been better in Falsettos than she was in August: Osage County. Gia Welch is a precocious powerhouse. She was great in Chaperone, but might also have been nominated for work on 42nd Street or Heathers. Meanwhile, Once’s Lizzy Hinton and Shrek’s Lynden Lewis occupy opposite corners of this playing field. The former helped build a complete world out of song and mirrors.The later was almost buried in spectacle but made heart and soul so much more important than green makeup and ogre costumes.
Let me let you in on a secret: Like Lena Younger’s striving son Walter, Patricia Smith was ROBBED! She should have gotten a nod for her work in the musical adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. I’m gonna talk about Raisin later on in this seemingly endless column, but frankly, that whole cast might want to call a personal injury attorney because they were dealt a disservice up front then ripped off by out appraisers!
Given all of Fun Home’s nominations in other categories, the omission of Joy Brooke-Fairfield feels oddly pointed. Fun Home’s a show that might challenge traditional gender divisions in these kinds of awards and when I didn’t see the older Alison included in this category, I so I double checked the whole list to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. But there was no Joy to be found anywhere, and that sentence is every bit as sad as it sounds. ROBBED!
I’d like to see Joshua Pierce win the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical category for Theatre Memphis’ superlative take on Falsettos. But I missed First Date and Dreamgirls this season and, truth be told, I don’t understand Shrek’s appeal. Too disoriented by this category to make a fair call. That almost never happens. Y’all tell me.
Best Leading Actor in a Musical is yet another heartbreaker category. Shrek’s never going to be my thing, but it’s very clearly Justin Asher’s, and he was a mighty fine ogre, loving every second of big green stage time. Stephen Huff was so at home in Fun Home it’s now almost impossible for me to imagine anybody else in his role. And I kinda feel the same about Jason Spitzer’s near definitive take on The Drowsy Chaperone’s Man in Chair. But I’ve gotta say, having been underwhelmed by his pitchy turn in Heathers, I was most impressed by Conor Finnerty-Esmonde’s take on the hard-luck musician in Once. But when I filter out personal taste in music and storytelling and just let myself focus on the difficulty and potency of the performances represented here, one actor’s work really stands out. Villains are fun to play but nothing’s harder than a complex character who’s hard-to-like but can’t be allowed to become a villain. Cary Vaughn, in his finest of many fine performances, plowed through Falsettos like a steamroller. Still standing. Still applauding this entire cast.
Eurydice — Awfully good looking.
But what about Kortland Whalum? Where is his name? I’ll be the first to admit, Raisin was tragically underproduced. The scenic environment felt unfinished, and in an intimate space like Hattiloo, nothing sucks the soul from musical performances like warm bodies performing to cold tracks. But somehow, in spite of everything the actors had working against them, Raisin’s cast collectively overcame. I can’t blame the Ostrander for not rewarding the production, but when you factor in the odds against, no cast was more ROBBED than this one. I’ll brook zero argument: No actor deserves to this category half as much as Whalum. Folks are welcome to disagree on this point, but folks who do are flat wrong. ROBBED!
If Jamel “JS” Tate doesn’t win Best Featured Performer in a Drama for Jittny I’m personally calling in the FBI. Annie Freres is likely to win Best Featured in a musical for her flashy roll-on as the Dragon in Shrek. Or maybe it will go to Breyannah Tillman, who stuck the landing in her role as The Drowsy Chaperone’s show-stopping aviatrix. But James Dale Green stopped time with nothing but his weatherbeaten tenor, a strummed mandolin, and a compelling story to tell. That sounds like a winner to me. Who got Robbed? Once’s Chris Cotton, that’s who.
I’m totally happy if the Ensemble award goes to All Saints in the Old Colony, Falsettos, Fun Home, Jitney, or A Perfect Arrangement. All are deserving, though Jitney may be just a little bit more deserving than all the rest. But how in the blankety-blankblanblank did Once not make this list? The cast doesn’t just act together, they also make music together — acoustic music. Music largely unaided by electronics and amplification. Music so thoroughly human it connects past and future like a time machine made of skin, bone, wood and string. I’m happy if the award goes to any of the fantastic nominees, but no matter who wins the judges lose on this account. Once was the season’s ultimate ensemble show, and POTS’s ensemble crushed it. The pre-show hoedown was worth the price of admission. BOO!
