The Buffalo News - Theater http://www.buffalonews.com Latest stories from The Buffalo News en-us Fri, 24 May 2013 21:43:33 -0400 Fri, 24 May 2013 21:43:33 -0400 <![CDATA[ Three theaters announce new seasons ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130523/GUSTO/130529704/1283
The Irish Classical Theatre Company will begin its season with Moliere’s comedy “The School for Husbands,” running from Sept. 13 to Oct. 6. Next is Lillian Hellman’s play “The Little Foxes” (most recently produced at the Shaw Festival in 2008), from Oct. 25 to Nov. 13. The ICT begins the new year with a production of Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance,” on the Andrews Theatre stage from Jan. 18 to Feb. 9. Canadian director Gordon McCall returns to direct “Stones in his Pockets,” Marie Jones’ comedy about two aspiring screen stars in a small Southern Ireland town, from Feb. 28 to March 23.

Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars” comes next, from April 25 to May 18. In the final spot, typically reserved for a comedy, is Noel Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” running from June 6 to June 29, 2014.

Theatre Jugend, the company launched three years ago by Drew McCabe and Justin Karcher, announced its plans to take up residency in the Alt Theatre, which has lately backed off from producing theater and switched to a program of multidisciplinary salons.

Theatre Jugend begins its season Nov. 7 with “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” by Bert V. Royal, which, according to a release, “takes the Peanuts gang and thrusts them into the teenage world of drugs, homosexuality, bullying and just trying to make it in the world.”

Next is “Orgazmo,” an adaptation of a film by “South Park” and “Book of Mormon” co-creator Trey Parker, from Feb. 13 to March 1. The three-show season ends with “Captain Jett Bettington and the Adventures on Planet Earth: A Space Odyssey in 3 Episodes,” by Buffalo’s Jacob Albarella and Jason Kaiser, from May 1 to 17, 2014.

O’Connell and Company, which announced a move to the Park School from its home at Erie County Community College earlier this year, has also nailed down plans for its season. Here’s a look:

“Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show,” Sept. 26 to Oct. 27; “Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings,” Nov. 29 to Dec. 22; “The Lady with all the Answers,” Jan. 23 to Feb. 23; and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” April 24 to May 25.

In its new home, the company will continue to produce its popular “Diva by Diva: A Celebration of Women” and its “Sundays at Seven” cabaret series.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 23 May 2013 06:59:49 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ ‘Touched by an Angel’ is a jarring piece of theater ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130522/GUSTO/130529749/1283
Young Angel, a 19-year-old college student, is nursing a deepening anger for her overworked mother Cheryl (Daysha Witt). Cheryl, torn between providing for her daughter’s education and taking care of her own dying mother, has become an emotional recluse. Her husband, the good-hearted George (Donald Capers), is struggling to keep the whole rickety trio from breaking apart.

Life in Angel’s household is on the verge of unbearable, as it is for countless teenagers whose parents struggle to make ends meet to a provide a glimmer of hope for their children. The central struggle, between Angel’s need for an emotional connection with her mother and her mother’s insistence on providing a life for her daughter, is about as real and relevant as any issue facing struggling families across the United States.

So why doesn’t “Touched by an Angel” feel more like the visceral wake-up call it set out to be? The writing, though occasionally resorting to clichés and stretching credulity, often crackles with wit. The performances, especially from Capers and Stevens, let us see past the skin of these characters and at least a few inches into their conflicted souls.

The trouble, instead, has something to do with the play’s all-too-predictable formula, lifted directly from the Perry playbook with a few important twists. That formula, in which vignettes of family strife crescendo to a foregone conclusion that is always spiritual in nature, is like riding a familiar roller coaster for the 30th time. The thrills are there. Even the twists and turns are there. But because we know the conclusion by heart, the element of surprise is nowhere to be found.

None of that is to say that “Touched by an Angel” doesn’t contain its share of genuine human drama. By far the best scene in the play comes at the end of the first act in an exchange between Angel and George that is at once side-splitting and full of awful dread for something the audience knows is in the offing. It shows both actors’ gifts for naturalistic comedy (and for dancing). But that naturalistic element is conspicuously absent from most of the play’s other exchanges.

It’s doubtful, despite the play’s preordained ending, that playgoers will predict some of the stranger twists Davis and Stephens inserted into this story line. That’s partially to their credit, but they’ve had to go so far in order to try to overcome the prescription that they approach telenovela territory.

In future work, it would be great to see Davis and Stephens build on the chemistry and genuine audience engagement they achieved in that fraught first-act exchange between Capers and Stevens. These are two gifted minds at work, just waiting to break out of their cage.

touched by an angel

Two and a half stars (Out of four)

When: Through Monday

Where: Buffalo East, 1410 Main St.

Tickets: $10 to $20

Info: 602-6253 or webjam.com/atp2008

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 23 May 2013 06:48:33 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ Young cast shines in Ujima’s ‘Breath, Boom’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130520/LIFE/130529935/1283
So said audience greeter Gary Earl Ross on the recent opening night of a play by Kia Corthron, “Breath, Boom.” Ross was right. A production at Ujima certainly strives for excellence, very often achieves it, and sometimes Lorna Hill’s acting company is willing to wait for the best, knowing it will surely come. Tomorrow night. Next week.

Such is the case of “Breath, Boom,” an intense story of mean streets and meaner inhabitants – mostly a cadre of young teenage sistahs on the prowl or in your face, a violent, chilling, territorial gang led by 16-year-old Prix (pronounced Pree), a sullen young miss who is mad at everybody, particularly her inept mother and her abusive stepfather. Self-preservation is her watchword. Diss her? Cross her? Trouble.

Kia Corthron is a 50-ish emerging black playwright. She has been called, in some circles, the “heir apparent” to the late and poetic voice of urban blacks in America, August Wilson. Her more recent plays – “Breath, Boom,” “Seeking the Genesis,” “Life by Asphyxiation,” “Wake Up, Lou Riser” and the acclaimed “A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick” – seem to be about “topics,” not so much about plot. They explore the death penalty, ecological dangers ignored, racial injustice, an array of social ills, family disintegration. These are big themes, causes complex, solutions blurred.

“Boom,” all about the cycle of violence in black neighborhoods – friends, foes and family alike – is a dozen years old now and still disturbs. But Corthron has said that “Audiences shouldn’t be able to predict what’s coming, scene to scene, sentence to sentence.” So, here we learn, in long, rambling monologues, about Prix and her love for fireworks, the holiday crowds imagined and waiting, taking a collective breath before the “boom,” then the aftermath, the impact, the bright colors drifting off into pastel trails. Her euphoric fantasies contrast sharply with her days and nights as an enforcer. Prix and her pyrotechnic dreams get her through dismal times at home and several stretches in prison. “Breath, Boom” follows Prix until she’s 30, paroled, older, wiser, broke, close to homeless.

There are other surprises. Cat, 15 and in jail, rants profanely about her life. In the middle of a brutal tale of the streets, she inexplicably and longingly rhapsodizes about her high school geometry class, the need for angles and order and line. Corthron again. Lyrical moments, a strange but spellbinding cadence, an almost musical rhythm surfacing in dire circumstances. David Mamet channeled.

