Both the UK version (which EWP is presenting) and the US rewrite (which flopped on Broadway) revolve around a world championship chess match between brash American Frederick Trumper (Victor E. Chan) and the equally cocky Russian Anatoly Sergievsky (Elijah Rock), a contest which mirrors the Cold War still being waged at that time between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Complicating matters is an operatic-style romantic quadrangle which has both Frederick and Anatoly the object-of-affection of Frederick’s “second,” Florence Vassy (Joan Almedilla), a young woman born in Soviet Hungary but raised in the free world, with Anatoly’s Russian wife Svetlana (Carey Rebecca Brown) arriving in Act Two to complete the love mix. Overseeing all of the above is the nameless Arbiter (Ryan Castellino), with wily Russian Alexander Molokov (Ray A. Rochelle) serving as Anatoly’s second and the equally cunning Walter De Courcey (Michael Alexander Henry) forming part of Freddie’s delegation.

Among the elements Chess The Musical has going against it are a title sport not all that likely to keep an audience glued to the edge of their seats, Richard Nelson’s virtually dialog-free “book,” one which tells its stories entirely through song lyrics (no easy task for an audience to follow even in the best of cases), and a US-vs.-USSR rivalry that has become so dated in the years since Chess’s debut that today’s younger theatergoers may find it hard to relate to. (A 30something audience member was overheard remarking that he had no idea what the verb “defect” meant.)

 Fortunately, director Dang and company do their dangdest to overcome the source material’s weaknesses, and both they and the audience come out winners.

First and foremost there is the production’s supremely talented mix of performers-of-color, the most rainbow-hued ever in an East-West Players musical, and every bit as gifted as those which have preceded them.

 Almedilla, so moving in EWP’s World Premiere musical Tea, With Music earlier this season, gets quite possibly her best role since Miss Saigon’s Kim in the considerably ballsier Florence Vassy, a part which Almedilla plays with gumption, glamour, and grit and sings with superstar-power pipes in “Nobody’s Side” and “Someone Else’s Story,” and opposite Brown’s stunning Svetlana in the show-stopping duet “I Know Him So Well.” A captivating Brown scores too with the heartbreakingly beautiful “Heaven Help My Heart.”

 Rock’s gorgeous operatic vocals more than match his leading man good looks as Anatoly, his deeply affecting “Anthem” ending Act One with an emotional wallop. Castellino’s sensational, sexy Arbiter reveals the versatility of this UCLA grad, a night-and-day turnabout from the nerdy Wally he originated in 2009’s World Premiere Life Could Be A Dream, and never more so than when rocking out to the infectious “The Arbiter” and “One Night In Bangkok.” A dynamic Chen belts out “Pity The Child” with the best of them, an equally striking Rochelle sings compellingly about “The Soviet Machine,” and the four-part “Quartet (A Model Of Decorum And Tranquility)” has Rochelle, Almedilla, Castellino, and Rock harmonizing to heart-pounding effect. A charismatic Henry’s Walter completes the cast of principals, adding his own powerhouse vocals to multiple numbers.

Lending bang-up support in assorted cameos are EWP favorites and newcomers Cesar Cipriano, Stephanie Mieko Cohen, Jasmine Ejan, Shay Louise, DT Matias, Maegan McConnell, Alex Sanchez, Justin Vasquez, whose uniformly cover-model looks are more than matched by their triple-threat talents. A standout Sanchez plays Anatoly’s Act Two opponent Leonid Viigand, Vasquez’s ingratiating Mayor gets to welcome the chess teams to his town of Merano, Cipriano and Matias’s pole dancers are each more perfectly sculpted and limber than the other, and last but not least, Ejan dance-bedazzles as the Spirit Of Chess, both in Act One Indian mode and Act Two Thai garb.

 Director Dang’s vision comes particularly to life in scenes which combine dramatic action with Marc Oka’s inventive choreography—the ingenious opening “Story Of Chess,” the chess teams’ welcome to “Merano,” the sizzling “The Arbiter,” and above all the super-sexy Miss Saigon-esque “One Night In Bangkok.”

Dang makes imaginative use of scenic designer Adam Flemming’s striking multi-level set, while Flemming’s projection design takes us from Italy to Thailand, in addition to projecting live news broadcasts with various ensemble members as reporters. Anthony Tran’s costumes are a truly stunning bunch in shades of black with red and gold highlights, while Ken Takemoto’s props are stunners as well. Dan Weingarten lights all of the above with a dazzling display of pizzazz and Vegas-ready glitz.

Music director Marc Macalintal conducts and plays keyboards in the production’s outstanding live orchestra (Jenny Chaney on keyboards, Stuart Espinoza on drums, Khris Kempis on bass, Vincent Reyes on guitar, and Austin Yancey on woodwinds). Macalintal insures as well that every cast member is vocalizing at the peak of his or her talents (though there are times when the David Henry Hwang Theatre’s sound system does higher notes no favors).

Ondina V. Dominguez is stage manager and VIVS assistant stage manager.

Wikipedia writes that “no major revival production of the musical has yet been attempted either on West End or Broadway,” and it may be the case that Chess simply doesn’t have what it takes to become the blockbuster that sung-through musicals like Evita, Les Miz, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Miss Saigon have become. Still, with Dang and company’s creative juices at full boil, East West Players’ revival comes darned close.

East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theatre, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles. Through June 9. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00. Reservations: 213 625-7000
www.eastwestplayers.org

–Steven Stanley
May 15, 2013
Photos: Michael Lamont

 The man in question is scruffily-dressed, thickly-bearded Paul (VS. Artistic Director Johnny Clark), quickly warned by aging hippie bartender Dom (Paul Vincent O’Connor) that tonight is no night for someone who’s neither cop nor friend of cop to call this watering hole-in-the-wall his home, and as we will soon learn, Paul is neither the former nor the latter. No indeed, he is definitely not the latter.

Paul’s calm but determined refusal to vacate the premises suggests that he has more on his mind than a simple bottle of Bud, a suspicion that will be borne out once the police officers begin to arrive. As for what Paul has planned, you won’t hear it from me, and woe be anyone tempted to reveal the many shocks and surprises playwright Klier has in store.

