Mean Girls

Mean Girls @ Playhouse Square, December 3-Dec. 22
Review by Laura Kennelly



Mean Girls combines song and dance to tell a semi-comic story about teens finding their “place” in high school. Based on the 2004 film (also Mean Girls), it features a book by Tina Fey, music by Jeff Richmond; and lyrics by Nell Benjamin. It’s directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw

This is the show’s first national tour since its 2018 on Broadway opening. (It is still running).

Adjusting to high school is rarely easy, even for those who are introduced gradually from first grade on into the public-school system. For our main character, Cady Heron (a likeable Danielle Wade), it’s especially hard since she was home-schooled in Kenya. For some reason, her parents decided going to high school in Chicago would be good for her, so they moved to the United States. (It’s not a persuasive plot device, but who am I to question Tina Fey? It works, kinda.)

This awkward setup gives Mean Girls an excuse to draw comic parallels between the natural world of Africa that Cady knows well and the savage natural world of the Chicago high school that she knows nothing about.

Cady’s “kindly native guides” Janis Sarkisian (Mary Kate Morrissey) and Damian Hubbard (Eric Huffman), both social outcasts, provide her with the lay of the land. They point out various groups, jocks, nerds, and so on. Cady soon wins the approval of the ruling females, dubbed “The Plastics.”

The trio is led by Regina George (Mariah Rose Faith), who smiles a lot, but judges everyone; Gretchen Wieners (Megan Masako Haley), Regina's top follower, and Karen Smith (Jonalyn Saxer). Saxer’s Karen is delightfully dumb and has some of the best lines. When told Cady is from Africa, she asks, “If you’re from Africa, why are you white?!” (Karen’s the girl who says what everybody might be thinking, but no one says.)

It’s not Carrie or Heathers (no one ends up dead, although someone does get hit by a bus), but it is definitely one of those “high school is hell for girls” musicals that teaches a lesson about how to treat others (which is, “as you would like to be treated,” of course).

On the good side, the large cast skillfully executes the dance routines.

One of the most striking elements in Mean Girls was not the music (routine pop, nothing special), but the video design by Finn Ross and Adam Young. Projections on the set behind the actors made the show fresh, reminding us where we were (Africa, the high school, their homes, and so on), and letting us “see” the cruel comments written over students’ pictures that cause big trouble.

Bottom Line: There are funny moments, the cast is good, but the story has, overall, been done over and over. Yes, we know growing up is hard, but get over it. (I feel like a mean girl now, but there’s something about this show that brings out the snark.)

Kinky Boots at Baldwin Wallace

THEATER REVIEW: “Kinky Boots” @ Baldwin Wallace by Laura Kennelly

[Photo of Nick Drake as Lola by Roger Mastroianni] 

Through Sun 11/24

A perfect fit? Yes, indeed, Kinky Boots at Baldwin Wallace University shows how much joy (and maybe enlightenment) a musical can bring.

This youthful and vigorous (and sold out) collegiate premiere, directed by Victoria Bussert, with Gregory Daniels as choreographer and Matthew Webb as music director, is true to the original Broadway hit, written by Harvey Fierstein with music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. It’s a pop musical with a real heart.

Set in Great Britain, Kinky Boots is partly about saving a family factory in an increasingly competitive market. It’s not that the shoes are poorly made, it’s that they are too well-made and competition from overseas factories (not in the USA) has driven down the price and cheapened the product.

And it’s also about (and the main idea driving the action) learning to accept people for who they are. (Don’t try to “fix” people.)

The four leading roles were double-cast. I saw the opening night for both. The youthful leads brought a fresh energy to the show that the two national tour versions at Playhouse Square lacked. Cast members for both shows made each incarnation of their characters unique, even though they used the same words and sang the same original songs from the Broadway version. (I know, that’s called acting, but the vibe was refreshing.)

Both Charlie H. Ray and Andrew Faria as the hapless Charlie Price were likeable and earnest. When Charlie suddenly inherits the factory he must either dispose of or save, he learns how to run the family business (a chore he’d been avoiding). He also meets factory worker Lauren (played by Kailey Boyle and Sydney Howard).  Both Laurens were quietly desperate, perky, and funny in their attempts not to fall for Charlie. They do perfect justice to one of the best numbers in the show, Lauren’s comic anthem, “The History of Wrong Guys.”

