Though hardly the first Southern California production of the 1998 double-Tony winner (for Brown’s score and Uhry’s book), 3-D’s big-stage, big-cast, big-budget Broadway-caliber production is the first to present Parade as it was originally intended, quite unlike the stripped-down U.K. version that played the Mark Taper Forum in 2009. If ever there were a musical in which size does indeed matter, Parade is that musical, and 3-D gives it all the panoramic scope it deserves while doing justice to the memory of a man who paid dearly for being different.

31-year-old Leo Frank’s antisemitism-fueled lynching remains today, a century later, one of the most horrendous miscarriages of justice in United States history. It’s no wonder, then, that Parade was a hard sell on Broadway. If Fosse was the “feel-good” musical of 1999, then a show with such grim subject matter as Brown and Uhry’s was pretty much its antithesis, and closed after 85 performances.

Still, Parade snagged those two Tonys, and deservedly so. Brown’s powerful, eclectic collection of songs run the gamut from gospel to pop rock to rhythm and blues to emotional ballads. Likewise, no one writes with more insight about being Jewish in the South than Uhry, whose book proves the playwright as adept at drama as Driving Miss Daisy and The Last Night Of Ballyhoo proved him at comedy. Uhry’s book moves back and forth through time, as flashbacks reveal the events leading up to Frank’s arrest and trial and we meet the musical’s many characters, each of whom played an important role in the case and each of whom gets his or her center-stage moment to shine.

 In a stirring prologue, a young confederate soldier (Jordan Lamoureux) on his way to war sings a hymn to Georgia, “The Old Red Hills Of Home,” by the end of which he has morphed into his elderly self (Robert W. Laur), a reminder that the Civil War was no distant memory at the time of Frank’s trial, but a very real one for the citizens of Atlanta.

 Parade’s tale of injustice then begins, with young Frankie Epps (Lamoureux) inviting pencil factory worker Mary Phagan (Valerie Rose Lohman) to “The Picture Show,” a date to which Mary never arrives. Since we have just seen her visit the office of factory manager Leo (Jeff Skowron) to claim her week’s meager wages in a scene that Parade’s book cuts deliberately short, it is left to us (and to the citizens of Marietta) to fill in the blanks, though in markedly different ways.

Evidence soon piles up against Leo, much of it coming from janitor Jim Conley (Rufus Bonds, Jr.), damning albeit falsified evidence that ultimately leads to his arrest for murder and the kangaroo court that was his trial. Meanwhile, Leo’s mouse of a Southern Jewish wife Lucille (Caitlin Humphreys) informs her flabbergasted husband of her intention to leave town during his trial, a decision whose ultimate reversal is merely the first step in Lucille’s transformation from cowardice to courage.

 In court, prosecutor Hugh Dorsey (Norman Large) interrogates a trio of young factory girls (Renna Nightingale, Jenna Lea Rosen, and Brennley Brown) who testify under oath that Leo had invited Mary to “Come Up To My Office,” incriminating evidence accompanied by a vivid fantasy depiction of  the sex fiend the townfolk of Marietta believe Leo to be. Mary’s mother (Jeanette Dawson) then takes the stand with the devastating “My Child Will Forgive Me,” after which, in a show-stoppingly jazzy “That’s What He Said,” Conley concocts the elaborate lie that seals Frank’s fate.

Broadway’s Parade featured a cast of 35, later cut down to 15 for its scaled-down London/Taper revival. While beautifully performed, that reduced-cast version lacked the scope of the original. Not only was the absence of the Marietta populace palpable, the casting of individual actors in as many as three different roles proved jarring to the point of confusion.

3-D Theatricals restores Parade to its original size plus one, a cast of 36 allowing director Dawson and company to do all those things the London production couldn’t, and audiences reap reward upon reward.

At the same time, no matter how grand in scale, no Parade can succeed without exceptional talents in its two leading roles, and in Skowron and Humphreys, 3-D’s Parade has found its perfect pair of leads.

 Slight of stature with eyes staring suspiciously (and even scornfully) out from behind horn-rimmed glasses, Skowron gives us a Leo so clearly “the other” that it’s no wonder this Jewish New Yorker found himself a stranger in a strange land. Skowron’s Leo is not an easy man to like, yet the Broadway vet never lets us lose sight of his humanity, and with pipes like Skowron’s, Leo’s “How Can I Call This Home?” and “It’s Hard To Speak My Mind” have never been more powerfully sung.

 The role of Lucille is equally well-served by CSUF graduating senior Humphreys, whose youth proves a far better match with the real-life Lucille than the thirty-five-and-uppers who’ve mostly played her on Broadway and beyond. With an early 20something in the role, we understand Lucille’s initial desire to flee Leo’s trial, and when she becomes her husband’s most outspoken advocate, the distance she has traveled is all the more remarkable for having started out so meek and mild. That Humphreys acts up a storm and sings Lucille’s “You Don’t Know This Man” and “Do It Alone” every bit as richly as she plays the part is even more reason to celebrate her being cast in the role.

Surrounding Skowron and Humphreys are some of the finest performers and performances yet seen in a 3-D Theatricals production. E.E. Bell makes a pair of strong impressions as redneck defense lawyer Luther Rosser and as Officer Ivey. A dynamic Bonds reprises Jim Conley, the role he originated on Broadway, to powerful effect. Dawson sings “My Child Will Forgive Me” as heart-wrenchingly as I’ve heard it sung. A magnetic Zachary Ford is reporter Britt Craig, whose drunken “Big News” is one of Parade’s many show-stoppers. As power-hungry newspaper editor Tom Watson, the golden-throated Gordon Goodman is the evils of prejudice personified. Lamoureux is a standout, both in the production’s exquisitely sung prelude and as handsome, peppy Frankie Epps opposite the lovely Lohman’s doomed Mary Phagan. Large has never been better or more charismatic than he is as conviction-hungry prosecutor Dorsey, his “Somethin’ Ain’t Right” and “Twenty Miles From Marietta” making for a pair of Act One vocal highlights. Laur lends gravitas to the Old Soldier and passion to Judge Roan, and duets with Large a beautifully sung “The Glory,” a song added for Parade’s UK debut. Harrison White is heartbreaking as terrified night watchman Newt Lee in “I Am Trying To Remember.” Robert Yacko completes the cast of principals as fair-minded Governor Slaton, whose “Pretty Music” showcases his terrific tenor (and some fancy footwork opposite leggy dazzler Leslie Stevens as his wife Sally).

Brown, Nightingale, and Rosen shine as Leo’s three youngest accusers. Jenelle Lynn Randall does spellbinding work on the witness stand as the Franks’ maid Minnie. Danny Michaels has a delightful bit as prison guard Mr. Peavy. Joanna Jones (Angela) and David LaMarr (Riley) along with Bonds and White open Act Two with a soulfully performed “A Ramblin’ And A Rollin’.”