I will at the very least introduce Cops And Friends Of Cops’ remaining trio of characters—Emmett (Andrew Hawkes), a confrontational tough-guy cop whose insistence upon paying for Paul’s second beer seems the farthest thing from friendly, and patrol car partners Sal (Gareth Williams) and Roosevelt (Rolando Boyce), the former approaching retirement age after forty years on the force, the latter just itching for his three-year partner to turn in his badge if only to no longer be forced to grin and bear the endless stream of purportedly “friendly” racist jokes that spew forth from Sal’s mouth at African-American Roosevelt’s expense.

 An air of menace hangs over Dom’s bar pretty much from the get-go despite the considerable number of laughs that playwright Klier keeps coming fast and furious throughout the play’s first half-hour or so, that is until the bearded stranger reveals just why he’s there on cops-and-friends-of-cop night, after which bullets seem more likely to fly than jokes.

It’s been over two years now since VS. last treated us to an evening of L.A. theater at its edgiest, all the more reason to welcome Clark and company back, particularly since the 39-seat intimacy of the newly-renamed and niftily-refurbished former Black Dahlia Theatre maximizes every suspenseful moment of Klier’s play by keeping Cops And Friends Of Cops smack-dab in the audience’s faces from its deceptively quiet start to its high-power finish.

Mere inches separate anyone seated in the front row from Dom’s dive bar, surely one of production designer Danny Cistone’s most stellar creations, particularly as lit to maximum dramatic effectiveness by Derrick McDaniel. (Is there anything in Cistone’s set that doesn’t look like it was transferred lock, stock, and beer bottle from the nearest downscale neighborhood watering hole?) Gareth Khalioun’s pitch-perfect costumes are each and every one character-revelatory, from Dom’s tie-dyed t-shirt to Paul’s sloppily thrown together outfit that seems unlikely to have left his back for a week at the very least. And any play that features both a “violence designer” (Ned Mochel at his fiercest) and a “makeup and special effects artist” (Justine Vickery at her bloodiest) promises more than its share of brutality, police and otherwise.

Most importantly, director Klier keeps the tension at peak level, whether upping the realism and suspense with his electric sound design, or insisting on deliberately pregnant pauses which his superb cast deliver with razor-sharp accuracy.

 Clark has never been better than he is as a man driven nearly mad with … (You’ll have to fill in the blank, as for me to do so would be a crime.) Hawkes, Boyce, Williams are so absolutely believable as cops that you might be tempted to stick around afterwards for proof that they aren’t the real thing. And Williams ties the whole shebang together with his spot-on turn as seen-it-all Dom. And most of these guys are getting the onstage workout of a lifetime.

Cops And Friends Of Cops is produced by Andrew Carlberg and Clark. Tommy Dunn is production stage manager, Mercedes Manning associate producer, and Stephen Sullivan house manager.

Cops And Friends Of Cops gives theater lovers ample reason to celebrate VS. Theatre Company’s return to our L.A. stage scene in its brand-new digs. Not only is it a pleasure to welcome Clark and company back, to do so with as exciting a production as Cops And Friends Of Cops is exhilarating news indeed.

VS. Theatre Company, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Through June 1. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Reservations: 323 739-4411
www.vstheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 9, 2013
Photos: Kate Compton

tick, tick… BOOM! gives audiences a unique peek into Jonathan Larson’s life before Rent, the musical he sadly did not live to see become one of Broadway’s biggest smashes ever.

Though it may seem hard to believe that there was a time before Jonathan Larson’s Rent, there was indeed a time during which Jon struggled even to pay the rent, much like his Rent “Bohemians.” Between 1983 and 1990, Larson devoted his creative life to writing a musical called Superbia, whose workshop production led only to “Let us know when your next project is completed.” Seven plus years…and this is all the thanks he got.

Following Superbia’s dead-on-arrival workshop, Jon wrote a one-man-show called tick, tick … BOOM!—his way of expressing his feelings about his 20s coming to an end without any notable career success. A decade or so later (after Larson’s sudden death from an aortic aneurysm just days before his 36th birthday and long before Rent had become a bona fide international sensation), Larson’s family asked Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn to adapt tick, tick … BOOM! as a fully staged musical, one which would feature three performers, one as Jon and the other two playing various characters in Jon’s life, most significantly his gay best friend Michael and Jon’s girlfriend Susan.

Director Brandon Baer has reconceived tick, tick … BOOM! as a seven-performer musical, a concept that not only spreads the wealth among its USC student triple-threats but makes seeing tick, tick … BOOM! a brand new experience for those like this reviewer who’ve been there, done that before.

“The sound you are hearing is not a technical problem,” Jon (Myles Nuzzi) tells us as he sits in front of his keyboard, the tick-tick-ticking of a clock echoing in the background. “It is not a musical cue. It is not a joke. It is the sound of one man’s mounting anxiety. I … am that man.” With his 30th birthday fast approaching, Jon can’t help comparing his still unsuccessful life with that of his childhood bff Michael (Segun Oluwadele), a successful business executive with a fancy sports car and more brand-name outfits than he could possibly count. Meanwhile, girlfriend Susan (Hajin Cho) is thinking about giving up her Manhattan job teaching ballet to “wealthy and untalented children” and moving out of the city.

 The cast, creative team, and crew are joined by Jonathan Larson’s sister Julie, center back row

Tick, Tick…Boom! follows Jon during the days leading up to his birthday as he prepares for the Superbia workshop, flirts and quarrels with Susan, learns that Michael has worries that far exceed his own—and eventually finds the strength to persevere. (Thank goodness, or there would never have been a Rent.) Larson’s signature sound rings forth loud and clear in numbers like “30/90,” “Sugar,” and “Louder Than Words,” and his hilarious parody of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday” is almost worth the price of admission.

Since “Jonathan Larson” is onstage throughout Tick, Tick…Boom!’s intermissionless ninety minutes, no production can succeed without a Jon capable of grabbing an audience from his first note and keeping them in the palm of his hand until the final fade-out. Fortunately, Musical Theatre Repertory has found that special Jon in USC freshman Myles Nuzzi, and if it takes a while to accept this fresh-faced teen from Maine as a (nearly) thirty-year old, the richness and vibrancy of Nuzzi’s performance, both vocally and as an actor digging deep, makes him a spot-on choice to bring Jon Larson to life. From the opening notes of “30/90” to the show closer “Louder Than Words” (and a powerhouse eleventh-hour “Why” in between), Nuzzi treats audiences to a performance promising great things ahead.

