Feb 26 2009
THE UNIVERSITIES SHINE
Sad to say, CMU and Pitt are entering the second weekend of two-week runs -- sad, because both shows have something special to offer, with so little time left to see it. I'm going to have reviews in Friday's paper, but here's a note to give you an extra day's notice to get to see either or both.
CMU is doing Edward Ravenscroft's "The London Cuckolds" (1681), one of the less-frequently staged Restoration comedies, but a perfect epitome of the type: older husbands, young wives, randy young cavaliers, witty servants, mistaken identities, etc., etc. It hardly has a brain in its pretty little head, unless you count the class struggle of wealthy merchants (middle-class) vs. impecunious, devil-may-care aristocrats, with the author firmly on the side of the latter. The battle is over the women, but not to fear, the women manage to exercise much of the power themselves, taking lovers only because that's their whim.
(Pictured in the photo by Joshua Franzos are Steffi Garrard and Adam Barrie as one of the wives and her would-be seducer.)
Anyway, what really distinguishes director Don Wadsworth's "London Cuckolds" is the production, in which experienced faculty actors play the three booby husbands and nubile undergraduates play the wives, lovers and servants. The costumes and stage designs are sumptuous. If you like stylish farce, you'll have a grand time. I did.
Pitt also has two faculty pros stiffening an undergraduate cast, but the play is a very different thing entirely. "Angels in America" -- specifically Part 1, "Millennium Approache" -- is a very great play about big issues like bigotry, culture wars, spiritual hypocrisy and what playwright Tony Kushner sees as the right-wing perversion of democracy.
The Pitt undergraduates aren't generally as talented or well-trained as those at CMU, because Pitt's theater major is a liberal arts program, while CMU's is a professional conservatory. But these Pitt students honor the play with their work, and the play itself reveals as much emotion and intellectual complexity as it did when it first appeared in 1993. And pro Doug Mertz is a robust, scary Roy Cohn. (Pro Elena Alexandratos gets more scope in part 2, "Perestroika," which Pitt will stage in April.)
As to Point Park, it wheels into view this weekend with "Parade," the serious musical that explores the fate of Leo Frank, lynched in 1913 Georgia out of anti-Jewish prejudice, for a murder he didn't commit.
August Wilson monologues
This Sunday will be the first August Wilson Monologue Contest for high school students. The public is invited -- it's at the Pittsburgh Playhouse at 6 p.m. Winners get to go on to a national finals with contestants from other cities.
Symposium on Cognitive Studies
In connection with "Angels," the Pitt Theater Department is hosting a three-day conference in Theatre and Cognitive Studies, to many sessions of which the public is invited. The best bets are the keynote speech in the Randall Theatre on "Cognition and the Arts" (Fri., 4 p.m.); a panel on "Cognitive Criticism" in the Heymann Theatre in which three responders will apply their analytical tools to this production of "Angels," with me as moderator (Sat. 9:30 a.m.); and a roundtable discussion of all the issues raised (Sunday, 11 a.m.). No, I don't know what cognitive criticism is, either, but I expect I'll find out. 
Feb 21 2009
People say they most miss my weekly column, so here's a sort of (irregular) equivalent.
OSCARS AND ACTORS: The big news for actors this weekend is the Oscars, for which I've dutifully submitted predictions to several contests. My problem is that for once I've seen too many of the films to be as cynically dispassionate as you need to be to do well in your predictions. You're better off not having seen them at all, so you can just sift the buzz, rather than develop favorites. This is why passionate sports fans don't make the best betters. As to the relation between movies and what I really care about, live theater, it's this: movie work keeps actors employed. So feel free to go to the Pittsburgh Film Office Oscar party, virtuous in knowing that it helps bring movie work to Pittsburgh, which allows a few more local actors to subsidize their stage work.