Director Hill – with effective fight choreography by Steve Vaughn – gets strong performances from a very young cast. Shanntina Moore is an angry Prix, but in fantasyland she is also wonderful. Brianna Simmons, as Cat, gets your attention and keeps it. Notable others among a large ensemble include Vernia S. Garvin, Zoe Viola Scruggs, Paulo Silva and Dayatra Hassan. The set is bare except for the comings and goings of chairs and tables, the scenes many and sometimes the minutes between dialogue seem glacial. Momentum is often lost. But, the cast is remarkably mature. They’ll improve, tie it all together, discipline themselves. Excellence is just around the corner.

In truth, the fireworks metaphor wears thin: Life’s explosions, big and small, the many family detonations and certainly the disappointing misfires – we get the idea. Not a huge problem though in “Breath, Boom.” Kia Corthron makes few mistakes.

Theater Review

“Breath, Boom”

Three and a half stars (Out of four)

Drama presented through June 2 by Ujima Company at TheatreLoft, 545 Elmwood Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. For information, call 883-0380 or visit ujimatheatre.org. ]]> Tue, 21 May 2013 06:36:06 -0400 By Ted Hadley

news contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ Landmark ’85 AIDS play is still compelling ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130518/CITYANDREGION/130519068/1283
No one knew what was causing the deaths. No one knew how to treat the disease. No one could say with any certainty how to stop it from spreading. All anyone knew was that their friends were dying at an alarming rate, and that almost no one with means seemed interested in helping.

That help was egregiously, criminally late in arriving. And the space between the outset of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the arrival of any significant attention or help from a political structure all too happy to let gay men wither and die provides the setting for Larry Kramer’s extraordinary piece of polemical theater known as “The Normal Heart.”

A compelling production of the 1985 play, directed by Javier Bustillos, opened Friday night in the Buffalo United Artists Theatre, serving as a chilling reminder of that shameful period in American history for those who lived through it and a shocking primer on latent human cruelty for those who didn’t.

All attempts by those of us spared the terror and suffering of this crisis because of age or circumstance to imagine what it must have been like for its victims are doomed. It’s impossible for us to imagine what it must have felt like to lose dozens of close friends in the space of a few months. It’s impossible to guess at the feeling a man got from noticing a dark spot on the bottom of his foot and immediately recognizing it as a death sentence.

But Kramer’s autobiographical play, which chronicles the birth of the HIV/AIDS activism movement and his controversial role in it, comes as close to making those feelings manifest as any piece of literature about the crisis. The play, like the movement, is fueled primarily by Kramer’s incandescent outrage – a character trait that surely saved many lives but which continues to get the playwright into trouble.

Ned Weeks, Kramer’s mildly fictionalized version of himself, comes believably to life in the hands of BUA veteran Matthew Crehan Higgins. As a longtime program coordinator for Erie County Medical Center’s immunodeficiency department, Higgins deals daily with the ongoing ravages of HIV/AIDS. His handling of Weeks, perpetually at the edge of his own rage and sanity, is perhaps not quite as dynamic as the character demands but gets the anger and neurosis just right.

His speeches, seemingly lifted verbatim from Kramer’s own informed ravings, are full of accusations and insults, litanies of complaints and historical injustices. But he can also be brilliantly blunt. When one character, a conservative and closeted gay man, tells Ned that he can’t force people to identify as gay only to help the cause, he responds: “After you’re dead, it doesn’t make any difference.”

The play takes us through Kramer’s founding of a fictional version of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, his friendship with the straight doctor Emma (wonderfully played by Caitlin Coleman), his attempts to get the attention of the indifferent New York City Mayor Ed Koch and finally his painful ousting from the very group he created.

The play contains particularly sensitive and moving performances from Michael Seitz as Ned’s lover, Felix, and from Kevin Craig and Timothy Patrick Finnegan as fellow activists Tommy Boatwright and Mickey Marcus.

“Why should they help us?” Finnegan’s Mickey asks at one point in an exasperated speech chastising the homophobic political establishment. “We’re actually cooperating with them by dying.”

The play suffers from some timing and pacing issues, as well as from a strange selection of interstitial music. But the heart and soul of Kramer’s harrowing experience is there for all to see. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s one that deserves another look.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Sat, 18 May 2013 19:02:23 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ At BUA, a harrowing look at the birth of the AIDS crisis ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130516/GUSTO/130519325/1283 stood on the sidewalk outside of the Golden Theatre handing out copies of a letter he’d written. The letter contained a litany of facts about AIDS in America today, information meant to disabuse theatergoers of any false sense of security that the ravages of the disease were no longer a threat.

“Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague,” Kramer wrote. “Please know that no country in the world, including this one, especially this one, has ever called it a plague, or acknowledged it as a plague, or dealt with it as a plague. Please know that there is no cure.”

Kramer’s apocalyptic sense of urgency about the AIDS crisis, which was as much a public health crisis as a crisis of moral failure on a massive scale, has not faded one iota since he penned “The Normal Heart” in the midst of the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the early 1980s. The show, a local production of which opens in the Buffalo United Artists Theatre (119 Chippewa St.) on Friday night, was forged in the crucible of that movement and contains all its boiling rage, its terror, its sadness and its incremental triumphs. It is, for all the polemic bluster and seeming dramatic excesses it contains, one of the best pieces of literature written about the fight for survival in an indifferent and often vindictive time and place. This production, directed by Javier Bustillos, stars Brant Adamczyk, Kevin Craig, Kurt Erb, Timothy Patrick Finnegan, Dave Hayes, Matthew Crehan Higgins, James Mikula, Michael Seitz and Caitlin Coleman. Tickets are $15 to $25. Call 886-9239 or visit www.buffalobua.org.

– Colin Dabkowski ]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 12:27:48 -0400 <![CDATA[ New play takes on struggles of a family feeling the economic crunch ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130516/GUSTO/130519326/1283
“Touched by an Angel,” by local playwrights and Alemaedae Theatre Productions stalwarts Phil Davis and Taura “Chyna” Stephens, brings audiences into the troubled household of a husband, wife and their 19-year-old daughter, Angel. Cheryl, the mother, works so much to pay for her own mother’s medical bills and her daughter’s college education that her relationship with her family suffers. When Cheryl’s husband George gets a job offer elsewhere in the country and Angel starts to cry out for her parents’ attention, the family undergoes even more drama and turmoil.

Alemaedae Theatre Productions has been a proving ground for many local actors and playwrights, especially Davis and Stephens, whose previous plays, written together and individually, include “So Fierce: Peter Williams,” “The Wonderful World of Peter Williams,” “Family Before Everything” and “Let’s Get It In” and “The Call.”

“Touched by an Angel” continues through May 27 in Buffalo East (1410 Main St.). Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. For info, 602-6253 or www.webjam.com/atp2008. – Colin Dabkowski

]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 07:08:53 -0400 <![CDATA[ World premiere of ‘Two Weeks’ turns up the heat ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130516/GUSTO/130519340/1283
Well, when Harold T. Fisher wrote his first novel, “Two Weeks Until the Rest of My Life,” a couple of years back, he must have been in the throes of a record fever.

If Fisher’s name rings a bell, know that he once was on-air locally in the late 1990s at WGRZ-TV as a reporter and news anchor before moving on to other venues, notably Washington, D.C./Baltimore where he now lives, working for Howard University Radio while just beginning to flesh out the plot of his second narrative.

While at Channel 2, Fisher was a colleague of Paulette Harris, now the artistic director of the African-American Cultural Center’s Paul Robeson Theatre. Fast forward to recently. Harris and the Robeson’s resident actress and singer, the award-winning Mary Craig, read “Two Weeks,” a book called a “sensual page-turner” by one reviewer, loved it and thought that the words on the page would be great on the stage. The astute Harris and the savvy Craig made the proposal to Fisher, and he agreed. Harris would adapt the novel into play form, with Craig at her side, and in time the Robeson would present a “world premiere.”

