Theatre Review: "Once" at the Orpheum Theater

When it comes to Broadway musicals, people often expect something big. Stunning scenic effects, massive production numbers, solo vocal pyrotechnics reverberating to the balconies.

But then along comes Once.  A single, well-appointed, fundamental set. Folky stylized dance numbers.  Intimate songs. Elemental dialogue. By contrast, modest in every respect. It opened in New York in 2011 already well sold, being a staged remake of a much-admired, much awarded 2006 movie. More praise. More awards. Eight Tonys.

It’s easy to see why there’s been such acclaim when you attend a performance by the national touring company production in its short stay at the Orpheum here in Omaha. The tender story comes endowed with wonderful songs and dynamic staging. Yes. Dynamic. Calling it intimate and modest does not imply bare-bones simple.

The 12 cast members emphatically, compellingly stomp, swirl, and whirl. They sing to perfection, sometimes solo, sometimes duets, sometimes in ensembles. And collectively they play seven guitars, two eloquent violins, cello, piano, and other strings such as ukulele, banjo, mandolin and several. Plus several pieces of percussion. That doesn’t mean showing off virtuosity. It means a well-tuned  ensemble.

They serve the story. Not a complex one. An appealing one. Front and center are two characters generically called Guy and Girl. Within the framework of what looks like a Dublin pub, you see and hear how they came together and where they went. He’s a single obscure Irishman who sings and plays guitar in his owns songs and earns a few Euros repairing vacuum cleaners (generically called “Hoovers” in that part of the world.)  She’s Czech, sometime plays piano, takes odd jobs, sustains and tends her mom and little daughter while separated from her husband. Girl sees that Guy has true talent and does all she can to encourage him to pursue a career, even when she loves him which could mean they’ll separate.  

That part of the story comes across touchingly clear. But I found that much of the time I could not understand the more complex and amusing parts of the dialogue due to the Irish accents and the Czech-like ones. On opening night it was clear, due to laughter in many parts of the theatre, that quite a lot of people present had no such problem. FYI: There’s profanity.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová wrote most of the songs which range from intense, to wistful, to reflective and, at times, to passionate. Among them is the beautiful and famed “Falling Slowly” the Oscar winner for Best Original Song in 2008. A Grammy winner too. There is also the sweet “Gold,” made so endearing in choral a cappella singing in the second act. It’s by Irishman Fergus O’Farrell, who gets no mention in the program book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Hansard--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark%C3%A9ta_Irglov%C3%A1

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2013/0211/647350-radio-documentary-fergus-ofarrell-interference-muscular-dystrophy/

Stuart Ward as Guy makes the best and most of every song as does Dani de Waal as Girl. As for characterizations, they project sincere truth. But the superb ensemble singing, playing, dancing   leaves the most indelible impression.

Bob Crowley’s wonderful set adds to the magic. With its myriad mirrors and lights along the walls, you feel as if you are in a special place. Of course, you are. This once.

Once continues through May 17 at the Orpheum Theater, 409 S. 16^th St. Thurs. 7:30 p.m. Fri: 8 p.m. Sat: 2 & 8 p.m. Sun: 1:30 & 7:30 p.m.  Tickets: $62-$524. www.omahaperformingarts.org

Theatre review: "Our Town" at Blue Barn Theatre

Thornton Wilder’s timeless classic Our Town remains full of life at Blue Barn Theatre. Director Susan Clement-Toberer’s imaginative use of the playing space becomes a vital, truly up close, personal sense of a close-knit community.  She and her cast create a vigorous, believable ensemble. Integrity.

This re-visit to Wilder’s enduring 1938 play makes it clear why it deserves its reputation. Although perhaps considered a nostalgic immersion into a simpler American time, the beautiful third act makes it clear that Wilder has much more there for us. A message that transcends time and place. A message to take home again and again. It’s about death. Yes. Death. The simple message bears repeating: Each of us will die. While alive, we should cherish what we have and those we love while there is time. No wonder a Pulitzer Prize was awarded.

Clement-Toberer’s interpretation seems to emphasis simplicity, not just in the way this is staged, which, after all, conforms with Wilder’s own bare-bones concept. Rather, her actors mostly come across as more generic than specific. As if these archetypes need not have clearly defined  personalities.

However, the deliberately elemental language about everyday life gets delivered by nearly everyone in the cast with clear, natural sincerity.

The core of the story concerns two intersecting, neighboring families, the Gibbs family and the Webbs. It follows them over 12 years during which time George Gibbs courts Emily Webb. They marry. She dies.

Benjamin Thorp’s personification of George starts full of endearing charm and emerges with natural depth. But Kelsi Weston’s Emily on opening night never developed beyond sounding like an insecure high school student. Early in the play that could be justified. Yet on opening night, the readings of most of her lines, even as a young adult, sounded as if Weston hasn’t learned how to convey their meaning. Wilder’s significant dialogue for Emily barely got its due. 

