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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

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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

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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

The Witching Hour, by Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman—28 Oct. 2023

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Kari Williamson and Nate Schierman’s The Witching Hour is a murder-mystery-comedy dinner theatre about a group of witches in Salem, MA, running a magic healing retreat. When their magic begins to go haywire, the sisters—Hazel, Athena, and Lorelei, along with their niece Miranda—have to find a way to save their business. Each of the sisters has her own competing idea about how to save the business, and the disagreements lead to significant tension between them. This is compounded by romantic and interpersonal tensions as the sisters bring their romantic partners/interests into the business side of things. But when another local warlock, Phoenix Draco, is killed, it’s up to the audience to determine who dunnit, which we do by asking questions of the characters as they move between the different tables.

The Sock & Buskin production, directed by Kristi Branstetter, featured excellent performances from a great cast, which is typical of Sock & Buskin’s general quality. The sisters were played by Melissa Brannen (Hazel), Williamson (Athena), and Liz Fuhrmann (Lorelei), who worked really well together to develop a chemistry that reflected both a deep bond and clear tensions in how the business should be run and they should approach being magical as such. The trio brought to life the triangulation between Hazel’s desire to save the health center by becoming less magical, Lorelei’s militant devotion to keeping their magic at all costs, and Athena’s middle position seeking a third alternative. These tensions were balanced comedically by Sela Plummer (Miranda), whose performance as an air-headed, enthusiastic, bubbly, and positive junior witch lightened the mood at tense moments while also reminding the sisters of the stakes for being good witches.

The other characters reproduced these relationships at a secondary level, with Dan Putnam (Kyle Stanley) and Jane Warren (Stefanie Austin) aligning with Hazel, Phoenix (Eric Ziegler) aligning with Lorelei, Vincent (Brent Ottaway) aligning with Athena, and Tom Edwards (Zach Myers) aligning with Miranda. Putnam and Warren run a witch “rehabilitation” business, which teaches witches not to be magical, and it was clear from Austin’s performance that Warren is a fanatical true believer, which co-existed in uneasy tension with Stanley’s much more casual Putnam, who is moving away from his opposition to magic. Ziegler played the swaggering, self-confident, and villainous Phoenix to perfection. While Vincent was a comparatively smaller role, Ottoway did bring a kind of calming presence to the stage when he arrived to run the investigation into Phoenix’s murder. And Myers was amazing at mirroring the innocence and excitement of Miranda.

One impressive element of the performance in particular was the cast’s ability to stay in character while chatting with audience members before the show and then while we asked them questions after the murder. In particular, I tried to ask difficult questions that would trip the actors up (especially with the actors I had worked with previously), and they unfailingly responded coherently and without breaking character.

The Witching Hour set at the beginning of the show

My one critique of the performance is the stage itself, which was quite small for the amount of stuff in the set and the number of people in the cast. In particular, the set typically involved some large pieces, like a check-in desk, kitchen table, and human sized cauldron. When the entire cast was onstage and all playing towards the audience, it ended up looking rather like a line up instead of an organic scene, because there simply wasn’t enough space on the stage in this venue to comfortably fit the entire cast on it.

My video review of Kari Williamson and Nate Shierman’s The Witching Hour

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin—14 June 2023

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The big draw of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin, was undoubtedly Richard Thomas in the role of Atticus Finch. Thomas, famous as John-Boy in The Waltons, was certainly a big factor in my mother’s excitement to see the production—and considering that many of the other people in the audience were older, I imagine that most of them had grown up with the Waltons as well. However, a celebrity lead was far from the only worthwhile element of this show.

The play itself is obviously an adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which is one of the most widely read and influential pieces of American literature. This can make adapting a piece like this challenging, because audiences are likely to be primed by knowing the story and may expect it to be treated in certain ways. Sorkin treated the novel extremely effectively by, on the one hand, maintaining all of the crucial elements of the plot itself, while, on the other, not merely putting the relatively linear plot of the book on stage. Tom Robinson’s trial is broken up throughout the play, being narrated and contextualized by Scout, Jem, and Dill. This non-linear structure works well for creating tension around the movement of the play while at the same time giving audiences the elements of the story that make Lee’s novel such an impactful story.

