Author: phillipzapkin

Back to the Future: The Musical—27 June 2024

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Back to the Future: The Musical Show Poster

I’m not really a musicals person, especially in the West End/Broadway style of musical, so Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future: The Musical (with music and lyrics by Allan Silvestri and Glen Ballard) is not normally the kind of show I would seek out. I bought tickets because the movie version is amazing, and I was hoping that John Rando’s production at London’s Adelphi Theatre would turn the camp up to 11. I was hoping tents and an archery range would need to be set up on stage because of how camp it was.

Unfortunately (for me), that’s not really what happened.

By and large, the show (which we only ended up staying for the first half of) was fine. It followed the plot of the original 1985 film relatively closely, while adding in a set of musical numbers. Essentially, the show takes itself relatively seriously as an example of musical theatre, which simply wasn’t what I was hoping for. Yes, musical theatre is always camp to a certain extent, just by nature of the genre. But they didn’t play into that—with the exception of Cory English, who played Doc Brown. English was the only person I genuinely enjoyed watching, and whom I felt was having tremendous fun with the role. His responses, his vaguely suggestive song lyrics and dance moves, and the physical excessiveness of his reactions made English far and away the most exciting performer of the show. For instance, when Marty (Ben Joyce) tells Doc that they need to generate 1.21 gigawatts, English flings himself all over the stage in consternation, muttering about how impossible it is, and even ending up throttling a scarecrow that Marty had used to “camouflage” the DeLorean, asking the scarecrow if it heard what Marty said. English, more than any other performer, had his camping gear for this show.

An advertising poster

As far as Joyce goes, I wasn’t incredibly impressed. On one level, the standards may have been set unfairly because Michael J. Fox played such an iconic Marty McFly in the film, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever live up to that. And some of my disappointment with Marty was not Joyce’s fault, so much as the material he was given to work with. Certainly, in the film, Marty is occasionally saddened when people tell him that he’s never going to succeed at anything. But giving that part of Marty’s character several major musical numbers early on really makes that central to the character—instead of the cool, rebellious, Ferris Bueller-type person of the movie, we get a relatively depressed, hopeless sad sack for much of the musical.

Lorraine’s creepy line to her future son, used on an advertising poster

The other big issue with the addition of the music was that the 1955 versions of Marty’s parents were ten times creepier. George (Oliver Nicholas) gets a solo number during the bit where George is watching a girl through her window. This is not an ideal moment to really give that character the spotlight, if we want the audience to have any sympathy for him. Apart from this incredibly uncomfortable choice, I thought Nicholas was a very funny performer, who really went for it with George’s nerdy lack of confidence. Another issue where the musical numbers made the show more uncomfortable was with Lorraine Baines’ (Sarah Goggin) scenes where she’s aggressively pursuing Marty romantically. It’s temporal-flux incest-iness, which is always awkward, but having several songs in which she sings about her desire to have sex with the guy we know to be her future son just ramped up the creep factor exponentially.

My video review of Back to the Future: The Musical

Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap—20 June 2024

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Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap

To get the standard info out of the way first, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is famous for having the world’s longest single production run, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1952 and playing uninterrupted (despite a move next door to its current location at St. Martin’s Theatre in 1974—though they never missed a performance, so the initial run wasn’t actually interrupted) apart from a brief hiatus due to Covid. That incredible performance run alone makes Christie’s play one of the most significant pieces of theatre in the world. But apart from that, it’s a genuinely enjoyable play in itself. The current director is Philip Franks.

Christie’s The Mousetrap is a murder-mystery set in a smallish guest house slightly outside London in 1952. The Ralstons, Mollie and Giles, have just opened the guest house, and they’re joined by a range of guests, including the eccentric and flighty Christopher Wren, the domineering and severe Mrs. Boyle, the helpful Major Metcalf, the androgynous Miss Casewell, and—the unexpected guest—the suspicious foreigner Mr. Paravicini. When Mollie receives a phone call from the police telling them a Detective Sergeant Trotter is on the way, the Ralstons are confused about what they’ve done. However, Trotter—who arrives on skis because the house has been cut off by a blizzard—informs them that it’s “more a matter of police protection.” Someone in the house is going to be murdered. Trotter tries to gather clues, but the occupants of the house are generally reluctant to actually give him the information he needs. And then one of them dies. The second half is devoted to Trotter trying to solve the murder and prevent another one, and the plot thickens…

I was actually somewhat concerned going into this performance because I directed a production of The Mousetrap for Sock & Buskin, my community theatre, and my actors and crew did an amazing job. On the one hand, I was worried that my view of this world-famous professional production would be colored by my affinity for how we had put on Christie’s play, and that I would be overly critical of this performance merely because of how invested I was in ours. At the same time, I worried that I would have seen the play so many times in rehearsals and in our performance that I wouldn’t really be able to enjoy this one.

