Forever Plaid @ Playhouse Square, Hanna Theatre, May 5-21, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

The Plaids (actors, from left to right, James Penca, Mack Shirilla, Andrew Kotzen and Mickey Patrick Ryan) 

Great Lakes Theater signs off the current season with Forever Plaid, a Stuart Ross and James Raitt musical directed by Victoria Bussert. It’s a sweetly nostalgic look at 1950s pop music and early 60s quartets (Four Freshman, etc.) through the eyes of The Plaids, four young men who were on their way (maybe) to fame and fortune in 1963. Alas, they died when their car collided with a bus full of Catholic school girls (on their way to the Ed Sullivan Show to see that new group, The Beatles, ).

But wait! Here they are, each bearing a lit candle down the stairs as they enter the Hanna Theatre with a stage waiting in readiness for them (each mic covered with a tiny white shroud), an audience looking at them, expecting a show. Is it heaven or hell or purgatory or merely a waiting station before the next stage?

Doesn’t matter. It’s meant to be a funny premise and it is, as the lads don’t seem fraught with grief over their ironic end (although they are more than a little bit annoyed).  All the quartet wants to do is perform the concert they were enroute to present. And that’s a great excuse for a show!

And perform they do, much to our delight. Francis  (Mack Shirilla), Sparky (Andrew Kotzen), Jim (Mickey Patrick Ryan), and Smudge (James Penca) croon and belt over two dozen hits that rocked every car radio and school dance back in the day. Shirilla (as Francis) strongly serves a pivotal role as the one who consistently urges his friends to seize the moment. Penca’s comic Smudge overcomes his initial reluctance to even walk onstage and by the end belts out (in his uniquely deep bass voice) that paen to heavy labor, “Sixteen Tons.” Kotzen and Ryan add light, romantic, and even comic touches in turn. Just for laughs (and nostalgia) one sequence involves recreating the Ed Sullivan Show in approximately three minutes. (Imagine “America’s Got Talent” in three minutes and you got it.)

Featured golden oldies include, “Cry,” “Lady of Spain,” “Three Coins in a Fountain,” “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Heart and Soul” (with Shirilla on piano and a little help from an audience member who raised her hand when asked “Who knows this?”), “Dream Along with Me,” and...oh just think of a hit song from that era and it’s likely in the show.

The numbers are delightfully choreographed by Gregory Daniels (especially one where plungers  become mic stands). Matthew Webb (conductor/piano) and Timothy Powell (bass) provide accompaniment from one corner of the stage.

Bottom Line: In the end we never know exactly what happened to the lads after their show, but we do know we just shared a relaxing look back at another musical time. Recommended for light summer fare and a pleasant evening out.

Forever Plaid continues through May 21. For tickets go to GreatLakesTheater.org or call 216-640-8869.

Photo: Roger Mastroianni

Something Rotten!

Something Rotten! @ Playhouse Square, April 26-May 14

Review by Laura Kennelly

‘Tis a happy occasion for the provinces (AKA Cleveland, to put it in Elizabethan style) when [Broadway] Royalty visits. And, make no mistake, Something Rotten! offers a very very happy occasion--it’s one of the best new musicals around. The National Touring Company of  Something Rotten! (the Broadway show closed January 1st) brings rich and silly merriment to the Connor Palace.

This musical, directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, offers light-hearted fun perfect for spring. Yes, there’s satire, but set so far in the past that no one will mind (not even English teachers) having a bit of fun at The Bard of Avon’s expense. As the first extravagant production number jokes, “Welcome to the Renaissance where everything is new.”  Based on appearances (lush, witty, totally extravagant costumes, clever adaptable sets), there’s nothing second rate about this touring hit.

If you love Shakespeare, and hate musicals, you’ll love it; if you hate Shakespeare and love musicals, you’ll love it (one of the best songs is “God, I Hate Shakespeare”). If you love both (hand raised here), then you are in heaven.

Neither the iconic Renaissance bard nor the musical theatre culture escapes loving mockery. When Shakespeare puts on a show, it’s in the park (as in popular community productions today featuring “Shakespeare in the Park”). When the brothers discuss writing a “A Musical,” enough well-crafted allusions to famous musicals seep in (sometimes just a chord or two, sometimes a set or a light) that everyone will likely recognize favorites.

The premise sounds as if it might inflict serious historicity upon us. Fear not, facts are few, but it’s wonderful to consider the possibilities: What if amongst Shakespeare’s rivals (and he did have many) were two bumbling brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, who ran into a soothsayer named Nostradamus who told them the next new stage fad in Renaissance England would be musicals?