While Thomas was the main attraction—and his performance was without question extremely good, as were all the performers—the show was stolen by Jacqueline Williams, playing Culpernia, the Finch’s maid/nanny to the kids/friend of Atticus. This is a supporting role, but every time Williams spoke she got a consistent audible response from the audience. Throughout the show, the audience regularly responded with laughter, gasps, or other verbal responses. But Williams was most consistently able to draw out audience reactions with her sassy Black maid character, speaking truth to white men in the racist south. Another performer who consistently got these kinds of audience responses was Steven Lee Johnson, playing Dill Harris. He perfectly combined a kindly insight with a charming naivete that made his performance deeply endearing. Again, every actor was impressive, but Williams and Johnson took their supporting characters and went above and beyond with them.

My one issue with the production is with the dialects. Personally, I don’t like fake accents on stage. I think they’re often done poorly. And while there were elements of the dialects here that were very good, there were also lines that didn’t strike my ear as correct for an Alabama accent. Part of the challenge is for an actor to project their voice while doing an accent, which is much harder than speaking at a normal conversational volume, but I am just overall not a fan of stage accents. One thing I definitely want to give the dialect coach credit for is Joey Collins’ (playing Bob Ewell) pronunciation of the word “white,” which he distinctly pronounced “hwite,” with an audible haich sound at the beginning. This is a pronunciation that was cultivated by white southerners after the Civil War, which was meant to mark them as true southerners and true white people. So, when the racist Klan member Bob Ewell pronounces a strong haich sound at the beginning of the word, this is spot on in terms of the dialect of the time and place.

My video review of Aaron Sorokin’s Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less—13 May 2023

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Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less (IOGM from here on out) has to be an incredibly taxing play to perform, as each of the five actors plays a multitude of roles, each demanding its own character. The actor with the fewest number of distinct characters plays seventeen, while the top two play thirty characters each. The actors in the State College Community Theatre (SCCT) production, directed by Tom McClary, met this challenge exceedingly well, putting on an incredibly funny show that moved—as it says on the tin—through Homer’s epic poems and through much of Greek mythology.

The content of the play is reasonably straightforward given the name. The show opens with one of the actors setting a timer, to the chagrin of the rest, who protest that they’re still rehearsing and haven’t even learned all their lines yet. But the timer has begun. Act I and II each begin with various mythological stories told through a series of styles—talk shows, game shows, dating shows, etc. before moving to the major Homeric works: The Iliad in Act I and The Odyssey in Act II. The performance moves at a breakneck pace, hitting the key info from each mythological element and putting a humorous spin on it, often through word association, caricature, or situational irony. Each of the characters is brought to life through the small five-person cast, playing between them a total of 130 different characters.

For the SCCT production, important or recurring characters had distinctive props or catchphrases to help distinguish them. For instance, when Rob Arnold played Zeus, he wore a crown of gold leaves, and when he played Achilles, he carried a Greek soldier’s helmet. When Heidi Cole played Aphrodite, she wore a red feather boa. Andy Ogrinc probably had the most notable catchphrases, between Hermes’ “That’s how I roll” and Diomedes’ “Diomedes rules!” With such a whirlwind of characters, these recurring elements helped audiences keep some of the characters straight.

However, there were also individual characters that stood out in particular, such as Margaret Higgins’ Semele, lover of Zeus and mother (partially) of Dionysus. When Hera (Ian Dargitz)—whose prop cycled through several household cleaning implements—convinced Semele to demand Zeus show himself in his true godly form, she got an elaborate death scene, which Zeus urged her to perform so well it would be mentioned in the reviews (goal: achieved). The beauty of this scene was the build-up by Zeus, seating the confused looking Semele in a chair centerstage and gathering the rest of the cast around, before her (purposefully) somewhat awkward death scene.

While most of the characters kaleidoscoped back and forth, either appearing only for very short periods or returning for repeated short bits, the one lengthy amount of time spent with a single character was during Act II’s telling of The Odyssey, when Dargitz spent much of that section in character as Odysseus. The performances were just as solid and hilarious as they were in Act I, but the shift from continually shifting character focuses to an extended focus on a single character slowed down the pace of the IOGM as a whole. This is, of course, a pretty accurate reflection of the difference between The Iliad and The Odyssey, as the latter is much more singularly focused on Odysseus. But that singular focus meant the production didn’t feel like it had the frenetic energy during the Odyssey portion, which had contributed so much to the humor and power of the first Act.