 Completing the extraordinary ensemble are Connor Berkompas, Abby Bolin, Zack Crocker, Lisa Dyson (Lizzie), Allen Everman, Amy Glinskas, Micaela Martinez (Lyla), Sharie Nitkin, Kirklyn Robinson, Ryan Ruge, Natalie Sachse, William Shaffner, Allyson Spiegelman, Christopher Van Etten, and Andrew Ross Lynn (Floyd McDaniel).

Despite some of the grimmest subject matter ever to serve as the basis of a Broadway musical, Parade features a surprising number of song-and-dance sequences, imaginatively choreographed Dana Solimando, highlights of which include the snappy “The Picture Show” and the creepy yet infectious “That’s What He Said.”

With musical director David Lamoureux conducting the big 3-D pit orchestra (provided by Los Angeles Musicians Collective), this may well be the best-sounding Parade ever, thanks also to sound designer John Feinstein.

 3-D Theatricals gives us a Parade designed “from the ground up,” and gorgeously so, beginning with Tom Buderwitz’s ingeniously conceived and executed set design, one which, along with Shon LeBlanc’s huge bevy of period costumes, looks absolutely sensational as lit to stunning perfection by a never-better Jean-Yves Tessier. Additional kudos go to prop designer Terry Hanrahan, wig designers Cliff & Kat Senior, and technical director Jene Roach. Lisa Palimire is production stage manager, Hanrahan assistant stage manager, and Esteven Valdes assistant choreographer.

3-D Theatricals decision to play it considerably safer in its just-announced 2014 season of older standards (The Producers, Into The Woods, Damn Yankees, and Ragtime) makes 2013’s chancier, edgier slate of 9 To 5, Parade, Shrek The Musical, Funny Girl, and “A Show That Sets The Bar” all the more noteworthy, with Parade easily the riskiest of the bunch, but likely to prove the most rewarding as well.

Those in search of powerful, ground-breaking musical theater can do no better than to catch this unprecedented, unparalleled revival of Parade, one which does Jason Robert Brown, Alfred Uhry, and above all T.J. Dawson and 3-D Theatricals proud.

Plummer Auditorium, 210 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Through May 26. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00. Also Saturday May 25 at 2:00. Reservations: 714 589-2770
www.3dtshows.com

–Steven Stanley
May 11, 2013
Photos: Isaac James Creative

 Book writers Tom Hedley and Robert Cary stick fairly close to the plotlines created by Hedley and Joe Eszterhas for the 1983 movie smash, one which introduced Jennifer Beals to the world along with an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt craze that swept the nation.

Pittsburgh native Alex (Jillian Mueller, getting her first Opening Night in the role) works days as a welder and nights as a dancer at a local bar alongside bff Gloria (Kelly Felthous), who dreams of dancing in MTV videos, the two best friends mentored by more seasoned dancers Tess (Katie Webber) and Kiki (DeQuina Moore).

Meanwhile over at Hurley’s Steel Mill, young Nick Hurley (Matthew Hydzik) is learning the family business from the ground up and finding himself attracted to the mill’s most attractive female welder despite (or perhaps because of) her sassy mouth and take-no-bullshit attitude.

Supporting players include Hannah (JoAnn Cunningham), the elderly ballerina-turned-dance instructor who encourages Alex not to let self-doubt prevent her from applying for admission to Pittsburgh’s premiere dance conservatory; Jimmy (David R. Gordon), Gloria’s smart-alecky boyfriend who dreams of standup comedy stardom in New York; Harry (Matthew Henerson), who owns the bar where Alex dances; and C.C. (Christian Whelan), a nogoodnik whose sleazier strip-club has been stealing customers (and dancers) from Harry’s.

If this all seems rather too flimsy (and at times improbable) a foundation for a musical, remember that Flashdance The Movie was pretty much savaged by the critics, to whose thumbs-down audiences gave the Philly finger, making the film the third-highest box office grosser of 1983.

What Flashdance had going for it as a movie (in addition to the nineteen-year-old it turned into an overnight star) was its songs (including “Maniac” and the Oscar-winning “Flashdance… What a Feeling”) and Alex’s dancing, performed by unbilled “stunt double” Marine Jahan.

Finding ways to integrate the abovementioned songs, along with “I Love Rock And Roll,” “Manhunt,” and “Gloria,” into a traditional musical in which characters break into song at the drop of a hat might seem a daunting task given that none of them appear likely candidates to “advance the plot.” Enter the book writers’ inspired solution to this dilemma, aka Kiki and Tess, who perform most of the movie’s hits as nightclub numbers backing up the musical’s greatest asset, a series of sensational dance sequences choreographed by Tony-winner Sergio Trujillo, who serves also as the musical’s high-octane director.

In fact, if there’s anything sure to get Flashback audiences cheering, it’s Trujillo’s inspired dance numbers, many of which juxtapose ballet with ‘80s jazz, modern, and breakdancing, all of which are executed to perfection by an extraordinarily gifted ensemble of both lead performers and “background players.”

 Over a dozen brand-new plot-driving songs have been added to Flashdance The Musical (music by Robbie Roth and lyrics by Cary and Roth), the best of which are ballads like “Here And Now,” “Hang On,” and “Where I Belong,” songs which feature one hummable hook after another and make the recording of an Original Cast CD a must. As for the show’s up-tempo numbers, if they end up mostly generic ‘80s pop, they definitely do capture the sounds of a decade as well as showcase Roth’s gift for melody.

Hedley and Cary’s book proves the most problematic aspect of a show with Broadway dreams. Though Alex gets plenty of stage time throughout, the focus is too often on peripheral characters, and since we see Alex doing little to actually prepare for her dream other than talk about it (that is when she’s not finding reasons to avoid auditioning), she doesn’t capture our hearts the way she ought to. Hedley and Cary need to give us more reasons to care about Alex and root for her, the way we do Billy Elliot.

Fortunately, performances go a long way towards making up for any script deficiencies, first and foremost that of the Flashdance tour newcomer who brings Alex to vibrant, sizzling life. Quintessential triple-threat Mueller does it all, and does it sensationally, whether dancing up a storm, belting out tunes with the best of them, or making us believe in Alex despite the script’s improbabilities.

Boy-next-door Hydzik is everything anyone could wish for in a romantic musical theater leading man, Felthous is a dynamic Madonna-meets-Cyndi powerhouse, and Orange County’s very own Gordon combines charisma, a cocky charm, and gorgeous pipes to winning effect. Veteran character actors Henerson and Cunningham are both marvelous, as is Thursday Farrar, who deserves featured-player billing as Hannah’s sassy caregiver Louise. Whelan plays sleazy with the best of them, while Dan Kohler, Ariela Morgenstern, and Lawrence E. Street make strong impressions in cameo roles.