Thankfully, I was wrong on both counts.

Mostly.

I did genuinely enjoy this performance, and for the most part I thought the acting and production choices did really work for me. Though I know the script well enough that I could identify places where the cast/production dropped or added material, and there were a few tricky scenes that I compared unfavorably with our production.

One thing that struck me was that the cast or the production actually changed some of the words, and I’d be very interested to know whether those changes were ad libbed by the actors or whether the production has specifically chosen to add or remove them. Some it makes sense to change. For instance, when Mollie (Lucy Doyle) is speculating that the killer could have been a prisoner of war, in the script she says, “a prisoner of the Japs perhaps,” but this performance dropped that. Now, in 1952, it’s unlikely that many British people would have batted an eye at that, but today is would likely raise some eyebrows. It is not necessarily a slur, but it’s also not that far off one—and in our S&B performance we did discuss cutting that word, but ultimately our licensing agreement prevented us choosing to cut language. However, I could see why a production would, on an institutional level, choose to forego a word that hasn’t aged well. On the other hand, there were instances where alterations did not seem purposeful necessarily. Like Paravicini’s (Lorenzo Martelli) line “You English are a funny people.” I don’t know that it added anything meaningful that wasn’t already clear about Paravicini’s character—though it did get a laugh. From a theatre production perspective, I wonder whether these are standard changes or whether there is some degree of ad libbing allowed for the actors, since after all they are playing the same role night after night, and that can get quite boring I imagine.

My other concern had been about preferring our production choices to those of the St. Martin’s performance. There were a few instances where this was the case, but for the most part it was different without being better or worse. One place I really did think we surpassed the professionals was when Casewell (Elyssia Roe) has a brief breakdown while being questioned by Trotter (Sam Stafford). In our production we had a really hard time navigating what was going on in this scene and why, because it’s such an odd departure from the rest of Casewell’s behavior, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere. For my money, Haley Libran, who acted the role in our S&B production, pulled off that breakdown in a way that felt more natural and purposeful.

My video review of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap

Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution—12 June 2024

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Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution

Agatha Christie is, as many people know, one of the most popular and beloved British authors. Theatrically, her most famous piece is The Mousetrap (review forthcoming after I see it next week), but an ongoing production, begun in 2017, is her play Witness for the Prosecution, running at London County Hall, and directed by Lucy Bailey. The play revolves largely around a courtroom drama testing the innocence or guilt of Albert Vole—and the physical space of the County Hall ideally suits the performance.

Witness for the Prosecution follows the trial of the young and attractive Albert Vole, who is accused of murdering Emily French—a wealthy woman in her mid-late fifties whom he had befriended. Shortly after French changes her will to leave the bulk of her fortune to Vole, she is brutally murdered. The questions becomes whether Vole killed her for the money, whether he is the victim of unfortunate circumstances, or whether there’s some more sinister conspiracy swirling around. Vole manages to charm many of the people in the play, including Mr. Myers, who takes his defense case and passionately argues for his innocence. Myers does contend with the prosecutorial barrister, Sir Wilfred Robart, but perhaps more so with Vole’s wife, Romaine (who isn’t precisely his wife, because she was—supposedly, at least—already married when she “married” Vole to get out of Berlin and to England), who gives quite different testimony on the stand than she had told the police and Myers before. The jury—a dozen audience members—have to ultimately decide the question of Vole’s guilt or non-guilt.

View from the gallery to the stage space of Witness for the Prosecution

The space of the County Hall—no longer the seat of London county government—is one of the best potential spaces in which this play could be performed because the physical set up of the space resembles a court room. Where I sat in the gallery gave an excellent view of the entire performance space from above (see the picture), which repurposes the seats where the heads of the London county government (I don’t know their proper titles) had once sat as the seat for the judges, and repurposes the seats for the county officials as seats for the audience. With a purpose built stage in the middle of the space, there is a tight, formal fit of the stage within this space created originally for official business. On the stage itself, the wooden platform has some degree of malleability, as it becomes Myers’ office, the court room floor, and even the execution space for the opening scene playing out Vole being hanged. But the reason the space works well is precisely that it is a repurposed official space, a space that is imbued through its history and form with the appearance of authority, an appearance lent to the theatrical set up of the play.