That time has arrived. The Robeson has opened the stage version of “Two Weeks,” with novelist Fisher in attendance for the first performance. Adaptor Harris looked harried; Craig, the play’s director, looked tired; Fisher looked pleased.

Let’s return to the topic of heat, part and parcel of this often very naughty “urban erotica-romance,” as Fisher describes it. The story introduces Denise Younger, a governmental worker in the nation’s capital. Denise is nearing the Big 4-0 and feels unloved and underappreciated. Over the years she’s sent a couple of loser lovers to the curb and she needs a break. Off she goes to New Orleans for a conference. Faster than you can say, “Where’s the French Quarter?” she meets Tyriq, many years her junior. He’s bright and suave and he’s a stud. After dinner and a couple of Mississippi Moonlight cocktails, an inhibition-loosening Delta concoction, it’s off to the sack for that night and the next.

Denise has next-day regrets, of course, but who is going to know? “I’m far from home,” she thinks. “It’s just a lark. A boy-toy for a few days. But, what was I thinking?”

There is spark despite the age difference. New Orleans, “the Big Easy?” This was “Too Easy.” They make plans, he’ll move, get a job, they’ll be near each other. About now, an uneasy feeling starts to pervade “Two Weeks Until the Rest of My Life.” What was a tale that was sassy, sexy and flip now turns edgy. Novelist Fisher and interpreter Harris both bring judgment, decision-making and consequences to the fore and the play slyly changes gears. Denise and Tyriq both thought they were ready to move on. There is a game-changing event, an unspeakable tragedy and also, fulfillment. Heavy-duty stuff.

The Robeson presents its best cast in some time; it’s a new benchmark for the company. Annette Christian is a superb Denise, sweetly frustrated but too late wary; Debbi Davis is scene-stealing gal-pal Bonnie; and Pete Johnson is an impressive, smooth but ultimately honest Tyriq. Dependable Sandra Gilliam is along; Tiaona Loman, as sex-kitten Saundra, stretches credibility but is excellent as a late-play voice of reason.

The cast also includes Chalma Warmley and Quanaejah McPhyrce, a charmer as hotel clerk Lisette.

This “Two Weeks” is a step beyond a “work in progress.” But, it could use some tweaking if it goes elsewhere, as planned. The story is told in a series of blackouts, too many of them interminable. Characters make far too many cellphone calls; they don’t move the action along and most conversations are inane and empty.

The plot may remind some of the Angela Bassett 1998 film, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.” There are similarities. But, importantly, significant differences.

Two Weeks Until the Rest of My Life

Three stars

When: Through June 2

Where: African-American Cultural Center’s Paul Robeson Theatre, 650 Masten Ave.

Tickets: $25-$27.50

Info: 884-2013, africancultural.org ]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 06:31:53 -0400 By Ted Hadley

news contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ At Shaw: 3 stars for ‘Major Barbara,’ 3.5 stars for ‘Guys and Dolls,’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130515/GUSTO/130519361/1283
As a major in the Salvation Army intent on saving as many souls as possible, she practically glows with youthful idealism. But before the curtain comes down on George Bernard Shaw’s capitalist fantasia “Major Barbara,” which opened Friday night in the Royal George Theatre, all the doe-eyed naiveté has gone out of her eyes and been magically replaced with a hard-won pragmatism about the ways of the world.

Director Jackie Maxwell’s production of Shaw’s long-winded but monumentally engaging play about the tug-of-war between public and corporate interests sets out to rescue Undershaft from her status as a weak protagonist all too willing to mold her ideals to the arguments of others. Alas, despite Maxwell’s laudable efforts and a remarkable performance from the magnetic Nicole Underhay in the title role, the show fails to transform Shaw’s projection screen of a protagonist into a living, breathing human.

But that’s hardly a fatal flaw for this play, itself a kind of cobbled-together sounding board for some of Shaw’s more brilliantly crafted speeches and jokes. It hinges on the moral evolution of Major Barbara, whose appetite for religion and social justice is complicated by the fact that her father, Andrew Undershaft (Benedict Campbell) is the world’s most successful purveyor of war machinery to anyone who can afford it.

From the start, this is a compelling battle: the father’s merchant of death versus Barbara’s angel of mercy. Their journey, helped along by a bevy of minor characters each pointed in different directions on the show’s spinning moral compass, leads them inexorably toward one another. Or, at least, it leads Barbara inexorably toward her father’s dark vision of the world.

Along the way, we meet Cusins (the appealing Shaw Fest vet Graeme Somerville), a “collector of religions” who joins the Salvation Army only to woo Barbara; the sarcastic Lady Undershaft (in a hilarious turn from Laurie Paton), who is estranged from her wealthy, arms-dealing husband; and a host of other sisters and unfortunate street-dwellers.

Among the swirling, timeless arguments about the reliance of scrupulous charities on unscrupulous profiteers (see: Wall Street, Halliburton, et al.) and idealism’s collision course with rocky reality, there are lots of good jokes and memorable turns of phrase. “I wouldn’t have your conscience, not for all your income,” a huffy Cusins at one point declares to Undershaft, who responds: “I wouldn’t have your income, not for all your conscience.”

Most of all though, despite its dashed-off, impressionable protagonist and a preachy second act that drags too slowly, “Major Barbara” is worth watching for one riveting and disturbing speech by Andrew Undershaft in the third act about the nature of poverty. That speech, which reveals a dark undercurrent of Shavian thinking and as much chilling food for thought as any Shakespearean soliloquy, makes the entire experience worthwhile.

Major barbara

Three stars

When: Through Oct. 19

Where: Royal George Theatre, Shaw Festival

Tickets: $24 to $110

Info: (800) 511-7429 or www.shawfest.com

Damon Runyon lifted the title character of his short story “The Idyll of Sarah Brown” straight from Shaw’s “Major Barbara.” Some 17 years later, in 1950, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows did much the same for “Guys and Dolls,” their musical collaboration with composer and lyricist Frank Loesser.

Most of “Major Barbara’s” major baggage was dropped in both the story and the musical, making the virtuous (and conveniently corruptible) Salvation Army leader the ideal focus for a show about the colorful demimonde of Broadway in the early ’50s.

The Shaw Festival’s grand, no-expense-spared production of one of the most note-perfect musicals in the canon opened Saturday night in the Festival Theatre to ecstatic applause from the bejeweled and tuxedoed crowd. And the performers in this cast, talented singers and expert dancers all, earned every last clap.

“Guys and Dolls,” beloved of high school drama departments across the United States, is a perfect cartoon of a show with only a hint of a story and some of the better lyrics ever written for the stage. It’s a comic-book world of lovable gangsters and their even more lovable dames engaged in a joyful urban dance in an airbrushed version of New York City in the middle of the century.

The Shaw has become increasingly adept at producing the great old chestnuts of American musical theater with some connection to the Irish playwright after whom the festival was named. Its been on an upward swing since its expert “Mack and Mabel” in 2007, later turning fine productions of “Wonderful Town” and “My Fair Lady” (based on Shaw’s “Pygmalion”), among others.

For this production, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki with molecular fidelity to the original material and choreographed to within a millimeter of its life by Parker Esse, the Shaw has rounded up a phenomenal cast.