Last but not least are Moore and Webber, two of the buffest, leggiest, sexiest, and most talented singer-dancers you’ll ever see on a Broadway or regional stage, each with her own showcase number, Webber’s powerhouse “I Love Rock And Roll” and Moore’s sexsational “Manhunt.”

 Supporting all of the above are some of the country’s most phenomenal dancers: Claire Camp, Derek Carley, Ryan Carlson (Break Dancer), Lynorris Evans, Farrar, Haley Hannah, Jacob Karr, Kohler, Holly Laurent, Morgenstern, Shane Ohmer (Ballet Dancer), Rebecca Riker, Andrea Spiridonakos (Ballet Dancer), and Street, who segue from ballet to modern and back so seamlessly that you’d think there were twice their number onstage. (Swings Natalie Caruncho and Nick McGough are poised to step into ensemble tracks at a moment’s notice.)

With music supervision and arrangements by Jason Howland, Nate Patten conducing the show’s ‘80s rock concert-ready orchestra, and sound designers John Shivers and David Patridge in charge of the overall mix, Flashdance sounds absolutely fantastic, and it looks every bit as ‘80s-sensational as it sounds, thanks to scenic designer Klara Zieglerova, costume designer Paul Tazewell, lighting designer Howell Binkley, hair and wig designer Charles LaPointe, makeup designer Cookie Jordan, and above all projection designer Peter Negrini, whose color-saturated LED-screen projections are not only gorgeous to look at but take us from location to location in an instant. Other credits are too numerous to mention, though the backstage work of production stage manager Mary MacLeod, stage manager CJ LaRoche, and assistant stage manager Shannon Hammons cannot be ignored.

While it may be too soon for Flashdance The Musical to make a touring-to-Broadway transfer, with additional work by its creative team, a Broadway run may well be in the cards. Regardless of its future on the Great White Way, Flashdance The Musical seems poised to become a regional theater favorite, following in the dance-steps of its fellow ‘80s musicals Footloose and The Wedding Singer. Orange County and L.A. audiences have the next two weeks to discover why.

Segerstrom Center For The Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Through May 19. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 7:30. Saturdays at 2:00 and 7:30. Sundays at 1:00 and 6:30. Reservations: 714 556-2787
www.scfta.org

–Steven Stanley
May 7, 2013
Photos: Kyle Froman

The hate crime that was the brutal 1998 murder of 21-year-old University Of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard brought playwright Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of New York’s Tectonic Theater Project to the town of Laramie in search of answers. Who could have committed such a barbaric act (and why?) … and how did the residents of Laramie react to Shepard’s murder, and to the attention it focused on their city of 28,000?

The result of Kaufman and his team’s* eighteen-month research was The Laramie Project, which Los Angeles audiences got their first look at when the Colony Theatre Company staged it to memorable effect in 2002.

Ten years after their initial visits, Kaufman and the Tectonics returned to Laramie to find out how much the city and its residents had changed in the ensuing decade, the result of which is The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.

Orange County’s award-winning Chance Theater now presents both plays in rep, offering Southern California audiences the rare opportunity to see not only where we were at the time of Matthew’s murder, but also how far we’ve come since then, and assuming Oanh Nguyen’s staging of the original is as powerful as the sequel reviewed here (as I’m certain it must be), then Angelinos and Orange County residents alike are in for a humdinger of a double feature.

 10 Years Later’s first act follows the Tectonic troupe back to Laramie where they discover many positive changes (there’s at least one openly gay state legislator, an annual AIDS walk, and even “Drag Queen Bingo” fundraisers) but also a disturbingly revisionist view of Matthew’s murder, whom many younger residents now believe was either a drug deal gone bad or a robbery that just got “out of control,” due in part to an episode of 20/20 which, though disproved by both trial evidence and statements made by Matt’s killers, continues to exert its insidious hold.

 Act One is but a prelude for The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later’s dynamo of a second act, one which gives us a suspenseful Wyoming House Of Representatives debate and vote on a proposed gay marriage-banning amendment to the state constitution, prison interviews with convicted killers Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, and the profoundly moving words of Judy Shepard, who has striven to make her son’s death a catalyst for social and legislative change in the United States.

Director extraordinaire Nguyen has taken a script made up only of its characters’ spoken words and transformed it into a striking piece of dramatic theater, working in collaboration with his eight outstanding actors (who convince us that they are many entirely distinct characters played by the Tectonic Project originals) and a design team who make The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later look as thrilling as it plays.

Chance Theater company members Jocelyn A. Brown, Erika C. Miller, and Karen Webster do some of the finest work in their years, including a number of gender-bending turns, and more recent company arrival David McCormick matches his Chance colleagues of longer standing in excellence.

 Brown (as Tectonic member/Laramie Project co-writer Leigh Fondakowski) makes a strong impression as (among others) now-retired police officer Reggie Fluty, still haunted by the discovery of Matthew’s beaten body, and lead investigator Officer Dave O’Malley, who in the years since the murder has turned from self-avowed homophobe to someone “180 degrees different.”

Miller (Kelli Simpkins) couldn’t be more memorable as UW domestic partner benefits advocate Zackie Salmon, as Matt’s friends Jim and Romaine, the latter of whom believes that “by talking about Matthew, good things happen, good change is happening,” and as a conservative Wyoming legislator whose very personal connection to a member of the LGBT community transformed her views on gay and lesbian people.

 Webster (Amanda Bronich) is a powerhouse as always as assorted moms and grandmoms, a teenage UW student, and most indelibly, as Matthew’s mother Judy Shepard, radicalized by her son’s murder into impassioned social activist in her quest for federal hate-crimes legislation.

McCormick (Stephen Belber) is impressive as (among others) Jeffrey Lockwood, who believes that the self-reflection provoked by Matthew’s murder was “ just too frightening [because] the Matthew Shepard murder flies in the face of who we are, the story we’ve told ourselves,” and as Belber himself, whose illuminating prison one-on-one with Russell Henderson is an Act Two centerpiece.

The remaining foursome either return to the Chance or make dynamite Chance debuts.

 Karen O’Hanlon (Barbara Pitts) is terrific as UW professor (and author of Losing Matthew Shepard) Beth Loffreda, who can’t tell the story of the past ten years “without having to think about both what we’ve done, but also what we haven’t done,” as Laramie Boomerang newspaper editor Deb Thomsen, who insists that “Laramie is a community, not a project,” and most memorably as UW theater professor-turned-openly gay Wyoming lawmaker Catherine Connolly, who discovered both expected foes and unexpected friends when an anti-gay constitutional amendment came up for vote in the Wyoming House Of Representatives.

A passionate Robert Foran plays Kaufman himself, in addition to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, Matt’s father Dennis, Greg Silber (producer of that heinous 20/20 report), Father Roger (whose intervention made prison interviews with the killers possible), UW professor John Dorst, and Republican representative Peterson, whose “pro-family” rhetoric is as hard to stomach at the Chance as it was for Connolly to have to hear in the anti-gay amendment debate.

