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Tony Isbell Awarded Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement in Memphis Theater

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.

You bring up film and TV so maybe we should talk a little bit about “I Was a Zombie for the FBI?”

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. 

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Intermission Impossible Theater

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

Maness 4-ways.

You know what? As long as John Maness wins something, I don’t care about anything else this year. If the Ostrander committee misses all the rest by miles and miles, I’ll be satisfied for the ounce of justice done. Because … holy crap! After this season, the O-committee should consider a “John Maness hardest-working-person in Memphis Theater” trophy. With a roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic married to the soul of a magician and escape artist, he hammers out one unique character after another and vanishes inside them. I mean, who the hell does this guy think he is, Erin Shelton?

Nevertheless, the time has come, once again, for shade to be cast and predictions made in regard to this year’s crop of nominees and nominees that might have been if only the universe wasn’t so frequently unfair. It’s the season when the Intermission Impossible team wonders what it is our tireless, too human Ostrander judges might be smoking. When we ask the one question on every right-thinking thespian’s mind — “WHO GOT ROBBED?”

I want to see J. David Galloway take home the set design for New Moon’s lovely, immersive, and necessarily inventive design for Eurydice. I’ve been frustrated in the past by designers who quote or wink at surrealism when what’s needed is something approaching the real thing. Not every aspect of Galloway’s design was as dreamy as it might have been, but the microbudget masterpiece engaged imaginations, enabling the kind of stage magic money can’t buy.
[pullquote-1] That said, bigger, better-funded companies still have advantages in design categories and I suspect the judges may prefer Jack Yates’ outstanding work on The Drowsy Chaperone or the ordinary otherworldliness of Tim McMath’s design for Fun Home at Playhouse on the Square.

But what about the eye-candy that was An Act of God (also Yates)? What about 12 Angry Jurors, an environment so real yet another confounded patron tried to use the onstage bathroom (also Yates)? If it sounds like I’m arguing for more Jack Yates nominations, maybe I am. But I’m also making a case that there’s been some good design this season, and given a different set of sensibilities, this category might have swung another direction entirely. There might have been nods for the elegant emptiness of Bryce Cutler’s Once, at Playhouse on the Square, or the grubby, unfussy realism of Phillip Hughen’s design for The Flick at Circuit Playhouse. I look forward to seeing how this category evolves as New Moon continues to mature, and smaller Memphis’ companies leverage thoughtfulness against more tangible resources. 

Falsettos.

It’s wrong that Mandy Heath wasn’t nominated for lighting Falsettos but I can live with the slight as long as she wins the prize for Eurydice. That’s really all I have to say about that.

Once is a stunt musical — and what a terrific stunt! It’s part concert, part narrative drama, with the actors doubling down as their own orchestra. The three-chord score’s not Sondheim but casting players who are also, well… players isn’t easy. And pulling off a piece musical theater where the songs feel more like barroom romps than show tunes, requires a different kind of sophistication. I suspect the thrice-nominated Nathan McHenry will take this prize. He should take it for Once.

Who got robbed? Maybe nobody this year.

For excellence in sound design there are a few nominees, but really only one choice. Joe Johnson’s dreamy original score for Eurydice didn’t enhance the designed environment. It completed it.

I was happy to see choreographers Ellen Inghram and Jared Johnson nominated for the wit and wisdom permeating their work on Falsettos. It would be nice to see them win over the flashier entries in this category. No robberies here.

When it comes to the non-musicals, best female lead and supporting roles are almost always the toughest category to call because year after year they are overstuffed with contenders. While Kim Sanders was her usual perfect self in both A Perfect Arrangement and Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the double nomination in the supporting category may not double her odds against commanding, emotionally wrenching turns by Jessica “Jai” Johnson in Ruined and Erin Shelton in All Saints in the Old Colony. Kell Christie was the best Emelia I’ve ever seen and a perfect match for John Maness’ woman-hating Iago in New Moon’s Othello. Any other year Christie would be my #1 pick. She’s a longshot compared to Shelton and Johnson and I’m hard pressed to say who’s more deserving of the honor.