As long as I’m complaining about the judges, OMG! Why is Tony Isbell nominated for excellence in direction of a drama for Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf? Don’t misunderstand, I come to praise this year’s lifetime achievement honoree, not to dis him. Isbell absolutely should have been nominated in this category, but for his work on The Nether (not eligible). Or his work on Years to the Day (also not eligible). Or maybe even his work on Stage Kiss (eligible and solid but fuck-you ignored). I’d go so far as to say he got ROBBED! in spite of bing nominated. This insubstantial work is a jarring inclusion next to Dr. Shondrika Moss-Bouldin’s unflinching approach to Ruined and the inventiveness of Jamie Boller’s Eurydice. Not to mention the hyper-detailed character development, and ensemble work Jeff Posson oversaw for All Saints in the Old Colony and the flawless world-building of Steve Broadnax’s Jitney. I’m calling this one for Posson, but it could go in almost any direction.
Best production of a drama? I like Jitney, though I’ve not pegged it as a winner in many other categories. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that’s the case here, though the parts were also quite good. Should All Saints in the Old Colony win, it’s every bit as deserving and, being a new script and the underdog here, maybe even more deserving.
I’m betting the darkhorse for excellence in Direction of a Musical and calling this one for Jerry Chipman and Falsettos. Everything else was bigger or flashier or more current in some way or another, even the stripped down Once. But life’s about balance, and Chipman’s production had nary a hair out of place that wasn’t supposed to be out of place.
Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’ (2)
Looking at the nominee spread, my gut tells me Fun Home was the judges’ favorite musical this season, and why wouldn’t it be? It was flawlessly cast, and beautifully performed. But this wasn’t the best work I’ve seen from director Dave Landis. I saw the performance with two companions. One wept openly, responding to the story and the characters. The other complained all the way home about the musical’s almost complete lack of action and visual/physical dynamics. I became the most unpopular person in the car when I said I thought they were both 100-percent right to feel the way they felt. Up to this point I’ve been #TeamFalsettos but I’m calling this one for Once. The other shows were great, but they were shows. Once was an event.
“Theaters not actively engaged in creating new material are passively engaged in their own obsolescence.” — Me.
Yeah, I totally quoted myself, but there’s not much I believe more than that. It’s one of the reasons I think the Ostrander Awards for Best Original Script and Best Production of an Original Script, may be more important than nice. In the future, judges might even consider beating the bushes a little on this front, and looking beyond the usual qualifying companies. All Saints in the Old Colony is a fantastic new script. It will win these categories, and it will know productions and awards beyond Memphis. But now would be a good time for all the folks who contributed words and music to Opera Memphis’ all-original 901 Opera Festival to cancel their credit cards because they have been ROBBED! OM might not be under consideration, but if we’re looking for superlatives, I can’t recall a more impressive example of new musical theater in the 901. Not
Tony Isbell in ‘Red’
since OM’s 2014 production of Ghosts of Crosstown heralded the rebirth of a neighborhood.
That may not cover every category, but it’s all I’ve got for now. Who did I forget?
Also, stay tuned for a Q&A with lifetime achievement honoree Tony Isbell.
A little Clapton goes a long way for me, so when I walk out of the theater after a production of August: Osage County — an American family drama that’s all T.S. Elliot up front; Derek and the Dominos in back — I don’t hear ol’ Slow Hand’s signature guitar cutting through the piano swells. I hear something else entirely. I hear a verse from one of the most famous musicals in history sung in the caustic yet familiar voices of the South Park gang:
“We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say
Yeeow! A-yip-i-o-e-ay!
We’re only sayin’
You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma, O.K”
So tell me Oscar Hammerstein, what if it’s just land? What if there’s nothing grand about it? What if the great plains aren’t a great geographic feature but a terrible existential condition — “like the blues”? Or a horror-movie curse resulting from too many white men’s estates being built over the spot where a native culture was buried?
Can’t help it, it’s just what Tracy Letts’ grand pastiche of the American family tragedy does to me. Standing tall on the shoulders of Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Tennessee Williams and the women in Shakespeare’s King Lear, this Pulitzer-winning story of a death in the Weston family, forced reunion, and the inevitable struggle to reclaim order and tradition, all take place in the shadow of one unrepeated moment of true greatness. It’s a bitter, withering comedy about bitterness, withering, and a world that ends with whimpering not a bang. Theatre Memphis’ neatly crafted production gets a lot right, but suffers from pacing issues and fuzzy character development.