After vocalizing Little Shop’s Audrey II from offstage, Oluwadele makes a noteworthy MTR onstage debut in his sensitive portrayal of Jon’s best friend since summer camp. Joining Nuzzi, Cho, and occasionally other ensemble members in “Johnny Can’t Decide,” “Sunday,” “Real Life,” “See Her Smile,” and “Louder Than Words,” Oluwadele’s velvety vocals are some of Tick, Tick…Boom!’s best. As for Cho, the talented Trojan makes for a most appealing Susan, and never more so than when duetting a sexy, flirtatious “Green Green Dress” with Nuzzi.

A number of supporting characters in Jonathan Larson’s life make cameo appearances in tick, tick… BOOM!, roles customarily assigned to the actors playing Michael and Susan. Director Baer gives these parts to four additional performers, not only making this tick, tick… BOOM! a bigger show, but allowing for richer harmonies, providing a greater sense of New York hustle and bustle, and giving choreographer Charlotte Wen a chance to strut her stuff by turning “Sugar” into a jazzy full-cast production number. “Sunday” works particularly well too with a larger cast of characters for Jon to “paint” à la Sunday In The Park’s George, and so does Jon’s meeting with the ad execs at Michael’s place of work.

Claire Adams is hilariously “like butta” as Jonathan’s agent Rosa (in addition to other cameo bits), Kimberlee Holland makes for an amusingly maternal Mrs. Larson (and others), and Kevin Paley has one scene-stealing moment after another in a series of deliciously played cameos including Jon’s nerdy dad and a snooty maitre d’ from somewhere waaaaay overseas.

Most significantly in Baer’s re-imagining of tick, tick… BOOM!, the plum role of Superbia workshop leading lady Karessa becomes her own part rather than being played by “Susan” in a dual role, thereby allowing glamorous Claire Blackwelder to show off her power pipes in “Come To Your Senses,” the show’s most gorgeous ballad, in addition to enriching the production by letting us see both women in Jon’s life.

Wunderkind musical director Anthony Lucca conducts and plays keyboards in tick, tick… BOOM!’s sensational band (Lucca, Ryan McDiarmid, Ethan Sherman, and Santino Tafarella), whose onstage presence makes them part of Jon’s story as well.

Victoria Tam gets top marks for an ingenious scenic design which carries a keyboard motif throughout. Megan Guthrie-Wedemeyer gets major snaps for her many character-apt costumes. Lighting designer-technical director Alex Underwood, prop designer Summer Grubaugh, and sound designer-mixer Danielle Kisner all offer major contributions to a thoroughly professional looking/sounding production regardless of the age of its creative team.

Alice Pollitt is stage manager, Kelly Merritt assistant stage manager, Dreem Qin assistant scenic designer, Underwood spotlight operator, and Henry Boyd crew. tick, tick… BOOM! is produced by Arielle Fishman and Victoria Pearlman.

As I post this review on Opening Night, audiences have only four more performances in a mere two days to catch tick, tick… BOOM! before the woulda-coulda-shouldas set in. If you’ve got ninety spare minutes in the next forty-eight hours, head on over to the USC-adjacent Village Gate Theatre. The young talents of Musical Theatre Repertory do Jonathan Larson’s memory proud.

Village Gate Theatre At USC, 3223 S. Hoover St., Los Angeles.
www.uscmtr.com

–Steven Stanley
May 1, 2013

Now before you say, “But I don’t see student productions,” allow me to point out that this is USC’s prestigious School Of Dramatic Arts, many of whose grads have gone on to star on Broadway and beyond. Not only that, but The Most Happy Fella has been impeccably directed by Tony winner John Rubenstein and choreographed with athleticism and panache by two-time Ovation Award nominee Lili Fuller (herself a recent USC grad), and it features a full pit orchestra under the baton of award-winning musical director Alby Potts. Talk about credentials!

That being said, The Most Happy Fella is a rather daring choice for any theater, let alone for one on a university campus, if only because by blurring the line between opera and musical theater, it requires performers of the highest vocal caliber. Though the musical does feature more than a bit of spoken dialog, most of it is “sung through” and often operatically so. In fact, the 1956 vinyl Original Cast Album had so much music on it that it was released in a then unheard-of 3-LP boxed set with virtually the entire show intact.

Fortunately, every single leading player on the Bing Theater stage has pipes to sing Loesser’s melodies as they ought to be sung. Close your eyes and you’d never guess you were hearing students twenty-two and under. As for the Happiest Fella himself, a role originated on Broadway by Metropolitan Opera star Robert Weede, USC has its own secret weapon in Cole Cuomo, without whom I can’t imagine The Most Happy Fella even having been considered as this year’s annual Spring Musical.

But first a bit about the show itself.

Based on Sidney Howard’s 1924 Pulitzer Prize-winning They Knew What They Wanted, The Most Happy Fella recounts the tale of Antonio “Tony” Esposito, a middle-aged Italian immigrant Napa Valley grape grower who falls in love at first sight with a San Francisco waitress he dubs “Rosabella.” Unable to summon up the courage to talk to her, Tony leaves her a note in which he declares his love and proposes marriage. After a correspondence begins between the two, Rosabella (who has no recollection of Tony at the diner) asks for his picture. Fearing that his beloved Rosabella will lose interest once she sees this balding, middle-aged Italian, he sends her a snapshot of Joe, his foreman and a hunk of a man if there ever was one. Rosabella is immediately taken by Joe’s masculine good looks and takes the first bus out of San Francisco posthaste.

Needless to say, there’s a not-so-happy surprise awaiting the mail-order bride upon her arrival in Tony’s Napa Valley.

Among the many memorable songs Loesser wrote for The Most Happy Fella, the most famous is surely the barber-shop-harmonied “Standing On The Corner,” which hit #3 on the Billboard Charts. Rosabella’s joyous “Somebody, Somewhere,” her tender “Warm All Over,” and especially her oh-so-romantic duet with Tony, “My Heart Is So Full Of You,” are other standouts, as are the bright and breezy “Big D,” “I Like Everybody,” and “I Made A Fist.” Then there’s the title song, a leave-the-theater-humming hit if there ever was one.