The almost equal roles of the parents, played by Michael Markey, Moira Mangiamelli, Benjamin Thorp and Emma Chvala, remain convincing.

The only other principal character is the Stage Manager, a memorable invention by Wilder. Nils Haaland gives him unassuming, easy-going friendliness, as if part of the scenery, rather than choosing to stand in the spotlight himself. Yet, he does deliver the eloquent third act monologue with all the beauty it contains, serving Wilder to perfection.

There are 22 other people represented, few of which could deliberately, briefly, clearly, stand out.

Of those, Dennis Collins leaves in indelible impression playing the alcoholic choir director Simon Stimson.

The playwright, characteristically at Blue Barn, gets no biographical print space in the multi-paragraph nine pages concerning everyone else involved in these performances.  FYI: His play The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) also won a Pulitzer as did his novel  The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Another play, The Matchmaker (1954), has become best known as the Jerry Herman musical Hello Dolly. http://thorntonwilder.com/

 

This production is Blue Barn’s final one at its Old Market theater and a joyous, loving way to wrap things up, especially given such an indelible sense of community.

Our Town runs through June 7 at Blue Barn Theatre,  614 S. 11^TH St. Thurs-Sat: 7:30 p.m. Sun: 6 p.m. Tickets $25-30. www.bluebarn.org

 

Theatre Review: " Race" at Omaha Community Playhouse

David Mamet. Yes. He tackles questions of race head on. He knocks you out. No nonsense. He slugs with jabs of ironic wit. Roaring laughs. He gets inside your brain, making you ponder, wonder, question. Pay attention, damn it.  You don’t want to miss anything. And you very well might get it all at Omaha Community Playhouse, because director Amy Lane and her dynamic cast nail the essence of Race to the wall.

This exercise in black and white deals not just with skin color but the questionable absolutes of truth and justice. It vibrates with conceptions and pre-conceptions.

Cut to story. Wealthy white guy Charles Strickland has been accused of raping a black woman. She made the claim. He seeks court-room protection from lawyers Jack Lawson (white) and Henry Brown (black) who have new assistance from young Susan (black. No last name). She’s just joined the practice. This launches 90 or so intermission- sliced minutes into ticking, explosive questions about guilt, innocence, shame, conscience, truth, justice, sexism, paranoia, press sensationalism and, of course, various strains of racial bias. You might think that this is some kind of heavy load to bear. But no, the words, the thoughts, the ideas keep on zipping by. Grab them on this merry-go-round.

Timing, pacing, using every inch of the space and digging deep into the meaning of the words, director Amy Lane gets it all right. So does Doug Blackburn whose Jack crackles with intelligence and sardonic precision. Andre McGraw as Henry has sturdy humor and unrelenting strength. Brennan Thomas’s take on Strickland stays totally real, suggesting innocence even while armored by his assured privileged class membership. Susan is played by Jonnique Powers. She does well by seeming overshadowed and subservient in this male-dominated territory. But she has attitude inside that frame.

As usual, Mamet’s language is peppered with expletives. They and all the other words serve an intense purpose: to get us to ponder our own roles in a society where our own perceptions of race continue to color our behavior.   

Don’t expect easy resolution. You may be provoked to grip the edge of your seat but, as a witness, or a man or woman in some kind of jury, only after you’ve had time to breathe outside that office are you likely come up with some kind of conclusion about what really happened there. Plus what really happened in the unseen room where the rape may have taken place. But then maybe not. Think it over, pal. 

 
Race continues through June 8 at Howard Drew Theatre, Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass St. Thurs-Sat: 7:30 p.m. Sun: 2 p.m. Tickets: $21-$35- www.OmahaPlayhouse.org

 

Theatre review: "Wicked" at the Orpheum Theater

In its eleventh year of surging vitality, a great-looking, superbly produced version of Wicked,  the musical, has arrived in this Great Plains state, neighbor to Dorothy Gale’s Kansas. Not that Dorothy is at the center of this visit to Oz. She’s a sound effect and a shadow. You probably know that. This adventure has become a legend of our time to which audiences cherish renewed visits, as if it were the second coming of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A dark adventure, sure. A potential Halloween ritual.

The show, derived from Gregory Maguire’s exceptionally imaginative 1995 novel, subtitled The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, has been re sub-titled The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz.  This is not to suggest that the musical’s book writer Winnie Holzman much transformed Maguire’s material. By and large, she remains faithful to the source. Also credit Maguire for dovetailing his own ideas with what L. Frank Baum wrote in 1900’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz brilliantly and quite literally brought to life in the classic 1939 film.

Whatever version of the tale appears, the whole concept has become an icon of our culture, one of continual fascination.

