Confusion in the Dark

To open its new season Everyman Theatre has chosen to revive Frederick Knott's hardy perennial, Wait Until Dark.  The thriller pits a gang of smugglers (Roat, Carlino, Mike) against a blind housewife (Susan), trapped in her basement Greenwich Village apartment.  Roat and his associates are attempting to retrieve a doll that has accidentally fallen into the possession of Susan, her husband (Sam), and a pesky upstairs teenage neighbor (Gloria).  The opening effort of the gang members to deceive Susan through a series of elaborate ruses---including the suggestion that her husband was having an affair with the gang member (Lisa) who inadvertently gave him the doll---turns into physical violence in the second act.  In the celebrated climactic scene out of Grand Guignol, Susan turns the entire stage pitch black as she breaks the fuses on all the apartment's lights to create an even playing field with Roat, now determined to rape and kill her.

Unfortunately, the director Donald Hicken has chosen to use Jeffrey Hatcher's 2013 "adaptation" of Knott's play rather than the original 1966 Knott script.  Originally set in 1960s New York, the action is now transplanted to 1944.  Why?  In a program note, the dramaturg Johanna Gruenhut argues that this new setting gives the play a film noir feel.  Everyone is now bathed in a dark undercurrent of criminality and vice.  "As they negotiate the tribulations, blame is hard to ascribe, no one---not even a young neighbor---is truly innocent, and it is unclear who is more capable of protecting whom, and who really needs protection."  Really?  The blind Susan, the heroine of the piece, is perfectly innocent: Roat is the violent aggressor and she has done nothing to provoke him.  Her husband Sam, falsely accused of adultery in order to get Susan to relinquish the doll, is innocent as well.  Gloria is a disturbed, obnoxious girl in teenage rebellion mode but she courageously helps Susan to fend off the trio of aggressors.   No criminal she.  Knott's moral universe starkly pits the good against the evil; it's three against three and there's no ambiguity as to who is the assailant and who is the victim.

Another bit of Hatcher's tampering has to do with the smuggled contents in the doll.  In the original script it was heroin; now, it is diamonds.  But the violent Roat and his dime-store henchmen are clearly low-life petty criminals, more typical of the drug trade than an elegant heist from Tiffany's.  The script is full of the anxiety typical of 1960s New York: a burgeoning drug trade, rising crime rates, middle-class flight to the suburbs, growing insecurity in those who remain in the city.  Even Gloria's violent tantrums have a 1960s youth rebellion air to them.  The newly concocted references to World War II do nothing to advance the action.

The sound design also bears traces of directorial malfeasance.  The play is punctuated by the loud sound of a clock ticking and eerie music that sounds like the old Twilight Zone.  It weakens rather than enhances the tension of the play.  Susan's anxiety in her silent, isolated little universe is undercut.

The cast delivers a solid performance.  A standout was Shannon Hutchinson as Gloria, the awkward, disturbed, but ultimately heroic teenager.  Megan Anderson is completely credible as Susan, alternating confusion, terror, and courage as she slowly deciphers the conspiracy tightening around her.   As Roat, Bruce Randolph Nelson captures the sadist's dark humor but is not as menacing as Roat might be.

      

Election 2016 at Kennedy Center

One of the central theatrical events of the DC region is the annual Page-to-Stage Festival held on the Labor Day Weekend at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.  The Festival's committee invites theater groups from the District, Maryland, and Virginia to give a preview of the new dramatic season through readings, rehearsals, and panels tied to their current works-in-progress.  Numerous Baltimore groups presented programs at this year's Festival.  One of the more intriguing entries came from the Playwrights Group of Baltimore, who presented an anthology of short plays, USA 2017, which focused on everyone's favorite topic of conversation these days: the presidential election in November.

A mixture of comic and tragic pieces explored the election's outcome from different perspectives.  As one might expect, Donald Trump was the arch-villain of the evening.

Rich Espey's sober dialogue What a Year probed the ways in which "white privilege" is more than a slogan and how even mildly racially tinged language can hurt and distort reality.  More bombastic, Paddy Carroll's satirical My Fabulous Trumpettes imagines how the famous Trumpian wall backfires as the Donald takes over the White House with the comic assist of Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, and Vladimir Putin.  The wall returns in Amy Bernstein's elegiac The Wall, in which a Mexican-American mother and daughter find themselves separated from and invisible to each other because of the new wall on the Mexican border.  Political corruption is the object of criticism in Joe Osborne's No Contest, set in a decrepit Philadelphia precinct.  The most poetic piece of the evening, Cheryl Williams's Ford's Place gently depicts three older women dealing with the grief-tinged comic soap opera of their small neighborhood.