Still, despite a tried-and-true plot and gorgeous tunes, any production of The Most Happy Fella will sink or swim based on its Tony, and how many performers in their early twenties are up to the role’s many challenges?

Cuomo most definitely is, the USC junior having only several months ago proven his dramatic-vocal mettle as Sweeney Todd, a performance about which I wrote: “With his darkly masculine presence and big rich baritone, Cuomo (the star of such diverse USC fare as City Of Angels, The Drowsy Chaperone, A Little Night Music, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) has the charisma, the gravitas, the acting chops, and the pipes to make us believe that he is indeed the Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.”

Pate now shaved to a circle of graying hair above the ears, Cuomo not only persuades us he is decades older than his mere twenty years, he invests the role of Tony with the gravitas, the acting chops, and the pipes to make us believe that this 50ish “old man” has indeed won the heart of everyone around him, that he despairs of ever finding a partner to share his life with him, and that he might even step onto an operatic stage during his time off from farming. Cuomo’s joyous rendition of “Rosabella,” his prayer to “Mamma, Mamma,” and his duet of “My Heart Is So Full Of You” with his young bride are as gorgeous as it gets. Not only that, Signor Cuomo speaks convincing Italian and acts the heck out of the role, from Tony’s jubilant welcome of Rosabella to his Napa Valley home, to his awestruck discovery that she returns his love, to his rage upon learning that she has been with another man.

Kimberly Hessler is Rosabella to Cuomo’s Tony, and a more crystalline soprano audiences could not ask for, hitting the highest of high notes in “Somebody, Somewhere” with ease. Add to that a delicate beauty and a genuine sincerity to win Tony’s heart at first glance and you’ve got a perfect match for Most Happy Fella’s most perfect leading man.

Providing comic relief as Rosabella’s best friend Cleo is Adrienne Visnic, previously seen in Katharine Hepburn mode in A Little Night Music and now proving herself a comedienne in the grand tradition of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball. Visnic steals every scene she’s in, aided and abetted by a couldn’t-be-cuter-or-spunkier Andrew Schmidt as Herman, the hired hand whose sheer likeability ends up being almost too much for acerbic city-gal Cleo. Selling the show’s opener, “Ooh! My Feet!” with the best of them, Visnic then duets an infectious “Big D” opposite young charmer Schmidt, who gets his own scene-stealing solo of “I Made A Fist!”

As Joe, the handsome foreman whose “pitcha” persuades Rosabella to head off to Napa, D.J. Blickenstaff segues from his stellar direction of Little Shop Of Horrors and Sweeney Todd to the bona fide leading man he was in A Little Night Music, lending his rich vocals to two of The Most Happy Fella’s most romantic ballads, “Joey, Joey, Joey” and “Don’t Cry,” and convincing us that whatever happens, Joe’s heart is in the right place.

Haley Fletcher is a standout as Tony’s jealous, possessive sister Marie, displaying acting chops and vocal gifts to match her costars’. As farmhands Al, Clem, and Jake, the terrific trio of Turner Frankosky, Tyler Miclean, and David Nicholson join voices in barbershop harmonies with Schmidt’s Herman for a buoyantly catchy “Standing On The Corner.” And speaking of terrific trios, Henry Boyd, Peter Mitchell, and Ian Shain (as “party planners” Giuseppe, Pasquale, and Ciccio) have the gorgeous Italian opera pipes and comedic talents to make “Abbondanza” and “Benvenuta” a pair of over-the-top hilarious showstoppers. Eric Hu makes for a fine Doctor, and gets his own tenor solo “Song Of A Summer Night.” Children Chelsea Rifkin and Zachary Rifkin are petite charmers as Tessie and Gussie.

On a newsworthy note, USC Athletic Director Pat Haden’s cameo as Postman #2 earns cheers for his character’s delightfully folksy “I See Her At The Station.” Though Haden’s 60ish presence in this otherwise late-teens/early 20s cast does stick out more than a tad, merely knowing that it may introduce many of USC’s 650 student athletes to the world of musical theater is reason enough to celebrate Haden’s “special appearance” in the production.

Completing the all-around splendid cast are Allison Aoun (Waitress), Taylor Barry (Waitress), Matt Brown (The Cashier, The Man), dance captain Sarah Fanella (Waitress), Arielle Fishman (The Country Girl), Jacqueline Garell (Aunt Harriet), Kevin Herald (The Priest, The Bus Driver), Natalie Johnson (Maxine), Jennifer Kranz (Agnes Jones), Madison Mills (Gladys), Megan Mountford (The Woman), Andie Mueller (Neighbor Woman), Maggie Nolting (Van Pelt), Sanford Reed (The Bus Boy, The City Boy, Truck Driver), Charlotte Spangler (The Brakewoman), Caroline Spinola (The Mandolin Player), and Elizabeth Weir (Sullivan), with Frankosky doubling as Truck Driver and Nicholson as Postman #1.

Not only do the above students sing in gorgeous harmonies, director Rubenstein has given each one his or her own mini-storyline to tell, and whether or not these young Trojans came into rehearsals as dancers, choreographer extraordinaire Fuller has whipped them into dancing shape for a number of energetic, athletic, and even balletic musical numbers including the wedding party “Sposalizio” and the hoedown-flavored “Big D.”

I’ve seen The Most Happy Fella three times before, each production featuring the two-piano accompaniment created for the 1992 Broadway revival in place of the fully orchestrated Broadway original, giving production #4 event status if only for the joy of hearing twenty-three (count’em!) musicians bring Loesser’s music to full stereophonic life. They are Richard Adkins, Bob Allen, Sally Berman, Jennifer Bliman, Robert Coomber, Sharon Cooper, Katelyn Faraudo, K. T. Gilad, David Hill, Laura Jesson, Eric Johnson-Tamai, John Krovoza, Julie Long, Marissa Mcleod, assistant musical director Matthew Oden, Jeremy Reinbolt, June Satton, John Smith, Emily Schroeder, Darryl Tanikawa, Kelly Weaver, Amy Wilkins, and Scott Wright, and together they sound as impressive as anything you’d hear on The Great White Way.