Finally, there are the extraordinary pair of actors whose roles include those of Matthew Shepard’s two convicted killers.

 Brandon Sean Pearson (Andy Paris) is shattering as the still hate-speaking Aaron McKinney, his face transformed by repressed rage and resentment that belie any remorse he professes to feel “for all the wrong reasons.” Pearson also impresses as Matt Mickelson, who owned the bar where Matt met Aaron and Russell that fateful October night, as Laramie native-turned-New York actor Jedediah Shultz, and as UW Law School Dean Jerry Parkinson.

Perhaps most fortunate of all in his acting assignments is a standout James McHale, who as Tectonic actor Greg Pierotti not only gets to interview Pearson’s McKinney, but makes for a heartbreakingly real Russell Henderson in his interview with McCormick’s Belber. McHale also shines as openly gay Laramie resident Jonas Slonaker and as Shepard murder investigator Rob DuBree.

 Scenic designer Fred Kinney has created a striking, deceptively simple set which turns out to be much more than just walls, lights, and eight chairs (which director Nguyen and company manipulate with endless ingenuity). KC Wilkerson’s lighting and Ryan Brodkin’s sound design combine impressively to up the dramatic ante, with Joe Holbrook’s video design transporting us to the Laramie plains and other locales. Design kudos go also to costumer Erika C. Miller and prop master Jules Fugett, with additional praise due dialect coach Glenda Morgan Brown, dramaturg Skyler Gray, and stage manager Courtny Greenough.

Meghan McCarthy is assistant scenic designer, Jake Soto assistant lighting designer, Vincent Quan assistant video designer, Kimberly Kocol assistant costume designer, Nicole Salimbeni assistant stage manager, Teodora Ramos master carpenter, Casey Long managing director, Masako Tobaru production manager and technical director, Jeff Hellebrand box office associate, and Jennifer Ruckman literary manager.

Time constraints prevented this reviewer from catching The Laramie Project, and truth be told, The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later stands quite strongly on its own, with only the basic facts of the Matthew Shepard needed for full appreciation.

On the other hand, those with a pair of evenings or time for a weekend double feature (Parts 1 and 2 are presented back-to-back on both Saturdays and Sundays) would do well to make it a matched set of Laramie Projects. As anyone who’s experienced a Chance Theater production (and particularly one directed by Oanh Nguyen) can tell you, you won’t have a finer intimate theater experience in the OC than at the Chance.

*including The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later co-writers Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris, and Stephen Belber

The Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills. Through May 19. Thursdays (Part 1) and Fridays (Part 2) at 8:00. Saturdays at 3:00 (Part 1) and 8:00 (Part 2). Sundays at 2:00 (Part 1) and 7:00 (Part 2). Reservations: 714 777-3033
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
April 24, 2013
Photos:

 Like Willimon’s Farragut North, The Parisian Woman gives audiences an deliciously intimate glimpse at the behind-the-scenes dealings (and double-dealings) in Our Nation’s Capital, with crackerjack Broadway director Pam McKinnon firmly in the driver’s seat.

This time round it’s Chloe who’s doing the power-brokering, the better to insure her husband’s nomination as U.S. Attorney General. To do so means working her feminine wiles on more than one bedmate, and should that prove insufficient to get hubby into the President’s cabinet, well what’s a little blackmail between friends?

 If I’ve been deliberately vague about just who these friends and lovers might be, it is to avoid spoiling any of the surprises Willimon has in store, beginning with a biggie, one for which credit must go to French playwright Henry Becque’s 1885 drama “La Parisienne,” the inspiration for Willimon’s 21st Century take-off. An article at TheatreHistory.com calls this plot twist in Becque’s original “alone worth the price of admission.” The same holds true with The Parisian Woman, and this “I didn’t see that one coming!” revelation is but the first fiendishly clever plot twist Willimon has up his sleeve.

 Besides paying tribute to Becque’s original (and the fact that Chloe spent a particularly formative time of her young adult life in Paris), Willimon’s title character is more Parisian in nature than nationality. After all, what Parisienne worth her salt wouldn’t have at least one lover in addition to her legally wedded spouse, and who but a Parisienne could turn manipulation into a simple matter of feminine wiles?

And who better to play the sexy schemer than film/TV star Dana Delany, who has us in the palm of her hand from first scene to last?

With Delany as Chloe, forget any danger that Willimon’s anti-heroine will turn into a two-dimensional villainess. From her star-making role as Colleen McMurphy on China Beach, girl-next-door likability has been part of Delany’s appeal, and no matter how devious and manipulative Chloe may become, Delany keeps us resolutely on her side. We might not want Chloe as a potentially back-stabbing friend, but as brought by Delany to multi-layered life, we can’t help rooting for the seductive conniver and cheering each stab of the knife. And for an actress who’s done most of her work in the short-take, stop-and-start world of television and film, Delany proves herself a consummate theater pro in a role which has center-stage (and letter-perfect)  in every single scene.

 Steven Culp and Steven Weber provide bang-up support as the men in Chloe’s life, while SCR favorites Linda Gehringer and Rebecca Mozo do their accustomed terrific work as a Washington DC maven and the daughter she wouldn’t mind seeing elected President someday.

As always, one of the great pleasures of a South Coast Rep play is its scenic design, and Marion Williams’ for The Parisian Woman is no exception. Not only is Chloe’s elegant Washington townhouse spot-on, only a theater with SCR’s resources at hand could have this massive set slide smoothly back upstage to allow a pair of equally detailed sets to slide in, one from house left, and the other, later, from house right, a feat no 99-seat theater could hope to replicate.

 David Kay Mickelsen costumes each character to elegant, stylish Washington DC perfection, while Lap Chi Chu’s lighting design and Cricket S. Myers’ sound design are as good as it gets, par for the course for the LADCC Angstrom Career Achievement Award winning Chu and the Tony-nominated Myers.

Kelly L. Miller is dramaturg, Jackie S. Hill production manager, and Sue Karutz stage manager.

Reviewing Willimon’s previous DC-set play, I wrote, “Rarely can I recall an audience more involved in a play’s action and in the twists and turns of its plot than was the case last night. Farragut North is exciting, thought-provoking, conversation-starting theater at its best.” About The Parisian Woman, let me simply say “Ditto,” with Dana Delany as its powerhouse bonus.

South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scr.org

–Steven Stanley
April 23, 2013
Photos: Henry DiRocco/SCR

 DiPietro’s book borrows inventively from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, yet centers itself around a character Elvis himself might have played in one of his 1960s movies. Chad (the Elvis role) is even referred to more than once as a Roustabout, the title of an Elvis flick in case you didn’t know.