Beverly Weston was a cowboy poet — a rugged creature of the West and raging aesthete all in one package — a one-hit-wonder whose first and only book made him a superstar. He was hopeless at the end, living in his library and past glory. The only contact we have with Beverly before he takes his plunge into the great unknown is the job interview where he hires a Native-American housekeeper and charges her to not just cook and clean, but to live in the house like it was hers. Seems the old douche, having glimpsed the end of the world, couldn’t resist an opportunity to disrupt things with a poetic flourish.
Bev drinks. His wife takes pills and dances spasmodically to old Clapton records. She has a foul, slurring mouth and her foul, slurring mouth has cancer. Instead of dividing the family estate into three parts between the daughters, she’s keeping everything but the old used furniture. Plans to make a blast of her final chapter with nice new things, songs with a beat, and a lot of prescription drugs.
Two of the daughters abandoned Osage County. The eldest followed her (soon to be separated) college professor husband when he got an offer he couldn’t refuse. The youngest chased a fantasy of romance and let the winds blow her all the way to Florida, where she’s met the man of her dreams — a sleazy businessman, serial husband, and compulsive pedophile.
The middle kid stayed home and took care of everybody but herself until, very recently she decided to start over in New York with her first cousin, and the true love of her life.
[pullquote-1] From the isolated patriarch to the rebellious and vulnerable teen, there’s not much originality in the plot. We’ve encountered all these characters and situations before. We’ve seen every piece of this puzzle in other plays and works of fiction. What’s special is how Letts stitches it all together while pushing the characters in his story of American collapse, to the brink of parody and dark farce.
Director Jerry Chipman gets some great performances from his supporting cast. Matthew Hamner is almost too good as the show’s smarmy pedo who comes on like a best pal, and Gabriella Gonzalez is just as convincing as his intended teenage target. As the youngest of the Weston daughters, Emily F. Chateau is as fragile as a glass unicorn and seems as likely to cut you, if broken. Emily Peckham is the embodiment of good old gal zest, Sarah Solarez epitomizes patience in the face of an exploding family volcano, and Greg Boller is convincing as a college professor trying to do right by the family he wronged.
The ensemble play’s more central characters never seem quite as focused or finely crafted and its herky-jerky pacing sometimes made the three-hour show a bit of an endurance test. It’s a test that’s still worth taking.
August: Osage County arrived in 2008, and its “rot in the heartland” themes reflected an especially cynical moment in American history. Today, as we wrestle with the meaning of greatness, and grandness, and the land we belong to, this show, overstuffed as it is with marital infidelity, incest, child molestation, fibs, lies, falsehoods and fucking Clapton, seems almost quaint.
I’ll have fuller reviews of all these plays available shortly. In the meantime I just want to encourage everybody to take advantage of an opportunity to go to the theater on a weekend when you’ll have to try extra hard to see a bad show. The mix of musicals, dramas, classics and world premieres makes for an especially rich spread. So if you’ve got a hole in your schedule this weekend, fill it. If you’ve got plans, cancel at least one. Whether you’re already a theater lover or just a little bit curious any all of these pieces will satisfy.
Once at Playhouse on the Square
Take a peek at this seconds long video. I’ll wait.
You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’
That clip’s from the pre-show. You know, the half-hour or so after audience members are allowed into the theater but before the show actually starts. It’s the (mostly) full cast of Once having a fiddle-sawing, guitar-picking, mandolin-strumming, box-beating, foot-stomping, tin whistle-tooting jam session. It’s fantastic and they carry the joyful Celtic momentum into this bittersweet Irish ballad of a musical that invests far more in the power of live music and honest theatrical performance than it does in Broadway spectacle.
Once is the story of a depressed young songwriter who lives with his old Da above the shop where they make Hoovers that don’t suck suck proper again. His girl’s left him for New York, and nobody’s listening to his music except for the struggling Czech immigrant who becomes his muse and chief motivator.
The ensemble’s amazing but the secret star of this Once is simple wooden stage that looks like it was designed not to impress visually but to maximize the warm sounds of acoustic instruments and lightly amplified human voices. It’s a little like hearing guitars played inside a bigger guitar. It’s hard not to get swept up in the songs, and swept away by the story.