Turns out he’s not the best of soothsayers, but he does have a vision--of sorts. That’s the plot and the inspiration that leads to a riot of silliness and some pretty catchy tunes by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick (who perhaps drew on life experience as a brother-duo writing team when creating the show’s Bottom brothers). For a look, see [http://www.broadway.com/videos/156167/video-go-behind-the-music-of-something-rotten-with-karey-wayne-kirkpatrick/]

Three key members of the cast were in the Broadway show (Adam Pascal as Shakespeare, Rob McClure as Nick Bottom, and Josh Grisetti as Nigel Bottom).  With rockstar swagger Pascal’s Shakespeare flaunts and struts his way through crowds of fainting fangirls. And his eyes? Well, David Bowie has nothing on Pascal for eyeliner. Tres chic.

Other players include  Maggie Lakis as Nick’s much-put upon wife, Bea; Blake Hammond as the befuddled Nostradamus (related to, but not the famous prophet “Nostradamus”);  Autumn Hurlbert as gifted poet Nigel’s sweetly girlish love, Portia; Scott Cote as the pompous Puritan Brother Jeremiah, and Jeff Brooks as unofficial producer/backer Shylock.

Kudos, too, to Nick Rashad Burroughs, as the minstrel who strolls onstage to open the show and welcome us to the Renaissance “where everything is new.”

Something Rotten doesn’t stint on special numbers, well-executed dancing, and spunk. Much of the show’s merriment is carried by what seems to be hundreds of different characters, all played by the quick-stepping and enthusiastic ensemble. The ensemble cast includes Baldwin Wallace University’s Lucy Anders, class of 2015, as well as Kyle Nicholas Anderson, Daniel Beeman, Mandie Black, Pierce Cassedy, Drew Franklin, Juliane Godfrey, Leah Hofmann, Kristie Kerwin, Ralph Meitzler, Patrick John Moran, Joel Newsome, Con O’Shea-Creal, and Tonya Thompson.

Praise also to those who see to the little details that make things work: Scott Pask (scenic design), Gregg Barnes (costume design), Jeff Croiter (lighting design), Peter Hylenski (sound design), Josh Marquette (hair design), Phil Reno (music director/conductor), Glen Kelly (arrangements), Larry Hochman (orchestrations), Steve Bebout (associate director).

Bottom Line: Clever, involving, funny, and fresh. Highly recommended.

 Freaky Friday@Allen Theatre, Playhouse Square, April 15-May 20

Review by Laura Kennelly

Never mind “being in someone else’s shoes.” How about exchanging bodies? That’s the premise of Freaky Friday, the Cleveland Play House’s last show of the 2016-2017 season. This Disney pop/rock theatrical production takes a light look at the common “You just don’t understand” wail that often comes from both mothers and daughters.  After  Disney movies plus TV shows based on the idea (and in this musical’s case, specifically on Mary Rodger’s novel, Freaky Friday), the comic story itself won’t surprise.

     Magic happens and a mother and daughter suddenly find themselves inhabiting each other's body. They only have one day to switch back because the mother is getting married the next day (‘nuff said there).

    Thanks to clever and very talented leads, Heidi Blickenstaff (as Katherine, the super-busy mom who uses her own wedding partly as a marketing ploy) and Emma Hunton as Ellie (Katherine’s rebellious teen daughter), the opening night show brought laughs plus a few sighs, looks, and  nudges amongst the mother-daughter pairs who filled the Allen Theatre.

Among the highlights in this frothy comedy: Biology class. There, Chris Ramirez as Adam, (Ellie’s secret crush) brings back memories of how easy it was to fall for “hot” guys back in high school. Hunton’s expressions as she sings “Oh Biology” (in Biology Class of course) with Ramirez are priceless. Suddenly, she (now with her mother’s mind) remembers “Oh yes, that’s what it’s like to host all those new hormones.” And, since she has her mother’s knife skills, she wows her biology teacher and class with her efficient dissection technique.

    Of course (it’s Disney), after almost two dozen musical numbers (likely nothing that will make the top charts, but pleasant enough) and a bit of easy dancing poses, the story ends happily. Both mother and daughter gain new respect for each other’s lives after living them for a day.

    The small orchestra, led by Andrew Graham, provided upbeat music as they played on stage behind a screen.

Bottom Line: Empathy gained via magic, quick funny, and efficient. Blickenstaff and Hunton win highest marks for excellent character switching--adding comedy and a bit of pathos to an otherwise familiar joke.