ON STAGE THIS WEEKEND: Three noteworthy shows are concluding all-too-short runs this Sunday. The one you're going to most regret in the long run not having is Thom Thomas' "A Moon to Dance By," based on the 1939 encounter among D.H. Lawrence's widow Frieda, her lover Angelo and her long-estranged son, Monty -- played very notably at Playhouse Rep by Jane Alexander, Robert Cuccioli and Gareth Saxe. Seriously: this is a national-class feather in Pittsburgh's cap (here's my original review) and it brought me back for a second viewing (more below). There are still two performances Saturday and one Sunday.
Two one-person shows are closing: Herb Newsome in his own "FreeMan in Paris," an intriguing faux-biography of a mid-century black jazz musician, for New Horizon at the Kelly-Strayhorn -- you can hear him talk about the show and also about August Wilson in this week's podcast interview; and Rita Gregory in Nilaja Sun's "No Child...," about a caring teacher in a tough high school in the Bronx, for Open Stage in the Strip.
Wali Jamal's one-man "Martin R. Delany: The Pittsburgh Years," about the pre-Civil War journalist, doctor, poet and black nationalist. This is the second of Jamal's projected four plays for his company, History's Flipside. The first, staged last year, was about Robert Smalls; the next two, coming later this year and next, will be about Daisy Lampkin and Mary Cardwell Dawson.
(I reviewed all three shows in one piece Thursday. The two pictures here are of Newsome as two of the many characters he plays; both Gregory and Jamal play multiple characters as well.)
LAST WEEKEND: Life isn't all theater, there's also dance and sports. Last weekend Mary and I loved Attack Theatre's "Passion Reflected," especially the playfulness of the third piece, "At a Later Date." Then Saturday afternoon we enjoyed Pitt's roundball conquest of Cincinnati, and Monday we gloried in the epic victory over Uconn. My dream is that Pitt will play Uconn three more times -- and the only victory that really counts is the final one.
MORE STEELERS: Someone who identifies himself as "an expat actor who watched [the Super Bowl] from his Northern Manhattan apartment" wrote to say he enjoyed my dramaturgical analysis of "both its Aristotelian and Freudian aspects. Truly, a great day to be a Pittsburgher." But he says he's going to have to "keep my hometown pride at least slightly more under wraps, as I will leave next week to spend most of the rest of the year doing a season with the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland. A certain amount of reserve may be in order." I'll say!
Broadway composer Stephen Flaherty had no such need on a recent trip to Washington to perform in a concert at the Kennedy Center: he and Trevor Hardwick unfurled their Terrible Towel (I'm sure they only had one) in front of the White House.
(That's Dormont's finest, Stephen, with his head cut off in the top picture, and Trevor below.)
BROADWAY SHOWPLANE: In Sunday's paper we announce the PG's spring ShowPlane to Broadway, May 6-10, with a slate of four musicals -- the new "9 to 5," established hit "Billy Elliot," and revivals of "West Side Story" and "Guys and Dolls." The package includes air, airport transfers, the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, welcoming dinner, my opinions about the shows (well, that's free), optional extras, etc., etc. For those who want more drama and grit in their theater, I especially recommend Lincoln Center's revival of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" as a matinee extra.
"JOE TURNER": This is the Broadway revival that occasioned some controversy last fall when it was announced the director would be Bartlett Sher, the first non-black to direct Wilson in New York. They've just announced the cast: Marsha Stephanie Blake (Mattie), Chad L. Coleman (Herald Loomis), Michael Cummings (Reuben), Aunjanue Ellis (Molly), Danai Gurira (Martha), Andre Holland (Jeremy), Arliss Howard (Selig), Ernie Hudson (Seth), LaTanya Richardson Jackson (Bertha), Amari Rose Leigh (Zonia) and Roger Robinson (Bynum). Of these, the most veteran member of the (unofficial) August Wilson Rep Company is Robinson, whom we know in Pittsburgh from his appearances at the Public Theater in "Things of Dry Hours" (2004) and "Driving Miss Daisy" (2003). (You might enjoy an interview I did with him in 2002 touching on Wilson in several ways.)