The production looks as great as any you’d see on a regional theater stage thanks to USC student Jamie Lew’s first-rate set design (featuring three meticulously detailed locales), USC grad Joseph Kennedy’s fabulous period costumes, and USC grad Omar Dana’s gorgeous lighting design. Ovation and LADCC Award winner Philip G. Allen and USC’s Emma Bramble have teamed to create a sound design which not only mixes vocals and orchestra to crystal-clear perfection, but provide a number of well-executed effects as well.

Rebecca A. Esquivel is stage manager and fight captain, Kate Harrow technical director, Edgar Landa fight choreographer, Vika Teplinskaya scenic artist, G. Austin Allen and Alice Pollitt assistant stage managers, Selby Souza assistant scenic designer, Marly Hall costume assistant, Madigan Stehly assistant lighting designer, and David Crawford assistant sound engineer. Tina Crnko, Jason David, Landy Eng, Katt Ortega, Erin O’Sullivan, Kevin Paley, Vicki Pearlman, Molly Quinian, Jake Rush, Amy Sizer, Jonathan Stoller-Schoff, and Jose Maria Verduzco Parra serve as crew.

If past big-stage Bing Theatre productions of Brigadoon, Into The Woods, and City Of Angels have impressed this reviewer (and did they ever!), The Most Happy Fella may well be the most impressive of all. Anyone who loves musical theater even half as much as I do owes him or herself the thrill of seeing The Most Happy Fella as it is rarely if ever done in the budget-conscious 2010s. Trust me, Happy Fellas like USC’s only come along once in a blue moon. This one is not to be missed.

Bing Theatre, University Of Southern California, Los Angeles.

–Steven Stanley
April 4, 2013

Rarely has a play had as Hollywood-ready a “log line” as On The Spectrum, now getting its West Coast Premiere at The Fountain Theatre, and though Ken LaZebnik’s dramedy is not at the level of the stellar production it is being given at the Fountain, a pair of breathtaking lead performances and an extraordinary video/sound design are more than enough put it on every L.A. theater lover’s must-see list.

 Dan Shaked is Cormac “Mac” Sheridan, a 23-year-old college grad currently applying for law school and, to all appearances, one who stands a very good chance of being accepted.

Still, there are clues from his everyday interactions with Elisabeth (Jeanie Hackett), the 50ish single mother who has raised him on her own, that her son does not fit into a “neuro-typical” mold.

Mac is in the habit of talking on and on about whatever currently occupies his mind, and rather pedantically so, seemingly unaware of whether the person at the other end of this “conversation” is showing interest or not. He is likely to take idioms literally, doesn’t seem to hear the nuances in other people’s speech, and appears to lack the “empathy gene” that we neuro-typicals rely on when unloading on friends with sympathetic ears.

 The latter is the case today, as Mac reacts to Elisabeth’s news with an agitated “Does this mean we’re going to have to leave this apartment?” rather than a concerned “Mom, I’m so sorry,” and when Elisabeth tells him that yes, indeed, they may have to move into cheaper digs, Mac responds with something close to panic, as he probably would to any event outside his safe daily norm.

Searching for a solution to this financial family crisis, Mac determines despite Elisabeth’s misgivings to look for a job. He does after all have a college degree in graphic design. Surely he can find online work.

Mac’s job search leads him to a website called The Other World, one which takes its visitors into a Hobbit/Lord Of The Rings/Narnia-type fantasy universe, a website which not only fascinates Mac, it is one that could definitely benefit from his graphic design expertise.

 What we in the audience already know, and what Mac will soon discover, is that Iris (Virginia Newcomb), the site’s creator, lives in her own world, one limited in real-life terms by the dimensions of the apartment she rarely if ever leaves, but one which, as far as her mind is concerned, has no limitations.

As outsiders, we might assume this strange, silent young woman to be schizophrenic. Her head, arms, hands, and body seem always in jerky, twitchy motion, movements that to an untrained eye could easily come across as bizarre, off-putting, and maybe even downright creepy.

It is here that Jeff Teeter’s astonishing video design and Peter Bayne’s remarkable sound design take us inside Iris’s head, revealing not only the world she inhabits but the very real, very intelligent, very human young woman she is.

Iris offers Mac the graphic design job (and a $17/hour salary that may make it possible for him and his mother to stay put) and before long the two of them are chatting away as if they’ve known each other forever, and not for a matter of mere minutes.

It takes but a short time for Iris to figure out that she’s talking with a fellow autistic, though Mac bridles at being lumped in with those whose autism is far more severe than his. He’s a college grad, on his way to law school, able to function in the normal world, and therefore merely “on the spectrum,” words that spark the activist in Iris. Their mutual autism is not a disability but merely a “difference,” and it is the neuro-typicals around them who ought to be adapting to their world, and not the other way around.

Politics aside, an instant connection has sparked between Mac and Iris that shows signs of leading to something much more.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that playwright LaZebnik will figure out a reason for Mac and Iris to meet face to face, and no degree in rocket science is needed to determine that Elisabeth will be none too happy about her son’s relationship with someone whose world is the one she’s spent the past two decades trying to help Mac “escape” from.

It is here that LaZebnik’s play needs, as they say, “work,” work that could have been part of the creative process of bringing On The Spectrum to fresh new life at the Fountain.

Unfortunately, it is my understanding that LaZebnik was not a hands-on presence during the production’s rehearsal period, thereby missing out on the opportunity to take his play beyond its current work-in-progress state.

On The Spectrum begs for a second act, one that would a) allow for greater character development, particularly of an underwritten Elisabeth, b) avoid the too-rushed quality of the ninety-minute play’s last half hour, and c) improve upon a too abrupt, too TV movie neat-and-tidy ending.

 Regardless, the production being given LaZebnik’s play at the Fountain is about as perfect as imaginable given the imperfections of its script.

First of all, the Fountain has picked Jacqueline Schultz to direct. A Scenie-winning Best Actress for Park Your Car In Harvard Yard, Schultz’s extensive experience with learning-disabled students gives her unique qualifications to helm On The Spectrum, in addition to the guidance an “actor’s director” can bring to this type of project.

Newcomb has the showiest role, and as anyone who saw her performance in 2011’s A House Not Meant To Stand, the Scenie winner is precisely the gifted young actress to tackle it and dazzle. Though the majority of Iris’s lines are prerecorded, allowing us to hear the voice Iris hears in her own head, Newcomb’s body language is no mere ad-libbed improvisation. Rather, one has the sense that each and every movement has a meaning, and that if we could simply break the code, we’d understand her body language as easily as we do the words that come out of the Fountain’s speaker system. Equally remarkable is just how fully three-dimensional a young woman Newcomb gives us, one our hearts go out to and for whom we ache.