As Sarah Brown (read: Barbara Undershaft), Elodie Gillett brings far more charm, contemporary humor and romantic longing to the role than it probably deserves. She stumbles her way gloriously through the rum-soaked number “If I Were a Bell” and her performance of “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” is hilarious and heartbreaking in the same breath.

The comic romance between Nathan Detroit and the put-upon dancer Adelaide comes to shimmering life on the talents of Shawn Wright and Jenny L. Wright, who provide the bulk of the show’s quirky spirit and some of its sharpest pieces of humor and songwriting. His mastery of that Runyonesque combination of slang and formal language is spot-on. Her delivery of the sneeze-ridden “Adelaide’s Lament” is a model of fine-tuned comic timing.

As Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Thom Allson nearly runs away with the show with a nuclear-powered performance of “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” that rocked the house.

The only false note here is Kyle Blair’s too self-serious portrayal of the dapper gangster Sky Masterson, whose entirely humorless delivery of the show’s most famous song, “Luck Be a Lady,” lands with a thud.

There’s something to be said, once in a while, for eschewing any egotistical desire to project some sort of contemporary vision on a modern classic. Sometimes it’s best to respect the original material, to stay faithful to the admittedly simple vision of its creators and to set about the difficult-enough work of reproducing it.

That’s exactly what Bradecki, choreographer Esse, set designer Peter Hartwell and musical director Paul Sportelli set out to do. And boy, did they succeed.

guys and dolls

Three and a half stars (Out of four)

When: Through Nov. 3

Where: Festival Theatre, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Tickets: $24 to $110

Info: (800) 511-7429 or www.shawfest.com



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 16 May 2013 06:31:12 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ ‘Flat Stanley’ goes on a soul-searching journey ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130515/LIFE/130519505/1283
A new production at Theatre of Youth gives audiences a different kind of hero, in “The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley,” based on books by Jeff Brown and Scott Nash. Stanley’s literary cred is a full franchise at this point, with books, an iPhone app and even a school curriculum – The Flat Stanley Project – that entices readership through a global pen pal program.

He’s also a musical, a fine production of which TOY capably handles. While the company’s cast does a serviceable job at bringing Stanley Lambchop to three-dimensional life, their material is often too flat to work with.

Timothy Allen McDonald’s adaptation doesn’t spring to life with quite the vitality that this boy’s story would have you think. Even in children’s theater, where exposition tends to take a while, it is not apparent when or why this story is being told. And though kids may not verbalize their criticism, that doesn’t mean they don’t notice when something isn’t doing it.

Still, there’s a fun time to be had, and children at a recent matinee were enjoying their storybook hero come to life.

What does Stanley want to be? Well when life gives him the ultimate lemon – when the bulletin board above his bed crashed down and flattens him – he makes the greatest lemonade. Given his slim new state, he packs up in an envelope and travels the globe in search of friends near and far. He goes to the Louvre and helps stop a robber from stealing a masterpiece. He goes to Hollywood, and falls for the alluring lights of show business. He makes time to visit an old friend from the neighborhood.

Stanley’s superpower, it turns out, despite all abilities of human flight and postal service fraud, is that of indifference. What’s next, a trip to Applebees? Stanley needs something meaningful to hold onto, a force to ground him, not the attractions on Hollywood and Vine. It’s wholesome in that way.

Adults will recognize this soul-searching tale from their young adulthood, when the Big Wide World felt too small to own, and too large to attempt. “Pippin,” “Candide,” “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars” – this is a tale as old as time. But Stanley’s version of it is too tame to feel like any risks are being taken, or any real gain is at stake. Perhaps if he felt more lost to begin with we’d understand his need to hop in a mailbox.

His eventual – spoiler alert – return home is safe and comfortable, but it’s also where a little boy should be in the first place. It’s too much about his room and not enough about his head.

All that aside, his adventures are far-reaching and his friends are supportive.

Christopher Quinn is our Stanley, and gives him sweet notes of curiosity and wonderment. His bedtime cape-and-flight charade has him hurling around his room like a carefree puppy.

Michael Zito plays, among other characters, Stanley’s brother, Arthur. It’s probably Zito’s particular punctuation alongside Quinn’s muted tone, but his Arthur is often played more invigorated by his own imagination. Zito’s other roles, as a foolhardy Dr. Dan and sly Hollywood agent, are similarly exuberant; we often wish for Quinn to match Zito’s enthusiasm, though his characterization is without flaw.

The sound in the Allendale Theatre is often an issue, especially in musicals, but it was a major concern here. It was often impossible to comprehend musical dialogue or singing; another detail that isn’t lost on young audiences.

Beth Donohue and Robert Insana are pitch-perfect as the boys’ parents, and other roles, too. Donohue harbors much of the ensemble’s pacing, playing to her little viewers with attention to articulation and clarity, and does it in the mom costume: pink capris and tight red hair.

Insana is befitting his bowtie as a quiet but steady father.

Kerrykate Abel is our trusty mailperson, delivering the Lambchops’ mail, which includes their son, with cheer and security. She’s a warm energy for audiences to hold onto, even when sound woes muffle her words.

That Stanley has so much joy around him is not discouraging; children should feel affection and love without caution.

Never mind that they barely appear concerned about their son’s desire to fly away, nor even anxious for his eventual return. But where Stanley’s plea for meaning in this obnoxiously pleasant existence is concerned, he might consider a quest more down to earth.

That, or a better bulletin board.Three stars (Out of four)

Through June 2 in the Theatre of Youth, Allendale Theatre, 203 Allen St. Tickets are $24-$26. Call 884-4400 or visit theatreofyouth.org.

]]> Wed, 15 May 2013 06:17:58 -0400 By Ben Siegel

news contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130515/LIFE/130519504/1283
“The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley”

∆∆∆ (Out of four)

Through June 2 in the Theatre of Youth, Allendale Theatre, 203 Allen St. Tickets are $24-$26. Call 884-4400 or visit theatreofyouth.org. ]]> Tue, 14 May 2013 16:31:44 -0400 <![CDATA[ Jewish Repertory Theatre’s ‘God of Isaac’ is a charmer ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130511/LIFE/130519890/1283
And, almost always, audiences do just that. Now the hit streak continues at the versatile yet intimate Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre with James Sherman’s comedy – albeit one with thoughtful, often serious, undercurrents – “The God of Isaac,” a little charmer of a play that has you hooked from its early minutes. In the late going, a whiff of preachiness appears and is forgiven. Like the man said. Shalom.

The set-up is novel. Isaac Adams has written a memory play, slice-of-life, mid-1970s stuff concerning his questions about his Jewish faith and an actual historical event that surfaced in his hometown of Skokie, Ill., a heavily populated Jewish suburb of Chicago. A neo-Nazi group called the Nationalist Socialist Party of America planned an in-your-face march through town to scoff at the Holocaust. Militant Jewish Defense League leader Meir Kahane, equally extreme, vowed to confront the marchers, violence loomed, First Amendment rights were argued, the ACLU was summoned. “Part of me is part of something,” Isaac sensed. He was torn. No sleep.

That’s the serious undercurrent and the trigger that began to topple Isaac’s hasty marriage to a blonde shiksa – a non-Jewish woman – causing his reading to suddenly include religious tomes. He remembers long-forgotten prayers, confers with a rabbi, longs for his old girlfriend and loses his job. “Oy,” he says. “Pain.”

The play-within-a play continues. Isaac’s mother is in the audience, still spreading guilt like jam, but, like others in this schizophrenic piece, fires Catskill-circuit one-liners at her troubled son, rolls her eyes and longs for intermission. Isaac is floundering.