As Nicola, Charlie’s bossy fiancée who pushes him to sell the building for a condominium development, Nadina Hassan and Caroline Didelot reveal both Nicola’s glamour and her icy, self-interested heart.

Things look bad for the Price Shoe Factory until Charlie accidentally runs into Lola, a person he thinks needs rescuing. But what he has really come across is his own rescue. When drag queen Lola’s heel breaks, an inspired Charlie realizes that cross-dressing men who dance in high heels need strongly built shoes in big sizes. Boom! A niche market!

Nick Drake’s Lola rocked the Lauper pop tunes and then stunned us with a velvety, luxurious, “Hold Me in Your Heart.” Also comfortable with the outgoing personality of Diva Lola, Gordia Hayes showed great comic timing, especially  in the big fight scene (“In This Corner”) with Ethan Rogers’ “tough” factory worker Don. Both nights Lola’s team of six dancing “Angels” (Lee Price, Mateus Cardoso, Nick Cortazzo, Kyle Elliott, Nic Hermick and Charles Miller) showed plenty of flair as they moved gracefully in fancy gowns and high heels.

One highlight (among many) in the show came when Roger’s Don (brawny and a bit dense), Pat (an appealing Eden Mau), Lola and others in the ensemble have fine fun with Don’s idea of “What a Woman Wants.”

Education of another kind came when cute Little Charlie Price (Colin Willett) and precious Young Lola (Isaiah Young) were shown getting very different “lessons” from their fathers. Charlie’s dad (Ben Senneff) and Lola’s dad (Anthony Harris, Jr.) loved their boys, but couldn’t understand their life choices (as is often the case with parents and children).

Overall, wow! Choreographer Daniels and the cast presented stunningly executed dance numbers, some featuring over two dozen performers, others with smaller ensembles. The set designed by Jordan Janota and the costumes by Charlotte Yetman brought real Broadway flair to the show.

Bottom Line: An outstanding delight that matches Broadway productions. Latest word is that Kinky Boots tickets are sold out, but it would be worth checking.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]

Looking Back at Elyria: A Midwest City at Midcentury

Looking Back at Elyria: A Midwest City at Midcentury by Marci Rich

Book Review by Laura Kennelly

The book’s twelve essays, all with fine photos from “back in the day,” describe everyday life in Lorain County—more specifically, in Elyria, Ohio—from her childhood in the 1950s through the 1960s. As Rich writes, “One benefit of nostalgia, or of remembering, is that there is something to be gained by looking back, and perhaps that something is finding a new way forward.” These essays were inspired by a request from the Chronicle-Telegram to celebrate the city’s bicentennial.

Quirky facts abound, such as how Heman (yes, that’s how he spelled it) Ely decided to name the new town in 1817 by combining his name with that of the Illyrian provinces in Europe. Rich likes to think he also summoned up Shakespeare’s Illyria, the magic kingdom in Twelfth Night.

We think the world of iPhones (thanks, Facebook and Twitter, etc.) is complicated, but even in the telephone switchboard days, as Rich’s book reveals, phone life was complex. She recounts an interview with the niece of a local telephone operator. (Oh, wait, that’s probably news to us now too—phone calls had to be personally placed by operators sitting at the telephone company that you had to talk to.) The niece shared typed protocol instructions issued to switchboard employees during World War II. Fun fact: Priority calls—from the President on down—could break into any other calls.

By Rich’s time, party lines were taken for granted. Several families might share a line, and rules about not listening in to others’ conversations were printed. (Of course, not everyone followed those rules and one could hear many interesting things that were “none of your business.” Rich probably didn’t do that. I did.) If you ever need a way not to pay at a pay phone (sadly phone booths are largely extinct today), Rich shares a method her young girlfriend used. (See page 93—I’ll never tell.)