 Though Shaked’s Mac is, by contrast, the more “normal acting” of the two, his role is no less challenging, the gifted young actor needing to trod the very thin line between authentic character and broad caricature. So spot-on is Saked’s work that an audience member remarked that during his PhD studies at MIT, he had found himself surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of Macs. Even to a layman like this reviewer, Shaked’s performance is a thing of beauty. It helps that Mac is the best-written of On The Spectrum’s three roles.  Still, in lesser hands, even fine writing would not have been enough for us to believe in and care about Mac, not despite his many idiosyncrasies but because of them.

Not unexpectedly, Hackett does her accustomed excellent work as Elisabeth, giving us the character’s anger, frustration, and unconditional love, even as we wish that LaZebnik had given the L.A. stage star more to work with, and even despite an eleventh-hour change of heart that it takes an actress of Hackett’s stature to make us come close to believing.

If ever credit for a production’s success could be said to be shared between director/performers and design team, On The Spectrum at the Fountain is that production.

Teeter’s video design, projected across the entire back wall of John Iacovelli’s terrific set, transforms two otherwise realistic apartments into Iris’s fantasy “Other World” in all its magical permutations, and in several extraordinary sequences, takes us on an R-Train ride from Mac’s apartment to Iris’s and back. How Teeter achieves his three-dimensional effects I cannot begin to imagine, but do so his does, and it is awe-inspiring.

Bayne’s original music score adds greatly to the dramatic impact of Teeter’s videos as do his sound design and R. Christopher Stokes’ imaginative lighting. Kudos go too to costume designer Naila Aladdin Sander’s character-appropriate outfits (and one “steam punk” gown in particular) and Misty Carlisle’s many props, including yak bells, laundry, Elisabeth’s “ancient” laptop, and other assorted paraphernalia.

Zachary Moore is associate lighting designer.  Corey Lynn Womack is production stage manager, Terri Roberts assistant stage manager, and Scott Tuomey technical director. On The Spectrum is produced by Simon Levy, Deborah Lawlor, and Stephen Sachs.

Having seen a number of West Coast Premieres that have benefited from up-to-last-minute rewrites, I can only imagine how much stronger a play On The Spectrum would have been given additional script work during the rehearsal process.

Regardless, it’s hard to imagine LaZebnik’s play getting a more stunning production than the one now running at the Fountain. Mac and Iris will make you see the world with quite different eyes, and you will be better for having spent an hour and a half in their presence … even if another twenty minutes would have helped make On The Spectrum the play it deserves to be.

The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles.
www.FountainTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 28, 2013
Photos: Ed Krieger

 Based on E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, Ragtime The Musical (book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens) takes us back a century to a time of historic change in the United States, a time when the country was divided between The Haves (the super-rich like Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan, both of whom are supporting characters in Ragtime) and The Have-Nots (African-Americans and European immigrants).

Though the haves wanted to believe, as they sing in Ragtime’s opening number, that “there were no Negroes and there were no immigrants,” people like Ragtime’s fictional “Father,” “Mother,” “Younger Brother,” and “Little Boy” were soon to find out otherwise.

 Mother (Jennifer Sperry) takes in an African-American baby found in her garden, and later the child’s unwed mother Sarah (Johanna Rose Burwell). Younger brother (Slater Ross) becomes inspired by anarchist Emma Goldman (Joanna Churgin), and not long after joins Sarah’s lover, musician Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Deus Xavier Scott), in the forced takeover of the Morgan Library. And Mother’s life eventually becomes intertwined with those of immigrant Tateh (Bradley Miller) and his young daughter (Karen E. Kolkey).

The original Broadway production featured a cast of fifty. Kentwood Players cuts this down to forty-three, still a huge number for any production, and a particularly daunting one for a community theater which draws many of its cast members from “regular folks” who happen to love performing in their spare time.

Ensemble members Greg Abbott, Jeannine Barba, Heather Barnett, Erika Brauer, Jacquelyn Carr, Jim Crawford, Sheridan Cole Crawford, Jacqueline Crist-Franzen, Terry Delegeane, Ruth Andrea Featherstone, Martin Feldman, Jackie Fiske, Shamika Franklin, Samuel Goldman, Justin P. James, Spencer Johnson, J. Paul Myers, Fiona Okida, Roy T. Okida, James Olivas, Michelle M. Pedersen, Judy Rosenfeld, Megan Ruble, Bruce Schroffel, Hollister Starrett, Christopher Stefanic, Jessica D. Stone, Courtney L. Williams, Ja’von Willis, and Marcus Alan Wynn join voices to powerful effect in the rousing opening number, the stirring “Till We Reach That Day,” and the grand finale reprise of “Wheels Of Your Dream,” credit for their gorgeous harmonies shared with musical director Bill Wolfe.

 Ragtime manages to be at once epic, in both its power ballads and cast of well-known historical figures—Henry Ford (Abbott), Harry Houdini (Drew Fitzsimmons), J.P. Morgan (Feldman), Evelyn Nesbitt (Amanda Majkrzak), Admiral Perry (Schroffel), and Booker T. Washington (Darryl Maximilian Robinson), and personal, in its focus on a pair of families whose members also include Father (Rocky Miller), Grandfather (George Kondreck), and Little Boy (Logan Gould), and its focus on Coalhouse’s efforts to win Sarah back, on Tateh and his daughter’s first steps towards becoming Americans, and on Mother’s growing disillusionment in her marriage.

A pair of performances in particular stand out among the crowd. Sperry plays mother with strength and grace and sings in a rich, expressive soprano, while the powerfully-voiced [Bradley] Miller makes Tateh the epitome of paternal devotion and the dauntless American immigrant spirit.

 Churgin’s feisty Emma Goldman, Fitzsimmons charismatic Houdini, Gould’s spunky Little Boy, Kolkey’s sweet-faced Little Girl, Majkrzak’s oomphy Evelyn Nesbitt, Robinson’s towering Booker T. Washington, and Ross’s impetuous Younger Brother are standouts as well, while Featherstone’s solo in “Till We Reach That Day” reaches epic gospel proportions.