Allegory takes over in Susan Middaugh's Heavy Weights, where Hillary and Donald become boxers in the ring.  Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty make guest appearances to deliver patriotic speeches on the real meaning of America.  In Kevin Kostic's The Political Roundup dueling Democratic and Republican television commentators, using the foulest rhetoric to destroy the positions of the other side, suddenly discover they are long-lost siblings and the children of the unsuspecting host.  A political farce, John Conley's Adele and Lancelot Bake a Cake features two White House chefs, adamantly opposed to Hillary and Donald, who bake an unusual dessert for the unexpected new President and Vice President.  An elegiac note returns with Dwight Cook's C in C's Last Walk, depicting Obama's bittersweet day of departure from the White House.

Shirley Basfield Dunlap, Menchu Esteban, Alex Hewett, Richard Keller, Alina Collins Maldonado, and Erica Poe joined the playwrights as the cast for USA 2017.  The result was a clear, passionate, creative---but far from nuanced---take on our bizarre electoral season.

   

Organ Donation: The Comedy

Everyman Theatre's production of Michael Hollinger's Under the Skin smoothly presents a comic melodrama about an unlikely subject: organ donation.  This is only the second production of Hollinger's play (it premiered last year at Philadelphia's Arden Theatre) and confirms Hollinger's status as an emerging playwright to be taken seriously.  Energetically directed by Vincent Lancisi, the sleek production brings out the humor as well as the pathos of a dysfunctional family suddenly brought together by a health crisis.

The crisis is middle-aged Lou's collapsing kidneys.  Needing a transplant, he turns to his estranged daughter Raina, torn between filial duty and resentment of her father's longstanding abandonment of her.  As the plot thickens, Raina meets the mistress of her father, Marlene, and the son from the adulterous affair, Jarrell.  The many references to American pop culture keep the audience laughing as the play's many plot twists and revelations of family secrets lead the play to a dramatic if somewhat strained conclusion.

The cast works smoothly as an ensemble.  Megan Anderson (Raina), Mitchell Herbert (Lou), Alice Gatling (Marlene), and Keith Royal Smith (Jarrell) bring a convincing emotional anguish to their roles.  The omnipresent humor and improbable plot reversals do not overwhelm the internal conflict within each of the characters.  The set design of Brandon McNell and the lighting design of Jay Herzog place the characters within the steely, antiseptic, analytic world of the medical establishment. The sterile material environment is an effective counterpoint to the volcanic emotions of the characters as they confront each other's deceptions and their own fears.

As entertaining as the play is, it has the feel of a dramatic work which has not quite matured.  With its cascading pop references, the script often has the sound of a television situation comedy.  There is further work required to reveal the characters and the conflict in depth. The ending is also problematic.  The lights come up on the audience as Raina reminds us that we all part of one big family and that we should all be willing to donate organs, even to strangers.  I expected the ushers to confront us with organ donation cards as we left the theater.  This public service announcement may have been well-intentioned but it is a shrill piece of agitprop which only weakens the play as a dramatic exercise.

    

Families Sweet And Sour

The Variations project has become one of Baltimore's most creative theatrical traditions.  Now in its eleventh season, the project is a year-round collaborative event.  The audience from one year's production votes on the theme for the next year's.  After a brain-storming party on the chosen theme, area playwrights submit short plays on the theme.  (This year's competition garnered eighty different scripts.)  A selection committee culls the strongest plays for a staged reading with a q&a with the selected playwrights.  A final group of plays---this year an octet---is chosen for a full production.

The result this year is Variations on Family, an exceptionally polished anthology of plays produced by Rapid Lemon Productions under the tutelage of Max Garner.  Directed by Rosalind Cauthen, the evening features eight plays focused on the family, understood both as comedy and tragedy.  Despite the different genres, many of the plays focus on race and ethnicity, perhaps not surprising in a city roiling with racial conflict.  The evening is also unified by Cauthen's vigorous direction, which inserts athletic movement even into the most solemn of the constituent pieces.

Among the lighter pieces, Kimberley Lynne's "The Same Story" provides a comic slice-of-life as family members at a family reunion start to tell---you did read the title, didn't you?  This time it's about that really big insect that invaded an old road trip.  The sharp timing keeps the energetic cast (Tyrone Requer, Josh Thomas, Valerie Lewis, Sarah, Jacklin, Bob Singer, Kristina Szilagyi) moving.  Archie Williams and Tyrone Chapman's "FTP" manages to bring humor out of a most un-humorous political movement: Black Lives Matter. Tyrone Requer lends a bewildered, comic touch to the role of the demonstrator Dayshawn. Once again, the tight ensemble direction gives this piece its energy.   Larry Malkus's "Walter's Claw Hammer" provides the opportunity for Samy Hayder to give a bravura performance as the precocious child Andy, ready to snitch on anyone and anything.