The performances in the play were excellent, and the rollercoaster of contradictions and changes in how the various characters behaved was consistently effective at bringing the audience along for the ride. George Jones’ performance as Leonard Vole, for instance, perfectly brought us along with the idea of his innocence, his almost gullible naivety. Of course, Myers (played by Gyuri Sarossy) and his associate Mr. Mayhew (Ewen Cummings) both discuss how charmingly innocent Vole seems to be, but Jones’ performance struck perfect accents of the simplistic cockney who continually blunders into saying potentially incriminating things because he’s so naïve he lacks the criminal cunning to lie. Vole’s most direct counterpoint is his “wife” Romaine (played by Meghan Treadway), who perfectly embodied what her character says about wanting to be hated by the jury and by Myers in order to achieve her goals. Treadway’s confidence and mockingly cavalier attitude to issues of truth, innocence, and justice is especially pointed in its contrast with Sarossy’s earnest faith in the legal system.

The one thing about the performance that left me wanting more was actually Sarossy’s performance—not because he was bad, since he is definitely an excellent actor, but because one element of the performance did not seem entirely justified. When Myers either confronted Romaine in court or discussed her with Mayhew outside the courtroom, Sarossy performed with an intensity and rage that suggested a deep-seated personal animosity to either Romaine individually or to “her type of woman” specifically. But this is never really explained in the play. Based on the passing reference Myers makes to his wife, his own marriage seems relatively happy, so it’s not clear from whence the depths of Myers’ anger comes.

Video performance review of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution

William Shakespeare’s Richard III—8 June 2024

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Me with the Richard III poster at the Globe

As part of a Literary London study abroad course on crime and justice in British literature, I assigned William Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was a marvelous bit of serendipity that Shakespeare’s Globe was putting on that very show while we visited London. Even before the Globe posted their summer 2024 season, I knew we would visit the recreated theatre where Shakespeare’s plays debuted—but getting to see a world class production of a play we are studying in the theatrical setting the Bard would have known was an amazing educational opportunity.

The Globe’s production, directed by Elle While, was absolutely amazing. Michelle Terry played a Richard who was exceptionally funny—I don’t think my students realized from reading the play how witty and clever Richard actually is—while also being casual, energetic, conspiratorial, and irrationally unhinged at the requisite moments. She dominated the stage space, even for being a relatively smallish person, and drew eyes to her wherever she was on stage at any given moment. One element of her performance that especially stood out was the crowd work. The same was true of Helen Schlesinger, who masterfully played a city-trader style Buckingham. Between Terry and Schlesinger, they effortlessly engaged with the groundlings standing near the stage—from the time they noticed a man who had nodded off while leaning on the stage to the time when Schlesinger came down into the crowd and took someone’s beer. For modern audiences, trained by contemporary theatre conventions to sit silently and observe, rather than participate, this kind of crowd work gives a taste of what the theatre must have been like in 1593(ish) when the play was first performed.

The Globe theatre stage for Richard III

Stylistically, the play had an interesting blend of modernization and traditional elements, which drew out aesthetic and thematic elements. On the thematic level, one of the most obvious modernizations was the incorporation of direct references to Donald Trump. This included added dialogue, like Richard quoting the infamous Access Hollywood tape as part of his self-aggrandizement, and Richard’s supporters wearing red hats during one portion of the play.

On the visual level, there were blended costumes, with some characters having more traditionally Elizabethan inflected costumes and some having entirely modern costumes. Rivers (Em Thane) and Grey (Tanika Yearwood), for instance, were clothed in ruffs, doublet, and knee breeches, but wore modern sneakers. However, when Thane transitioned from Rivers to the Commissioner, she put on a modern British police commissioner’s uniform. Richmond (Sam Crerar) was costumed in boots, ripped jeans, a multi-colored shirt, and a worn brown leather bomber jacket with red rose patches on it. Very much a modern look. And for Richard, there was a blending, including an initial costume of black doublet, black jeans, and black cowboy boots. But this was replaced variously with white pleated shirt, black jeans, and gold boots; with a green feathered doublet and sculpted chest piece (which may have been sculpted in such a way as to suggest Richard’s scoliosis); or with an almost entirely gold royal ensemble.

Speaking of Richard’s scoliosis, this has been one of the controversies surrounding this play—that Terry is not a disabled actor, but was cast in the role of Richard, which is one of the most famous disabled characters in all of theatre. I’m not going to delve too deep into this controversy, though here are some links to articles about it:

One point of potential controversy that did strike me, however, was the choice of who was cast as Richmond. Crerar is a great actor and there was nothing inherently problematic about his performance as Richmond—on the contrary, he was quite good, as he was in his other role as Catesby. However, he is the only cast member who presents as male (though Crerar uses both male and gender neutral pronouns). Everyone else in the cast presents as female, and so one might be forgiven for reading the casting choice as reflecting the toppling of the tyrannical female (playing at being male) by the male as being some kind of implicit endorsement of cis-het patriarchy. I doubt that was an intended element of the play, but the triumphant defeat of a female Richard by a male Richmond could be read as signaling support for traditional gender hierarchies. And the glorious defeat of the female coded body “pretending” to be male, even using prosthetics (i.e., Terry’s chest plate) to appear more male may, without too much stretching, be read as the destruction of a transman by a “real” man. Again, I don’t think the production team purposefully sought out these thematics, but I do find troubling the choice of casting the single male-presenting member of the cast as Richard.