"Joe Turner" rehearsals started this week. Previews begin March 19, with the opening night April 16. Although produced by Lincoln Center, it will be at the Belasco Theatre (44th St. east of Broadway). I should declare a personal interest: I was commissioned to write an essay about the Hill District background for the quarterly Lincoln Center Theater Review. I'm also hoping to find some money to take my August Wilson class at Pitt to see the show.
NEW WORKS FEST: Yes, it's time again. Pittsburgh News Works Festival is accepting unproduced one-act plays for its upcoming 19th season. Twelve will be staged Sept. 10-Oct. 4, with six more given readings Aug. 23 and 30. Submissions (40 minutes max) must be postmarked by April 4. For all the rules and regulations, visit www.pittsburghnewworks.org or call 412-881-6888. Winners will be staged by local theater groups
SECOND HELPINGS:
'The Seafarer' (gone) and 'A Moon to Dance By' (going)
Reveling in my semi-retirement, I went back a second time to see both "The Seafarer" (at City) and "A Moon to Dance By" (Playhouse Rep), and in both cases expanded my appreciation.
This is often what happens, partly because it's a stacked deck: you go back for a second viewing of plays you liked to start with, which are usually (with me, anyway) those most likely to reveal further depths and complexities. Beyond that, there's the likelihood the performances will have deepened over time. But mainly, you're a different observer, already knowing the play on one level and thus freer to see other levels a second time.
For all these reasons, in whatever combination, I was more moved by both productions on second viewing. I think it's mainly because in both cases I focused sooner on what I knew would be the central issue -- Sharkey's vulnerability to Lockhart (the devil) in one case, Monty's aching need of contact with his mother in the other.
At first you're put off by Monty, of course, with his English rectitude, not to say his class and ethnic bigotry. But already knowing he would soften toward his estranged mother, I could see it start to happen sooner, and I found myself identifying with his need more fully. In my own case, it's my father I regret not having known, but I felt many of Monty's emotions as my own. What a good play this is, full of smart dialogue that engages you intellectually and emotionally.
With "Seafarer," my connection is less personal, but the existential dread of its loneliness and despair (so powerfully captured in the Anglo-Saxon poem that provides its title) is even sharper on second viewing, probably for the same reason: you more quickly see past the comedy that the first viewing has taught you is really just camouflage of deeper needs and fears.
I have a question about the final poker hand. Given the Devil's ability to read minds, he certainly knows what cards Ivan has. Or is his knowledge limited to what Ivan (thinks he) knows? This is important, because in one case God must intervene directly (miraculously) to turn Ivan's four 4s into aces on Sharky's behalf, but in the other, the miracle simply resides in Ivan's finding his glasses. When the electric votive light comes on it suggests the former, but the enigma (and God's direct participation) is unresolved. What do you think?
[Sunday addendum: A message from a reader has helped me rethink this. The odds against there being three players with four of a kind in one hand of 3-card draw (with no wild cards) are so astronomical, and Lockhart is so sure of himself, that I think he must have stacked the deck and knows exactly what each player has. So it has to be a greater force that changes Ivan's four 4s at the last minute, using the rediscovered glasses as a gimmick. Yes, it's a miracle.]
Feb 11 2009
Duquesne grad Jim McManus' "Cherry Smoke" is going to its third continent -- no, fourth, if you consider New York City a world into itself. It was originally staged here by barebones productions, which took it to last year's Edinburgh Festival. Now it's being staged in Sydney, Australia, by the Old Fitzroy Theatre. And the Clockwork Theatre will stage it in NYC, Feb. 21-March 14 at the Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row (W. 42 St.). Directing will be Jade King Carroll, who has an extensive history as an assistant on August Wilson productions. Joining Clockwork regulars Marianna McClellan, Jay Rohloff and Doug Nyman will be CMU grad Kate Rogal, who, as the granddaughter of Chilly Billy Cardille, we might call Pittsburgh stage royalty.