Leather-jacketed Chad (Michael Dashefsky) arrives on his motorcycle one day in “a small, you- never-heard-of-it town somewhere in the Midwest” in 1955, and the dull, go-nowhere lives of its citizens are never the same again. Tomboy Natalie (Laurel Petti) falls head-over-heels for Chad and decides to disguise herself as a guy named “Ed”, the better to get closer to him (Chad not seeming to realize that Natalie is alive). This sets off a chain of unrequited loves that Shakespeare would have been proud to create.

 Chad falls for the new woman in town, the sexy/brainy museum proprietress Miss Sandra (Devon Hadsell), as does Natalie’s father Jim (Göran Norquist), who is loved from afar by Sylvia (Victoria Rosser). Miss Sandra only has eyes for “Ed.” Meanwhile, geeky Dennis (Charles McCoy) pines after Natalie, who started the whole thing when she got it into her head to dress in male drag. Only Dean and Lorraine (Brian Whitehill and Stephanie Inglese) have the good fortune of falling in love with each other, but Lorraine is Sylvia’s daughter, making theirs is a forbidden love, especially since Matilda (Chelle Denton), Dean’s prude of a mother is the bossy mayor, who along with her closed-mouth sidekick Sheriff Earl (Jack Robert Riordan), patrols the town enforcing the “Mamie Eisenhower Public Decency Act” (no singing, no dancing, no touching, no kissing, and certainly no interracial love). Gay love would also be forbidden if anybody in the town knew that such a thing existed, a conundrum for the previously 100% heterosexual Chad when he finds himself attracted to “Ed.” Got that?

 All Shook Up opens with “Jailhouse Rock,” our hero Chad swiveling his hips while backed by acrobatic jail-uniformed fellow inmates and a bevy of black-and-white striped mini-dress-sporting prisonerettes. Chad has spent the night in jail, you see, for exciting the town’s women. “And we don’t like our women excited,” the warden informs him upon his release.

 The scene then switches to Sylvia’s honky-tonk, where its drab denizens living drab lives sing about “Heartbreak Hotel,” located as you may recall somewhere “down on a street called Loneliness.” Chad’s unexpected arrival causes women to faint in his presence and soon the citizens aren’t looking (or feeling) so drab anymore. When Mayor Matilda catches them (gasp!) dancing, she exclaims in horror, “Well, it looks like there’s been a whole lot of shaking going on!” And there has been indeed.

Grease-monkey Natalie, whose philosophy heretofore has been “Why wear a dress when you can use it to clean an engine,” now dons feminine garb to pull Chad’s attention away from Miss Sandra, but to no avail. Chad only has eyes for Miss S., telling her with a seductive growl, “Everything you say makes me sweat.” When Natalie transforms herself into “Ed” in order to become the Roustabout’s sidekick, Miss Sandra finds that there is indeed a reason (named “Ed”) to stick around town. Who said the course of love ever ran smooth?

 DiPietro’s book is chock-packed with laughs, some straight out of the Elvis songbook, as when Chad tells Dennis, “What I’m searching for is the highest form of love—Burning Love.” The double Tony-winning writer (for Memphis) also deserves credit for having created a clever and cohesive book around a bunch of preexisting songs, and making them fit his plot as well as his plot fits them. Mayor Matilda’s attempts to alert her fellow citizens to the danger Chad poses to their white bread community by warning them musically that he’s the “Devil In Disguise” is but one of DiPietro’s inspired choices.

And speaking of inspired, direction doesn’t come any more inspired than Patrick Pearson’s, and with All Shook Up, the two-time Scenie-winning Director Of The Year, nails his first big-stage regional theater-scale production with imagination, flair, and attention to the most minute detail as witnessed by an ensemble of characters who, though nameless, each has his or her own story to tell.

 With his striking rock star good looks, Men’s Fitness cover model physique, and MTV-ready footwork, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the current BFA crop as right to play Chad as the charismatic Dashefsky, and since his Natalie is Petti, the heavenly-voiced, surely Broadway-bound star of last fall’s Ordinary Days, romantic sparks ignite like wildfire, even when Petti is hiding her girl-next-door prettiness under a mechanic’s cap and fake stubble.

McCoy proves every bit as winning in Urkel nerd mode as he was as Petti’s self-confident Manhattanite boyfriend in Ordinary Days, and boy can this young man sing.

Inglese makes for a charming, vivacious Lorraine opposite Whitehill’s handsome, stalwart Dean, a boy any pony-tailed teen would be nuts not to fall for.

Denton has great fun ruling the roost as Mayor Matilda, especially when breaking out of her über-social conservative shell to belt out “Devil In Disguise,” while Riordan, as her sidekick Sheriff Earl, earns laughs without uttering a word and cheers when he does.

 Theater majors Rosser and Norquist not only sing Sylvia and Jim’s songs with rich, powerful pipes, they act their roles with charm, have great chemistry together, and manage to convince us that they are years older than their ages, no small trick in a student production.

Finally, Hadsell makes a remarkable transition from Carousel’s graceful ingénue Louise to sex-in-a-slit-up-to-here-red-skirt Miss Sandra, proving that in addition to power pipes, versatility should be the CSUF junior’s middle name.

 All Shook Up proves also to be the best possible showcase for its triple-threat ensemble of nineteen, since this is one show in which no one fades into the woodwork, whether lead performer or member of the chorus.

It’s a particular pleasure seeing graduating seniors Tim Fitzsimons, William Hoshida, associate choreographer/dance captain Amy Trgovac, and Gina Velez every bit as charismatically watchable in dancey ensemble tracks as they have been in leading roles, and as for the rest, they don’t come any more terrifically talented than up-and-comers Antwone Sylvester Barnes, Erica Beck, Ethan Daniel Corbett, Matthew Dunn, Nick Gardner, Justin Goei, Dannielle Green, Melissa Haygood, Bren Thor Johnson, Kirk Schuyler Lawson, Dominic Leslie, Alexis Ritchey, Kellianne Safarik, Andrea Somera, and Ellie Wyman.

Choreographer William F. Lett gives all of the above quite the workout in musical number after musical number, his dance steps capturing all the excitement of an Elvis movie, from the exiting “Jailhouse Rock” opener to “C’mon Everybody” to “Let Yourself Go” to “Devil In Disguise” to “Burning Love,” and everywhere in between, making All Shook Up one of the fanciest-footed college musicals ever. Only the omission of the “C’mon Everybody” reprise seems a curious choice since it robs the audience of the chance to get up on its feet and sing and dance along, something which has allowed previous All Shook Ups to end with a great big post-curtain call bang.

Musical director Diane King Vann not only gets her cast harmonizing to Stephen Oremus’s beyond-heavenly vocal arrangements, she conducts and plays keyboards in the production’s sensational onstage band, whose members also include Jeff Askew, Pete Herz, Ashley Jarmack, Scott Martin, David Page, and Bryce Rankin.

