Nathan McHenry and Carly Crawford (Photo: Tony Isbell)
Quark Theatre is gearing up to finish off its season in the coming weeks with the regional premiere of Constellations by Nick Payne, opening Friday, May 10th.
“I have been calling this a multiversal love story,” says director Tony Isbell. “Because it’s about two characters — Roland and Marianne — and the story is they meet, they go on a date, they hit it off, they fall in love, they break up, they get back together, and they deal with some very serious issues along the way and some very funny issues. But it’s not that straightforward: We follow their relationship through the lens of the multiverse. … It jumps to different universes and it occasionally jumps back and forwards in time as well. So there’s a lot going on.”
At just about 80 minutes, the play, Isbell says, feels like a montage sequence. “Like short scenes cut together,” he says. “But these two actors [Carly Crawford and Nathan McHenry] are phenomenal because when they switch universes there’s no technical aspect — there’s not necessarily a scene change or sound change. It’s all conveyed by the actors and just something as simple as a change of tone of voice or a change of their posture or the way they’re relating to each other. And the amazing thing is you can almost always tell when there’s a change, when they jump through the universe, not only because they end up repeating some of the same lines but just because of the nuance they bring to the characters as they move from universe to universe.
“I call it a love story because that’s really what it is. The most important thing here is the relationship between these two people and how much chemistry they have and how much the audience roots for them. Because they’re both really likable people most of the time, and in a couple of universes, they’re not so nice, but most of the time they’re really likable and the audience is really rooting for them. I think people will just really be fascinated by the show.”
Isbell hopes this production follows the success this season has offered so far with The Wasp and The Sound Inside. “In terms of audience we’ve just done really well,” he says. “This has been our most successful season, and we’d like to continue that with this show.”
Tickets for Constellations can be purchased at quarktheatre.com. Performances run Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m., May 10th through May 26th.
Constellations, Theatre South at First Congo, 1000 Cooper St., Friday, May 10-May 26, $20.
Kim Justis and Taylor Roberts as professor and student (Photo: Tony Isbell)
The phrase “the magic of theater” most likely brings to mind a musical. Grandeur, spectacle, something larger than life. Certainly that is often true, but there are some instances where “the magic of theater” refers to the exact opposite: the small vagaries of everyday life quietly rendered to the stage. These sorts of plays can make audiences feel as though they’re pressed against a living room window, peering through a gap in the drapes to eavesdrop on the characters’ lives. When it comes to Quark Theatre’s production of The Sound Inside, audiences might receive a shock. The metaphorical front door opens, and we aren’t just acknowledged — we are invited directly in.
The Sound Inside is a one-act play with a cast of only two characters. Kim Justis plays Bella Baird, a creative writing professor at Yale who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Taylor Roberts plays Christopher Dunn, her student. Over the course of the play, the two become inadvertently close, and the line between professor and student becomes increasingly blurred.
Director Tony Isbell describes the play as an “existential mystery.” It is narrated throughout by Baird, and eventually in parts by Dunn as well. Isbell says, “The show certainly portrays the versatility of theater. It moves back and forth from direct address, where the characters talk directly to the audience, into traditional scenes between the two of them and even into meta-theatrical territory, or at least one of them acknowledges the fact that she is in a play talking to an audience. It has scenes of great pathos and emotion as well as some very funny bits, including one of the funniest monologues I’ve ever seen.”
I think I can guess which monologue Isbell is referencing, and I have to agree. Justis is superb in her delivery, so much so that my friend, local nursing student Quinlan Culver, leaned over after the monologue, gestured to her arms, and said, “I have chills.” There are ample moments that might elicit such a response from audience members, as it becomes less and less apparent just how much of what we’re watching is actually true. The concept of an unreliable narrator is familiar, but one aspect of The Sound Inside that is so fascinating is that our narrator, Bella Baird, comes across as completely, even frankly, honest. It’s Christopher Dunn who creates unsure footing for the audience. Roberts convincingly plays Dunn as a bit off somehow, in a way that’s hard to put your finger on. Dunn’s cadence of speech is strange, his mannerisms are slightly awkward, which is a stark contrast to Bella Baird’s comfortable self-assurance. The juxtaposition makes the slow crescendo of Bella’s insecurity even more compelling to watch.
This play is one that intentionally leaves many questions unanswered and up to the viewer’s interpretation. Playwright Adam Rapp seems to be drawing our attention to this by including a story within the play that ends in a similarly ambiguous way. The disparity in age between the characters leaves me wondering, “Is this simply a friendship in which age doesn’t have much importance? Is the ‘friendship’ between Dunn and Baird perpetually teetering on the edge of sexual tension?” It certainly seems the latter is true, and the actors manage to sustain that tension throughout every one of their shared scenes. The moment when Dunn begins to narrate is one that was beautifully executed by the two actors. It feels almost sweet, but at the same time, the shift in the power dynamic is almost tangible. Baird, whether she realizes it or not, has lost control, a metaphor for the entire play condensed neatly into one fleeting moment.