Overall, this collection of stories is like something one might hear at a family reunion—especially ones describing the stores in town, their owners, shopping in them. Others reflect on history and are touching in their brutal truth, such as the loss of  twenty-year-old “Bubby” (Norman Jones, Jr.) who had just applied for a job at the Ford plant, but got drafted instead. He served in Vietnam only four months before he was killed. What, Rich asks, might have happened if he’d not been drafted, been alive, when the news came (which it did) that he’d gotten the job? We all lost, she argues convincingly.

Rich remembers seeing presidential nominee John F. Kennedy in “When JFK Came through Town.” Her father put her on his shoulders so she could see him on that September 1960 day. Later, she recalls, she remembers her mother crying at the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Others in Elyria, whose names she chronicles, had closer association with the President and were also devastated by his death.

Bottom Line: This is a well-written memory-rich book, not only for Elyria and Lorain County residents, but also for anyone who grew up in middle America (hand raised here, though far from Ohio). It celebrates a commonality of experience to be treasured and remembered.

The Band's Visit: National Tour at Cleveland's Playhouse Square

THEATER REVIEW: “The Band’s Visit” @ Playhouse Square by Laura Kennelly

Through Sun 11/24

Once upon a time in Israel, the Egyptian Ceremonial Police Orchestra musicians took the wrong bus. Is this true? Who cares? An intriguing “What happened next” forms the heart of The Band’s Visit now at Playhouse Square’s Connor Palace. This Broadway Series show directed by David Cromer, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and book by Itamar Moses, won the Tony Awards’ Best Musical (not to mention nine other awards in other categories).

 It deserves it.

Eight band members, led by Tewfiq (Sasson Gabay), have a gig in urban Petah Tikvah, but language difficulties cause them to go to the wrong city and so they are stranded overnight in Bet Hatikvah, a sleepy desert village. In the opening song, everyone in Bet Hatikvah sings, “Waiting,” which is what they are doing: Waiting for something, anything to happen. (If you’ve ever driven through small towns in West Texas, New Mexico or Arizona, you know what they mean.)

When local café owner Dina (Chilina Kennedy) sees that the band needs help, she finds them places to spend the night — some with her, some with friends. Like Come From Away, the story shows strangers finding welcome.

The cast makes everything believable. Gabay’s Tewfik vacillates appealingly between confidence and awkwardness as he and Dina become friends.

Kennedy’s charming, mesmerizing stage presence is such that when she looks out into the audience to talk or sing, it’s easy to feel she sees you, cares about you and wants to charm you. She does, especially with “It Is What It Is” and (in delightful tribute to romance) “Omar Sharif.”

We see two workers in Dina’s café — the awkward Papi (Adam Gabay) and Itzik (Pomme Koch) — discover that the strangers give their lives new (and welcome) perspective. Gabay’s young character learns to court a girl and Koch’s learns to negotiate his marriage and extended family.

For the show’s first 60 minutes, recent Baldwin Wallace graduate Mike Cefalo seems to be merely furniture. He’s the poor “Telephone Guy” who stands throughout the show next to the town’s only telephone. His girlfriend in the United States promised to call. He waits and waits. Then, in one of the show’s joyous closing moments, he sings the moving “Answer Me,” and it becomes an anthem for everyone.

There’s more, of course, lots more. Some includes going out at night to party (and roller skate), some involves drinking and looking at the stars, and some brings heart-to-heart sharing and honestly. The result? People discover commonality and the bus comes in the next morning. Nothing changes and everything changes.

Other ensemble cast members include Jennifer Apple as Anna, Marc Ginsburg as Sammy, Kendal Hartse as Iris, Joe Joseph as Haled, Sara Kapner as Julia, Ronnie Malley as Camal, James Rana as Simon, Or Schraiber as Zelger, and David Studwell as Avrum.

The production’s choreography by Patrick McCollum and set design by Scott Pask create an outstanding use of the rotating center stage. It’s a house, a café, a bar, a skating rink, a bus stop. Whatever is needed suddenly appears.

And how about the music? Some members of the Egyptian Police Band seem to play their instruments, others convincingly fake it. The appealing original Tony-winning score sounds authentically Middle Eastern.  Conductor/keyboard player Rick Bertone leads the “real band” (Tony Bird, George Crotty, Evan Francis, Roger Kashou and Ronnie Malley) from a veiled, raised platform above the stage.