Opera 901 Showcase

Who got robbed? Although FEMMEemphis’ productions aren’t under consideration, basically the entire cast of Collective Rage. Quark’s similarly out of the running but in the young company’s very adult production of The Nether, young Molly McFarland stood shoulder to shoulder with grownup co-stars and delivered a brave, polished performance. As the youngest of the Weston daughters in Theatre Memphis’ tepid August: Osage County, Emily F. Chateau was damn near perfect — as fragile as Laura Wingfield’s glass unicorn and as likely to cut you if broken. ROBBED AS HELL!

Anne Marie Caskey does consistently professional work but she seemed miscast in Theatre Memphis’ not altogether successful production of August: Osage County. Ostrander loves Caskey (as do I) and her inclusion here might seem less bewildering if not for the absence of Michelle Miklosey’s pitch perfect Eurydice  Tracy Hansom’s good old fashioned curtain chew in Stage Kiss. Were I one of these two ladies, I’d take The Oblivains strong advice and call the police. Because, ROBBED! OMG ROBBED!

Some of the best female leads this season did their thing just outside Ostrander’s natural reach. Jillian Baron and Julia Baltz were equally badass in FEMMEmphis’ Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief. But let’s be real. All this talk of robbery is purely academic because each of these fantastic performances paled next to to Maya Geri Robinson’s larger-than-life depiction of a Congolese Mother Courage in Ruined at Hattiloo. And Robinson’s performance may have only been the season’s second best. I can’t say with any confidence that I’ve ever seen an actor own a show like Morgan Watson owned Sunset Baby, also at Hattiloo.

Emily F. Chateau. The F stands for F-ing ROBBED!

The list for Best Supporting Actor is strong. It’s so strong I’m picking Bertram Williams for Ruined even though I started this column cheering for John Maness in anything. The list of nominees might also have included nods to Jeff Kirwan for his performances in New Moon’s Buried Child, Eurydice or both. It’s worth noting (yet again) that every performance in All Saints in the Old Colony approached a personal best and Marques Brown was ROBBED!

I don’t know what the theater judges had against Buried Child but James Dale Green’s Dodge is a glaring best actor omission. So is Emmanuel McKinney, who gave a knockout performance as Muhammad Ali in the uneven Fetch Clay, Make Man. Both of these men should post on Nextdoor.com right away to let everybody know they were ROBBED! Once that’s been done, can we please all agree to give this year’s prize to John Maness? And can we go ahead make it for everything he touched this season? I say this with deep appreciation for and apologies to All Saints’ Greg Boller and Jitney’s Lawrence Blackwell who both delivered special, award-worthy performances in a season where the competition happened to be a little stiffer than usual.

I take it from the sheer number of nominations in the category of Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, the Ostrander judges liked Fun Home. Me too. But maybe not enough to give any category a near sweep. Especially when it might be appropriate to co-nominate Fun Home’s small and medium Alison in order to make room for Falsettos’ Jaclyn Suffel and/or Christina Hernandez who were both ROBBED!

Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’

A taste of Once‘s pre-show jam.
Like I said, Ostrander very clearly likes Fun Home this year with the odd exception of adult Alison, Joy Brooke-Fairfield. So, individual nominations aside, I’m predicting a joint win for the two Alisons. Of course Annie Freres was a force of nature as the title character in The Drowsy Chaperone. All else being equal, she was probably the most outstanding nominee in a field of outstanding nominees.

Best Female Lead in a Musical is a heartbreaker category because everybody nominated is ridiculously talented. Nobody in town has pipes like Dreamgirls’ Breyannah Tillman, who’s also proving to be a formidable actor. But Emily F. Chateau also had an amazing year and may have been better in Falsettos than she was in August: Osage County. Gia Welch is a precocious powerhouse. She was great in Chaperone, but might also have been nominated for work on 42nd Street or Heathers. Meanwhile, Once’s Lizzy Hinton and Shrek’s Lynden Lewis occupy opposite corners of this playing field. The former helped build a complete world out of song and mirrors.The later was almost buried in spectacle but made heart and soul so much more important than green makeup and ogre costumes.