Video review of Shakespeare’s Richard III by Andi Stout and I

The Good Body, by Eve Ensler—17 May 2024

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Eve Ensler’s The Good Body Program

Sock & Buskin’s recent charity performance of Eve Ensler’s The Good Body—benefiting Centre Safe—was a great performance of a generally powerful play about the psychological and physical difficulties women experience in their own bodies. Stephanie Whitesell’s directorial debut was a triumph, and the performers were each amazing.

Ensler’s most famous play is almost without a doubt The Vagina Monologues, but The Good Body expands the focus to deal with women’s general insecurities about their bodies—particularly as far as weight/stomachs are concerned, but also dealing with other common “trouble” areas like breasts, thighs/butts, and, yes, vaginas. Eve (the character, who may or may not genuinely reflect the feelings and experiences of the author—though the character seems at least relatively autobiographical) is the thread that holds the play together, as her experiences quilt together monologues by a number of other women, discussing their own experiences. These experiences are almost universally either negative or complex, but leaning towards the negative. There’s one important exception that I’ll discuss in the next paragraph. The play does deal with sexual violence, as well as surgery and other issues that may be difficult for some audience members. But overall, it is an extremely powerful exploration of the negative affect often encoded in women’s experiences of their own bodies as “not good enough.” (And, to be fair, men experience similar anxieties, though often not as pronouncedly as women. And this is to say nothing of trans people, or LGBT people more generally, whose bodies are significantly policed in different but related ways).

The one major issue I have with Ensler’s play is that the only characters we meet who are happy with their bodies are from the Global South, and the only characters we meet from the Global South are happy with their bodies. Eve meets a woman in East Africa (Kenya, if I remember correctly) who says she loves her body because it’s hers. And she meets a woman from India who is proud of being fat and who goes to the gym not to become thin but simply to get more energy. By contrast, all of the women from the US and Europe (i.e., the Global North) are discontented with their bodies, often seeking to alter them through surgery, excessive workouts, starvation diets, etc. This strikes me as a problematic form of orientalism, in which “wisdom” or the “truth” is vested in the ethnic Other, who is perceived as somehow more wise, intuitive, aligned with nature, etc. It’s a problematic trope because it exoticizes people from the Global South.

The Good Body Set

That being said, the performance by the Sock & Buskin cast was excellent. The role of Eve was largely split between Sandy Adams and Veronica Rosenberger, with Adams playing the more active part and Rosenberger generally serving the narrator function. Whenever Eve needed to interact with someone or perform a physical activity like working out, Adams generally played that role—even if Rosenberger was speaking. This pairing worked really well, particularly since Adams was seated stage left and Rosenberger stage right, so the two women bookended the other cast members.

In the middle seat was Jessica Karp, who played a large number of parts, and did a wonderful job bringing to each character her own distinct personality, style, and voice. Her depiction of Helen Gurley Brown (editor of Cosmo) was quite different from her performance of the Puerto Rican woman embarrassed by her “spread,” and the Kenyan anti-female genital mutilation activist who was happy with her body. Karp did a great job showing each part she played as a different person, each fully developed and interesting in her own right.

Playing a smaller number of parts, but having one major monologue was Michelle Rodino-Colocino. While she did play multiple roles, they were generally smaller roles, apart from the lengthy monologue by Eve’s Italian friend who had an ambivalent relationship with her breasts. This is a complex, difficult monologue, with contradictory emotions, sexual abuse (which the character doesn’t necessarily seem to register as sexual abuse), and major emotional impact. And Rodino-Colocino brought those challenging emotions to the forefront effectively.

The final performer was Jackie Gianico, who played several speaking roles, but also did an incredible job performing silent roles—something I’m always impressed by. With her speaking roles, Gianico was extremely funny, especially as the rebellions “fat girl” in the health spa/“fat camp.” But Gianico also often supported the monologues of other characters through mime or silent performance. For instance, during Karp’s monologue as Helen, Gianico was the model for a Cosmo Christmas shoot, and she struck various modeling poses wearing a Santa jacket. But when Helen offers Eve edamame, Gianico’s model put out her hand to get some as well. Helen gave her a single piece of edamame, which Gianico then spent the remainder of Helen’s monologue slowly eating in tiny, tiny bites. I find the stage business of those who aren’t the center of attention to be a really fascinating component of theatre, and Gianico did this to perfection.