Isaac confronts Shelley, the shiksa: “I want children. God said ‘go forth and multiply.’ ”

“Well, that’s all they did back then,” she says. “I have to work, you know.”

Things go downhill. Shelley leaves, there’s a hint that Chaya, the old flame, might come back, Isaac finds his religious identity by combining the best tenets of many faiths – Mom’s advice, thank you – the Skokie event fizzles a bit and the future looks brighter.

Director Elkin’s cast is outstanding, many of them performing multiple roles because the play takes a quartet of trips into famous films to find help and motivation for Isaac: “Huckleberry Finn,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” Tom Joad, leaving town in a hurry, gets advice from his mother. Sounds familiar.

Tom Loughlin, Adam Yellen and Kristin Bentley do double and triple duty. Lisa Ludwig absolutely nails Shelley the Shiksa; what a complete portrait she paints. Darleen Pickering-Hummert, character actress personified, steals the night as Mrs. Adams. Perfectly goofy, fun and so wise all at once with a purse loaded with zingers.

David Butler, a fine storyteller, with material straight from the late Myron Cohen, is very likeable and self-deprecating as Isaac. He’s ultimately the very “mensch” – an honorable, decent, responsible and true-to-himself guy – that he longs to be. His search for religious meaning ends well, he finds what he needs, he’s at peace.

“You can’t chew with another’s teeth,” his parents advised him.

Sounds good to me. ]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 16:06:53 -0400 By Ted Hadley

news contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ Canalside to host hundreds of events this summer ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130510/CITYANDREGION/130519911/1283
The events, announced Friday by the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., will include concerts, festivals, dance, theater and poetry performances, outdoor exercise classes and family activities.

Some highlights of the mammoth series, which the harbor corporation pulled off with a budget of just $200,000, include the Pride Festival on June 2, a pop-up playground June 15, a July 4 celebration, Squeaky Wheel’s Outdoor Animation Festival on Aug. 21 and the Buffalo Irish Festival from Aug. 23 to 25.

The organization also announced a new website, canalsidebuffalo.com which lists all the planned activities.

At 10 a.m. today, the canal corporation will host a preview of the summer’s events, featuring several dozen presentations from the likes of MusicalFare Theatre, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Young Audiences of Western New York and the Rince na Tiarna School of Irish Dance. Food trucks will be on hand in a preview of the “Canalside Food Fight” series of competitions among local mobile food vendors.

The fair-weather activity at Canalside has grown significantly since summertime programming began in 2009 with a handful of events. After Friday’s news conference in the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, Tom Dee, president of the canal corporation, said that Canalside’s vastly improved reputation has helped make it into a lucrative destination for cultural groups.

“In our infancy, we had nobody coming down here. Nobody would come down, nobody knew where we were, because everybody said there was nothing to do. So we had to pay people to come down and entertain,” he said. “Now people are knocking on our door, saying, ‘We’ll do it for free. We want to get our name out there.’ The Irish Center, the Philharmonic, the Pride Festival – we gave them money last year and the year before. This year, no money. And they’re saying they’re thrilled to come down.”

Mayor Byron W. Brown praised Dee and his agency for its approach to developing the waterfront, which has shifted in the past five years from silver-bullet solutions like a Bass Pro shop to incremental, piecemeal projects designed to reach a critical mass.

“It’s a philosophy I support, because by promoting smaller events, it creates more excitement, more momentum, continuous activity,” Brown said after Friday’s news conference. “There is always something to see and do down here, and I think that really helps to set the table for the larger investments.”

Brown added that small-scale public investments in events by the canal corporation were crucial in attracting private money from Benderson Development’s renovation of the former Donovan Building, Ellicott Development’s Carlo project near Templeton Landing, and the Buffalo Sabres’ $172 million HarborCenter on the Webster Block.

State Sen. Mark Grisanti joined the chorus of praise Friday for the series of summer activities.

“When you listen to the radio and you talk to people, there are still a lot of naysayers out there that are saying that nothing’s happening in Buffalo, that Buffalo’s dying,” he said. “But let me tell you, those have got to be individuals who have not been down to the waterfront.”

Today’s Canalside Food Fight will get the season off to a lively start and fill a void for downtown visitors who love to eat.

The city’s licensed food trucks, barred from the Canalside area in most times, will be allowed to park and sell food this afternoon for what will be a season-long cooking competition, said organizer Matt Carlucci.

From noon to 4 p.m. today,seven trucks will be serving paying customers, Carlucci said.



email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 14:47:40 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ Songs are the key of nostalgic ‘Jersey Boys’ at Shea’s ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130510/LIFE/130519965/1283
“Jersey Boys,” which opened a two-week return engagement at Shea’s Performing Arts Center Wednesday night, is this scene in musical form. It’s the reclaimed story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the top-selling but underappreciated boy band of the 1960s that churned out mega hits but somehow failed to rank as historically as the Beatles, the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones. The band’s founding members recount their versions of events from the mean streets of Jersey to the big lights of Atlantic City. Similar to the Carousel’s wheel of selective nostalgia, we cling to what we want to honor, and dance to what we wish we could get back.

It’s a brilliant show in this way. The musical is often considered the most legit of the jukebox genre, and that’s well-earned; it won the 2006 Tony Award for Best Musical against formidable competition. It is neither frivolous like ABBA’s “Mamma Mia,” (oddly) vanilla like the bluesy “Memphis,” nor offensively revisionist like Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” In lieu of manufacturing strange fiction to accommodate vague pop lyrics, which has become the norm for so many other productions, “Jersey Boys” tells a story of its songs’ origins, and in doing so, lets them exist in their natural habitat.

With few exceptions – usually a ballad parading as narrative movement – all songs are performed in the context of the working band’s steady hustle: under a street lamp, where a harmony first lands; in the recording studio, where an instrumentation completes the puzzle; on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” where the country goes gaga; and on the road, where theater and stadiums drown their silhouettes in blinding spotlights.

The decision to keep this glorious music native to its roots is the smartest thing the show does. It allows the story to steer the dramatic narrative arc, which is what Valli and his brothers – not to mention a tiring, pervasive theatrical genre – deserve. The amount of musical numbers is impressive, yet this still feels like a play with songs and not a musical with dialogue.

The result is an efficient, smooth, compelling piece of theater, with one of the finest pop scores around, regardless of origin. Director Des McAnuff, who also helmed “The Who’s Tommy” to Broadway in the 1990s with a similar perpetual motion, keeps this show flying at all times. Our anticipation of rags-to-riches clichés aren’t ignored, but acknowledged before moving onto the scene at hand.

This tour’s cast does a fine job of keeping pace with the big race, but unfortunately Brad Weinstock, as Valli, fails to deliver on all his levels. His mates keep the band’s synergy afloat, but Weinstock misses some key points in his central role. His falsetto is patently Valli, and his moves are tightly controlled. For what it’s worth, his opening scenes as a novice, eager singer are fittingly adorable. But he has trouble maturing Valli to the leading man that he became – from the foursome’s ensemble, to top billing and eventually a solo act.

When Weinstock raises his voice to imposing band founder Tommy DeVito (Colby Foytik), he barely makes a growl, let alone a roar. It could have, and should have, been a significant coming out.. Buying into this doe-eyed boy’s dream requires a promise of growth, and we just don’t see the return on that investment.