Let me let you in on a secret: Like Lena Younger’s striving son Walter, Patricia Smith was ROBBED! She should have gotten a nod for her work in the musical adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. I’m gonna talk about Raisin later on in this seemingly endless column, but frankly, that whole cast might want to call a personal injury attorney because they were dealt a disservice up front then ripped off by out appraisers!

Given all of Fun Home’s nominations in other categories, the omission of Joy Brooke-Fairfield feels oddly pointed. Fun Home’s a show that might challenge traditional gender divisions in these kinds of awards and when I didn’t see the older Alison included in this category, I so I double checked the whole list to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. But there was no Joy to be found anywhere, and that sentence is every bit as sad as it sounds. ROBBED!

I’d like to see Joshua Pierce win the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical category for Theatre Memphis’ superlative take on Falsettos. But I missed First Date and Dreamgirls this season and, truth be told, I don’t understand Shrek’s appeal. Too disoriented by this category to make a fair call. That almost never happens. Y’all tell me.

Best Leading Actor in a Musical is yet another heartbreaker category. Shrek’s never going to be my thing, but it’s very clearly Justin Asher’s, and he was a mighty fine ogre,  loving every second of big green stage time. Stephen Huff was so at home in Fun Home it’s now almost impossible for me to imagine anybody else in his role. And I kinda feel the same about Jason Spitzer’s near definitive take on The Drowsy Chaperone’s Man in Chair. But I’ve gotta say, having been underwhelmed by his pitchy turn in Heathers, I was most impressed by Conor Finnerty-Esmonde’s take on the hard-luck musician in Once. But when I filter out personal taste in music and storytelling and just let myself focus on the difficulty and potency of the performances represented here, one actor’s work really stands out. Villains are fun to play but nothing’s harder than a complex character who’s hard-to-like but can’t be allowed to become a villain. Cary Vaughn, in his finest of many fine performances, plowed through Falsettos like a steamroller. Still standing. Still applauding this entire cast.

Eurydice — Awfully good looking.

But what about Kortland Whalum? Where is his name? I’ll be the first to admit, Raisin was tragically underproduced. The scenic environment felt unfinished, and in an intimate space like Hattiloo, nothing sucks the soul from musical performances like warm bodies performing to cold tracks. But somehow, in spite of everything the actors had working against them, Raisin’s cast collectively overcame. I can’t blame the Ostrander for not rewarding the production, but when you factor in the odds against, no cast was more ROBBED than this one. I’ll brook zero argument: No actor deserves to this category half as much as Whalum. Folks are welcome to disagree on this point, but folks who do are flat wrong. ROBBED!

If Jamel “JS” Tate doesn’t win Best Featured Performer in a Drama for Jittny I’m personally calling in the FBI. Annie Freres is likely to win Best Featured in a musical for her flashy roll-on as the Dragon in Shrek. Or maybe it will go to Breyannah Tillman, who stuck the landing in her role as The Drowsy Chaperone’s show-stopping aviatrix. But James Dale Green stopped time with nothing but his weatherbeaten tenor, a strummed mandolin, and a compelling story to tell. That sounds like a winner to me. Who got Robbed? Once’s Chris Cotton, that’s who.

I’m totally happy if the Ensemble award goes to All Saints in the Old Colony, Falsettos, Fun Home, Jitney, or A Perfect Arrangement. All are deserving, though Jitney may be just a little bit more deserving than all the rest. But how in the blankety-blankblanblank did Once not make this list? The cast doesn’t just act together, they also make music together — acoustic music. Music largely unaided by electronics and amplification. Music so thoroughly human it connects past and future like a time machine made of skin, bone, wood and string. I’m happy if the award goes to any of the fantastic nominees, but no matter who wins the judges lose on this account. Once was the season’s ultimate ensemble show, and POTS’s ensemble crushed it. The pre-show hoedown was worth the price of admission. BOO!