Freaky Friday, directed by Christopher Ashley, with a new book by Bridget Carpenter and a pop‐rock score by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, plus choreography by Sergio Trujillo plays at the Allen Theatre through May 20, 2017

Photo:

From left to right: Emma Hunton (Ellie) and Chris Ramirez (Adam). Photo credit: Jim Carmody.

Hamlet @ Hanna Theatre, March 31-April 15 Review by Laura Kennelly

Yes, it still ends badly. Heaps of bodies litter the Hanna Theatre stage at Hamlet’s conclusion. But director Charles Fee and the Great Lakes Theatre team make this beautifully staged tragedy  fresh, even new.

Fee has pruned Shakespeare’s revenge drama into a lean, stylish creation with an askewly modern slant that references Freudian Mama Love and pop psychology. On opening night #2 with Jonathan Dyrud as our hero (#1 featured Laura Welsh Berg in the title role) this interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet proved unique and deliciously satisfying

Unspoken implications emerge about motivations and values. Why does Hamlet rather unquestioningly believe the apparition which may or may not be his father’s ghost? What’s to be gained from revenge anyway? How could he treat the innocent Ophelia (and his mother for that matter) so poorly? In a powerful performance, Dyrud reveals our hero as a compelling cross between evil and good, a man who channels an obsessive edge that pushed his responses no matter who got hurt. Hamlet, in short, was a well-spoken spoiled brat with little empathy who probably shared more personality traits with his ruthless Uncle Claudius than he realized.

Erin Partin creates a lovely, wistful beauty as Ophelia, his abandoned girlfriend. Her gowns and songs were fetching. Laura Perrotta as an elaborately coiffed Gertrude, convincingly shows her as a woman too taken with her own insecurities and with the manly authority of Hamlet’s uncle (given surprising sympathetic portrayal by David Anthony Smith) to do much more than reflect distress.  Dougfred Miller, as the sententious Polonius, seems like a “good guy” and his remarks don’t seem nearly as trite as they do when quoted by our contemporaries.

Other cast members with pivotal roles in this Elizabethan-era soap opera include Lynn Robert Berg as the spooky apparition, Nick Steen as gallant Laertes, M. A. Taylor as Reynaldo, Christopher Tocco as Horatio, and Aled Davies as the Gravedigger.

Scenic designer Russell Metheny creates an outstandingly dreamy version of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The multi-leveled set seemed candlelit, thanks to a chandelier with flickering candles (really electric, but you couldn’t tell). The center stage lift was used to great advantage. The set itself offered audience members a captivating choice, whether to sit in the audience (where this reviewer sat), in the “pit” (people sitting on benches were close enough to put their drinks onstage during intermission), or on the stage, just behind the actors in tiered seating. It was kinda the Globe back in the day (with the quality in the boxes and the peasants below), and kinda not.

The production alternates male and female actors playing Hamlet, which isn’t much of a stretch considering that in Shakespeare’s time males played all the roles. I regret that I only had time to see one of the Hamlets.

Bottom Line: A truly fascinating new look at a classic that paid tribute to tradition (the set, the costumes) and to innovation (thanks to very fine acting that made familiar lines sound fresh). Shakespeare isn’t dead. There’s a reason his works still grace our stages and haunt our imaginations: He’s just that good.

Photo credit: TRG Reality

A Great Wilderness @ The Beck Center, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Photo by Andy Dudik

Daniel ( Christian John Thomas) and Walt (Tim Tavcar)

Can two weeks at a mountain cabin and an understanding adult “turn” a gay teen straight? That’s not the only question the ambitious A Great Wilderness poses at this latest Beck Center’s production. Author Samuel D. Hunter has provided director Scott Spence and the six-member cast a play that toys with the “what ifs” of life, but provides no pat answers.

All action takes place in the cozy cabin great room created by scenic designer Aaron Benson (with a hand from carpenters Gabriel Jimenez and Ryan Gajdos). There’s a wooden table and chair set, a comfy sofa covered in warm plaids, several round braided rugs, a kitchen, and a window with a terrific view of evergreens outside. There are even timbered ceiling beams.

It’s a retreat center created to convert Christian gay teens to the hetero-normative model for sexual expression espoused by their (or their parents’) religious beliefs. Mom and Dad pay to send the boys away for two weeks. They believe being gay can be cured by therapy. Walt’s “cure with kindness” retreat was set up some thirty years ago by Walt, Abby, and Tim. When the play opens, Walt (Tim Tavcar, the model of a friendly, avuncular fellow) is the only one left still working there. He’s busy packing up in anticipation of his retirement.