For Quark Theatre, Isbell says, “Our motto is ‘small plays about big ideas.’” The Sound Inside fits the bill as an intimate show that manages to explore, in its 90-minute or so run, power, feminism, truth, trust, illness, bravery, existentialism, and much more. In a simple, dressed-down black box set, Quark Theatre has managed to capture just as much allure as any big-budget musical.
Quark Theatre’s The Sound Inside runs at TheatreSouth at First Congo through March 17th.
From left: Mary Hollis Inboden, Tony Isbell, Meghan Lisi Lewis (Photo: Quark Theatre via Facebook)
Thanks to Quark Theatre, Memphis is about to be home to the American debut of The Wasp, the critically acclaimed play written by London native Morgan Lloyd Malcolm in 2015.
“As crazy as this sounds, we have been told that no other theater company in the United States has done this play,” says director Tony Isbell, who founded Quark Theatre with Louisa Koeppel and Adam Remsen in 2015. “I just sort of stumbled across it. When I read the script for the first time, I lost count of the number of times I was taken by surprise because there are so many twists and turns. Usually, especially if you do theater a lot, you can read a script and kind of get an idea of where it’s going. But I will admit I did not see where this one was going. Even up until the very last page, I did not see where it was going.”
A psychological thriller, The Wasp unravels the relationship between once-childhood friends Heather and Carla, who have lost touch since school where a bully incident tore the two apart. At the start of the play, the women reunite 20 years later over tea at a cafe, where one offers the other a significant amount of cash and an unexpected proposition. What ensues is a dark exploration of how trauma shapes us.
“I highly recommend you don’t do your research,” Isbell says. “Spoilers. Don’t watch the previews. Just let us take you on a ride.”
As with most Quark productions, the cast of the play is small — just two women: Meghan Lisi Lewis, who was most recently in Theatre Memphis’ The Play That Goes Wrong, and Mary Hollis Inboden, a University of Memphis alum, whom you might you might remember from a number of Memphis productions before she moved to work in television, most recently on shows like Kevin Can F**ck Himself and The Righteous Gemstones.
So far, more than 50 percent of tickets to The Wasp performances have been sold, and Isbell predicts the show will sell out. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at quarktheatre.com. Performances will run September 22nd through October 8th, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinées at 2 p.m., at First Congo Theater in Cooper-Young.
In anticipation of Lewis and Inboden’s performance, the Flyer spoke with the two actors to learn more.
Mary Hollis InbodenMeghan Lisi Lewis
Memphis Flyer: What interested you in this play?
Meghan Lisi Lewis: You just don’t often get the opportunity to do a two-woman show. So for me, that is a gift. I was hooked by this script from jump. It’s a smart, smart script. And it really takes the audience on a ride, and I was really excited to go on that ride myself as a reader and audience member. It’s also a really big stretch for me. I’ve been in the Memphis theater scene for a long time, but I rarely get to dive into roles that are this far outside of who I really am.
Mary Hollis Inboden: I’ve spent the last 10 years doing exclusively television, and this is a great opportunity for me to make sure that I’ve still got it while we [the Screen Actors Guild] strike. It’s been 17 years since I’ve been on stage in Memphis, and a chance encounter brought me into the space of Meghan, who was talking about having just auditioned for this play. She actually asked if I’d be interested in coming and doing this two-hander play. And of course, I was terrified. It is a challenging piece, and it’s also a show that features two women, and only two women. And, in a way I feel like only women can, the show touches on empathy, and love and support and understanding and also cruelty and violence and how we hold resentment. And it’s so completely well-rounded the way they kind of get at these really hard topics. Of course, I’m always drawn to women, female characters, especially who can behave badly, but also have a full scope of their existence and world. So that was exciting for me, and quite frankly, the reason why I took it on.
Meghan, you mentioned that part of the reason you took on this role is that you’re not like your character. As actors, how do you approach characters that are so outside of who you are?
MLL: The way that these women are written is so complex. So while the lived experience of my character Carla is nothing like my own lived experience, I think in ways universal experiences come through. We all either know these people [like our characters], interacted with these people, or have bits and pieces of them in ourselves. And so I think the challenge that’s been so interesting to me is to find where our humanity does align and how I can bring truth to her through my own lived experiences or the experiences of my friends and loved ones and also through the relationship that Mary Hollis and I have built, both as individuals and then through the relationships we’re building in the play. It’s like the characters are both far away from us and very close.
MHI: I would piggyback on that, fully agreeing that we’re always using our experience to bring these characters to life. And I do associate with my character. While I wasn’t a victim of bullying, I am a victim of a mass shooting [the 1998 Westside Middle School shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas] and have grown up with that sort of trauma in my past. The shooting, while it was so very tragic, and I really wish that it hadn’t happened to me or my classmates, in some ways, it propelled me forward. I understood immediately how precious life is and wanted to get at that. And so I would be wrong if I said that there wasn’t a little part of what I feel like is my success that is kind of overcoming that tragedy every day.
Mary Hollis, what’s it been like being back on stage in Memphis?