Highly recommended. Sunset Baby at The Hattiloo
You want to see one really great performance? Oh baby. Decked out in fuck me boots and the war paint of a woman who lures Johns into her car in order to rob them Morgan Watson’s Nina is as hard and multifaceted as cut diamonds. It’s hard to eclipse actors as strong as TC Sharp and Emmanuel McKinney, and they both hold their own as Nina’s long absent father and gangsta boyfriend respectively. But whether she’s rolling her eyes and saying, “I love you,” or holding forth on what it really means to be “children of the revolution,” it’s hard to take your eyes off Watson long enough to look at anybody else in a tight, terrific ensemble.
Sunset Baby’s set after the death of a one time Civil Rights icon named Ashanti X who had struggled economically, becoming a less than inspiring crack addict in later years. Now that she’s dead her papers are worth more than she ever was and Nina’s long-estranged father shows up looking to get back into his daughter’s life. And for letters Ashanti X had written to him while he was in prison.
Sunset Baby is a GenX story looking at lives shaped by a stalled Civil Rights movement, when protest gave way to politics, and old heroes became fringe figures and outlaws. It’s a little play telling a big story.
Highly recommended. All Saints in the Old Colony at TheatreWorks
Here’s an excerpt from my review of a great fookin’ world premiere launched right here in Memphis.
All Saints in the Old Colony feels like Homokay’s New England-flavored answer to Katori Hall’s housing project drama Hurt Village. The Old Colony, Boston’s second oldest housing project, has changed quite a bit in recent years, but was once a dense cluster of brick towers populated by poor Irish families. As with Hurt Village, All Saints is set against a backdrop of gentrification and change. It tells the story of Kier, an Irish-born immigrant and disabled dock worker who, in the absence of parents, raised his siblings as best he could, making hard decisions that still haunt his malnourished, whiskey-soaked brain.
Carla McDonald
All Saints in the Old Colony: real people, real problems
More specifically, it tells the story of an attempted intervention where the whole family comes together — including sister Fiona who was given up for adoption at an early age — to help Kier into a healthier lifestyle. But, in the words of playwright Sam Shepard, whose work is also reflected in All Saints, there’s no hope for the hopeless. Opportunities for temporary escape abound, but for these siblings normalcy will always be relative, and there’s no hope that these four — five, counting an offstage brother too unforgiving to appear — will ever find peace, let alone happiness.
Highly recommended.
Fences
Theatre Memphis’ second production of Fences is another good opportunity to revisit favorite topics like exceptionalism and how badly our legacy playhouses serve Memphis’ communities of color, and how productions like this first-rate go at an August Wilson classic are the very thing we talk about when we talk about exceptions proving the rule. But I’ve buried the lead, so put those thoughts on hold long enough to consider this: No matter how overexposed Fences may be relative to some of Wilson’s consistently strong oeuvre this perfectly cast and lovingly-staged production is something you’ll want to see. Maybe more than once.
Highly recommended.
You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’ (2)
Perfect Arrangement
This is the only one of the bunch I haven’t seen yet, but it sounds awfully intriguing. Here’s how the folks at Circuit Playhouse are describing it.
It’s 1950, and new colors are being added to the Red Scare. Two U.S. State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. There’s just one problem: Both Bob and Norma are gay and have married each other’s partners as a carefully constructed cover. Inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, madcap classic sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two “All-American” couples are forced to stare down the closet door.
Verdict: We’ll have to wait and see, but it better be good because the competition is stiff.
The Ostrander Awards executive committee needs to create a new category for set designer Jack Yates: Best Performance by an Onstage Bathroom. Last season, I witnessed an audience member walking across a realistic set into fake facilities Yates built for Rasheeda Speaking. Then last Sunday morning, I awoke to similar stories in my social media feed from Theatre Memphis’ sturdy, star-studded production of 12 Angry Jurors. As was the case with Rasheeda, Yates has developed an immersive space, placing the audience in an environment that’s as familiar as it is convincing — at least if you need to pee badly enough. But we’re not here to talk toilets, are we?
Though its fierce, searching speeches feel by-the-numbers in ways that expose Jurors‘ roots as an Eisenhower-era tele-play, Reginald Rose’s script is frustratingly current in its depiction of prejudice in the American legal system. It tells the story of a murder trial that might have ended in an easy guilty verdict if not for the persistence of one skeptical juror who defied peer pressure and outright threats because a man’s life was at stake. Director John Rone’s cast is a Who’s Who of Memphis Theater with Kim Justis, Bennett Wood, Pamela Poletti, Christina Wellford Scott, and Jim and Jo Lynne Palmer in key roles — and that’s just the first half-dozen. It’s a dream team, and every player’s at least as convincing as Yates’ crapper. It’s a rare and serious treat to see so many generations of talent working together on a classic. Catch it if you can.