As long as I’m complaining about the judges, OMG! Why is Tony Isbell nominated for excellence in direction of a drama for Death of a Streetcar Named Virginia Woolf? Don’t misunderstand, I come to praise this year’s lifetime achievement honoree, not to dis him. Isbell absolutely should have been nominated in this category, but for his work on The Nether (not eligible). Or his work on Years to the Day (also not eligible). Or maybe even his work on Stage Kiss (eligible and solid but fuck-you ignored). I’d go so far as to say he got ROBBED! in spite of bing nominated. This insubstantial work is a jarring inclusion next to Dr. Shondrika Moss-Bouldin’s unflinching approach to Ruined and the inventiveness of Jamie Boller’s Eurydice. Not to mention the hyper-detailed character development, and ensemble work Jeff Posson oversaw for All Saints in the Old Colony and the flawless world-building of Steve Broadnax’s Jitney. I’m calling this one for Posson, but it could go in almost any direction.

Best production of a drama? I like Jitney, though I’ve not pegged it as a winner in many other categories. Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that’s the case here, though the parts were also quite good. Should All Saints in the Old Colony win, it’s every bit as deserving and, being a new script and the underdog here, maybe even more deserving.

I’m betting the darkhorse for excellence in Direction of a Musical and calling this one for Jerry Chipman and Falsettos. Everything else was bigger or flashier or more current in some way or another, even the stripped down Once. But life’s about balance, and Chipman’s production had nary a hair out of place that wasn’t supposed to be out of place.

Ostranders 2018: Picks, Pans, and ‘Who Got ROBBED?!?!’ (2)

Looking at the nominee spread, my gut tells me Fun Home was the judges’ favorite musical this season, and why wouldn’t it be? It was flawlessly cast, and beautifully performed. But this wasn’t the best work I’ve seen from director Dave Landis. I saw the performance with two companions. One wept openly, responding to the story and the characters. The other complained all the way home about the musical’s almost complete lack of action and visual/physical dynamics. I became the most unpopular person in the car when I said I thought they were both 100-percent right to feel the way they felt. Up to this point I’ve been #TeamFalsettos but I’m calling this one for Once. The other shows were great, but they were shows. Once was an event.

“Theaters not actively engaged in creating new material are passively engaged in their own obsolescence.” — Me.

Yeah, I totally quoted myself, but there’s not much I believe more than that. It’s one of the reasons I think the Ostrander Awards for Best Original Script and Best Production of an Original Script, may be more important than nice. In the future, judges might even consider beating the bushes a little on this front, and looking beyond the usual qualifying companies. All Saints in the Old Colony is a fantastic new script. It will win these categories, and it will know productions and awards beyond Memphis. But now would be a good time for all the folks who contributed words and music to Opera Memphis’ all-original 901 Opera Festival to cancel their credit cards because they have been ROBBED! OM might not be under consideration, but if we’re looking for superlatives, I can’t recall a more impressive example of new musical theater in the 901. Not 

Tony Isbell in ‘Red’

since OM’s 2014 production of Ghosts of Crosstown heralded the rebirth of a neighborhood.

That may not cover every category, but it’s all I’ve got for now. Who did I forget?

Also, stay tuned for a Q&A with lifetime achievement honoree Tony Isbell.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Krapping You Negative: Beckett Finds Love at Theatre South

Tony Isbell is Krapp. I mean that in the best possible sense.

A question that is seldom asked: What does Samuel Beckett’s mini-masterpiece Krapp’s Last Tape have in common with poop porn? Consider the “reaction video,” a digital-era phenomenon that came of age following the release of Two Girls, One Cup, a pornographic short depicting two women enjoying a pint glass full of human chocolate. Here’s a classic reaction video of somebody showing the infamous TG1C clip to their grandmother. As viral content goes, it’s horrible. And a stone cold classic. 
 

Krapping You Negative: Beckett Finds Love at Theatre South

So, what’s the point of this strange comparison? For starters, I want to demystify Beckett, whose work is often characterized as being difficult and detached. Also, in both a formal sense, and as a piece of entertainment, Krapp’s Last Tape functions identically to a reaction video. If granny makes you laugh, blush, cringe, or shake your head, you’ll have no trouble at all engaging with Krapp. In both cases the comedy and the pathos are are rooted in the relationship between a candid observer and the content stored on his/her technology. Only instead of watching girls go wild, Beckett’s titular curmudgeon sits at an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and listens, in real time, to a decades old recording of himself reviewing an even older recording of himself. It’s an Escher portrait of a mirror selfie, reducing one man’s entire life to 40-minutes of covert clowning. It is, by turns, hilarious and hateful, and in a masterful performance that lives up to that description, Memphis actor Tony Isbell hits every single note, high and low.