(Of note: Buffalo boy Devon Goffman, a swing in this cast, will perform the role of Tommy in the second week of the show’s two-week run. If there’s a better show at which to celebrate a hometown boy-done-good, it’s this.)

As quiet bass Nick Massi, Brandon Andrus bottoms out this volatile duo with his simple-minded but salient wisdom. Massi’s observations of backstage drama and unresolved histories gives the band’s real fans, those giving standing ovations mid-show and singing along as if at a concert, an insider’s perspective to add to the scrapbook: When things go down and fights get heated, everyone is to blame, and all are absolved.

And like our lesson on the Carousel, there’s nothing wrong with remembering things the way you want. Even when digging out old photos or dusting off old albums, the details belong in the past. It’s the music that belongs with us today.

Theater Review

“Jersey Boys”

Three and a half stars (Out of four)

Through May 18 in Shea’s Performing Arts Center, 646 Main St. Tickets are $34.50. Call 847-0850 or visit sheas.org.

]]> Fri, 10 May 2013 06:26:34 -0400 By Ben Siegel

News contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ ‘Potted Potter’ offers Quidditch, Rowling’s magic and much hilarity ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130508/GUSTO/130509318/1283
The vocabulary and characters of J.K. Rowling’s modern classic are now embedded firmly enough into the popular imagination that you need not have read the books or even seen the films to grasp the humor of this piece of relentless slapstick. The vaudevillian show is as much for “Harry Potter” obsessives and aspiring Quidditch stars – one man in my row claimed he’d read each of the seven books seven times through – as it is for run-of-the-mill muggles.

The show, which began as a street performance in 2005 to amuse fans waiting in line for the release of the sixth book, is the brainchild of U.K.-based Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner. It enjoyed great success in Britain, a place even more deeply obsessed with the franchise than America, and later spawned popular productions in Toronto, New York City, Australia and South Africa.

For this production, Clarkson and Turner’s show gets a magnificent treatment from Gary Trainor and Delme Thomas, a sort of Hogwarts-educated Abbott and Costello whose scripted hijinks come off as the inspired riffing of two very old and very good friends.

The concept of the show is a simple one: Two friends have been charged with mounting a spectacular production of Rowling’s entire “Harry Potter” mythology. Trainor is an expert on the subject, while Thomas, we’re meant to believe, has only the dimmest knowledge of the key plot points, mistaking the wizard training ground Hogwarts for a pair of warthogs and constantly questioning the logic of Rowling’s character development strategies.

Thomas portrays Ron Weasley, the meek redhead perpetually at Harry’s side, as a Cockney street tough in a fluorescent Carrot Top wig. His version of Harry’s precocious friend and fellow wizard Hermione Granger consists of a wig with two dangling pigtails and a few syllables delivered in a deep, gravelly voice. His Professor Snape, the mercurial instructor who is perhaps Rowling’s most complex character, introduces himself simply by running out onto the stage from behind a wardrobe, declaring that he hates Harry Potter, slapping him, and then running back off stage.

The winking nature of the show is one of its central charms, and the gifted comedic duo has thoroughly demolished the fourth wall in order to involve the audience more deeply in what seems more like a personal game than a traditional theater production.

“Dumbledore is the greatest wizard alive, and you’re telling me that he went, of his own volition, into teaching?” Thomas asks at one point, incredulously, to the groans of Trainor and the laughter of the audience.

After one particularly hammy bit about halfway through the 75-minute joyride, Trainor looks into the audience and declares: “I think we can all agree the victim is theater.”

The pair, because of its reliance on the standard music hall formula of straight man and incorrigible instigator, is free to add its own personal quirks and bits of improv into the performance. It’s a complete joy to watch an actor as self-assured as Thomas execute his endless series of costume changes and absurd sight gags, as it is to watch Trainor’s eye-rolling responses and feigned irritation.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the show is that it actually communicates a genuine sense of the long story arc that spans Rowling’s sprawling, 4,000-page-plus series. Each book gets a different treatment from the pair, ranging from a rapid-fire school lesson to a musical puppet show set to “I Will Survive.”

For many of the younger audience members – and a few of the older ones, no doubt – the highlight of the show was most likely a theaterwide game of Quidditch that had the entire crowd batting around a beach ball and attempting to send it flying through one of two illuminated goals hanging on either side of the stage. Half the audience got to play members of the virtuous Gryffindor house, while the other adopted the hisses and underhanded tactics of the evil Slytherin house. Neither side won. But fun, I think it’s fair to say, was had by all.

Whether you’re a “Harry Potter” fanatic or a mere muggle, this show is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

review

Four stars

What: “Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience”

When: Through Sunday

Where: 710 Main Theatre, 710 Main St.

Tickets: $37.50 to $47.50

Info: 847-0850 or www.sheas.org

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 9 May 2013 07:32:14 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ Play mines mayhem behind 'Gone With the Wind' ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130504/LIFE/130509693/1283
On stage now and for another couple of weekends at Matthew LaChiusa’s busy acting company, ART of WNY, is a play by Ron Hutchinson titled “Moonlight and Magnolias.” It’s a paean to film, its stars and moguls, egos, flops and blockbusters, a shouting, rough-and-tumble, almost true story of how Margaret Mitchell’s sprawling novel, “Gone With the Wind,” found its way into Hollywood history.

Ben Hecht was one of several screenwriters recruited by famed producer David O. Selznick to condense Mitchell’s vivid, 1,000-plus page, Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of the American Civil War and the ensuing Age of Reconstruction into a workable script for the big screen. Hecht was a Hollywood legend. He could pound out a script in a matter of days, hours sometimes. He preferred crime thrillers and screwball comedies so when he was strongarmed into service on GWTW, he had to admit that he hadn’t read the best-selling novel.

“It’s about the Civil War,” Selznick said.

“Well, that’s the trouble right there,” Hecht replied. “No Civil War story ever made a dime.”

Ben also frowned on Scarlett and Rhett, Melanie and Ashley. Cousins marrying? “Is that legal?” he asked. “In the South, it is,” deadpanned Selznick.

So, Selznick, under the gun and apparently popping amphetamines like crazy; Hecht; and Victor Fleming, the deposed director of the then-filming “The Wizard of Oz,” began the seemingly impossible task of writing a script for GWTW in five days. The trio remained locked in a room with a typewriter and only bananas and peanuts for food. Hecht always said that movies weren’t made, they were “yelled together.” Boy, was he right on.

Gail Golden, a skilled comedian, actress, film collector and aficionado, who has been away for a decade, has returned to Buffalo and who better to direct a play about movies?

She has actors David Mitchell (Selznick), Todd Fuller (Fleming), and veteran Guy Wagner (Hecht), at each other’s throats and physically manic for three acts. They’re loud and silly and frequently over-the-top on a Lauren Millman set. It all makes for an impressive rendering by Golden and the cast in a funny and occasionally crude piece. David Mitchell is stellar throughout and Fuller is enjoyably when he foolish imitates Prissy, the young house girl and her “don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ babies” speech.

Completing the cast is Jamie Nablo-Lama, as hassled Girl Friday Miss Poppenguhl.

So, hooray for Hollywood. And plenty of giggles for “Moonlight and Magnolias.” ]]> Fri, 3 May 2013 17:20:20 -0400 By Ted Hadley

NEWS CONTRIBUTING REVIEWER

]]> <![CDATA[ Kavinoky gives top-notch treatment to ‘August: Osage County’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130502/GUSTO/130509913/1283
This is the dark and unanswerable question at the black heart of “August: Osage County,” a triumph of magisterial melodrama by Tracy Letts that opened Friday night in the Kavinoky Theatre.