When a young boy appears at the door, we learn that Walt has accepted one last client: Daniel (Christian John Thomas, a talented fifteen-year-old actor who very persuasively reveals his character’s awkwardness and discomfort). Daniel’s there under protest, as he soon makes clear, but he’s a polite young man and Walt is able to convince him his stay won’t be a harsh “brainwashing.” Relieved, Daniel goes outside to take a short hike. Hours later, he still has not returned and it’s assumed that he’s lost in the Idaho wilderness.

Although the pace is slow and the action predictable in the first act (setting up how nice both Walt and Daniel are), the second act immediately time-jumps and leads us to doubt our previous assumptions. It’s a clever technique and brings in an element of mystery and, perhaps, crime. Abby (Lenne Snively as the bossy ex-wife of Walt) and her current husband, Tim (a helpful Brian Byers), Eunice (Heidi Harris plays Christopher’s semi-hysterical mother), and Janet (Kelly Strand, the business-like Park Ranger) join Walt in the cabin while everyone worries about what happened to Daniel.

Alternate pairs of conversations gradually reveal an array of personal traumas and insecurities. Questions include: Why didn’t Walt retire before now (he seems semi-incompetent, mostly because he keeps forgetting things). Why is it called a “Christian” camp? Why do the characters feel passionately that gay teens should conform to the traditional social models espoused by some churches? Did Walt’s love of young boys make Abby feel neglected in their marriage? Has Walt compensated for and subsumed his own homosexual desires so that he can stay Christian and still remain engaged with young gays as a friend? (Maybe.)

Bottom Line:  A Great Wilderness holds a mirror up to difficulties encountered when society tries to contain and regulate sexual attraction. In this play, the real wilderness seems lodged in the heart, mind, and motivation of Walt. Like the speaker in the famous poem that follows, he’s a man who has enjoyed his own version of Paradise:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

[Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald translation from the Persian]

The Great Wilderness continues through April 9, 2017 at the Beck Center in Lakewood.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time @ Playhouse Square, March 3--April 9, 2017

Review by Laura Kennelly

Gross: As we enter the Connor Palace theatre and look to the stage what greets our eyes? A dead dog impaled on a pitchfork. And that dog and its discovery triggers all subsequent action in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, turned into a play by Simon Stephens, is based on an excellent and engrossing novel of the same name by Mark Haddon. (I recommend the novel without reservation. It’s a fine hypothetical exploration of what it might be like to see the world through the eyes of a boy with autism.)

Director Marianne Elliott’s recreation of the world of Christopher Boone, our 15-year-old hero with an autism-related disorder, relies effectively on powerful scenic design and quietly expressive costumes (both created by Bunny Christie), stage-framing and defining lighting (by Paule Constable), and dramatic sound effects (by Ian Dickinson). [There’s a strobe light warning.] While not a typical Playhouse Square Broadway Series musical, in fact, not a musical at all, “Curious” delights in sound, light, and special effects (including a model train set, track lighting all over the sides, top, and bottom of the stage, live animals, post-curtain surprises, and near-sonic booms). There’s no attempt made to construct a realistic set, but rather to create one that reflects the world Christopher sees. It’s confusingly full of unexpected doors and storage cubicles. (The minimal furnishings are carried onstage by the actors as needed.)

Adam Langdon’s Christopher seems to represent a perfect innocent, but he’s also a strangely aggressive one who feels empowered when he believes his truth is “true” truth. He states matter of factly that he never lies (unlike everyone else he knows, as we come to see) and his tender heart is touched when he discovers the body of his neighbor’s dog. When the play opens, we see him kneeling beside its body; he’s sad, yet growing in determination to find out who could have done such a thing. Langdon adeptly portrays the lad’s righteous passion while also showing that the teen’s  growing physical powers, coupled with his ignorance concerning unspoken social contracts (be polite, don’t hit people) can make him hard to live with.

He lives with his father, Ed (Gene Gillette). Gillette’s tough-guy-with-a-heart portrayal of a single father who has tried to shelter his son from some unpleasant truths makes him an appealing character. Christopher’s teacher/therapist Siobhan (a nurturing Maria Elena Ramirez) offers the lad understanding and helps him deal with everyday realities. Of course Siobhan makes Christopher’s family look inept in comparison, but then, she has the freedom to refuse to live with him (as she does when he asks to come home with her). Unlike those responsible for his care, she gets a break at the end of the day.