BOTTOM LINE: Tonic for the mind and soul. Watching it is like watching a tale from the Thousand and One Nights come to life. Moonlight, romance, music, and longing combine to weave a subtle musical magic in only 90 minutes.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]

Pipeline at the Cleveland Play House

THEATER REVIEW: “Pipeline” @ Cleveland Play House by Laura Kennelly

Photos by Roger Mastroianni

Through Sun 11/3

Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline, now at the Cleveland Play House’s Outcalt Theatre, looks at today’s world and doesn’t like what it sees. Director Steve H. Broadnax III and an outstanding cast show a quick-changing social scene propelled by a clash between ideals and the fragile humans who must live up to them.

The strong-willed Nya (Suzette Azariah Gunn) teaches in the inner city. It’s a dangerous place to work, one where students attack each other and their teachers. Early on we see just how dangerous when we meet Nya’s fellow teacher, the fragile and dedicated Laurie (Rachel Harker). Laurie has just returned to teaching after being seriously injured during an outbreak of in-school violence.

Her friend Nya feels she’s needed in the school, but refuses to send her son Omari (a conflicted Kadeem Ali Harris) there and insists he go to an exclusive upstate boarding school. It’s a place foreign to him. He resents that others there assume things about him just because he’s African-American. Despite the consideration and kindness shown to him by fellow student, Jasmine (a winning Jade Radford), he’s depressed and very angry.

Now, add to that mix the men in Nya’s life. She and Omari’s father Xavier (a commandingly distinguished and very angry Bjorn DuPaty) live apart. We see her spurn fellow worker Dun (Eric Robinson) so it seems that whatever might have happened between them that made Xavier jealous is in the past.

When Omari pushes a teacher  in boarding school, Nya feels overwhelmed with fear (and guilt). She worries that her son is doomed, like so many others his age, to move into the “pipeline” that funnels young black men into reform school and then serious crime and then prison.

It’s a strangely paced production, with monologues and dramatic exchanges (sometimes with long pauses) on the set interspersed with videos of chaos in school hallway shown on a large screen behind the stage. Often, what should be intimate — the talk between loved ones — moves too quickly from one trauma to another. The stage’s rising center platform doesn’t always retract fast enough, so we have, for example,  a bed in the middle of the stage slowly sinking while a new scene set elsewhere begins.

BOTTOM LINE: Despite a good effort by the talented Cleveland Play House team, it’s not enough to smooth over distracting dramatic elements inherent in the play itself. Pipeline tries to cover too many important social topics — public and private education, divorce, single parents, social reform — all at once. It takes a village to make a mess? I don’t think that’s what the playwright had in mind, but that seems to be what she shows us. Morisseau, a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant awardee for 2018, offers 90 minutes of pain about marriage, schools, responsibility and assumptions.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]

THEATER REVIEW: “The Member of the Wedding” @ Beck Center by Laura Kennelly

Through Sun 11/3

Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, now at the Beck Center, builds slowly, scene by scene, to give a true and tender glimpse of lives intersecting in a small southern town. Director Eric Schmiedl and an excellent cast make everything they do to bring us into their world seem simple and easy (it is not) as we slip into August 1945 and a welcome post-war era.

The set, designed by Walter Boswell, boasts an ice box refrigerator, a basic kitchen sink, and a stove (with oven) as well as a kitchen table — all suitable to the era. It’s the space where pre-teen Frances (Frankie) Addams (Ellie Ritterbusch) finds food and comfort. And yes, there’s a screened-in porch just off to the side, a necessity of life where the summers are long, hot and mosquito-filled.

Almost everyone ends up in that kitchen because that’s where Bernice Sadie Brown (Lisa Louise Langford), dispenses love and support. As the Southern family’s African-American housekeeper, Langford seems completely at ease, just the way Bernice herself would have been. Langford, recently seen in the Beck’s King Lear as Regan, Lear’s fire-breathing dragon daughter, plays an entirely different sort of woman, a woman whose wisdom, love and charity offers a refuge. It’s a challenge to show goodness, but Langford’s Bernice does so in an impressive performance.