Krapp’s Last Tape hasn’t just aged well, it’s become even more resonant in the age of Instagram and #TBT. Contemporary audiences are primed to sympathize with a solitary man interacting with his device.

Me

Update: I’m in my kitchen writing a review of Krapp’s Last Tape. And I need a shave. Also, even though you can’t see it, there’s an entire bunch of overripe bananas hanging behind my head.

Toward the end of his opening night performance Isbell struggled to detach a spool of tape from Krapp’s antique recorder. That’s all part of the show. But when the spool finally released something seemingly spontaneous and wonderful happened. The actor reeled backwards, hitting a pendent lamp hanging above his head. Planned or not, the result was more effective than any expensive special effect ever could be. The lamp swung like a mad pendulum, casting the protagonist in light and leaving him in darkness over and over again until, at last, all potential energy was spent. Action, reaction, etc. Visual metaphors don’t get much better or more basic than that. 

Krapp’s Last Tape shares the stage with a neatly packed production of Beckett’s rarely-seen micro-drama, Ohio Impromptu. The show’s action consists of a stationary “reader,” (Adam Remsen) reading a book to a similarly stationary “listener,” (Isbell), who remains silent but sometimes knocks to indicate he’d like to hear a passage repeated. Remsen’s interpretation is smart and sympathetic but, through no fault of his own, it’s never all it could be. Beckett wrote for unique voices. Krapp’s Last Tape, for example, was inspired by a radio performance given by British actor Patrick McGee. While Remsen did his job beautifully, Ohio Impromptu cries out — like a strange disembodied mouth — for a special voice that paints vivid pictures in the surrounding blackness. That’s why I’m looking forward to a repeat performance when age and experience have seasoned the soft-spoken actor’s pipes. 

Krapping You Negative: Beckett Finds Love at Theatre South (2)

A strange disembodied mouth

My favorite thing about this night of independently produced theater is its origin story. The nutshell: a couple of actors realized they both loved a play that’s easy and inexpensive to stage, so they staged the damn thing. Because, why not? More like that, please.

Big things really do come in small packages. I should probably use that line to connect this closing graph to the poop porn in my opening. But, in spite of having just typed the words, “poop porn in my opening,” I’m not that kind of critic. It’s hard to imagine a more modest production than Krapp’s Last Tape and Ohio Impromptu. It’s equally hard to imagine a more satisfying night in the theater. 

Standing. Clapping. 
Me

Picture, or it didn’t happen!

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We Recommend We Recommend

Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at First Congo

What started as an obscure joke on Facebook has turned into a rare treat for Memphis theatergoers and fans of actor/director Tony Isbell.

Isbell created a lively Facebook discussion when he posted a status update saying, “I’ve just eaten, I regret to say, three donuts and have only with difficulty refrained from a fourth.” Some commenters liked donuts. Others liked them a lot. But Isbell wasn’t really casting about for snack affirmation. He was dropping a nerdy hint to fans of absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett.

Actor Adam Remsen, who’d been directed by Isbell in productions of Glengarry Glen Ross and Six Degrees of Separation, recognized the allusion and answered, “Oh Krapp.” A conversation started that has resulted in an independently mounted production of Beckett’s mini-masterpiece Krapp’s Last Tape.

Tony Isbell as Beckett’s Krapp

“It’s like one man’s entire life in 40 minutes,” says Isbell of a play that finds its elderly title character listening to a tape of his somewhat younger self talking about an even earlier tape of his much younger self. It’s not quite 60 years old and maybe even more relevant thanks to Instagram and Facebook.

“When people think of Beckett, they think of Waiting for Godot,” Isbell says. “They think of abstract characters dealing with huge issues. But this play is the most naturalistic thing he ever wrote. It’s exactly what it is: An old man sitting at his tape recorder listening to old tapes of himself and making a new one. It happens in real time. That’s it.”

Remsen shares directing duties with Isbell and joins him onstage for a production of Ohio Impromptu, another rarely seen Beckett sketch with similarly nostalgic threads.