12 Angry Jurors at Theatre Memphis through October 1st
12 Angry Jurors
Maybe I have a weird sense of beauty, but I’ve got to confess, I got a little choked up when I pulled right up to the door of 7 N. Main on my bike and looked into the brightly lit space. When those lights finally went down on Quark’s production of Years to the Day, I knew anybody walking by outside could look in and watch the show, too. They could watch the audience watching the show. Everything was so minimal, so open, immediate, inviting and accessible. It was something to see without being remotely extravagant.
Tony Isbell directs Adam Remsen and David Hammons in Allen Barton’s play about two middle-aged white guys sitting around talking that’s way more engaging than that sounds. Dan (Remsen) and Jeff (Hammons) are old college buddies who’ve grown apart and, prior to the awkward coffee date we witness, haven’t made time to hang out in four years. The ensuing conversation touches on all the things one might expect from a couple of 40-something guys hanging out talking — the latest film, health, aging, sex, kids, divorce, the grim specter of death on the horizon, etc. Jeff’s gay now. Dan nearly died of a heart attack in the parking lot of a discount store. There’s some catching up to do, and it’s not easy.
Dan’s such a conservative ranter and despiser of all things “nanny state,” it’s hard to imagine at times how these two men were ever friends. But the magic of Years to the Day is rooted in a slow-burning revelation that shared personal history creates needs that outweigh cultural values.
The story is set in a familiar world with an alternative history, so familiar situations are presented without the usual cultural/political baggage. This nearly trigger-free environment lets us watch debates without becoming a part of them — to see the dynamics of argument, not the merits of an argument. It’s a nifty, hypnotic writing trick, though it can also feel a little gimmicky at times.
If watching two strong, unaffected actors ruthlessly going for it in a tight, high-stakes game of middle-stakes Life sounds like your idea of a good time, Years to the Day delivers.
I’m not sure what else I can say about this show without spoiling punchlines that sometimes land like actual punches. Clocking in at under 80 minutes, it’s not a huge time investment either, leaving plenty of time to enjoy life on the riverfront.
Quark’s Years to the Day at 7 N. Main through September 29th
Like the classic drama’s pivotal character, Brick Pollitt, a frustrated alcoholic who lost the one great, good, true thing in his life and now spends his days drinking till he feels peace, Theatre Memphis’ revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a handsome, aging wreck still waiting for “the click.”
Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning script is 62 years old, but there’s still plenty of life left in its gleefully profane old body. Time may have been kinder to The Glass Menagerie, but Cat has aged well enough. It’s still a potent meditation on family, legacy, mortality, and the terrible lies we tell ourselves to keep on living. The play’s most famous character, Maggie the Cat, Brick’s manipulative, Nashville-trash wife, is as fascinating as she ever was, and Natalie Jones gives the character plenty of genuine Ole Miss je ne sais quoi. The cast is beautiful. The design is nifty. But opening night at Theatre Memphis was plagued by slow cues and sputtered lines that made the show crawl like cold molasses.
Williams’ nods to King Lear aren’t subtle. The author’s own ambitions are also fairly evident. He wants this play to come on like a devastating force of nature and leave audiences feeling like they’ve weathered a thunderstorm of Biblical proportions. To that end, director Anita “Jo” Lenhart’s production is too cool, too formal, and far too rigid. It’s too many perfect lines, cut on the bias, against the grain of a play that that coos and whispers, before it roils, then boils, and, per the play’s famous Dylan Thomas epigraph, rages against the dying of the light.
Cat‘s top-shelf cast of actors walk those rigidly proscribed lines like everybody knows where they’re supposed to go, but nobody’s entirely sure why they’re going there. Words and ideas get lost in business, and those that aren’t lost are projected, in an actorly manner occasionally resembling human speech.
Williams built Cat like a piece of music, weaving distant conversations over croquet, phone calls from neighboring rooms, the sounds of children shrieking and tearing about the grounds, fireworks, and a wild storm, with aria-like monologues and explosive confrontations. The story of brothers competing for a birthright conjures Biblical images of Jacob and Esau and Christ’s parable of the prodigal son. The characters may be petty, but there are no small themes here. Cat wants to be epic at every turn.