As Frankie, the growing-up livewire little tomboy who hasn’t yet reconciled herself to being a girl, Ritterbusch is captivating. She makes us see the chatterbox who shares every thought that comes into her mind, the energetic and (yes) bossy preteen, and the little girl who misses the mother who died giving birth to her.

As John Henry West, Frankie’s one real friend, the six-year-old cousin she tells what to do, Chase Oberhaus is absolutely convincing. He’s the sort of likeable little kid that you don’t know how much you will miss until he’s gone.

Other cast members include David Dolansky, Baird Bracken, Fred Gloor, Peter Lawson Jones, Corin B. Self, Audrey McNulty, Audrey Morrison and Madelyn Voltz.

BOTTOM LINE: The Beck Center’s The Member of the Wedding presents a nuanced and finely-acted portrait of the struggles and joys of growing up. Maybe you don’t need a reminder of that time in your life, but maybe you do. If you let it, this tender show will win your heart.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]

THEATER REVIEW: “Julius Caesar” @ Great Lakes Theater by Laura Kennelly

Photos by Roger Mastroianni

Through Sun 11/3

Sarah Bruner, director of Julius Caesar now at Great Lakes Theater, brings grim reality (and a bit of modernity) to Shakespeare’s classic tale about politics, changing rulers, and trusting sycophants.

Nothing good happens to Caesar.

The cuts were well-done (Shakespeare always must be cut unless it’s a mini-series), but the pace was so brisk that if one didn’t know the plot (but likely most do), one might wonder why the killers of Caesar turned on each other so quickly.

The night I was there, Shelby Griswold stepped in at the last minute as Caesar because regular player Carole Healey was unable to perform the role. Griswold’s Caesar proved as regal as they come and seemed quite comfortable as Rome’s possible dictator-in-waiting. When Caesar ignored the  soothsayer (an eerie and creepy Jodi Dominick), as we knew he would, it was clear that pride blinded him.

The simple set by Russell Metheny employed scaffolding with a shaded second story where shadows and characters drifted past cutout windows. It was a practical solution that allowed us to imagine Rome’s close columns and public areas. Leah Piehl’s costumes seemed dark, as if togas were uniformly grubby. (Who knows? Maybe they were.) One iffy costume touch was the red ribbons that were pulled out as characters were stabbed. They were supposed to represent blood, but at times they turned bizarrely comic.

One unexpected highlight turned out to be when Caesar’s false friend Brutus (played as indecisive, yet forceful by Lynn Robert Berg) and his partner-in-crime Cassius (shown as facile and properly conniving by Laura Welsh Berg) disagreed about the need for murder and later how to cope with the fallout of the assassination. They seemed to echo mannerisms married couples (as the Bergs are) might recognize when Brutus and Cassius argued and when they agreed. It’s quite possible that close political allies might indeed have such a co-dependent relationship and the Bergs made that point.

As Mark Anthony, an engaging Nick Steen, barely disguised his character’s duplicitous nature. It’s amazing that Brutus and the others trusted him to speak at Caesar’s funeral. As Brutus’ wife Portia Jillian Kates shines, but briefly, since no one heeds her warnings.

The mob scenes provided a terrific demonstration of how easily crowds may be swayed by a good “spin.” Anyone who knows about social media knows how that works, but it was darkly amusing to see characters dashing about the stage as they turned quickly from one emotion to its opposite.

OK. Now to the elephant in the room. Gender-blind casting is not surprising anymore (is it?), and the actors in this Great Lakes production carried it off beautifully. What did seem patronizing and unnecessary was changing Shakespeare’s pronouns to fit the gender of the actor playing the character. At times it threw the rhythm of the speeches off. And it was inconsistent too — how could there be worry that Caesar wanted to be “King” as they said? Why wasn’t that changed to “Queen?” Let Shakespeare be Shakespeare and damn the consequences.

BOTTOM LINE: A well-acted timely and tidy summing up by an excellent Great Lakes cast of one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies.

[Written by Laura Kennelly]