My video review of Jay Hopkins and John Hunter’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, And All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less

Moon Over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig—29 Apr. 2023

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The Sock & Buskin Theatre Company’s production of Ken Ludwig’s comedy Moon Over Buffalo was an enjoyable performance marked by excellent comic timing. Under the direction of Stefanie Austin—a co-founder of Sock & Buskin—the full force of the farce came to the fore through Ludwig’s trademark wit and series of happy accidents.

Moon Over Buffalo is an actor’s farce, about the trials and tribulations of the Hay family and their 1950s touring theatre company. George (Michael Waldhier) and Charlotte (Laura Waldhier) are aging stars who have had good theatre runs and minor success in the movies—though they still dream celluloid dreams of Hollywood. Their company, including stage manager Paul (Nate Schierman), younger actress Eileen (Isabel Vullings), and Charlotte’s mother Ethel (Michelle Rodino-Colocino) are doing Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in rep in Buffalo, NY—a theatrical backwater apparently. Their daughter Rosalind (Liz Fuhrmann) returns with her new fiancé Howard (Zachary Myers) having left both Paul and the stage forever. The initial conflict is driven by the revelation that Eileen is pregnant with George’s child, which leads to Charlotte announcing that she’s leaving George for their lawyer Richard (Eric Zeigler). George gets a call letting him know that big time Hollywood director Frank Capra is coming to see their matinee because the two stars of his current film—roles George and Charlotte had wanted—have left the project. George tells Charlotte that Capra is coming and this could be their big break, but she doesn’t believe him. After Charlotte walks out, George disappears to get drink, so he isn’t there when Charlotte returns having seen in the newspaper that the other stars are out of the picture. She, Paul, and Rosalind try in vain to find George, and when they finally do find him he’s so drunk he can barely stand, let alone do their matinee performance of Private Lives. George, for his part, decides that the matinee should be Cyrano, and so when they finally manage to get the matinee with Frank Capra in the audience started, George comes on stage in his Cyrano costume, still absolutely steamed. The performance is an unmitigated disaster, with sets falling over, George missing his cue and in the wrong costume, lines getting mangled, and Ethel making a surprise appearance to try and “save” the show by “explaining” to the audience what’s going on—an explanation Charlotte dismisses by acknowledging that the audience will already think they’re insane. The play ends back in George and Charlotte’s apartment, with her once again planning to leave with Richard. George makes a speech convincing her to stay, Rosalind’s fiancé Howard (whom George and Paul mistook for Eileen’s brother who vowed to kill George, and therefore tied him up in the closet) is now engaged to Eileen and planning to start a family right away (much to George’s relief), and Rosalind goes back to Paul and her life on the stage. To cap the action off, the actors are informed by telephone that Capra’s plane was delayed, so he missed the matinee and will be seeing the evening performance instead.

Like most farces, Moon Over Buffalo really depends on the timing of the performance, the actors absolutely need to have flawless comic timing to make the play work. And the Sock & Buskin production definitely did that. One of the most challenging scenes is probably the play-within-the-play, in which the company is doing Private Lives and George is doing Cyrano. This scene reflects multiple aspects of comic timing—the reaction and drawing tension out. There is a series of unexpected events (unexpected, that is, from the audience’s perspective; the actors know what’s going to happen but must act as if they don’t). When, for instance, the railing falls over first as Rosalind is on stage alone—George has missed his cue—and then again when Charlotte and Paul are on stage, the actors repeatedly jump in surprise. And of course, when George rushes on in his Cyrano costume, Fuhrmann’s reaction is shock and confusion. The same reaction is repeated when Charlotte and Paul first see George in costume when he interrupts their scene. And while reactions to a surprise need to be performed believably, the other element of comic timing in this scene is building suspense by waiting. Rosalind enters the stage alone at the beginning of Private Lives, and George misses his cue. And the hints she tries to drop. And the subsequent cues she tries to give him. Eventually, Rosalind begins essentially narrating their entire conversation as a hypothetical of what he would say if he were there. During all this time, Fuhrmann is alone on stage, with no one to play against but herself, and she has to master humorous timing all on her own, which is much harder than having someone to play off of.

There were a few moments, mostly at the beginning of the second half, where the timing wasn’t entirely ideal. But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Across the entire cast—including supporting characters like Ziegler, Myers, and Rodino-Colocino—the timing made the pacing of the show quick, enjoyable, and uproariously funny.