The play, by the preternaturally gifted Chicago playwright Tracy Letts, shares certain strands of its DNA with Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and others with the unvarnished humor of sitcoms like “Roseanne.” The result is a theatergoing experience specifically engineered to access the encrypted emotions of a generation raised on the television of the late 20th century. It has thus served as a gateway drug into the special virtues of theater for those who might not have believed it had anything useful to tell them.

That is to say: “August” is not for theatergoing veterans, who have tended to dismiss it as too clichéd in its conceit or brash in its execution to be considered serious theater. But it is melodramatic by design – something like a Pedro Almodovar film without the camp – and therein lies its particular brilliance.

The show transports us to present-day Oklahoma, to an old family farmhouse that has seen better days. As it opens, we meet the weary patriarch Beverly Weston (Saul Elkin) holding forth on his alcoholism and his love for literature. He is shortly to wander off into the night toward an uncertain fate.

What drives him away becomes clear soon enough, when a shrill yell comes from somewhere offstage. It’s the voice of his cancer-afflicted, pill-addicted wife Violet (the extraordinary Sheila McCarthy), a primordial creature doomed by genetics and fate to inflict the pain of her illness, her addiction and her apparently wretched childhood on anyone within shrieking range.

Because of Beverly’s flight from his wife’s intolerable rage, the Weston children come flocking home to help. But they only find Violet, who delivers a series of remarkable diatribes – both drug-induced and terrifyingly clear-eyed – to excoriate her progeny for an endless litany of sins real and imagined.

We meet the put-upon Barbara (Eileen Dugan, who excels at playing exasperated sisters), whose impending divorce and missing father conspire to drive her to a very dark place, indeed. Her sister, Mattie Fay (Kelli Bocock-Natale), takes out her own unhappiness on her good-hearted husband (Norman Sham) and hapless son (Steve Copps). Another sister, Iby (the pace-setting Kristen Tripp Kelley), stayed close to home and is still plotting to escape her mother’s sphere of influence.

The Kavinoky has pulled off a fine production of Letts’ modern classic under the smart direction of Bob Waterhouse, a British-born man of the theater who clearly understands the peculiarly American sensibility and mood this play requires.

It takes an extremely delicate treatment from the cast, however, to activate the play’s most melodramatic scenes in ways that don’t come off as cheesy. Timing and chemistry issues afflict too many exchanges, particularly between Barbara and her husband (Tim Newell) and Mattie Fay and others. But McCarthy’s performance, clearly the result of an expedition deep into the soul of her tortured character, provides the unrelenting force behind the production and helps to allay concerns about timing and casting.

The show is essentially a series of miniature soap operas, each one intersecting in a way that deepens our sense of the genuine hopelessness of each character’s life. “August” can be read in any number of ways, but it is particularly interesting as a study in the ripples of abuse traveling across multiple generations. Violet carries the acid-green rage of her parents just as Barbara carries the rage of Violet, and, undoubtedly, young Jean will carry some version of that rage herself.

Letts makes us wonder whether the sort of merciless familial violence his characters embody is immutable and constant, or, like a radioactive element, subject to a half-life. That latter theory would constitute a form of hope, but that word is not in the vocabulary of “August: Osage County.”

What the play contains is pain, the sort of pain that infects everything around it – the sort of pain from which it’s just about impossible to look away.

review

Three stars

What: “August: Osage County”

When: Through May 19

Where: Kavinoky Theatre, 320 Porter Ave.

Tickets: $35 to $39

Info: 829-7668 or www.kavinokytheatre.com

email: cdabkowski@buffnews.com ]]> Thu, 2 May 2013 13:17:11 -0400 Colin Dabkowski
]]> <![CDATA[ Torn Space takes on bizarre, unhinged ‘Blood on the Cat’s Neck’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130502/GUSTO/130509914/1283
Remember Phoebe? Back in the 1960s, she was the centerpiece of a sendup, often erotic comic book series satirizing adventure heroes and heroines. Phoebe lived on the edge and frequently almost met her demise. She was often kidnapped: Nazis chased her, she was grabbed by Chinese foot fetishists and even by a pack of lesbian assassins. Phoebe, always nude, narrowly escaped to live another day, her ordeals ever more bizarre.

I was mildly surprised when Phoebe – born on a distant star – turned up in Torn Space Theater’s production of the late and bizarre German filmmaker and playwright Rainier Werner Fassbinder’s absurdist “Blood on the Cat’s Neck.” Phoebe, still an extraterrestrial, is on assignment, a fact-finding field trip. This needs some explaining.

Phoebe Zeitgeist – her surname in German means “spirit of an age” – arrives from her home galaxy amid a fanfare of otherworldly sounds and images, exactly what you’d expect from Torn Space and director Dan Shanahan, a sensory barrage of light and color, blips and whirs and a 90-minute droning undercurrent that will not stop.

Phoebe watches from afar, down a tunnel of sorts, as eight partygoers, dressed in white, walk downstage and begin a series of monologues about themselves – their marriages, good, bad and floundering, sexual preferences, parenting issues, workplace goals or lack thereof – and they are, collectively, an unlikable, self-absorbed, 1970s “Me Decade” group. Spirit of their age, indeed.

A word about Phoebe: She hears the words but can’t understand them. She’s been instructed to “learn about democracy” and she tries. She apes gestures that she sees, memorizes the posturing of the people below: The Soldier, The Girl, The Mistress, The Dead Soldier’s Wife, The Lover, The Teacher, The Policeman, The Model. Phoebe hears arguments among them now, slurs, sneers, put-downs, sees abuse, verbally and otherwise, the worst that earthlings can offer. Relationships, interaction, contact, appear impossible.

Usually, in productions of “Cat’s Neck,” Phoebe, true to her comic book roots, wears only a hat, gloves and shoes. Naked, a baby, ready to learn.

Here, played by Jessica Wegrzyn, clad in clinging black, she has the look of Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider of video games and the movies, toned, shapely, intimidating. Did I mention that she’s also a vampire? Phoebe has heard enough. Time to put malcontents out of their misery.

Yes, it is party time.

A tuned cast makes this chilling but tedious piece, sometimes subtitled, inexplicably, “Marilyn Monroe vs. The Vampires,” work: Wegrzyn, methodically manic, is fine when she gets down to business; others, who very often seem to be in slow-motion, include Angie Shriner, Diane Gaidry, Becky Globus, Johnny Toohill, Andy Kottler, James Wilde, Ivan Rodriguez and the superb Bonnie Jean Taylor, happily finding her way to Torn Space, as The Model, scarily, dangerously narcissistic.

Great work again by the Torn Space technical team: sound, light, graphics and video.

“Blood on the Cat’s Neck,” one of Fassbinder’s last plays – he died of a drug overdose at age 36 in 1982 – remains a puzzler right up to its closing, Immanuel Kant-inspired Phoebe soliloquy. It’s a rambling few minutes that further muddies the night.

review

Three stars

What: “Blood on the Cat’s Neck”

When: Through May 19

Where: Torn Space Theater, Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle, 612 Fillmore Ave.

Tickets: $15 to $25

Info: 812-5733 or www.tornspacetheater.com ]]> Thu, 2 May 2013 10:01:34 -0400 By Ted Hadley

News contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ Irish Classical stages a powerful ‘American Buffalo’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130502/GUSTO/130509922/1283
The night opens on Don’s Resale Shop, life’s hand-me-downs on display, hanging here, piled there, dented and bruised, someone’s one-time treasure or heirloom dusty or perhaps broken. No “Antique Roadshow” surprises here. In other words: junk.