My video review of Eve Ensler’s The Good Body, performed by Sock & Buskin

Tartuffe, by Moliere—28 Mar. 2024

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Penn State Theatre’s Tartuffe

Penn State Theatre’s production of Moliere’s Tartuffe, directed by Sam Osheroff, was an exceptional modern re-imagining of a play that has some antiquated feeling elements but overall remains exceedingly relevant to the world of 2024. On the one hand, Tartuffe’s rhymed lines and aristocratic subject matter feel very old. On the other, the theme of a conman preying/praying on the devout to build a cult-like following is very timely.

The basic storyline of Moliere’s play is that Orgon, a nobleman, has taken into his house Tartuffe, a man who pretends to be exceedingly devout, but who actually uses this apparent religiosity to trick Orgon into supporting his lifestyle and allow Tartuffe access to Elmire, Orgon’s wife, whom Tartuffe wishes to seduce. The rest of Orgon’s family (apart from his mother) sees Tartuffe for what he is and attempts to open Orgon’s eyes to the deception. However, Orgon rejects their insights, instead preferring his faith in Tartuffe. Even when Damis, Orgon’s son and heir, reports having witnessed Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire, Orgon sides with Tartuffe when the latter excessively blames himself as a sinner. As all this is happening, Orgon breaks the promised match between his daughter Mariane and her beloved Valere, much to the chagrin of the entire family, and tries to force her to marry Tartuffe. It is only when Elmire persuades Orgon to hide and observe Tartuffe’s behavior for himself that his eyes are opened. However, by this point, Orgon has already signed over the deed to his house, and he has given Tartuffe a box of evidence incriminating Orgon’s friend who betrayed the king, and which Orgon was illegally keeping safe. So, Tartuffe claims the house and tries to evict the family, even bringing along an officer of the king to arrest Orgon. However, the officer instead arrests Tartuffe himself, explaining that the king saw through his deception and identified the criminal as a recurring conman who has run similar scams under a variety of names.

The first thing I’ll address—because it’s the most visually striking—is the costuming for the Penn State production, done by Hilary Hayes. Initially, I was not a huge fan of the costuming, which seemed inspired by Dr. Seuss. The aristocratic characters all had bright color palettes: Damis in sky blue, Valere in sea foam green, Mariane in pink, Elmire in purple, and Orgon in gold. And when I say color palettes, I mean full on in those colors. Damis had a blue mop top wig, a puffy blue faux fur coat, a blue shirt cut to at angles, blue trousers, and blue loafers. Valere had a sea foam green mop top wig, a sea foam green shirt with excessively frilly sleeves that often comically engulfed his hands, sea foam green trousers, and sparkly green loafers. The only other color he had was a pink belt, which visually aligned him with his beloved Mariane, who was all in pink except for a green ornament in her hair. Mariane’s pink cocktail dress was supplemented with a giant pink bow, attached at her stomach and back, which the actress regularly put her arms down into and then wrapped around herself to hide from bad news. At first, I found the excess of the color schemes and the absurd opulence of the costumes off-putting, but as the show progressed they grew on me. And upon reflection, I realized how brilliant the costuming actually was because it visually aligned the aristocratic characters with the excesses of the ancien regime, in contrast to Tartuffe whose blue suit, red tie, flag pin and comically oversized rosary visually aligned him with televangelists and other charlatans who use religion to bamboozle and extort their followers.

The set of Tartuffe

As far as the performances go, they were exceptionally good. Every actor was excellent—I wouldn’t say there was a weak link anywhere in the chain as far as acting goes. In particular, several performers were simply excellent at facial expressions. Kate Diuguid (Mariane), for instance, often provoked bursts of audible laughter from the audience just through changes to her facial expressions. In one instance, she sat with Orgon (Korey Grecek) upstage on the stairs (visible in the picture) and when he told her that she was to wed Tartuffe, Diuguid’s face dropped from a kind of bland happiness to a stunned disbelief and terror—and she made that change so visibly that everyone in the audience, even those in the back rows of the downstage seating areas, could clearly tell what had just happened to the character. Signally that kind of change just through a facial expression, and doing it well enough that the comic effect stands out for an audience is incredibly difficult.