MHI: Being back on stage in Memphis, it has turned out to be the very, very right choice for me because I get to be in the room with Tony and Meghan. I mean, they’re just so fantastic and so talented, and they are a great representation of Memphis theater as I remember it. We’ve all grown up a little bit, but coming back, I am taking it back to brass tacks and learning so much again. So, as a working actor, it’s been a really, really great exercise, performing alongside and with Meghan and under Tony who has like the lightest touch. It feels very free in the rehearsal space to kind of make big decisions. While I’m so grateful for my jobs in TV, you can sort of feel, especially in some of those smaller roles on TV, that it’s not super creative all the time. [Theater] really forces you to have imagination and really express yourself and give everything that you have so that the live beating heartbeat of the theater is felt, and especially in a company like Quark that’s so small, and just about two chairs and two actors, it’s a real turn on. So I hope that once out of the strike, which will be resolved and hopefully in the favor of labor and actors, I can make some time and remember how productive it feels to do a live show, especially with creatives like Tony and Meghan who are just really filling my cup.
Meghan, though this is your first Quark production, you’ve been involved in the Memphis theater scene for a while now, right?
MLL: I’ve spent most of my decade or more on Memphis stages, mostly at Theatre Memphis. I most recently just did The Play That Goes Wrong there. So that’s sort of my home base. One of the things that is the most special about the Memphis theater scene is that 90-plus percent of the shows that you see in Memphis, outside of the Orpheum Theatre, are all done by volunteers. They’re volunteer actors, volunteer directors, and volunteer stagehands. And there is something truly magical about people who follow their passions and give up their time. And the Memphis theater community specifically has the most deep and generous pool of über-talented people that I have ever run into in all of my days. I’ve lived in L.A., I’ve lived in New York, I’ve been all over the world, and this theater scene is one to pay attention to. It’s important for audiences to come out and pay attention to all the theaters here because they’re getting things that you don’t get everywhere. And I think sometimes we’re spoiled for that.
Six chairs, two actors, a compelling script, and an audience — that’s all Tony Isbell needs to put on Quark Theatre’s latest production, Lungs. “Our focus as a company is really on the relationship between the actors and the audience,” the director says, “and we have a much smaller emphasis on things like sets and costumes and lights and sound. It’s about that experience of the actors performing and their relationship with the audience, and Lungs is certainly a show that highlights that.”
Written by Duncan Macmillan in 2011, Lungs, which Isbell describes as a “comedy/drama,” recounts a yearslong discussion between a couple, as played by Eileen Kuo and Chris Tracy, trying to decide whether to have a baby. “Parents from time immemorial have worried about if now is the right time to have a baby, but with everything the world is facing — climate change and political unrest and everything else — this generation now has some pretty specific things that they have to worry about,” Isbell says. “And [the play is] them talking and debating and laughing and crying and fighting and loving and just going through the entire gamut of emotions, all in about 90 minutes with no intermission. … It’s sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking — just like real life.”
The playwright Macmillan describes the piece as “a conversation that spans a lifetime,” Isbell adds, with the couple’s discussion jumping from one moment to the next. “They’ll be discussing one subject and then the next line is suddenly two weeks later but the conversation continues,” the director says. “When you think about a couple that’s been together for a long time, you kind of do have the same conversation that goes on and on. … And the actors are doing a great job with it.”
Indeed, with their different acting styles and approaches, Kuo and Tracy have remarkable chemistry that’s even evident in Quark’s promo videos posted to Facebook. “If you cast people who are talented and good and right, they invariably bring something with them that you would never have thought of,” Isbell says. “That has certainly been the case in this show. They would be rehearsing a scene and just make me just burst into laughter because what they did was so much funnier than what I had in mind.”
Further, with a cast of just two, Isbell says, “You have the opportunity to dig much deeper into what’s going on and into the relationship.” Certainly, that depth benefits the audience as the characters and their points of view become more fleshed out. “Some people are going to feel more closely aligned to the woman’s point of view, some to the man’s,” Isbell says. “Some will probably think they’re both wrong; some will think they’re both right.”
In turn, the director adds, “Audiences can expect to have something to have a good conversation about it in the car on the way home or dinner the next day or wherever.”
Performances of Lungs are through May 14th, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20 and can be purchased at the door or at quarktheatre.com.
Lungs, TheatreSouth at First Congregational Church, performances through May 14, $20.
Quark Theatre’s show opening this weekend isn’t exactly opening this week. It opened a while back but has been on something of a hiatus. For two and a half years.
The show — what happens to the hope at the end of the evening — had its Memphis debut in March of 2020. It was performed twice before Covid-19 shut it down.
“We thought we’d be back to finish the run in two or three months,” said Tony Isbell, director of the production and a founder of Quark. “Well, two or three months turned into almost two and a half years, but here we are, we are finishing the run.”
The pandemic was an effective crash course in the virtues of patience. Quark, being small and able to quickly adapt, bided its time until it could get back to its mission of doing “small shows about big ideas.”