Then there’s the human detritus: proprietor Don, always waiting for that Picasso behind the velvet Elvis; his “gofer,” crackhead Bobby; and Walter “Teach” Cole, street survivor, volatile, a walking, talking poster boy for anger management. Don spends his days hoping for a cash cow, Bobby scrounges and runs errands for drug money and Teach just hangs around, railing, ranting against people and things. “The world is lies,” he spouts. “There is no law, there is no right and wrong, there is no friendship.” Teach is not fun to be around and for all his talk of loyalty, he is essentially a snake. These are dented and discarded people – add pathetic to the mix – occupying Don’s Resale Shop.

The trouble starts when Don sells an apparent vintage American buffalo nickel for much less than it’s worth. When he realizes he’s been scammed, Don seeks to get the coin back, first recruiting the hapless Bobby but then enlisting the eavesdropping Teach to burglarize the customer’s apartment. Plans and preparation prove inept, vaudevillian almost, and there are hints of double-cross before the arrival of menace in the play’s late going. The ICTC has much experience with the works of Harold Pinter, where everyday events can turn deadly and seemingly harmless relationships go awry. Those enigmatic Pinter moments have readied them for Mamet and a riveting “American Buffalo.”

The story is told in Mamet’s customary vulgar street-talk style with inventive combinations – theater critic Ben Brantley once said that the flying and frequent curses were “like a stink bomb at a garden party” – but the jargon is most likely armor against the brutal urban lives of these three desperate and marginal would-be thieves, none of whom have many redeeming traits.

Well, Don does care, in a paternal way, about Bobby. “Never go without breakfast,” Don coaches. And he’s going to buy the kid vitamins. He’s an enabler, though.

Brian Cavanagh, in a rare directing role, loves this play. These are his people, he says, and he admits that “Mamet’s language is my language.” Cavanagh has insisted that the economical speech patterns, the fragmented or unfinished sentences, the pulsating unrelenting cadence, the “scatological buckshot,” as the famed Jack Kroll once described Mamet’s work, remain intact and nonstop. He has assembled just the cast to do that: Christian Brandjes, always precise, an invaluable pacesetter, as Don; Jose Rivera, sweetly strung-out, runny-nosed Bobby; and Brian Mysliwy, as Teach, mesmerizing from opening moments to final meltdown.

Mysliwy, in a departure from his manic and acclaimed comic performances at ICTC (“The Servant of Two Masters,” “La Bete”) is raw, real and rough, a champion of greed, a threat, a bully and a coward at once, always pacing and prowling, always alert for “a piece of the action.” To Mysliwy falls the task of underscoring Mamet’s incredible lessons here of the power of language. As Teach, he makes the night a seminar; unforgettable.

The symbolic, theme-setting set is by Ron Schwartz; it’s admirable work. ]]> Wed, 1 May 2013 22:32:25 -0400 By Ted hadley

news contributing reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[ Ever-popular ‘Jersey Boys’ swings back into Shea’s ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130501/GUSTO/130509918/1283 the show has entranced millions of people with its sampling of the teenage nostalgia the music of Frankie Valli and his fellow singers evokes.

Wherever “Jersey Boys” goes, record crowds seem to follow. And now, after a three-year absence and much to the delight of local audiences who already have bought tickets in droves, the show is returning to Shea’s Performing Arts Center for a 10-day run on Wednesday. Its previous visit, in April 2010, occasioned one of the more rapturous audience reactions I had seen up to that point.

The show, with a slicker-than-slick book by Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, tells the tale of the Four Seasons’ rise and fall, its mix-ups with the mob and its embodiment of a peculiarly American lust for fame. “Jersey Boys” opens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through May 18 in Shea’s Performing Arts Center (646 Main St.). Tickets are $34.50-$127.50. Call 847-0850 or visit sheas.org.

— Colin Dabkowski ]]> Wed, 1 May 2013 23:23:46 -0400 <![CDATA[ Irish Classical deftly handles Mamet’s gritty ‘American Buffalo’ ]]> http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130430/LIFE/130439996/1283
The night opens on Don’s Resale Shop, life’s hand-me-downs on display, hanging here, piled there, dented and bruised, someone’s one-time treasure or heirloom dusty or perhaps broken. No “Antique Roadshow” surprises here. In other words: junk.

Then there’s the human detritus: proprietor Don, always waiting for that Picasso behind the velvet Elvis; his “gofer,” crackhead Bobby; and Walter “Teach” Cole, street survivor, volatile, a walking, talking poster boy for anger management. Don spends his days hoping for a cash cow, Bobby scrounges and runs errands for drug money and Teach just hangs around, railing, ranting against people and things. “The world is lies,” he spouts, “There is no law, there is no right and wrong, there is no friendship.” Teach is not fun to be around and for all his talk of loyalty, he is essentially a snake. These are dented and discarded people – add pathetic to the mix – occupying Don’s Resale Shop.

The trouble starts when Don sells an apparent vintage American buffalo nickel for much less than it’s worth. When he realizes he’s been scammed, Don seeks to get the coin back, first recruiting the hapless Bobby but then enlisting the eavesdropping Teach to burglarize the customer’s apartment. Plans and preparation prove inept, vaudevillian almost, and there are hints of double-cross before the arrival of menace in the play’s late going. The ICTC has much experience with the works of Harold Pinter, where everyday events can turn deadly and seemingly harmless relationships go awry. Those enigmatic Pinter moments have readied them for David Mamet and a riveting “American Buffalo.”

The story is told in Mamet’s customary vulgar street-talk style, a multitude of f-bombs and a couple of c-words, with inventive combinations of both – theater critic Ben Brantley once said that the flying and frequent curses were “like a stink bomb at a garden party” – but the jargon is most likely armor against the brutal urban lives of these three desperate and marginal would-be thieves, none of whom have many redeeming traits.

Well, Don does care, in a paternal way, about Bobby. “Never go without breakfast,” Don coaches. And he’s going to buy the kid vitamins. He’s an enabler, though.

Brian Cavanagh, in a rare directing role, loves this play. These are his people he says and he admits that “Mamet’s language is my language.” Cavanagh has insisted that the economical speech patterns, the fragmented or unfinished sentences, the pulsating unrelenting cadence, the “scatological buckshot,” as the famed Jack Kroll once described Mamet’s work, remain intact and non-stop and he has assembled just the cast to do that: Christian Brandjes, always precise, an invaluable pacesetter, as Don; Jose Rivera, sweetly strung-out, runny-nosed Bobby; and Brian Mysliwy, as Teach, mesmerizing from opening moments to final meltdown.

Mysliwy, in a departure from his manic and acclaimed comic performances at ICTC – “The Servant of Two Masters,” “La Bete” – is raw, real and rough, a champion of greed, a threat, a bully and a coward at once, always pacing and prowling, always alert for “a piece of the action.” To Mysilwy falls the task of underscoring Mamet’s incredible lessons here of the power of language. As Teach, he makes the night a seminar; unforgettable.

The symbolic, theme-setting set is by Ron Schwartz; admirable work.Four stars (out of four)

Irish Classical Theatre Co., 625 Main St., through May 19. 853-1380 or irishclassical.com for info ]]> Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:07:45 -0400 By Ted Hadley

News contributing reviewer

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