Another actor who had to rely on his face was Joshua David Gunning, playing Tartuffe’s servant Laurent. Laurent is interesting because he has no lines in the Richard Wilbur translation Penn State performed, and yet he’s frequently on stage when Tartuffe is. While some performers might have given a very bland Laurent, largely just standing in the background unobtrusively, Gunning actually brought the character to life through his wolfish grins and glares. I felt like I knew what this Laurent was thinking at all times because of how Gunning held himself, his facial expressions, and how he seemed to stalk the action at all times.

The other actor I really enjoyed was Jimmy Hunter, playing Elmire’s free-thinking brother Cléante. It’s hard to identify exactly what about their performance was so good, but every time Hunter was on stage, my eye was drawn to them.

My one critique of the performance itself comes at the end of the show, when the king’s officer (Asim Baraka) arrests Tartuffe (Logan Glaze) and explains how the king saw through the conman’s crime. During this explanation—which justifies the deus ex machine ending—one of the servants (Teagan Jai Boyd) brought on a picture of the king—in this case a not entirely flattering picture of Elon Musk with a crown photoshopped on. This created an uproar, between the audience’s burst of laughter and the actors weeping and praising their beloved king. And this uproar drowned out the king’s officer’s explanation, meaning the audience couldn’t hear large portions of it. Since this does explain the conclusion to the play, it kind of matters whether we actually hear it. It would have been easier to follow if the actors were quieter in their adoration and if a pause had been left for the audience’s laughter before launching into the explanation.

My video review of Penn State Theatre’s Tartuffe, by Moliere

The Will to Kill, by Sock & Buskin—23 Mar. 2024

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The Will to Kill promotional poster

Sock & Buskin’s The Will to Kill was a new one for my partner and I, because we had never attended one of the company’s murder mystery parties before. Part performance, part cocktail party, part whodunit, the murder mystery party is an interesting, interactive, hybrid genre. Unlike most theatre, the majority of the action is carried out between “audience members” and the performers, rather than amongst performers themselves.

The premise of The Will to Kill is that we’re attending the will reading of Edmund Carroll Warren, a real estate baron who amassed a huge fortune while alienating his sister, his three children, their spouses, and (to a certain extent) his corporate subordinates. The only person Edmund actually liked was his adopted nephew Alistair. In the opening portion of the performance, we just milled around and interacted with the actors, finding out who they are, their relationship with and view of Edmund, and what they hope to get from his will. Then in the middle section, we gathered around a TV screen to watch Edmund’s video reading of his will—in which he left everything to Alistair, cutting his children and sister out completely. However, Alistair wouldn’t inherit until his thirtieth birthday, which is tomorrow. This is an important detail when Alistair’s body is found stabbed to death. The final portion of the even consisted of Inspector Perrier (a French police officer in an exchange program with the Bellefonte, PA police) arriving and deputizing everyone in the room to interrogate suspects. We had to try and figure out who the murderer was by asking questions and examining a few pieces of evidence. Finally, in the dramatic climax, Inspector Perrier did your standard detective story technique of going through and explaining who wasn’t the killer and how we knew, and only then revealing who the real murderer was.

In a sense, I was not a particularly good guest for this party, because I basically started from the perspective that I was just going to fuck with everybody—which ended up being hilarious for my partner and the couple sitting near us, but I think was a mixed bag for the actors. Some, like Gregg Baptista (playing Edmund’s son Reggie, the libertine poet) and Lilli Falcon (playing the lawyer who ran the will reading), really seemed to enjoy seeing what kind of insanity I could come up with. They both came back over to where we were repeatedly. In fact, Lilli was the only one who actually questioned my claims about storming the beaches of Normandy with Edmund. She pointed out that he was born in 1949, so he would have been negative four when WWII ended (in fairness, I was born in 1987, but no one pointed that out). Everyone else, in true improv fashion, went along with my claims and just accepted that it was part of Edmund’s history. By contrast, I think I irritated some of the performers, like when I accused Inspector Perrier of not really being a French police officer, but instead being Alistair in disguise (Kyle Stanley played both Alistair and Perrier, the later with a trilby hat, fake mustache, and French accent). But my arguments weren’t based on the actor being the same person, but on Bellefonte not having a police sergeant—the person Perrier claimed had sent him over—and that Bellefonte’s police exchange program was with Helsinki, Finland, not with France. I got the sense that Kyle didn’t really know what to make of this line of inquiry (sorry, Kyle). There were also several times when actors turned to everyone else in the group sitting with me and specifically asked if any of them had questions.

My video review of Sock & Buskin’s The Will to Kill

The Final Rose, by Stefanie Austin—10 Feb. 2024

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The program of The Final Rose

It’s always a treat seeing Sock & Buskin perform, since the company consistently produces high quality community theatre for central PA. Seeing their production of Stefanie Austin’s The Final Rose was particularly interesting for me, because—by way of full disclosure—I participated in a late stage readthrough of the script and provided feedback on how Stefanie could revise it heading into the production itself. But even without that background, the production, directed by Henry Morello, was a hilarious evening.