“We try to produce shows that no other theater in Memphis would produce,” Isbell said. “Not because they’re bad shows, but because people maybe haven’t heard of them or they could not guarantee that they would be able to get enough of an audience to make a profit. Quark doesn’t have to worry about that.”
Isbell got to do this unconventional show in an unconventional way.
“I found the playwright’s email address,” he said. “I emailed him and said, ‘Do you ever license your shows for other people to do?’ He said yes and sent me the script, and I said that we wanted to do it.”
There are actually two playwrights. Isbell had communicated with Tim Crouch, who has had a long involvement with the other writer, Andy Smith.
“Smith writes very kind of cerebral, intellectual, presentational plays where he talks directly to the audience and he invites them to think about what theater is and how it can affect the lives of people who see it,” Isbell said. “Crouch’s plays are more about how people can become involved in the theatrical process.”
The two characters in the play reflect the two playwrights and their approaches. Marques Brown plays Andy and Isbell’s character is known only as Friend. And the plot is pretty simple, dealing with two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a few years.
“They reunite and they find out that each of them has gone in different directions, and neither of them could have expected what the other one is doing,” Isbell said.
But don’t be fooled by that somewhat conventional description.
“The thing that I found really interesting about it was that it’s also about two different styles of theater,” Isbell said. “Andy is a character based on a real person. He sits, literally sits, on a stool on one side of the stage. He reads all of his lines from the script — he doesn’t act them in the traditional sense. My character comes into this world and wants to have what we consider a ‘realistic’ encounter. As the play goes on, my character says several times, ‘Come join me. Come over here, be with me.’ And Andy’s character keeps saying, ‘I’m fine. I don’t want to come over there. I don’t want to get involved.’ It leads to whole lot of humor because there are these clashes between these two different kinds of theater, the kind of abstract intellectual presentational and the very emotional, active kind of wound-up theater.”
The show, Isbell said, is funny, very poignant, and kind of sad.
“It’s like many Quark shows,” he says. “We want people to come and be entertained. We also want them to think about what they’ve seen and think about the ideas in each show that we do.”
In August, Quark came back on the scene with a remount of its 2019 production of Wakey, Wakey with Adam Remsen. That recent production, as well as this one of what happens, are on the stage at Germantown Community Theatre. But Quark’s usual home is TheatreSouth at the First Congo Church and it will stage two more shows there this season, one in January and another in April.
Performances of what happens to the hope at the end of the evening are September 29th and 30th, October 1stand 2nd; and then the following week on October 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. The 6 p.m. performance on October 9th is pay what you can. Tickets are available at quarktheatre.com.
Quark Theatre’s new show opening Friday, March 13th, continues its mission of staging “small plays with big ideas.”
The regional premiere of what happens to the hope at the end of the evening tells the tale of two friends who haven’t seen each other for years. The two — “Andy” and “Friend” — share some history but have taken divergent paths over time. Their sometimes rocky reunion, which works on different levels, reveals ideas about friendship and identity while in its way, shows the power of theater (one character reads from the script and addresses the audience).
British playwrights Tim Crouch and Andy Smith wrote the play that’s directed by Tony Isbell and packs a lot into the hour or so production. The performers are local stage veterans Marques Brown (pictured at left) and Brian Helm.
The production runs March 13-29 at TheatreSouth in the First Congregational Church in the Cooper-Young neighborhood. Showtimes are Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door or in advance from quarktheatre.com. There is adult language. More info: 901-501-5921.
Tony Isbell, director of The Humans at Circuit Playhouse.
Tony Isbell is drawn to certain kinds of plays, those, he says, with natural, honest, and truthful dialogue — and relationships that are “juicy.” So when Michael Detroit, executive producer at Playhouse on the Square, asked him to direct The Humans, Isbell said he’d give it a read. “I immediately fell in love with it. Playwright Stephen Karam has a way with dialogue that is maybe the most naturalistic that I’ve ever read or dealt with.”
The play runs at Circuit Playhouse through September 8th and has lured a remarkable cast.
Jo Lynne Palmer, Christina Wellford Scott, Barclay Roberts, Lena Wallace Black, Brooke Papritz, and Steven Burk tell the story of a family that has gathered for Thanksgiving. It’s a common storytelling device, but the execution of it is far from typical, Isbell says.
“On the surface it seems maybe familiar, like something we’ve seen before,” he says. “It’s like one of those slice of life dramas where we see a family get together and spend time together. There’s a grandmother, parents, grown daughters, and one of the daughter’s new boyfriend. But this is not one of those plays where there’s a big astounding revelation that people then spend the next hour fighting over. There are a lot of smaller revelations that people deal with, like people do in real life.”
For Isbell, this is the heart of the production, the relationships among characters. “I am less interested as a director in a spectacle and you know, cool sets and costumes. I mean, yeah, I like all those things, but I try to provide the best possible ground for actors to really shine and really dig their teeth into something. And these people do.”