“I’m not really doing that much directing,” Remsen says. “For me, the best part of the process has been getting to watch Tony Isbell perform Krapp’s Last Tape three or four times a week.”

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

4000 Miles at TheatreWorks

“Gentle” is the word I hear over and over again in reference to 4000 Miles, Amy Herzog’s funny, thorny play about geographical, emotional, temporal, and political distance across generations. Director Tony Isbell dropped the word when we chatted online. It’s popped up repeatedly in conversations with friends who’ve seen the play at TheatreWorks. Even New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called it a “gently comic drama” in his review, so there must be something to the idea that it’s a gentle play. But that isn’t how I experienced 4000 Miles. The play I saw was an uncomfortably real snapshot of a generational moment, a sound thrashing of lifestyle-lefties and a similarly-bracing critique of our elders and their astonishing ability to idealize the past. 4000 Miles is a quiet play, mostly. There’s no sustained shouting or violence to speak of, though death looks out from every corner of the room. Genuinely sweet moments are shared between a self-absorbed millennial and his grandmother, an old lefty at the tipping point of senility. But gentle isn’t the first word I’d choose to describe this subtle, one-act reminder that the reward of a long life is outliving everyone who might attend your funeral.

Did I mention that the show is also funny? It is. What it’s not is tightly plotted. Nor is it full of the archetypal characters that tend to populate the classic American family drama. To that end, 4000 Miles — a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist — is a chamber piece, more meditation than assault. But it’s an uneasy meditation, almost never serene.

The play opens with a scruffy, baggage-laden Leo waking Vera, his elderly grandmother in her Greenwich Village apartment at 3 a.m. The last thing she expected was an early-morning visit from her Left Coast grandson, and she doesn’t seem all that happy to see him. Leo has been cycling across the country with a friend, but when that friend died in a horrible accident on the road, he broke off communication with his family in Minneapolis and went off the grid.

Leo’s not intentionally malicious, but the young trustafarian is a natural manipulator: a wounded rugged outdoorsy-type quick to use his personal tragedy if it buys some sympathy or helps get the hot Chinese girl who looks like his adopted sister into bed. He takes up residence with his grandmother on a temporary basis, but makes her promise to not tell the family where he is.

Over the course of the play we watch Leo lose his girlfriend Bec, making one final douchey request to “remember how our bodies were together.” We also witness an attempted hook-up with a rich girl named Amanda who flips out when she discovers she’s in the huge, rent-controlled apartment of a card-carrying Communist. Amanda says she doesn’t think she can have sex in a Communist’s house, allowing that she’s usually kind of slutty. Her drunken anti-Communist rant is one of the show’s best set pieces. Replace the word Communist with any racial descriptor and the monologue would leave audiences slack-jawed. Then again, Amanda is Chinese, and there’s family history.

4000 Miles took its first Off-Broadway bows about three months before the Occupy Wall Street movement moved into Zuccotti Park. I mention that because somehow that real-world occurrence seems more like the ending of Herzog’s play than its actual ending. She uses the outdoorsy Leo and the urban Vera to look at how far the easily-identified tropes of the American left had evolved. Class-conscious collective action had become a lifestyle choice for people who can afford to protest GMOs and oil companies with their purchasing power. There is some suggestion that Leo is growing by the play’s end. It’s not hard to imagine him leaving for his new job out west only to get caught up in the massive street protest brewing in Manhattan. Nor is it hard to imagine him moving on following a fashionable arrest during some clash with the New York police.

Every character in 4000 Miles is a prisoner of perspective, Leo most of all. He’s loveably disheveled, despicably self-centered, and difficult to like. His grandmother, Vera, can be abrasive and muddled, but she clearly has the more sympathetic role, and Karen Mason Riss is spectacular in the part.

Christopher Joel Onken is completely believable as Leo, although his more cloying antics come across as being downright sinister. Carly Crawford is also effective, if a little stilted as Leo’s girlfriend Bec. Then again, if the show has a thankless part, that’s it.

Ron Gordon’s scenic design gives the impression that Vera’s not-so-Manhattan Manhattan residence is infinitely large on the inside. That’s a quibble, not a deal-breaker.