 One of the great pleasures of this All Shook Up is its all-new, entirely student-designed look, the first to eschew the rented Broadway Tour sets and costumes that have given each previous ASU I’ve seen the very same feel. Bradley Lock gets highest marks for his inventive set design, one which proves you can do All Shook Up without a real jukebox, motorcycle, or a 1959 pink Cadillac and still have it look like a million buck. As for Lock’s costumes, they too score high for their colorful period looks, with special snaps for the reversible skirts that allow drab townsfolk to go Technicolor in a jiff. (Only the female statuary’s skirts seem more Granny than Greek.) Laura Young’s excellent hair and makeup design complete All Shook Up’s period look, lighting designer Joey Weldon gives All Shook Up plenty of flash and pizzazz, and Jacob Kaitz deserves kudos for his sound design despite a few very minor mike glitches.

Jonathan Castanien is stage manager, assisted by Andrew Cristin, Francis Gacad, and Cailin Luneburg. A faculty-supervised production staff makes for a list of names too numerous to mention here, but all deserve applause for their work.

Ordinary Days, Carousel, [title of show], and now All Shook Up, 2012-2013 has been a memorable year for musical theater both big-scale and intimate at Cal State Fullerton. Forget the word “student” when you make theater plans next fall and spring and simply head down to Orange County for the very best in musical theater at bargain prices. If this year’s crop of talent and shows is any indication, audiences are in for more of the same professional-caliber entertainment in the twelve months to come.

Little Theatre, California State University, Fullerton Department of Theatre & Dance, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton.
www.fullerton.edu/arts/theatredance

–Steven Stanley
April 20, 2013
Photos: Edwin Lockwood

 Andrew Sattler and Edgar Lopez play real-life co-writers Hunter and Jeff, who in the spring of 2004 sat down to create a new musical in just three weeks, that being precisely the period of time remaining before the New York Musical Theatre Festival’s submission deadline. Joined by friends (and fellow performers) Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff, the quartet met the deadline with a 90-minute musical about how [title of show] came to life, from its first spark of inspiration to its Opening Night. As for the show’s title, having rejected such candidates as Festival Of Dreams, Your Arms Too Short To Write This Musical, and RENTT (with two t’s), the creative team decided to stick with what was on the application form: [title of show]. And wonder of wonders, their dream became a reality.

Since then, [title of show] has gone on to off-Broadway, where Bell and Bowen both won the Obie Award, transferred to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, with Bell’s book scoring a Tony nomination, and since then gone on to become a regional and student theater favorite. How’s that for life imitating art?

Many of [title of show]’s best and biggest laughs come from its awareness that it is a musical about writing the very same musical the audience is seeing unfold before its eyes. Take for example this exchange:

HUNTER: What if the first scene is just us talking about what to write? We could put this exact conversation in the show. JEFF: Wait, so everything I say from now on could actually be in our show? HUNTER: Yeah. JEFF: Like this? HUNTER: Like this. JEFF: And this? HUNTER: And this. JEFF: This too? HUNTER: This too.

Other deliciously clever moments include Hunter’s remark, “Right now I think we need to get out of this scene because it feels too long,” immediately followed by (what else?) a blackout. Later, in the song “Monkeys And Playbills,” Susan and Heidi (Mallory Staley and Caitlin Humphreys playing the real-life pair) show up in Hunter and Jeff’s dream, after which Hunter asks the girls what they think of the dream sequence, prompting Heidi to remark, “I’m sorry. Are we in this scene now?” Another brilliant moment occurs when Heidi wonders, “If the finished script is in that envelope, should we still be talking?” Guess what? Blackout.

Finally, though [title of show] is not at all about being gay, the writers’ sexual orientation does get referred to a couple times, as when a discussion of Broadway/West End trivia prompts Heidi to ask, “Is it me or did it just get like three degrees gayer in here?”, or when later on, Hunter remarks on “that cutie in the red shirt,” Jeff warns him that the guy is straight, and Hunter quips, “Well, so is spaghetti until it gets hot and wet.”

Since production budgets for CSUF’s Grand Central Theatre shows make shoestring look like rope, [title of show] proves a perfect, couldn’t-be-cheaper-to-produce choice, with Bell and Bowen’s book specifying a scenic design of four chairs, that and a piano or keyboard for the fictional show’s accompanist Larry to tickle the ivories, a role played here by musical director Mitch Hanlon.

All that’s needed in addition to the above is a director with vision (Kari Hayter being just that director) and a cast who can have us from hello to [tos]’s goodbye fadeout ninety minutes later.

Hayter not only elicits sparkling performances from her ensemble of four, she directs and choreographs them with abundant imagination, keeping the quartet ever in motion, whether executing clever poses, launching into dance steps, like a particularly inspired mini-tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or simply following Bowen and Bell’s script, but with flair and pizzazz.

That the production’s four stars couldn’t be more different “types” is just one reason that this [title of show] cast makes such a strong impression from the get-go.

Lanky blond Sattler is absolutely terrific as Hunter, a young man with dreams of Broadway and a Tony, whose tastes run toward trashy reality TV and ‘80s Broadway blockbusters. Dark-haired Lopez is equally splendid as Jeff, who prefers forgotten musicals to megahits, worries considerably more than his show-writing partner, and has a more realistic outlook on life. The bubbly Humphreys makes for a sensational Heidi (in real life a Broadway show vet), and sings the heck out of the show’s big power ballad “A Way Back To Then.” Blonde stunner Staley completes the quartet, and wonderfully so, as the quirky Susan, whose self-deprecating jokes and occasionally inappropriate remarks can’t mask a talent equal to her costars’.

[tltle of show] gives each of the fabulous foursome his or her moments to shine, including Sattler’s jive-talking F-word-sprinkled performance as Blank Paper in “An Original Musical.” Humphreys and Staley get their center-stage moments in “I Am Playing Me” and “Secondary Characters” (the titles are self-explanatory). And Lopez is great throughout as the character with the most confidence-ravaging “Vampires” to kill.

Lastly, CSUF faculty member Hanlon not only provides impeccable piano accompaniment as “Larry,” but even gets his own few dry words to say once Hunter and Jeff have gotten things worked out “with the union.”

McLeod Benson’s lighting design aids immensely in giving each scene its own distinctive look, with sound designer Kyle Swafford on hand to insert just the right effects. Haylie Lovett is stage manager, Rod Bagheri assistant musical director, and David Alan Royster assistant stage manager. Completing the behind-the-scenes team are Chandler Burke on light board and crew members Sara Lipowsky and Chloe Lovato.

Humphreys and Lopez will graduate in June, the former already set to star as Lucille Frank in 3-D Theatricals’ upcoming Parade (talk about fast track to stardom) while the latter heads up to Santa Maria and Solvang for an exciting summer season of shows with PCPA Theaterfest. Meanwhile, juniors Sattler and Staley will be back for next fall and spring’s CSUF musical theater season, and there’s no better news than than.