They’re a blue collar, lower middle class family, recognizably Irish American Catholic hard-working stock. And there are pressures: an ailing parent, financial stresses, children who have strayed a bit from the church. “The most important thing about this play in one way is the fact that these characters all love each other,” Isbell says. “They have some conflicts, they resolve them, they love each other, they make fun of each other, they laugh with each other, they occasionally cry with each other.”
To know Isbell is to appreciate his passion for theater. He is a co-founder of Quark Theatre (its slogan is “Small Plays About Big Ideas”) and as it embarks on its fourth year, it continues with its mission to get under the skin and make viewers feel and think and react. So while The Humans is not Quark fare, it is very much in that spirit. And you won’t have to wait long for Quark’s first show of the season. The Memphis premiere of Wakey Wakey by Will Eno opens September 20th at TheatreSouth.
For Isbell, having shows bunching up like this is next to normal. “I’ve averaged about three shows a year over the last 40 years,” he says, “which seems unbelievable, but that’s kind of what I’ve done.” That’s a long commitment to directing and acting at venues all around the area, and his devotion was noted last year when he was honored with the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ostrander ceremonies. He is quick to point out that he’s not the only lifetime achiever in The Humans. Jo Lynne Palmer received the award a few years ago and Christina Wellford Scott will take it home this Sunday from this year’s Ostrander ceremonies.
So Isbell is confident that audiences will be drawn in to the play and will take something home. “It will probably leave you questioning some things and will probably have you discussing it with your companion saying, ‘I think this was like this’ and then ‘No, I think it was like this.’ It’ll be that kind of thing.”
The Humans
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. The Circuit Playhouse, 51 South Cooper Street. Call 901 726-4656 or visit the website.
Michelle Gregory, Lena Wallace Black, Chase Ring in ‘Radiant Vermin’
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done for something you really wanted?
Chase Ring likes attention. Ring — currently lending his talents to Quark Theatre — made his marriage proposal onstage at Memphis’ annual Theatre Awards, The Ostranders. He’s one of the players in Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, opening at Theatre South this weekend, and he’s quick to tell stories about the lengths he’s been willing to go to for a little limelight — minor self-mutilation, skinny dipping in the Tony Garner memorial fountain in front of the McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College. None of it’s really bad, but Ring’s co-stars Michelle Gregory and Lena Wallace Black shrink a bit because, to hear them tell it, they’ve never broken the rules for any reason ever. Then, at length, another member of team Vermin makes a sheepish admission.
“I had a fake ID,” she says. I won’t say who engaged in this heinous criminal deceit, nor will I call out the other for fibbing to reporters about never veering from the straight-and-narrow because, as St. Augustine made plain in his Confessions, being a little bad can be its own reward. And once you get rolling it can be hard to hit the breaks.
We humans are infinitely adaptable creatures, all too willing to take risks, and subvert shame and conscious when the payoffs are suitably rewarding, and that’s the most I want to say about this condition as it relates to Radiant Vermin. Sometimes we cross the line for funsies — like a little skinny dip here and there or fudging our ages for access.
Sometimes there’s a body count. Sometimes we’re all implicated in the carnage.
Meet Quark Theatre’s ‘Radiant Vermin’
I took the sound out of this video to enhance mystery and let users add their own soundtrack. Trust me, you’ll want to.
Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin is a comedy about a newlywed couple discovering the dream-home they’ve always wanted can be theirs, if they’re willing to do what it takes. And what it takes is … a lot.
What are you willing to do for security? What are you willing to do for comfort? Luxury? To let folks know who you are? And here’s maybe the more important question? Did you even know you were doing it?
Caption contest?
“I almost hate to say the word, but it’s a very ‘meta’ kind of play,” Director Tony Isbell says. “Some have compared it to a sketch show. It’s not a naturalistic, at all, there’s a performative element to everything they do, and it’s funny.”
Ridley’s plays can be dark. The English visual artist and storyteller turned playwright pioneered what’s been described as the “In-yer-face” style. Radiant Vermin marks a shift in tone for Ridley but the fast-paced morality-farce still gets in the audience’s’s face at least a little bit.
“His early stuff is funny but it can be dark-dark,” Isbell says. “This is more dark-light.”
Radiant Vermin opens this week at the best little basement theater in Cooper Young, Theatre South. Click here for details.
Tony Isbell is Krapp. I mean that in the best possible sense.
In the Ostrander Awards first year of existence Tony Isbell was one of two actors nominated in the Best Actor category. He lost. Oh well. He’d be nominated many more times and win his share of play prizes. Now, after 40 years working in Memphis as an actor, director, producer, sometimes writer and occasional cult movie star, Isbell is being honored with the Eugart Yerian award for lifetime achievement.
Isbell will be honored at the Orpheum Theatre this Sunday evening when the Memphis theater community converges at the corner of Main & Beale for Memphis’ annual theater awards, The Ostranders.
Memphis Flyer: Origin stories are a good place to start. And we’ve talked about this before because, like me, you moved here from rural Middle Tennessee.
Tony Isbell: West Tennessee.
Yes, West Tennessee. But you didn’t exactly grow up in an urban environment.