I got to meet the company and some of their production crew when playwright McManus brought them here last month to give them a sense of his play's setting with a tour of his home town, Donora, and then enlisted me to give them a tour of August Wilson's Hill, as well.
(Here we are in front of August Wilson's childhood home at 1727 Bedford Ave. -- Jim McManus is in the front row, 2nd from the right, with director Jade just above him. The guy with the white hair is me.)
* Last Friday's opening night at the Playhouse of Thom Thomas' "A Moon to Dance By" (review in tomorrow's PG) had some of the opening night sizzle of the Playhouse of old. That's fitting, since Thom himself was Playhouse artistic director just after that golden era. The Rauh Theatre was basically full, and there was Richard Rauh himself, a direct link to the days when it was the premier theater in town. Among those I spotted at the post-show reception, in addition to those connected to the show, were Lenora Nemetz, David "Mr. McFeely" Newell and Bob McCully (all connected to Thomas' Odd Chair Playhouse days), CMU's Dick Block, the Trust's Kevin McMahon and Kristen, Penelope Miller Lindblom, Bill Nunn with his mother and sister, the Hazlett's Sarah Radelet, playwright Tammy Ryan, theater fanatics Ed Schied and Marci Metelsky (she, in from D.C.) and actors Mark Staley, Larry Meyers and Jarred DiGiorgi. Not that I was taking notes.
* ADVANCE WARNING: In connection with its production of "Angels in America" (Part 1, Feb. 19-March 1; Part 2, April 2-11), Pitt is hosting a Feb. 27-March 1 symposium on Theater and Cognitive Studies. I'll need to find out just what that means, since I'm moderating a Feb. 28 panel (at 9:30 am!) on cognitive responses to "Angels." That's open to the public, as are many other talks and panels.
REVIEW: Neil Simon, "Chapter Two," Kean Theatre, Gibsonia
I'll admit I headed north with some friends mainly because I've never seen the reputedly handsome new theater at the St. Barnabas campus on Meridian Road. But I was glad to revisit this 1977 comedy by Neil Simon, which falls just about in the middle of the run of some 30 shows with which he dominated Broadway for four decades. 
And then I realized I never had seen it before. I'd confused it with his earlier comedies, most specifically "Come Blow Your Horn," which is also based on his and his brother Danny's experiences as girl-chasing writers. Actually, "Chapter Two" is autobiographically based on the time after the death of Simon's first wife when he (here, George) quite unexpectedly fell in love with actress Marsha Mason (here, Jennie), who quickly became his second wife. As such, it has a strong taste of the darker seriousness that gradually crept into Simon's work, giving relative complexity to his later "BB" trilogy and "Lost in Yonkers," on which I think his more serious reputation rests.
(That's Kristen Scannell as Jennie and Greg Caridi as George, above, and Casey Bowser as Leo and Heidi Nichols as Faye, below.)
Unfortunately, here the skilled comedy craftsman doesn't yet seem to have control of this serious strain. In "Chapter Two," it shows up in the sudden, depressive panic George feels right after marrying Jennie. However explicable that may be, nothing in the play has prepared us for it. Worse, it requires that George be so unexpectedly cruel, self-centered and stupid that it's hard to root for his cure -- Jennie comes to seem a victim of emotional abuse, which certainly lessens our willing participation in the comedy. Maybe director Tom Madden and his lead actor, the experienced Gregory Caridi, are just too determined to honor the darkness to take care of the audience, too.
The most successful balancing act between broad comedy and emotional truth is by Casey Bowser, who plays the joke-cracking younger brother and turns serious with deadpan believability. It's easier for Kristen Scannell, who just has to remain true to Jennie's indomitable optimism. Playing her friend, whose own klutzy amatory experiments provide comic counterpoint, is Heidi Nicholls.
A largely veteran audience (by which I mean, my age or older) enjoyed the show a lot. Indeed, Simon provides knowing comic wisecracks about relationships of many kinds.
(Maybe I was the only one bothered that, of the four Broadway shows in the posters on the walls of Jennie's apartment, two of them came along well after the action of the play takes place.)