The Final Rose is set during the taping of the last episode of The Catch, a Bachelor-style dating show, in which Brad Masters will have to choose between Southern girl-next-door Kelly Dixon and upper-class socialite Miranda Carter. The problem is that, instead of loving either of them, Brad has fallen in love with the harried production manager Rebecca Cook. Their affair threatens to derail the show and Rebecca’s career. At the same time, Rebecca’s assistant Carrie Reynolds keeps finding notes threatening to bomb the show if it isn’t cancelled. Plus, the sleazy host Wes Gold is having his own affair with Miranda, while also hitting on Brad’s mom Colleen—between eating peanut butter sandwich after peanut butter sandwich. When it’s discovered that Miranda has been murdered, detective Robin and her daughter Olivia (it was take-your-daughter-to-work day at the police station) turn to the audience for help finding the killer. In the interval, the characters circulated around the tables to answer questions about their possible role in the killing and any possible motives. The last portion of the show features the revelation of the killer, which I won’t spoil.

The set of The Final Rose

As always with Sock & Buskin, the acting in this show was very good across the board. This is nothing less than I would expect with some veteran S&B actors, like Stefanie Austin (playing Rebecca), David Smith (Wes Gold), and Sela Plummer (Kelly). Of the various new S&B actors, I was particularly impressed by Jace Beaton, who perfectly evoked the sarcastic, dark, charmingly menacing Carrie, constantly critiquing the show’s anti-feminist ethos, joking about poisoning the seedy host of the show, and snickering at the absurd lengths the contestants go to to get Brad’s (Connor Heimerman) attention. Heimerman’s Brad was an interesting take on the character. Less of the suave, charming lady’s man, Heimerman gave us a more genuinely nice Brad, seeking actual love and quite uncomfortable with the dating show’s structure of dating, assessing, and disposing of people. This presentation made Brad as a human being more admirable that they typical dating show bachelor comes across, which helped invest the audience more in his relationship with Rebecca.

But when it comes to acting, I would be entirely remiss if I didn’t mention the perhaps surprising star of the show, J. Lance Wilkinson’s Bob, the camera operator. I’ve seen Wilkinson in other shows, so I already knew he’s a great performer. But, based on the script itself, Bob is a virtual non-entity. He has no actual lines, and even when Wilkinson circulated around the tables to answer audience questions, he mimed and gestured rather than speaking. Despite the complete absence of dialogue, Wilkinson’s performance was so hilarious, so engaging, and so effective that he was clearly one of the most popular characters. On the night I saw the play, there were several people who explicitly cheered for Bob when, for instance, he stood and applauded Carrie’s feminist critique of The Catch late in the show.

My video review of The Final Rose

The Value of Many, by Matteo Esposito—18 Dec. 2023

On By phillipzapkinLeave a comment

On my YouTube channel, I had done a video about Matteo Esposito’s The Value of Many as a text, but this review is about the 3 Dec. 2023 dramatic reading at The Tank NYC, directed by Meghan Finn. The recording of the reading is available here. My understanding is that The Tank NYC is dedicated to supporting the work of emerging artists, and so it’s great to see Esposito’s play getting a richly deserved performance.

The plot of The Value of Many revolves around a businessman named Dexter who comes into a café and arrogantly harasses Josh, a man on the autism spectrum. Dexter’s friend Larson tries to get Dexter to stop, and in subsequent conversations he tries to persuade Dexter that people with disabilities are valuable and able to contribute to society—an idea Dexter rejects, often in quite grossly ableist terms. However, when Dexter crashes the car because he struggles to see in the rain, Larson is killed and Dexter is confined to a wheelchair. Suddenly facing life with a disability, Dexter re-considers his position and his previous treatment of Josh. When he turns his business over to his associate, Bill, Dexter suggests Bill could hire Josh into the firm. For his part, Josh and his employer at the café, Shirley, see the news of Dexter’s accident in the newspaper and decide they want to give him a card to show their forgiveness and support. When Bill and Dexter offer Josh the job, he’s happy to accept. The play ends with Josh and the others coming to put a flower on Larson’s grave.