I was born in Union City and lived in a 10-mile radius of Union City and Martin until we moved to Memphis. That would have been 1978. So at this point I’ve lived more of my life in Memphis than where I’m from originally.
Tony Isbell in ‘Red’
Was theater something available to you?
No. That’s a very short answer. No. I used to say the first play I ever saw I was in. The University of Tennessee at Martin is there. And I’m sure they were doing [theater there]. But when I was a kid was a long time ago. Union City was maybe 10,000 people when I was a kid. Martin was maybe 3-4000. Something like that. So this was a small agricultural community, basically. I didn’t see theater. I saw a lot of stuff on TV of course. And at that time, there was still some stuff that was kind of like live theater. Even when I was in elementary school and junior high, there were no productions in the schools.
What were your creative outlets?
I don’t know if you can classify this is creative, but… For my family, who I love, I probably seem like an alien. I love to read. And I’d read practically anything when I was a kid. But when I discovered things that were like science fiction and fantasy and stuff that today would be called magical realism, I truly fell in love. Those were the kinds of things that I loved almost from the minute I began to read. Some of the earliest books that I remember — I can’t remember the titles — but they were Norse mythology and all that stuff about the Norse gods. Mythology in general. So anything that had a kind of flavor of the fantastic.
I did watch a lot of TV. Probably more than was good for me. But I used to pester anybody I could to read to me. They would laugh at me. In a good way. I was especially fascinated by the comics in the newspaper and I always wanted to know what does this cloud say. What does this cloud say. The act of reading just fascinated me and in Elementary School I got in trouble for reading too much. That sounds crazy, I know. We had assigned days when we could go to the school library. I’d find books that I wanted to read and we go back to class and we were supposed to do something else and I’d hold the book under the desktop and begin reading it immediately and just lose myself completely. I remember one time when the teacher called on me and I was totally in another world.
I do remember being fascinated by television when I was still fairly young, and asking I don’t know if it was my father or who it was. See, I understood the people on TV were actors. I didn’t think Gunsmoke was really happening. But it suddenly struck me — how did they know what to say? “Well, somebody writes it,” I was told. I thought that was so cool. So when I was really young I thought maybe I would be a writer. And I wrote some stuff.
You still do, don’t you?
I haven’t written anything in a long time. I wrote some things for Chatterbox. But I thought I might be a writer. I enjoyed reading too much to be a writer if that makes sense. I still get ideas and I get inspired and I start reading about things I want to do and… well…
Other than that, I grew up in a very rural environment. My grandparents had a farm. They had some dairy cows. And I would spend summers with them, not even 10 miles from where my folks lived. Both my parents worked. My mother was a factory worker. Real working class sort of thing. My dad drove a truck. He drove trucks pretty much his whole life. Not like semis but like local delivery trucks and things like that.
Tony Isbell Awarded Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement in Memphis Theater
Did you act things out? Or were you a class clown?
No. I was incredibly shy. And in many ways, I still am. But I was not the class clown or anything like that. If anything, I wanted people not to notice me. It goes back to that reading thing. I would get so involved in reading and watching shows. So caught up in that, it almost seemed like I lost track of what was going on in the real world around me. My mother was worried about me reading so much. She was really concerned that I wasn’t getting enough sunshine and fresh air and stuff. I told you before about how one time she made me give away all of my comic books. Oh my God it broke my heart. I had Spider-Man #1. She made me get rid of it. I think I got a nickel for it. It’s worth what now? $100,000 or something? Something crazy. My mother in particular was really concerned about me reading all that science fiction. She thought it was bad for me. And she didn’t know anything about it, I don’t think. She just saw the lurid covers on the paperbacks and magazines. She thought it was bad for my brain
Did you come to Memphis for school?
I went to undergraduate school at Martin. Marie and I actually got married there. In Union City. We moved to Memphis so she could go to graduate school to get her Masters. We weren’t really planning to stay here. We didn’t think much beyond her getting her Masters. She’s a speech pathologist. She works and has worked for the state of Tennessee for almost 30 years.
When did you start doing theater?
High school. And there are two people I can point to that got me into theater. One was an English teacher named Harriet Beeler. She taught English but at some point she got certified to teach speech. So she had to take some extra courses at the University at UT-Martin, which happened to be right there. One of the courses she ended up taking was a directing class. So, for her final, all the students had to direct a short play and she approached me. I don’t know why. I guess I was a good English student. She asked about doing a small role and I’d never done anything like that before, but for some reason, something in me just immediately responded. With fear and also extreme interest. So I said okay.
Isbell and Ellis in True West.