As Christopher’s investigation continues he runs into other delightful characters, especially Charlotte Maier’s ultimately hilarious Mrs. Gascoyne, a woman who always says what you think she will.

The talented and versatile ensemble cast rotates around Christopher’s adventures. They switch persuasively, if dizzyingly, through roles as the quirky people our hero runs into as the story continues. The ensemble’s choreographed movements serve, at times, to help Christopher violate ordinary rules of gravity as well as create key elements in his eventual trip to London.

Ensemble members include the previously mentioned Maier, Ramirez, and Gillette, as well as Brian Robert Burns, John Hemphill, Geoffrey Wade, Francesca Choy-Kee, Amelia White, Felicity Jones Latta, Robyn Kerr, and J. Paul Nicholas. Dance and Fight Captain, Tim Wright should also be singled out for directing some necessary roughness.

Although I was lucky enough to see the play several years ago in London (where it was first produced), the changes made in the New York production have, while not changing the central impression, smoothed out and clarified elements important to the story lines. Still, while the relentless struggle of being a person with autism and living with a person with autism is sketched out dramatically, things seem a little too cute at times. It’s asking too much to really even begin to share the experience, which is likely why I highly recommend Haddon’s more immersive novel.

Bottom Line: A well-acted, splendidly assembled production that conveys a little of what it must be like to lack the ability to sort out and shut out all that daily living that dances before our eyes and ears.

Gene Gillette as Ed and Adam Langdon as Christopher Boone in the touring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Photo: Joan Marcus

For tickets or more information about this Playhouse Square production to to playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

How I Learned to Drive @ The Cleveland Play House, March 4-26

Photo:

From left to right: Michael Brusasco (Peck), Madeleine Lambert (Li'l Bit), Karis Danish (Female Greek Chorus), Nick LaMedica (Male Greek Chorus), and Remy Zaken (Teenage Greek Chorus). Photo Credit: Roger Mastroianni.

It’s a great ride through risky territory. Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive looks honestly at family, sexual desire, puberty, pedophilia, and yet--magically--avoids being a mere lecture about the evils thereof. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play at the Allen Theatre, directed by Laura Kepley, runs through March 26 at the Cleveland Play House at Playhouse Square.

Under director Kepley’s sensitive guidance the five-person cast persuasively portrays people who (in their own minds) are all “doing the right thing.” The origins and consequences of their actions shown in back and forward time-jump sequence tell a nuanced and exquisitely-plotted story about what is often dismissed out-of-hand as merely a “dysfunctional” family.

As Vogel points out, it’s not quite that simple. The rural family is indeed dysfunctional, but it’s messed up in its own unique way. The story (set in the 1960s) begins with main character Li’l Bit (a very engaging Madeleine Lambert) sitting on a long winding road that, thanks to the clever set design by Collette Pollard, stretches upward to infinity (also known as the top of the stage). She begins to fill us in about how she learned to drive, thanks to instructions by her Uncle Peck (a handsome, conflicted Michael Brusasco). It becomes clear that she learned about a lot more than driving as she spends time with the only one in her family who doesn’t make fun of her body (though he appreciates her beauty and her Herbal Essence shampoo) or try to keep her trapped in her small town.

Li’l Bit’s name, like the others, holds an important meaning for the story. Her family, yearning for a girl baby, checked out her diapered self to happily discover she had only “little bits.” Her Uncle Peck’s name, of course, implies “pecker,” but that’s not explained. (We get to figure that one out for ourselves.) Other family members and friends are brilliantly (and often hilariously) sketched out by members of the Greek Chorus (Karis Danish, Nick LaMedica, and Remy Zaken).

Vogel’s play is neither a simple well-meant diatribe against sexual abuse nor a damning of adults who abuse children. It is, of course, against harming children and sexual abuse, but it also recognizes that in Li’l Bit’s case at least she’s not immune to sensing the power she has over her besotted uncle even though she’s not always sure what to do with it. Peck, a basically kindly man, is also a damaged person--his wife mentions wartime trauma when he was in the service--a factor which does not excuse his actions or compulsions, but makes him human. The interplay between the two leaves neither one unaffected, but the victory is clearly Li’l Bit’s.

Played without intermission, How I Learned to Drive gives plenty of grist for after-play conversation.

Bottom Line: Maybe someday being able to drive will be less important than it was in the 1960s, but for Vogel’s fascinating and highly recommended drama they provide a perfect metaphor for escaping boundaries.