Less successful, though not without their merits, are Burwell’s Sarah and Scott’s Coalhouse. Burwell embodies Sarah’s sweetness and vulnerability, and gives “Your Daddy’s Son” a bit of a pop sound, which I enjoyed, but the role requires bigger, more operatic pipes to give that song and her duets with Coalhouse their full effectiveness. Scott acts the role of Coalhouse with dignity and power, is Armani-model handsome, and has a resonant speaking voice, but too often resorts to speak-singing, perhaps in an effort to avoid hitting the wrong notes, something which unfortunately happens on more than one occasion.

On a more positive note are Majkrzak’s sassy “Crime Of The Century” (wheeee!), the exquisite “New Music,” [Bradley] Miller and Kolkey’s jaunty “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay Inc.” and Miller’s lilting “Gliding,” the touching “Our Children” (an exquisite Miller-Sperry duet), and Sperry’s stirring “Back To Before.” The always wonderful Churgin makes her mark in two of the evening’s most moving numbers, “The Night That Goldman Spoke At Union Square” and “He Wanted To Say.” In a lighter vein, the baseball-inspired “What A Game” provides welcome comic relief in an increasingly dark Act Two.

Director Susan Goldman Weisbarth merits kudos for the simple fact of managing a production of this size and for guiding some very fine leading players. I wish, however, that she had worked more with those ensemble members cast in minor roles, many of whom could have benefited from some extra one-on-one attention, the better to say their few lines with greater authenticity and conviction. I wish also that Weisbarth had found more visually imaginative ways of blocking Ragtime’s huge cast than having them frequently spread across the stage in a long upstage row. Also, having the production’s African-American cast members double as immigrants seems jarringly inaccurate for a time in which virtually all newcomers were European (and the focus of Ragtime’s history-based storylines).

Choreographer Victoria Miller works hard to get dance performances from the company’s more inexperienced members. This works best in the lively “Crime Of The Century” and “The Gettin’ Ready Rag,” considerably less well in the awkwardly performed “Henry Ford.”

Ragtime benefits from a generally fine behind-stage orchestra, best when keyboardists Wolfe (who also conducts) and Danny Gledhill are featured, though Coleen Okida (flute, piccolo, and violin), Jon Stehney (clarinet, oboe), Gabe Garnett (trumpet), and Patrick Okonski (percussion) deserve frequent snaps as well.

 Jim Crawford’s simple but effective multi-level set design gives cast members more room to maneuver than you’d expect on the Westchester Playhouse stage, with kudos to an inventively designed Model T, player piano, and swing. John Beckwith’s lighting design has many effective moments as well. There’s also a bit of Houdini magic certain to delight. Best of all are Ragtime’s many finely rendered early 20th Century costumes, designed by Maria Cohen, Sheridan Cole Crawford, and Jayne Hamil.

Ragtime is produced by Margie Bates and Gail Bernardi. Bruce Starrett is stage manager, no small task for a production of this magnitude.

Kentwood Players deserves highest marks simply for attempting the epic undertaking that is Ragtime and for delivering a number of first-rate performances and more than a few powerful moments. Despite its flaws, this is a production the 63-year-old Los Angeles amateur theater mainstay can feel proud to give its name to.

Kentwood Players, 8301 Hindry Ave., Westchester.
www.kentwoodplayers.org

–Steven Stanley
March 17, 2013
Photos: Shari Barrett

 Provocative indeed are the first words we hear from the character known only as Man. “Your mouth,” he tells Woman, “it’s such a wet thing. I could squeeze a bullet between those lips. Your mouth would relax. You would accept this bullet in your palette.”

Not to be outdone, his partner in this psychosexual pas de deux responds with an equal blend of violent imagery and verbal foreplay: “I could get a spoon and prise it into your eye sockets,” she shoots back.

And the cat and mouse games have only just begun as the duo play games of verbal one-upmanship that blend poetry, sadism, and yes, even a bit of tenderness as the play’s title might suggest.

A far cry this all might seem to be from the children’s books playwright Ridley has also written, yet the imagery conjured up by our hero and heroine could just as easily be elements of young adult fiction, the couple’s fantasy battles involving monstrous sea serpents, mythical unicorns, and wild monkeys, along with spaceships, pirates’ swords, and a pair of garden shears to do Lorena Bobitt one better. (Well, all right, that last one would probably not come from one of Ridley’s children’s tales.)

Other images are far more real, those of bullets and hand grenades inserted, as they say, “where the sun don’t shine,” though the real damage caused by Man and Woman may come from the bullets and hand grenades couched in the words they sling back and forth.

 Now if all this sound rather a bit artsy-fartsy (and the type of play this reviewer usually avoids like the plague), Tender Napalm might well have been just that were it not for several significant factors.

First of all, Ridley’s writing conjures up such vivid images that it’s hard not to find oneself enthralled, the playwright savvily punctuating Tender Napalm with just enough humor to provide a welcome bit of mood-lightening every now and then. Secondly, there is method to Ridley’s madness, the play’s penultimate scene flashing us back to the couple’s first meeting and providing several possible explanations for what has come before. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, with actors as out-and-out brilliant as Hamilton and Paige and direction as thoroughly inspired as Edwards’, I dare anyone’s interest to wane, so completely do the creative trio hold the audience in the palms of their hands.

Edwards’ directorial contributions cannot be underestimated. To begin with, playwright Ripley provides him with little or no stage directions.

Take for example the play’s opening scene.

The New York production of Tender Napalm started off with Man and Woman warming up for a fight, like boxers preparing for a match or Olympic athletes getting ready to compete. Not so in L.A., where Hamilton simply enters, pulls off the bed sheet which has been covering a prone Paige, and launches into Man’s “bullet” monolog. Edwards’ every own opening salvo, and an effective one at that.

And for those who might think that this sheet will soon be discarded, think again, as in Edwards’ interpretation of Ripley’s words, it becomes almost a third character.

 Still, there would be no West Coast Premiere of Tender Napalm worth seeing without actors capable of bringing Ripley’s words to life and keeping an audience in their spell, and Graham Hamilton and Jaimi Paige are just those actors.