Feb 08 2009
Though
it's been a week since that stirring Super Bowl, it still feels like yesterday.
Of course it's less than that since the final act of the drama, Tuesday's civic love-in, when we clasped our champions to our communal bosom.
"Drama" I say, and theater it certainly was, a four-act epic that had all the heights of elation,
precipitous reversals of fortune, depths of despair and sudden, golden victory
that you'd enjoy in a robust melodrama, careening wildly from comedy to tragedy
to delirium.
In my reckoning, the playoffs were preliminary. The two-week pre-Super Bowl trial-by-media was Act 1. Them the game itself was Acts 2 and 3, both of which ended with crucial Steelers reversals. Tuesday was Act 4. In between Acts 2 and 3 came a pause for orgiastic music, further whipping the audience into the necessary frenzy. Notice also how patriotic and militarist it all was, right up to having Gen. Petreus flip the coin.
The whole was like
nothing so much as the extended theater festivals of ancient Greece or the miracle and mystery plays of medieval England, also both civic rites with religious warrant, embracing the
whole population in shared theatrical ritual.
(Talk about embracing the whole population: everybody in town got into the act, including the cast of "Metamor-phoses" at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, as this group portrait shows. Actually, the "Go Steelers!" is a photoshop addition to an earlier picture, but why not? In addition to jumping on the bandwagon of civic pride, they have the warrant of playing various gods and other figures from classical myth, fitting right in with my general theme.)
In Act 2 and 3, the game itself, there was clearly a demented, dramaturgical magician pulling the strings, especially with James Harrison's improbable 100-yard, sideline-skirting dash just before
intermission (OK, halftime). More orthodox dramaturgy would have ended that act
with a tightening of tension, not a sudden, goofy reversal. It looked as though Pittsburgh would end what had been a dominating first half behind or at best tied, and
suddenly we were up 10 points, relaxing into our intermission drinks and
snacks.
But
the football gods, who've clearly studied dramaturgy with the best (Aristotle,
Shakespeare and whoever else is giving classes in heaven these days), were just
playing with us, relieving tension at the end of Act 2 so they could screw it to a higher
pitch later on. They did a reverse version of that later in Act 3 with the holding penalty that caused a two-point safety. We hated that, of course. But
without it, the Steelers might have made another first down or two before
punting, in which case Larry Fitzgerald's second touchdown would have come too
late to be overcome.
That's
great plot management, using catastrophe as a springboard to triumph. As I say,
some heavenly dramatist was playing with our emotions, raising them up and
dashing them down only to raise them up again in an explosion of victory.
Dramaturgical
analysis of SB XLIII can go farther. Consider the mythic,
symbolic structure of football itself, which takes place in huge arenas that
dominate our cities like the cathedrals or temples once did. There, on Sundays, no less, the population gathers in person and via radio and
TV, in greater numbers than at all the other churches put together. In ecstatic unison they
worship a band of specially selected and trained warriors, supervised by
superior priests in striped garb, who attempt to move an egg-shaped object
across a symbolic green battlefield until it crosses the final line or perhaps
splits the uprights, causing an orgasm of celebration.
[Pause for acknowledgment: If this insight sounds familiar, you may already be a fan of Thomas Hornsby Ferrils' 1957 Harper's Magazine piece, "Freud
on Football," which is available online: http://www.crystaloak.com/Gaijin/Essay/freud_football.htm.]
There
are similar communal religious services on Saturdays, when younger warriors
stage similar heroic rituals in hopes of moving up to the higher glories of
Sunday. In these Saturday contests, the symbolic struggle is played out with
the assistance of a band of agile, attractive young priestesses who cheer and gyrate,
praising the delivery of the egg to its sought-for home. (The Steelers theology is purer -- they do without the priestesses.)
So as you can see, football isn't just play or even just theater, it's also myth
and epic. And the actual game, the intense experience of shared peril and
last-minute escape, was just the two-act centerpiece of the four-act
participatory civic festival of communal confirmation, trial, rebirth and
religious thanksgiving.