My video review of Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo

The Women of Trachis: New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, by Theater of War Productions—27 July 2022

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Theater of War Productions is one of the most exciting companies in the performance of ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays because they tie each performance to a particular social issue and use the performances as a jumping off point for discussions of the issue. Their recent version of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis was performed with the support of the New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, and featured nurses as the Chorus and in two of the main roles. The connections between the performance, the audience members who responded, and the play itself is one of the elements that makes a Theater of War performance so sensational.

Sophocles’ Women of Trachis takes place at the end of Heracles’ life. He has been off fighting, and he sends word back to his wife Deianeira and his son Hyllas that the battle is won and he’s coming home. He also sends back Iole, his war bride/concubine/sex slave. This does not sit entirely well with Deianeira, who decides to try and win back Heracles’ affection with a love potion given to her by the centaur Nessus, who made the potion from his blood while dying because of Heracles. Perhaps predictably, Nessus tricked Deianeira, giving her a horrible poison rather than a love potion, but she did not begin to suspect that until she had already sent the robe soaked in the fatal draught. Deianeira expresses her fears to the Chorus, and shortly afterwards her son Hyllas arrives accusing her of murdering Heracles. Rather than defending herself, Deianeira accepts her guilt and commits suicide. Hyllas realizes his mistake and takes back his condemnation of his mother. Heracles is then brought on for an extended scene where he complains of the agony he’s experiencing, condemns Deianeira and expresses the wish to brutally murder her, recounts his great deeds, and then essentially uses emotional blackmail to convince his son to build a funeral pyre and set him on fire and then to marry Iole.

The Theater of War performance, done over Zoom, included the portion of Sophocles’ play in which Deianeira (Elizabeth Marvel) begins to fear she may have accidentally poisoned her husband, Hyllas’ (Craig Manbauman) condemnation then repentance, and Heracles’ (David Denman) experience of his painful demise. This show cut the first portion of the play in order to focus more specifically on the section relating to Heracles’ death, which is much more relevant and connected to the experience of hospice and palliative care nurses with whom the company collaborated for this project. The experiences of Deianeira’s grief and guilt, Hyllas’ difficulty processing Heracles’ suffering, and Heracles’ anger, pain, and trauma all resonated with the lived experiences of these nurses—points they made eloquently in the discussion after the reading of the script itself.

The three members of the Chorus (Angie Meraviglia, Dawn Fort, and Sharon A. Campbell) are all nurses, as is Manbauman and Charlaine Lasse, who played the Nurse. For me, the strongest performance of the night was actually Lasse. In her post-show comments, she said that as a post-natal care and NICU nurse—dealing with newly born babies who need immediate medical attention, often intensive care—she has to balance between loving her patients, but not being in love with them. That tension between being devoted to helping them, but not being so devoted that when patients do inevitably die she is unable to cope. Lasse was able to bring this tension to the Nurse’s role, which is essentially that of a messenger in this portion of the play, reporting Deianeira’s suicide to the Chorus. Her performance was natural and her reading of the lines crisp and clean, giving the impression not of saying lines written millennia ago, but of speaking from the heart as someone who has lived this experience of loss.

The other really strong performance was by Manbauman, who did a masterful job shifting through Hyllas’ competing emotions within the play. Manbauman was able to effectly portray the anger of a son who feels betrayed when he thinks he mother murdered his father, then the remorse of a son who knows he has helped drive his mother to suicide, then the tensions between his own desire to do what’s right and his (emotionally abusive) father’s demands of him.

Denman’s Heracles was probably the weakest of the performances, in large part because the role doesn’t lend itself to be played on Zoom. The performance was over-the-top, with a lot of roaring, excessive facial expressions, and an intensity that didn’t translate well over Zoom.

Again, though, what makes Theater of War Productions truly a unique company is that their performances are the catalyst for discussions among people immediately impacted by the issues raised by the plays. Following the performance itself, the floor was opened to the nurse-performers to discuss what resonated with them in the play, or what struck them as most important. Then the floor opened up to comments from the audience. And it is this approach to active engagement that defines Theater of War. They try not just to present the ancient plays, or even just to make them relevant to modern audiences, but to create spaces of discussion—a kind of Athenian democracy inspired approach—in which members of a community come together to collectively make meaning of these plays.

My video review of Theatre of War Productions’ Women of Trachis