Maguire attempted, he claims, to have us to ponder political, social, and ethical issues and the  nature of good and evil. A great ambition. However it’s essential to remember that this stage version  is a musical, not Shakespeare nor Peer Gynt.  Stephen Schwartz’s 18 songs dominate it, encompassing at least half of the production’s two and half hours. Hence the story comes lightly, albeit excellently sketched in. Holzman also peppers it with good laugh-lines, including inside joke references to movie dialogue. Recognition and identification have often been the basis for laughs,  from stand-up routines to TV sitcoms. It works.

So what we have here covers well-known ground and, since you may already know the show, a re-visit will certainly delight you and give you what you hope for.

The performances, the special effects, the sets, the costumes, the choreography look great from beginning to end. Emma Hunton as the emerging WWotW, Elphaba, gives a solid, well-grounded interpretation, evolving from innocent, hopeful adolescence to mature, urgent strength. Goofy glamorpuss Glinda’s comedy turns always work thanks to Gina Beck’s talent. Alison Fraser gives an appealing Angela Lansbury-like polish to Madame Morrible.  And Jud Williford’s version of Doctor Dillimond makes him sadly touching and sympathetic even while having scant time in the script to do so. Credit director Joe Mantello for bringing about all of this.  

Everyone sings and dances with skill and talent. But Stephen Schwartz’s songs soon begin to sound like each other and the effect feels interminable. A few clever lyrics emerge from time to time, but the melodies, the harmonies stay predictable and unimaginative. Schwartz, responsible as well for the scores for Godspell and Pippin, among others, has again turned out stand-and-deliver, knock-em-out, down front-and-enter, vocal pyrotechnics where volume substitutes for internal depth.  This joins the ranks of such equally profitable spectacles as Schonberg, Boublil and Kretzmer's Les Miserables, Lloyd Webber, Hart and Stilgoe's The Phantom of the Opera and Frank Wildhorn product. Crowd-pleasers. The work of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, who wrote such wonderful, memorable songs for the movie Wizard of Oz, fade into history, supplanted by a plethora of this sort of thing.

In case the references to the characters above puzzle you, this probably means you don’t know the plot of Wicked yet. If you go to see it, then, you may not be able to catch some of the fleeting suggestions of the brilliant elements of the story. The musical is posited on presumed familiarity with both sources, Baum’s and Maguire’s. Not an unusual thing for many musicals which give a lot of time to songs, bound to sell more tickets than well-developed plots and dialogue.

Elphaba is born different from the dominant race. She has another skin color. But she has rare talent. She also has power to change some lives. She and her sister Nessarose, the eventual Wicked Witch of the East, attend Chiz University to learn how to acquire more power presumably to benefit society. They are both outsiders compared to Glinda, a vacuous campus queen studying the same disciplines. Madame Morrible is the headmistress and has deep allegiance to the Wizard’s administration. The staff includes a Goat, Dr. Dillamond, one of many animals considered equal to humans until the country becomes Nazi-like. Elphaba, meeting the seemingly innocuous, fraudulent, divide-and-conquer Wizard, becomes disillusioned with everything she sees and vows to change society for the better, including becoming an animal-liberationist.  But an alien named Dorothy descends on this territory bringing destruction. Maguire brilliantly gives us a lot to ponder.

Holzman, FYI, adds a few variations of her own, including the dark, disturbing origins of The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man and The Scarecrow. But enough of plot. Just be aware, as a newcomer to the performance, that you have to look carefully under the glitter and gloss to see the many merits of the story.

This take on the original has a disappointing, tacky major scene near the end when Dorothy throws water on Elphaba. Of course, it is predicated on knowing the original Baum invention to which the classic movie does justice. And without CGI, BTW.  It is hastily staged with shadows behind a curtain. No need to cast an actress as Dorothy. No need to work out how and why WWotW (Elphaba) is doused with water since she can’t threaten The Scarecrow with fire, him not being not there in this version.  It looks as if Holzman and the producers ran out of imagination and funds for more smoke and mirrors and visual effects.

Omaha audiences, like audiences everywhere, no doubt will embrace this, no matter its shortcomings. Oh, speaking of Omaha, in Baum’s original story, The Wizard, aka Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs is from this city. And became known as OZ because he put the first letters of his first two names on his flying balloon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_(character)

Enjoy those flights of fancy which land well.  

Wicked continues through May 25 at the Orpheum Theater, 409 S. 16^th St. Omaha. Tues-Weds: 7:30 p.m. Thurs: 2 & 7:30 p.m. Fri: 8 p.m. Sat: 2 & 8 p.m. Sun: 1:30 & 7 p.m. Tickets: $35-$165 www.omahaperformingarts.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WarHorse Strides Into Omaha

Theatrical masterpiece WarHorse has magnificently come to Omaha for only a short stay offering a rare, unforgettable experience.