Hamilton’s Scenies (a pair of individuals for The Grönholm Method and Becky Shaw and a third as a member of the Peace In Our Time ensemble) altered this reviewer to one of L.A.’s most dynamic and gifted young actors, and in Tender Napalm he outdoes himself, not only getting quite possibly the toughest onstage physical workout of his career but digging deep down into Man’s darkest places in a performance we can scarcely take our eyes off of.

Paige’s performance as Estella in the Scenie-winning ensemble of Great Expectations alerted me to an actress of beauty and power, a first impression more than borne out by her absolutely stunning performance in Tender Napalm. In addition to a workout every bit as strenuous as Hamilton’s, Paige paints Woman in virtually every color of the emotional rainbow, her expressive eyes holding us in their thrall.

As was true in Casey Kringlen’s memorable staging of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol this past December, the 7000 square foot Six01 Studio once again proves one of L.A.’s most fascinating venues.

For Tender Napalm, a single row of folding chairs surround the four sides of the “center ring” in which Hamilton and Paige do battle atop a large Persian rug, the only other set pieces being a pair of boxes at opposite corners. Lighting designer Michael Hyland bathes the set in an appropriately stark light, except for the party lights which shine down in the aforementioned flashback. Nenad Pervan is movement director in a play in which the two actors’ movements are an integral part of their performances. Justin Preston is stage manager.

Tender Napalm is produced by Joe Morra, Lena Georgas, Edwards, Hamilton, and Paige, a labor of love that has paid off in a production which might not normally be this reviewer’s cup of tea, but in whose talented, committed hands, Ridley’s two-actor one-act becomes a theatrical adventure I am very glad I took.

Six01 Studio, 601 S. Anderson Street, Los Angeles.
www.plays411.com/tendernapalm

–Steven Stanley
March 11, 2013
Photos: Andrew Amani

Still, despite this solo performance glut, there aren’t that many you’d actually pay good money to see, all the more reason to celebrate the return of story-telling master David Dean Bottrell, who not only has a Scenie-winning Solo Performance in him, he’s got a wingdinger of a follow-up to it, entitled simply David Dean Bottrell Is Working.

 Bottrell’s first solo piece, David Dean Bottrell Makes Love: A One Man Show, could just as easily have been called David Dean Bottrell’s Adventures In Gay Dating had the title he came up with not been considerably cleverer. For its follow-up, Bottrell segues from Love Life to Career in a series of flashbacks prompted by an incident I’ll leave it to him to reveal. Suffice it to say that the event in question was traumatic and took place about six months ago in a “transitional neighborhood” in Mid-City L.A. where the actor slash comedian slash screenwriter was teaching an acting class.

Those flashbacks take us back in time to Bottrell’s first apartment in Harlem, then on to test screenings at the Magic Johnson Cinema “when I was black” (there is an explanation for that, and a funny one at that), and later to the crazed Boston Legal fan who wrote requesting a photo of Bottrell’s feet—a laugh-filled rollercoaster ride through a career most would-be Hollywood stars would probably exchange their own for in a heartbeat. (Take that, ye L.A. Times reviewer who dared to call Bottrell “on the fringe of success.”)

An elementary school Christmas pageant gave young David a taste of what a life in the spotlight might portend (and taught him the meaning of the verb “to upstage”). Before embarking on an honest-to-goodness showbiz career, however, 16-year-old David snagged his first paying job—weighing and bagging dope for Mrs. Opal Maynard, one of “the primary dealers on the west side of the [Ohio] county” where he and his Kentucky family had moved.

Still, Bottrell’s first love was acting, and noticing that “there were a great many musicals being produced on Broadway” (and realizing that after all “How hard could it be?”), the Kentucky-to-Ohio-to-New York transplant signed up to take singing lessons from Mrs. Christine Bibby-Schwott, just one more of the many quirky (and unfortunately named) characters with whom the acting hopeful was to cross paths on his quest for stardom. By 1984, he had even auditioned for his first Broadway show!

Flash forward to 2004, a year which saw Bottrell happily married to “a handsome, dark-haired, patent attorney” and earning big bucks himself as “a highly successful black writer.” (If you doubt the later bit of David Dean Bottrell trivia, look up the LL Cool J/Jada Pinkett Smith/Whoopie Goldberg starrer Kingdom Come on imdb.)

Unfortunately for Bottrell’s showbiz projects, the couple were living in Washington D.C., hardly the best place to pursue a career in entertainment, prompting David to briefly imagine himself “working among the sick and downtrodden of D.C.” as a minister or chaplain. (There was only one problem. As much as Bottrell liked the idea, he wasn’t exactly sure there was a god.)

I’ll leave it to the solo performer himself to reveal what prompted his return to L.A. (though trust me, it ain’t pretty) or how he got the Golden Statuette he so proudly displays near the end of his 70-minute show. Suffice it to say that you can’t keep a good performer down…not if he’s David Dean Bottrell, a man who gets laughs not only by catching you by surprise but in anticipation of a punch line you gleefully realize is coming. Quite a gift, and one that makes this a solo performance worth seeing where others might inspire groans or yawns.

At the risk of repeating myself, let me simply copy and paste from my review of Bottrell’s first solo piece: “Not only is David Dean Bottrell a very funny man with more than enough life experience to write a laugh-a-minute one-man show; he happens also to be blessed with razor-sharp comic timing, undeniable charisma, and a likeability factor that has you in his corner from the get-go and keeps you wanting more.” Still true this time round.

Along for the ride as he was last year is crackerjack director Jim Fall, and if Solo Show Number Two isn’t yet as polished as Number One was, it’s to be noted that last night was only its second performance as opposed to David Dean Bottrell Makes Love: A One Man Show, which I saw in its third incarnation.

Pamela Lillard pops up twice to underscore on guitar, though truth be told, prerecorded music would just as easily do the trick and not pull focus away from our star (no offense intended to the talented Ms. Lillard).

David Dean Bottrell Is Working is presented by Sitting Kitty Productions and Quitcher-Bitchyn Entertainment. Lee Costello is producer.

If last night’s SRO crowd’s standing ovation is any indication, those who snooze may find it hard to score tickets to David Dean Bottrell Is Working’s three remaining performances. Trust me: This is one One Man Show you won’t be wanting to miss.

The ACME Comedy Theatre, 135 N La Brea Ave Los Angeles.
http://www.acmecomedy.com/tickets.htm

–Steven Stanley
March 6, 2013
Photo: Ed Olen