Then came Act 4, the ceremonial return of the champions to the bosom of the city
that nurtured them.
It's
not enough that the hero slays the dragon or weds the beautiful heiress, he
also has to share his triumph with the people. In the theater, classical comedy
usually ends with a wedding and a festival in which the now-happy social group
is reborn. For us, that was Tuesday's parade and celebration, with its
easier, less anxious rhythm.
Even more than during the game itself, that was the
day to be a Pittsburgher.
Feb 05 2009
THIS WEEK'S THEATER: Running just through this weekend are PMT's "High School
Musical," Kuntu Rep's "Clean
Drums" (see below) and Point Park's "Hot
L Baltimore." The Public Theater's "Metamorphoses"
and City Theatre's "The
Seafarer" continue through next weekend,
while Quantum's "Mouth to Mouth," just opened (my review was in Tuesday's
paper), runs through the week after that. Opening this weekend are Robert Dubac's sequel to his
comic "Male Intellect: The 2nd Coming"; Open Stage's "No Child"
starring Rita Gregory; and the Playhouse's world premiere of "A Moon
to Dance," starring Broadway's Jane
Alexander and Robert Cuccioli, written by Pittsburgh exile Thom Thomas.
Sorry it's been a while since my last post -- the Super Bowl really took it out of me, before, during and after. This (Thursday) morning in my weekly stint on KDKA-TV's "Pittsburgh Today Live," I'm going to talk a little about it as communal drama, like the great theater festivals in ancient Greece, or the Mystery Plays in medieval England. Really. I kid you not. But mainly, of course, it was just one fabulous football game.
BRIEF REVIEW: Rob Penny, "Clean Drums"
The late Rob Penny (1941?-2003), Pittsburgher and
professor of Africana Studies at Pitt, played a significant part in black
poetry and theater, here and nationally. Aside from his own achievements, he
worked with August Wilson and Sala Udin on their Black Horizon Theater
(1968-71), an important influence on the careers of all three. And he was for
many years playwright-in-residence with Kuntu Rep.
So it is welcome and fitting that Kuntu and its
artistic director, Vernell Lillie, are staging a full season of Penny's plays, some of which they have staged before.
"Clean Drums" is
predominantly about Pittsburgher Joe Harris, a great African American drummer
whose career ran from the '40s into the '90s. I'm told he was one of the
early bebop drummers who worked with such as Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine,
Erroll Garner and others, often in New York, and then lived and worked for
several decades in Sweden, eventually returning to Pittsburgh where he played
with Frank Cunimondo, among others.
Unfortunately, at the early
performance I saw nearly two weeks ago, the play felt like two disconnected shows and
pieces of a third. One is a rich serial monologue by Harris; the other is a
musical revue featuring some great songstresses -- Billie Holiday,
Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughn and Dinah Washington. Either the monologue or the
revue would be satisfying by itself, but they are loosely tied together with an
irresolute series of debates and arguments that reveal some of Harris'
biography and principles but don't create any dramatic action.
To be fair, at the
performance I saw, some of the actors were unsure of their lines, so the text
may well be tighter than they demonstrated. Then, the play ran uncomfortably
close to three hours. I expect by now it moves more briskly, which would make
its virtues more apparent.
Those virtues include a
portrait of a artist with integrity, snapshots of powerful singers doing some
of their signature works, and a fine five-piece band led by Buster Alston. Harris
is played with intensity and personality (plus drumming skills) by Dennis
Garner, great nephew of Erroll. The women's voices vary from just adequate to fine, and they're all costumed with style and panache.
Perhaps my mistake was
expecting a play. This is a discursive riff on subjects musical and social, a
concert with intermittent passages of compelling talk.
"Clean Drums" continues this Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. at Alumni Hall, 4227 Fifth Ave., across from the Cathedral of Learning; 412-624-7298, www.kuntu.org or www.ProArtsTickets.org.