Much has been written locally about the physical heart of the story and how it’s told with extraordinary puppets resembling life-sized versions of horses. Yet Nick Stafford’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s young person’s novel goes much deeper and wider than only telling a tale about such creatures and a young man’s love for one of them. As conceived by Stafford, co-directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, this has become a compelling telling of an enduring fable about the horrors, the follies, the cruelties of war. And it unfolds through many kinds of visual stage magic, not intended to mimic reality, but to keep alive the centuries-old traditions of puppetry.  The Chinese, the Japanese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs in the days of their empires all expressed their heritages, their cultures, their beliefs, their dreams in an art form whose characters came to life through human hands moving rods or strings or were physically visible as if caressing figures made of wood, cloth, metal, wire. A different kind of life.   

So it is that from the very start of WarHorse you are immersed in song and symbol while members of the massive cast assemble, disperse, re-assemble in new roles. They also manipulate simple props while above them, on a fragment of a screen, elemental line drawings in black and white point the way to time and location of what unfolds. Make no mistake. This is not a movie, even though dramatic music by Adrian Sutton underscores many scenes. This is not Steven Spielberg’s impressive, thoroughly literal representation of the same story. This is live theatre wherein you are asked to abandon the need to expect a simulation of reality. Here you suspend disbelief, even while your eyes take in humans who are obviously moving birds and beautiful horses.

Young Albert Narracott’s  father Ted buys a stray colt at a horse auction and charges Albert with taking care of the animal. Boy and creature bond. That bond is torn asunder when Ted sells the horse, Joey, to the British cavalry to be used in the fighting and killing amid the mud and horrors of World War I. Joey and another horse, Topthorn, eventually fall into the care of German officer, Friedrich Muller, who hopes to escape with them back home to a life of peace. After Topthorn dies and Muller is killed, Joey runs away and seems lost forever. Meanwhile Albert, having enlisted in the army, is somewhere in France hoping to find Joey amid the death and terror that shatter the skies and the earth. 

Beautiful and emotionally moving scenes abound even while technical wonders never cease to amaze.  Joey, both young and fully-grown, pulses and endears as an expressive, living being due to the artistry of the original creators, Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones and South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company. Equally the live artists manipulating Joey succeed in making him as alive as they.

The production comes full of imaginative visual marvels. One moment encapsulates such brilliance  perfectly. A horse (not Joey) dies in battle and, as the body sinks to the ground, humans who had made it move, emerge with choreographed precision and float off-stage. The body remains. The soul has departed. I leave you to make other discoveries of your own.

You might be pleased to know that despite the seriousness of the story, there are comic lines and situations. In one such, a British sergeant waiting to lead his charges into battle discovers that, amid the ranks, Albert carries a picture of his horse instead of what would be normal for a soldier, a picture of a girlfriend. Hearty mockery.   

I see no point in singling out individual performances; this is an ensemble creation and each person, in even the smallest role, serves the conception superbly.  

You do need to know, however, that English characters have various regional accents and that the Germans and French are represented as if speaking their languages but doing so in English with German and French accents. There is much rich dialogue requiring your attention, reminding us that this is a play, a drama, one that has become a classic.    

Cherish it.
Gordon Spencer

WarHorse continues through its 7.00 p.m. performance on Sunday April 13^th at the Orpheum Theater, 409 South 16th Street, Omaha. Tickets are $40 to $90. There’s more information at www.omahaperformingarts.org.

An introduction

Hello!
As you can also read to your right ("About Me") I was writing in Pittsburgh, 2001-2013, for City Paper, Pittsburgh Magazine, WQED-FM’s Arts Magazine, Pulp, The Front Weekly and for my own blog, “Gordon Spencer On WRCT.” (Still accessible on-line.) Much of that was about theatre especially as a reviewer/critic.

From 1991 to 2001 in Milwaukee I was the theatre review/critic for Shepherd Express and wrote for Milwaukee Magazine and Milwaukee Footlights.

During those years I hosted radio programs presenting classical music and jazz, as I had done before in Albuquerque and New York.  And was a radio news reporter/anchor in Albuquerque.

Settling in Omaha in September 2013, I’ve been hosting a weekly jazz radio program on KIOS-FM (Fridays 1 to 3pm) and have written for The Reader.

I’ve found Omaha’s theatre scene lively and impressive, even though there are no regular Equity groups and no companies have regular ensembles. Clearly, there is a core of capable and experienced Omaha performers, some of whom are Equity members.

As for my other background, I had significant roles in community theatre productions in Pittsburgh, and appeared on stage twice in Albuquerque in the 1980s. And from 1958 to 1966  was a professional actor in New York,  off-Broadway, in summer stock, on radio, in films, on TV and in traveling marionette shows.

Should you be interested, you can read about that and more at my blogged memoir “Station Breaks by Gordon Spencer."