L.A. and Orange County musical theater lovers are urged to catch the gifted quartet in [title of show] during its brief Santa Ana run, a talent showcase if ever there was one for a foursome with Broadway dreams as big as those that propelled the characters they are playing to New York’s Great White Way.

CSUF Grand Central Art Center, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana.

–Steven Stanley
April 19, 2013

L.A./Orange County audiences now have the next two weeks to experience the laughter, the tears, the thrills, and the sheer joy that is Billy, winner of ten 2009 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, and in a Broadway first, a Best Leading Actor Tony awarded to all three Broadway Billys.

 (Noah Parets as Billy)

Movie buffs will recall Billy Elliot as the eleven-year-old protagonist of Stephen Daldry’s 2000 film of the same name. Both movie and musical take us back to northern England circa 1984, when the National Union of Mineworkers declared a nationwide strike, one whose consequences for both union and miners ended up dire indeed.

Lee Hall’s Tony-winning Best Book focuses on the strike’s effects on one County Durham family, made up of motherless Billy, his coal miner father, older brother Tony (also a miner), and a Grandma who keeps misplacing her pasties. (No, she’s not a stripper. Pasties are meat and vegetable filled pastries in Cornwall and its environs.)

 (Ben Cook as Billy)

When Billy happens one evening to stumble into the ballet class which follows the boxing lessons his dad is making him take, a passion for dance is ignited in the young boy that will change his and his family’s lives forever.

Whereas the movie version of Billy Elliot had Billy dancing to ‘80s hits like T. Rex’s “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” and “I Love To Boogie,” Billy Elliot The Musical features an entirely new set of songs by Elton John and lyricist Hall, and what songs they are, many of them going on for eight minutes or more, each a mini-musical with its own story to tell.

 “The Stars Look Down” introduces us to Billy’s cast of characters on the eve of the Miners’ Strike 1984. “Shine” takes us from Billy’s accidental arrival in ballet class to his realization that maybe, just maybe, dance can give his dreary life some of the “old razzle dazzle” ballet instructor Mrs. Wilkinson is singing about. “Solidarity” superimposes striking miners, baton-wielding police officers, and a ballet classful of little girls (and a lone boy) to breathtaking effect.

Along the way, Billy makes friends with Michael, a boy who likes nothing better than to try on his mum’s clothes, and who informs Billy in song and dance that there’s nothing wrong with “Expressing Yourself,” as celebratory a declaration of individuality as they come, and one which has Billy, Michael, and a bevy of inanimate dresses-come-to-life tap, tap, tapping to Peter Darling’s Tony-winning choreography.

 (Drew Minard as Billy)

And speaking of choreography, Darling has Billy, Mrs. Wilkinson, and ballet class pianist Mr. Braithwaite discovering that they were “Born To Boogie”; the entire cast doing their best holiday footwork as they send yuletide greetings (and a death wish) to Madam PM in “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher”; and Billy expressing his rage and frustration at being trapped in a town he’s already too big for in “Angry Dance,” a production number featuring miners, scabs, cops, and Billy that brings Act One to a thrilling emotional climax.

One of Billy Elliot’s most stirring moments comes when we see Billy and his “Older Self” dancing side-by-side to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and dance performances don’t get more electric than Billy’s audition number for the London’s Royal Ballet School, “Electricity.”

Last but not least comes the evening’s grand finale, “Company Celebration,” that has Billy Elliot’s entire cast dancing in … No, I’m not going to spoil the surprise.

Director Daldry and his creative partners never let us forget that Billy Elliot is at heart the story of a boy and his damaged but not irreparably broken family in quiet songs like Grandma’s bittersweet “We’d Go Dancing,” Billy and his late mum’s heart-wrenching “Dear Billy,” and Dad’s sad declaration of lost love, “Deep In The Ground.”

 (Mitchell Tobin as Billy)

Ben Cook, Drew Minard, Noah Parets, and Mitchell Tobin alternate in the role of Billy, and if Parets’ stellar triple-threat performance on Opening Night is an indication of the caliber of all four boys’ work (as I suspect it is), audiences are in for the year’s most memorable child star turn, no matter which date or time they attend.

 Janet Dickenson is a feisty, foul-mouthed, and absolutely fabulous Mrs. Wilkinson; Rich Hebert makes for a dynamic, deeply felt Dad; Patti Perkins is irrepressibly winning as Billy’s quirky Grandma; Cullen R. Titums captures all of older brother Tony’s rage and frustration to powerful effect; Kilty Reidy is a tap-dancing surprise as Mr. Braithwaite; and (at the performance reviewed) Jake Kitchin couldn’t be more delightful as Billy’s bestie Michael. (Kitchin alternates with Sam Poon in the roles of Michael and Tall Boy/Posh Boy, with Poon playing the latter two on Opening Night.)

 As for the rest of the cast, superlatives are in order for Joel Blum (George), Samantha B. Cutler (Debbie), Maximilien A. Baud (Older Billy/Scottish Dancer), Craig Bennett (Big Davey), and Molly Garner (Mum), and ensemble members Paul Aguirre, Cal Alexander (Small Boy), Madison Barnes (Ballet Girl), Damien Brett (Accordion Specialty), Jhailyn Farcon (Ballet Girl), Tim Funnell (Scab/Posh Dad), Christopher M. Howard, Danielle Kelsey (Lesley), acro captain Patrick LaVallee, David Light (Pit Official, Cara Massey (Clipboard Woman), Kaitlyn Mueller (Ballet Girl), Joel Newsome (Mr. Wilkinson), Brittany Nicholas (Ballet Girl), Yanna Nikitas (Ballet Girl), Jeffrey Pew, Jillian Rees-Brown, swing Alison Solomon (Tracey Atkinson), Carly Tamer (Ballet Girl), and Brionna Trilling (Ballet Girl).

Additional 2009 Tonys were awarded, and deservedly so, to orchestrator Martin Koch, scenic designer Ian McNeil, lighting designer Rick Fisher, and sound designer Paul Arditti, all of whose superb work is on display in this First National Tour, as are Nicky Gillibrand’s Tony-nominated costumes.

Music director Bill Congdon conducts the tour’s terrific ten-piece pit orchestra, featuring Congdon on keyboards accompanied by four touring and five local musicians.

Additional program credits are too numerous to mention here, though mention must be surely be made of production stage manager Gregory R. Covert.

The remaining months of 2013 have the Segerstrom Center For The Arts welcoming the National Tours of Flashdance, Catch Me If You Can, Sister Act, Anything Goes, Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, and Evita, and no one is more excited about their upcoming arrival than this reviewer. Still, as last night’s Opening Night performance made abundantly clear, Billy Elliot is in a class by itself, and that goes for both the musical, and the extraordinary boy whose name it bears.