I would have been a sophomore or junior at this time. The play was this – oh my God, like the worst Lifetime movie you’ve ever seen. Big tearjerker. I don’t remember the author but it was called The Valiant and it was about this guy who was in prison for murdering a man basically because he needed murdering. I wasn’t playing that role, I was playing a role that had about two lines. A prison guard. Beeler cast a football player to play the hero because she thought he looked right. He was very popular. Well, he didn’t come to the first rehearsal. There had been some mixup or something. But then he didn’t come to the second one. Just didn’t show up. So, I don’t know if it was the second or third time he missed that she says, “Well, maybe I think he doesn’t want to do this play.” By this point, I wanted to play that role so bad. But I was too scared to say anything. So she said, “I’m going to ask Andy to do it.” Andy was another guy in the show playing a guard. And Andy was a nice guy, but he could barely say the lines. So, after about 5 minutes of him struggling with the words she said, “Maybe we should let Tony do this.” Whatever else I may not have had, I was able to read things out loud really well and that was all she needed. She was like, “Oh good you can do it.” So I ended up doing that for the directing class and to this day I can remember how I felt before I went on stage. I was 16 or 17 and I was waiting backstage and my heart was pounding. I think I was actually afraid something bad was going to happen to me because my heart was beating so hard.
So, we went out there and did it and when it was over and we got to take a bow there was such an adrenaline and endorphin rush I literally felt high. Like I was on drugs of some kind. It was unbelievable. I’d never felt like that or imagined anything like that. It was just crazy. I was wearing this grey shirt and I had sweated so much I was wet from my elbow all the way down to my hip. I’d never done anything like that before either. I couldn’t believe it. I must have been a junior because the next year we moved to a new high school, they built a new high school. And I wound up starring in the senior play which was the first senior play we’d ever done since I’d been in that school.
With Deborah Harrison in Fool for Love.
Then I went to UT Martin and studied theater with Bill Snyder all four years I was there and did lots of acting and directing. He was an interesting guy. He was from originally from Memphis but went to Yale and was a couple of years ahead of Bennett Wood who also went to Yale. So they knew each other or knew of each other. Then he went to New York. His real thing was playwriting, he was a playwright and had a minor success Off Broadway with a play called The Days and Nights of Beebee Fenstermaker. Which is partially set in Memphis and partially set in New York. It opened the same season Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and was one of the first acting jobs for Robert Duvall. Bill Snyder was friends with Robert Duvall and Dustin Hoffman and ended up going to Actors Studio for a while. Everything he taught at Martin was extremely Actors Studio based. it was interesting because, when he would direct we would improvise everything. You know, doing it without the dialogue. He’d say, “Okay, you’re doing the play now but don’t worry about getting the words. Just get what’s going on.” It could be helpful. He hardly ever gave us blocking; all of that evolved out of the improvisation.
The show I felt like I made my really big breakthrough on was the production of Marat/Sade, which I would actually like to direct someday.
Me too, but I don’t see that happening.
I love that show. And it’s not really done. It’s like nobody does it anymore and I think it’s just as relevant now as it was back then.
Somehow that doesn’t seem like a very Actors Studio kind of play.
I never knew why he picked any of the plays that he did.
Who did you play in that?
I played The Herald. And improvising all that stuff in the insane asylum was incredibly freeing for me. I’ve told people before, and it sounds goofy. But there was one night in particular when I felt like all my my previous acting had been in a dark room and then somebody turned on the lights. It’s hard to explain. I’ve talked to other actors and they said they never had a moment like that. But it was like I understood what acting was supposed to be like. It wasn’t just saying lines. All of a sudden I was connected emotionally and I really understood the difference, I think. From that point on I was able to access it
So, after college you move to Memphis. What was the theater scene like when you arrived here? Was it welcoming?
Yes. Well, a qualified yes. When I arrived here it seemed like the only places to do theater were Circuit Playhouse and Theatre Memphis. Playhouse on the Square had either just started or was about to start. I came down from Martin a few times to see shows at Circuit. This is when it was still over on Poplar across from Overton Park. A tiny little theater.
I’d heard it was harder to get into Theatre Memphis. At that time, Circuit was doing the kinds of shows I was more interested in. So, for the first eight, nine, or ten years – I don’t know – I didn’t do any shows at Theatre Memphis. It was mostly Circuit because they did the more interesting plays for me. Also, the theater either owned or rented a house and, in the attic there was literally a space called called The Attic Theater that held, I’m not kidding you, maybe 10 seats. Maybe 12 seats. And that’s where I did some of my first stuff in Memphis, because anybody could do anything in The Attic. I did some original scripts there. All you had to do was say, “Hey, I want to do this.”
With Mark Pergolizzi in As Is.
The first play I did on a main stage was American Buffalo at Circuit. I played Bobby the kid. That was the first show I did there. It’s a wonderful show. It was the Christmas show — to literally let you know how much things have changed. I can’t remember the exact dates but it ran like December into January.
So this is my first show in Memphis really. Alan Mullikan played the shop owner and Jim Palmer played Teach. And the review was mixed to bad. It was Bob Jennings who hated any kind of thing like that anyway. Didn’t like foul language. So this was not a good show for him to see. I remember his opening of that review and it was the first time I’ve ever been reviewed in the newspaper the opening with something like… Wait. Did American Buffalo win the Pulitzer Prize or was it just nominated.
I don’t think it won. But maybe.
Maybe it was just nominated.