Because the Tank NYC production was a staged reading, there was limited performance compared to a full-scale production of the play. However, the actors did an excellent job bringing the story to life through the dialogue and carefully chosen actions to show what would be going on. Nikomeh Anderson (playing Josh) was probably the most active of the actors, which is rather fitting since Josh is one of the main protagonists. Josh is introduced cleaning a table in the café, and Anderson mimed polishing the top of the music stand on which his script rested to show this action; and when Josh stims (ritualized play with something like a string or rubber band, common among people on the autism spectrum), Anderson used the drawstring of his hoodie as Josh’s string. The actors also built the interactions between characters by looking at one another during key elements of dialogue. For instance, when Dexter (played by Chris Erdman) is harassing Josh, he would continually stare at Anderson, while Anderson often looked away. Luke Maloney (playing Larson) would look from Erdman to Anderson and Alyssa Parkhurst (playing Shirley) as he tried to restrain Dexter and apologize to Josh and Shirley for his friend. Even with the comparatively limited activity of a dramatic reading, the actors clearly showed the relationships between the characters and created the action.

One person who doesn’t seem to be credited in the playbill or in the YouTube description is the person who read the stage directions. This is a common role in a dramatic reading because it helps set the scene and helps audiences understand the context. Interestingly, the one area where sound and lighting cues were used in place of read stage directions was with the car crash. When Dexter crashes the car, there was a car wreck sound effect and a flash of light. This is a striking production choice to substitute reading the stage directions aloud here, because this moment is, of course, the turning point in the play and so making that more immediately visceral for the audience is an effective way to show that moment of change.

My video review of The Tank NYC’s dramatic reading of Matteo Esposito’s The Value of Many

Bonnets: How Ladies of Good Breeding are Induced to Murder, by Jen Silverman—1 Dec. 2023

On By phillipzapkinLeave a comment
The cover of the program for Bonnets

Jen Silverman’s Bonnets: How Ladies of Good Breeding are Induced to Murder was written as part of a Big Ten initiative to produce more plays by women and with strong roles for college age female actors. This is a really good initiative, not only for getting the work of more female playwrights on stages, but also because it helps train women in university theatre programs by giving them material focused on women’s experiences. The production by Penn State’s theatre program, directed by Jenny Lamb, was extremely good.

Silverman’s play is a trans-historical history play, which is a genre I love anyway. The play is divided between three different eras: the Paris of Louis XIV, Puritan colonial Massachusetts, and Victorian England. In each of these three scenarios, women find their choices constrained and eventually rebel against the forces that restrain their freedom to be themselves and to pursue what they want in the world. In Paris, Claire (Ceci Garcia) has never had a satisfactory sexual experience with her husband and has never had a lover, so she asks her sister-in-law Valerie (Lucy Snyder) to give Claire her lover Laurent (Justin Roldán) rather than poisoning him—which Valerie is apparently notorious for doing. Claire even agrees to poison him after sleeping with him, but then discovers that she likes him and doesn’t want to poison him. In the Victorian scene, Webster (Malcolm MacKenzie) is the harried and degraded maid of Mrs. Wolcott (Rafaela Torchia), who constantly berates and insults her. Webster is in love with Georgette (Drake Arielle), Mrs. Wolcott’s daughter, but can’t say anything because of both Victorian sexual mores and class hierarchies. And then in Puritan New England, Prudence (Sophie Nicholson) is having an affair with Daniel (Dylan Henderson), who can’t leave his wife Mistress Stone (Anna Farris). Prudence’s friend Fortitude (Lucy Martin) counsels her to simply obey the rules and behave properly, but Prudence accuses Mistress Stone of witchcraft to try and get her out of the way. Eventually, Prudence kills Daniel after he decides to abandon her and move to Boston, Webster kills Mrs. Wolcott for her continual insults and overwork, and Claire kills Valerie rather than poisoning Laurent. And all of this is watched over by God (Cassidy Brown), who experiences existential and moral doubts about the overall movement of the universe.

One aspect of the play that helps both develop the characters and move everything along is the blending of seemingly competing elements. Deep philosophical moments are interspersed with jokes, anachronistic references, moments of elation, and moments of depression. And the swirling mixture of these different tones creates a dynamic energy that helps move the show at a quick and arresting pace.

The set of Bonnets, with feminist, anarchist, and punk slogans and images

Aesthetically, I could see this show being done with straight historical costuming for the various time periods, but instead scene designer Vega Hernandez and costume designer Lauren Bretl created a riot grrl/punk inspired aesthetic, reflected in the background and clothing. The set was painted with feminist, anarchist, and punk slogans. The costumes were typified by ripped clothes, safety pins, torn fishnets, combat boots, and punk patches, generally with a historically inflected feel. For instance, Mrs. Wolcott’s outfit was decidedly steampunk, with the general shape of a Victorian dress, but a shorter dress and small leather corset with buckles rather than a true Victorian corset. The design of the production fit extremely well with the themes of women rebelling against systems that constrain them—and I personally found it very cool.

My video review of Jen Silverman’s Bonnets