Speaking of epic, Bill Baker is a heroic force for good in Memphis theater. His personal work is experimental and essential, but rare forays into more traditional drama are also reliably satisfying. For reasons difficult to identify, Baker’s struggling in the role of Big Daddy and only occasionally connects with the coarse “Mississippi Redneck” who made a fortune, and, unaware of his positive cancer diagnosis, is planning to spend his twilight years in an extravagant sexual escapade. Key lines of dialogue just weren’t there when he needed them.
Few things are harder for an actor than playing a character who only wants to disappear. Presumed homosexual Brick Pollitt is one of the most sadistically sullen, inward-focusing characters ever imagined for the stage, and, like so many actors before him, the usually excellent Gabe Beutel-Gunn fights to stay in scenes and on task. Jones is more successful, as Maggie, who’s eaten up with longing but willing to do whatever it takes to avoid being old without money. As is the case with everybody else, Jones’ blocking feels choreographed, and her long, jazzy speeches could stand a lot more clarity and color. Kinon Keplinger and Shannon Walton are pure competence as the family’s chief breeders, Brother Man and Sister Woman. Their brief but memorable appearance, in supporting roles, are the night’s most fully realized performances.
Lenhart has assembled such an incredibly strong, smart cast it’s impossible to imagine this Cat won’t land on its feet when the performances settle. The click, however, requires confidence. And nothing expresses doubt like a pre-show curtain speech assuring audiences that, in spite of whatever they may think, a main character is indeed using his crutch appropriately, “according to extensive research.” Y’all, please.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Theatre Memphis through May 14th
Daylight saving time may have sprung us forward Sunday, but even so, it’s getting darker out there all the time. Almost every production on stage in Memphis right now toys in some way with concepts of ugliness, scars, and deformity. In Lord of the Flies, schoolboys turn into murderous beasts when they’re marooned on an island. Violet’s about a girl whose face was scarred by an axe. Based on the true story of the conjoined Hilton twins, Side Show tells a circus story populated by a cast of “human oddities.” Blackbird‘s a tiny piece of chamber theater subjecting audiences to 90 painfully awkward real-time minutes as a victim of child sexual abuse confronts her abuser at his workplace. Everything’s ugly, and beautifully done.
There are moments in Playhouse on the Square’s chillingly austere take on William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies when the story’s opposing gangs threaten to stage a Pat Benatar video or square off in a Jets vs. Sharks dance-off. The sequences — impressive as they are — create tonal inconsistencies in a strong show. It works but never as cohesively as it might.
Lord of the Flies is the definition of an ensemble show. Director Jordan Nichols brought together an age-appropriate cast of (mostly) teens, capable of addressing the story’s heart and its horror. Golding’s violent parable of tribalism and unraveling democracy is encumbered by a bit of post-colonial savage vs. civilization bias, but its story of marooned British schoolboys playing naked dominance politics rings as true as ever. The kids nail it.
In one of the evening’s more effective movement numbers, the cast becomes a living, breathing evolution chart going one way first, then full on reverse. It’s too brutal and too beautiful and probably too on the nose. It’s also a perfect bullseye.
Lord of the Flies at Playhouse on the Square through March 26th
Violet‘s the best Tony-nominated musical nobody’s ever heard of. Based on Doris Betts’ short story The Ugliest Pilgrim and buoyed by a collage of authentic Americana sounds, Violet tells the story of a hardened young woman who’s pinned her hopes and dreams on a Tulsa faith healer. It’s a road trip story prominently featuring one hot, transformative night in Memphis. In a short-feeling 90 minutes, Violet tackles big ideas about race, class, beauty, and faith with none of the usual “put it on Jesus” cliches. Germantown Community Theatre’s production of Violet boasts some extraordinary voices and some not-so-extraordinary voices, but it’s all honesty and heart. Nichol Pritchard’s Violet is someone everybody knows. Hers is a standout performance.
Violet composer Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) dove deep into American roots music and delivered an unpretentious country-, blues-, and bluegrass-laden score, where Bo Diddley beats meet big Broadway ballads.
Violet at Germantown Community Theatre through March 26th
If you like good acting, go see Blackbird. If you like stories that are so overloaded with emotional twists, you’ll spend the rest of the night unpacking it all, go see Blackbird. This first production by Memphis’ Quark Theatre is one hell of an introduction. Tony Isbell and Fiona Battersby play Ray and Una — a sexual predator and his one known victim. Their unexpected reunion in Ray’s workplace keeps audiences squirming, cringing, and trying very hard to look away (and failing) for 90 intense minutes.