The darker pieces alternate between tragedy and melodrama.  Kathleen Barber's "Myths And Other Truths" puts the finger on race and class as an African-American family (Tyrone Requer, Adrienne Knight, Samy Hader) invites a reluctant Russian-American (Kristina Szilagyi) for a meeting concerning a claim that both families have a common ancestry.  The Russian is reluctant because she proudly descends from the Romanov family---or does she?  D Carter's "Brother's Keeper" brings sibling rivalry to a boil as Josh Thomas, in a terrific performance, plays an angry homeless man who refuses to return home despite the pleas of his very proper younger brother.  The evening's darkest drama, John Conley's "The Dissertation," starkly depicts the Armenian genocide of the 1910s as an increasingly angered graduate student (Sarah Jacklin) confronts her martyred Armenian ancestors (powerfully played by Bob Singer and Kristina Szilagyi) in an explosion of grief and faith.  Jacklin brings an intense emotional energy to the once-staid student who is overwhelmed by the horrors she discovers.  Adrienne Knight and Valerie Lewis give moving performances in Shelbi Nelson's "Like Mother Like Daughter" as an adult child suddenly meets the mother who had abandoned her in childhood.

Appropriately placed as the evening's closing piece, Alice Stanley's "Welcome Baby Anderson" mixes humor and pathos in this tale of a couple awaiting the delivery of a baby they are about to adopt.  As they shoot a video as a keepsake for their child, the mother (Sarah Jacklin) becomes the comically passionate helicopter mom even before the baby arrives.  The mood suddenly turns serious when alone before the camera, the father (Josh Thomas) reveals the emotional pain which has made the couple so grateful for the child.

All of the technical support for the anthology is professional and helps give the production its polished, consistent feel.  A special standout is Casey Dutt's set design.  The backdrop of floating, empty picture frames permits the transitions between the plays to freeze in a series of haunting family portraits.

       

Two Cheers For Democracy

Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday has not aged well.  Originally produced in 1946, the comedy has all the political fervor of the victors in the immediate afterglow of World War II.  Democracy will rule the world, corruption is on the way out.  Defeated fascists are everywhere, but communism might not be such a bad idea after all.  The closing civics lesson about our changing world weighs a ton.

Still, Vagabond Players has come up with a remarkably stylish production of this political satire.  The handsome scenic design (Roy Steinman, Maurice Conn), a one-set posh Washington hotel apartment, sets the high professional standard for the production from the beginning.  The plot revolves around a triangle of characters caught in a comedy of political corruption and redemption.  Billie Dawn (Anne Shoemaker)  is the mistress of a corrupt businessman, Harry Brock (Steven Shriner).  A violent thug lobbying venal politicians, Brock uses Billie as a dummy partner in his seamy deals.  She just has to sign on the dotted line.  Matters are complicated when a progressive journalist, Paul Verall (Torberg Tonnessen), is hired by Brock to give Billie some cultural seasoning.  (Her appearances on the Washington social circuit so far have been an embarrassment.)  In a bit of Pygmalion-like metamorphosis, Paul transforms Billie into an erudite defender of the American Constitution.  She also ends up his wife and they bring down Harry's corrupt empire.  George Bernard Shaw need not fear the competition.  Billie's sudden change from an ignoramus (who has no idea what the Supreme Court is) to a textual critic of Tom Paine defies belief.  The improbable romance between Billie and Paul also strains belief.

The casting of the play is excellent.  As Billie, Shoemaker delivers a dazzling performance.  Her voice, posture, and movements perfectly embody the ditzy mistress who slowly awakens to the corrupt scheme of which she is an unwitting part.  She makes her transformation into a crusading citizen as convincing as this implausible transformation could be.  Tonnessen's Paul captures all the earnestness of the reform-minded journalist, although there is little chemistry in his romance with Billie.  Shriner brings out the violence and egotism of Brock, but the occasional declarations of love for Billie fall hollow.  As fine as the lead performances are, the play is stolen by Carol Conley Evans as Helen, the perky maid with acerbic political commentary on the goings-on in the apartment and with perfect comic timing.

Steve Goldklang's direction effectively brings out the comedy of the piece.  Billie's sentimental education at the hands of Paul has many hilarious moments.  The director manages to bring out all the charm in a rather heavyweight political pamphlet.

 

Bland From Here

Single Carrot's Theatre current play, Blind From Here, presents a rarity (for them): a dull production.

A home-cooked creation, the rock musical features a book and lyrics written by troupe member Alix Fenhagen.  Paul Diem, Stephen Nunns, Jack Sossman, and Michael Kerr have written the score.  The result is a loud but long evening in the theater.

Brett Olsen-Ecker stars as Elsa, the lead singer of a rock group making a trip across America.  The adventures end when Elsa is involved in an accident and ends up---you did  read the title, didn't you?  We begin with jokes about the limited cultural horizons of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but the script and score become more of the same as one podunk Midwestern town after another passes into view.  The cast is energetic but Ms. Olsen-Ecker is not the world's greatest singer and the male band members (Paul Diem, Andrew Porter) do not elicit much sympathy in their Halloweenish costumes and wigs.  Caitlin Weaver and Holly Gibbs provide solid vocal backups, but their earnest support does nothing to enliven a monotonous score or add interest to a routine the-summer-when-I-crossed-the-country road story.

This bland production reveals once again the Achilles heel of Single Carrot, an otherwise superb company.  The Carrots have many fine actors, directors, designers, and technical engineers.  But playwriting is not their forte.