Segerstrom Center For The Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scfta.org

–Steven Stanley
April 16, 2013
Photos: Amy Boyle, Doug Blemker, Michael Brosilow, Kyle Froman

The spirit of Thornton Wilder is alive and well and living inside playwright Noah Haidle, whose remarkable Smokefall, now getting its World Premiere at South Coast Repertory, bears comparison with Wilder’s Our Town and The Skin Of Our Teeth.

 Like Our Town, Smokefall features a ubiquitous, all-knowing Narrator, whom Haidle calls “Footnote” (Leo Marks), since it is in numbered footnotes that he comments on the action, his words reminiscent of those spoken in Our Town by its “Stage Manager.” Take “Footnote Number One” as an example: “The Grace Episcopal church is well over two hundred years old, making it the oldest building in Grand Rapids. The bells themselves were imported from France. They toll the hours away and everybody hears them in town. No matter how hard they try not to. They are the metronome of their lives. Hour by hour.” Very Grovers Corners. Very Thornton Wilder.

 In place of The Skin Of Our Teeth’s Antrobus family, we have head-of-household Daniel (Corey Brill), his pregnant-with-twins wife Violet (Heidi Dippold), their sixteen-year-old daughter Beauty (Carmela Corbett), and the Colonel (Orson Bean), Violet’s elderly grandfather who lives with them. There’s also Max, the family pet, played to perfection by real-life pooch Sparky (though the program gets their names backwards).

 Though at first glance, these folk might seem to be your average Midwest family circa 1960something, Footnote’s footnotes reveal cracks in their apple-pie surface. Beauty, we are told, suddenly stopped speaking three years ago, her last words being simply, “I have nothing more to say.” Max, we learn, has fallen in love, “completely and hopelessly in love with the neighbor’s cat” and “for the first time in his life … knows the painful agonies of love.” Since the Colonel’s memory isn’t what it used to be, “the truth is that Max is the one who walks him, because without Max, the Colonel could not find his way home.” Violet sings a self-composed lullaby to her about-to-pop twins, to which, Footnote notes, “The twins applaud. They would give a standing ovation if they could.” And as for Daniel, we soon learn that “lying in bed at night, he makes lists in his head of all of his reasons to be grateful, but they only temporarily relieve his general sense of dread and malaise.” Today, Footnote tells us, will be the last one Daniel spends with his family, and this is not the only glimpse into the future that our narrator will offer over the course of Smokefall’s eighty-five minute, intermissionless three acts.

An air of whimsy pervades Smokefall from the get-go. Take the case of Beauty, whom “everyone calls Beauty, and nobody really remembers her name, not even her.” It doesn’t get much more whimsical than a character who “eats very strange things like paste and cardboard …, bark from trees, grass, earth, maple leaves, coffee grounds, envelopes, and the newspaper” and “seems to be perfectly fine, if not thriving, so nobody pays much attention to it anymore.”

If Act One, “What Hours They Forgot,” is whimsical, this is even more true of Act Two, “Where We’ll Never Grow Old,” which takes us inside Betsy’s womb with Brill and Marks as Fetus One and Fetus Two, an adult-sized duo who speak with the wisdom of the sages (“As descendents of Adam, as a consequence of the first sin, of this transgressed hereditary strain, we will be born into an absence of holiness and perfect charity”), duet “Send In The Clowns,” and alternately annoy and adore each other as you might expect two fetuses living in close proximity for nine months to do.

 Act Three, “Awake In The Reality Of Experience,” features Bean as Johnny, i.e. Fetus Two “grown up and grown old,” and Corbett as a now 95-year-old Beauty looking every bit as young as she did at sixteen, and able to tell us in actual spoken words about the years she spent traveling the world following Betsy’s funeral sixty-five years earlier.

My best guess is that all this whimsy may prove too much for some theatergoers. This reviewer had a bit of a knee-jerk resistance to characters who drink paint and converse inside a womb and keep getting interrupted by “footnotes.”

 Fortunately, thanks to a script brimming with humanity and heart, pitch-perfect direction by Anne Kauffman, exquisite performances by the entire cast, and a magical scenic design, this co-production with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre won me over fairly quickly. Smokefall may be whimsical to the nth degree, but its characters and their assorted destinies touched my heart and made me ponder life’s mysteries in ways that The Skin Of Our Teeth and Our Town have done for the past seventy to seventy-five years. (Since Thornton Wilder wrote only two plays, Smokefall sort of makes it a trilogy.)

Bean brings a lifetime of experience (and our shared memories of his six decades on stage and screen) to both the increasingly forgetful yet endearing Colonel and the equally aged yet still vital Johnny, letter-perfect performances that belie the actor’s eighty-four years.

Corbett’s incandescence makes her the ideal choice to play Beauty, and whether expressing herself in silence or in spoken words (without the slightest trace of her native English accent), her work here is as indelible as it was in last year’s Eurydice.

 Dippold is maternal warmth and wifely caring personified as Violet, and having previously starred in Haidle’s Mr. Marmelade, she captures the playwright’s voice to perfection.

Brill invests Daniel with a heartbreaking sadness beneath his outwardly “I’m all right, we’re all right” attitude, making his transition to Fetus One all the more remarkable.

Marks, too, gets a pair of night-and-day different parts, the wry, wise, witty Footnote, and the mischievous, adventurous Fetus Two, both of which he nails, as he has every role I’ve seen him in to date.

Together, Fetus Brill and Fetus Marks are so captivating and touching, their Act Two could easily stand on its own as a one-act.

If the South Coast Rep ensemble is made up of gifted L.A.-based talents (thanks to casting director Joanne DeNaut, CSA), Smokefall’s superb design team are all out-of-town imports whose work makes this World Premiere co-production all the more stunning.

 Scenic designer Martha Ginsberg’s two-story Grand Rapids home looks deceptively simple, an oversized dollhouse made all of blond wood, but it does amazing, earth-shattering things. Melanie Watnick’s costumes, David Weiner’s lighting, and Lindsay Jones’ original music and sound design contribute to making Smokefall every bit the design equal to SCR productions featuring more familiar local names.

John Glore is dramaturg, Joshua Marchesi production manager, and Jamie A. Tucker stage manager.

Smokefall is one of seven plays featured in this year’s SCR Pacific Playwrights’ Festival, five of which will be presented in one-time only readings (from April 26 to 28) for consideration in future SCR seasons, the other two anchoring the festival as fully staged productions. (Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman opens shortly.)

Though its abundance of whimsy might at first prove a tad off-putting to more reality-minded theatergoers, by the time Smokefall has reached its final, transcendent moments, those who have been willing to take the journey Haidle has charted will have found themselves richly rewarded.

South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scr.org

–Steven Stanley
April 9, 2013
Photos: Henry DiRocco/SCR