Glengarry Glen Ross won a Pulitzer. American Buffalo won a Tony. But maybe it won the Pulitzer, I hate that I have such a terrible memory for these things. *
Maybe it won. Or was nominated. Because, the opening of the review was something like, “The American Pulitzer committee, whether it should or not, has seen fit to award the Pulitzer Prize for drama to American Buffalo and Circuit Playhouse, whether it should or not, has seen fit to produce it.”
Oh wow. That’s really something.
He didn’t like it at all. He said something about me to the effect of “Tony Isbell, as Bobby, the mentally retarded young thug, doesn’t seem to be acting. He simply is the part.” He didn’t mean that in a good way. That was my first review.
So you wind up staying in Memphis.
It just kind of happened that we ended up staying. I never seriously thought about going to New York or Los Angeles because, frankly, I wanted to be able to do a lot of theater. I didn’t want to spend most of my time hustling auditions for shows that you don’t get. Then Marie got a pretty good job here and I ended up going to Memphis State and getting an MFA in theater because I thought I might go back to Martin to teach. But that didn’t happen, so we just ended up staying here and over the years I’ve gotten to do tons and tons of theater, which is what I wanted to do. And a little film and TV here and there. As far as being a professional, I just didn’t want to face all that. It had no appeal to me.
Oh, I loved that. That’s when I was working on my Master’s. I was actually approached by Marius Penczner, who was the director. He said, “Hey I’m going to be making this movie.” And I didn’t know who he was. He had seen me in some theater stuff and thought I’d make a good villain. Especially a space alien. I don’t know if this is true but he said he wrote the part with me in mind because he thought I had a cool demeanor that would work really well.
When I signed on I told everybody that I worked during the day and we’d have to work around that. Well, damned if I didn’t get laid off my job a week or two later. Then I saw the shooting schedule and was like, “I couldn’t have done this if I still had my job.” It was kind of good in that way. We shot for several weeks. Five or six weeks. Maybe a little longer.
And this launches on cable with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or something like that, right?
They had a premiere at Ardent Studios. They set up all these big screens because there wasn’t one auditorium big enough for all the people. There were five or six rooms they set up chairs in and you could watch on big TV screens. 20-30 people to a room. Then it actually played on Channel 5 a couple of months later. It ended up playing on the USA Network’s Up All Night. I think it was in rotation with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and they’d play it every four to six months.
Greatest hits: What are some of your favorite shows you’ve worked on?
Some of my favorite shows I’ve acted in? The Dresser at Circuit. I played Norman and it was the first year they had Ostrander awards. Myself and Jay Ehrlicher were nominated for best actor and I lost.
Jay was nominated for playing Salieri in Amadeus?
Yes, Amadeus. Also, I did Fool for Love. I loved that play. Still love that play. I got a lot of nominations in the early years. And in the later years too. It sounds like bragging, but I got nominated a lot. Acting more than directing. And I did True West a few years later at Theatre Memphis.
With Chris Ellis.
Yes. I directed Memphis’ premiere of Prelude to a Kiss and wouldn’t mind directing that again.
I like that Craig Lucas.
I did the other show of his— the Christmas Show…
Not Blue Window.Reckless!
Yes, Reckless. Loved that show.
This is all main stage stuff more or less, but you’ve also always done independent work too. Like you said you worked in the Attic. But you also produced a show in the basement at First Congo Church long before there was a theater in the basement of First Congo Church.
Thais.
Yes, Thais. And now you have a company for doing independent work. Tell me a little about Quark.
It came about as a kind of joke. I made a joke on Facebook about Krapp’s Last Tape. There’s a line in the play, “I’ve just eaten two bananas and was only able to just keep myself from eating a third.” Or something like that. I made that joke about donuts because I had, that morning, eaten three or four donuts. Adam got the reference. I knew he was a Beckett fan. He wrote his masters thesis on Beckett and he was the one person who responded with the correct line. In a post on Facebook I said it’s the one play I want to act in rather than direct and he said, “Well, let’s.” It turned out to be such a good experience. Such positive feedback from people. Even from people I didn’t think would care for it. A few months after the show I asked Adam, how about we do this on regular basis? Just a couple of shows a year.
We’re both nerdy, so we named the company Quark. Building blocks of the universe. And that’s what we want to focus on. We started with Beckett then looked at maybe doing some Pinter and said, “Maybe we want to do new things. Or things that haven’t been done here. So we started looking for new work that engages the intellect a well as emotions.
Bye, bye, Blackbird.
I love good design and I’m not just saying that because I’m married to a designer. Good, thoughtful design — which doesn’t have to be extravagant or expensive — elevates everything. But I also love work that strips everything away but the barest essentials. That’s what I love about Quark.
I wanted to get down to just the actors, the audience, and the script and let the rest be bare minimum. The main things I’m concerned with are the actors and audience. The space, the audience, the performers and what happens between them is what’s most interesting to me.
*American Buffalo did not win the Pulitzer though playwright David Mamet was confident it would. It won 3 Tony awards and the New York Drama Circle’s Award for Best New American Play.
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.
Jon W. Sparks 