Blackbird at TheatreSouth through March 26th
Side Show‘s got it all — great voices, great design, and a great story to tell. It doesn’t really capture the hell conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton lived through and only hints at a life where every relationship is abusive, reducing a horrible existence to so much irony and failed romance, but for all of its missed opportunities, this circus musical cuts to the core of everyday insecurity. Who hasn’t felt like everybody was staring at them and asked “Who will love me as I am?”
With the simplest gestures, Theatre Memphis’ designers have turned the entire main stage space into a big top. The effect brings everybody into the same big tent for the show’s duration.
With Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim takes audiences on a musical, psycho-sexual romp through the pages of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. The Sweeney Todd composer’s take on bedtime stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella is less like an animated Disney musical than Hitchcock shocker. The irony is that when Into the Woods became a film, Disney made it. While Theatre Memphis’ lush, color-saturated production is not a copy of the film, it has a post-Disney feel.
Theater Memphis’ Into the Woods is nothing short of lovely, with lush storybook designs by Jack Yates complemented by Jeremy Allen Fisher’s even lusher lighting. Voices are strong, the orchestra sounds fantastic, and the acting is solid.
Renee Davis Brame may be the best wicked witch Memphis has seen to date, which is no small compliment considering how frequently the show is produced. Imagine Bette Davis eating Bernadette Peters to absorb her superpowers. She shares the stage with a strong ensemble that includes Lee Gilliland and Lynden Lewis as the Baker and his wife, and Cody Rutledge as a dimwitted giant-killer named Jack.
Jack Yates
Old fairy tales get a little freaky in Into the Woods.
Into the Woods is relentlessly modern, putting it at odds with Theatre Memphis’ production,which is only intermittently so. The things that make the show so sumptuous dull the musical’s sharpest edges and un-sex it. What’s left remains gorgeous and exuberantly performed.
Into the Woods at Theatre Memphis through April 3rd
All the Way is an overstuffed sausage-grinding play about President Lyndon Johnson’s first 11 months in the White House. It begins with Kennedy’s assassination and ends with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and LBJ’s election.
George Dudley is always a pleasure to watch on stage, and his LBJ is no exception. Curtis C. Jackson and John Maness stand out as NAACP leader Roy Wilkins and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Greg Boller relishes his time inside the skin of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and Michael Detroit makes a sympathetic, if never entirely convincing, Hubert Humphrey. The women of the ’60s are finely represented by Claire Kolheim, Irene Crist, and Kim Sanders. Unfortunately, this enormously scaled show requires more than acting.
All the Way should make us see that soldiers are blown up in boardrooms not on battlefields, and how even progressive politics can play out like a slow-motion lynching. It should make us flinch and look away often. It never does, but it’s an election year, which may put audiences in the mood for a three-hour reminder of the days when even an oil-funded politician as crude and bullying as Donald Trump could dream of a “more perfect union” and get elected.
All the Way at Playhouse on the Square through March 26th
Charles Smith’s Free Man of Color is a melodrama more relevant than well-told. It’s the story of a slave with uncommonly kind masters who, as a newly freed man, is given a chance to attend college. It’s also a story of 19th-century liberalism, and a man of learning who staked his reputation on the progressive belief that, with the proper education and rigorous training, exceptional Christian males of African descent might one day go back to Africa, conquer other brown people, and rule over them as God intended.
Although Free Man of Color is inspired by the true story of John Newton Templeton, who attended university in Ohio, Smith’s play is essentially a work of historical fiction. That doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Templeton, played with boundless decency by Bertram Williams, is invited to live with university president Robert Wilson, who treats his precocious student like a son when he’s not treating him like the Elephant Man. Wilson’s wife, played with chest-thumping authority by Kilby Yarbrough, Jane is a period-perfect hysteric, forever on the verge of going all “Yellow Wallpaper” in the absence of agency and purpose. She creates more context by voicing her concerns for Native Americans who are hunted like coyotes.
Michael Ewing is ramrod straight as Wilson, a self-enamored political animal with a gift for otherizing.
Free Man of Color wants more dynamic treatment but still succeeds in leaving audiences with plenty of food for thought.
Free Man of Color at the Hattiloo Theatre through April 3rd
Carla McDonald 
Jack Yates