G&S do the Charleston

In the Young Victorian Theatre Company's production of Iolanthe, Gilbert and Sullivan's tale of fairyland meets the Jazz Age.
The operetta's gossamer plot concerns the problems deriving from the illict marriage between a fairy, Iolanthe (Madelyn Wanner) and a too human Lord Chancellor (Troy Clark). Their part-human, part-fairy son, Strephon (Jeffrey Williams) desires to marry Phyllis (Sara Kete Walston), a ward of the Lord Chancellor. Alas, the taboos of fairyland and the laws of parliament forbid the marriage. After a great deal of gauzy nonsense concerning fairy solidarity, parliamentary corruption, and the changing-of-the-guard, boy finally gets girl and the bevy of newly engaged fairies and peers can trot off to a honeymoon in Fairyland.
Under the artistic direction of James Harp, this Victorian tale is transplanted to the 1920s. The stylish Art Deco set, the flapper costumes, the hip flasks, the silent-film conventions, and the hints of the Charleston provide a charming frame for the evening. Walston makes a delightful Mary Pickford coquette and Alexis Tantau (Queen of the Fairies) makes a commanding vamp. But when the director alters the lyrics and book of W.S. Gilbert to include anachronistic 1920s slang, the production sags. The sag becomes a collapse when Harp inexplicably "updates" the material to make references to current politics. What do Obama, Arundel Mills, Robert de Niro, and the hapless John Edwards have to do with Iolanthe? What do they even have to do with the Roaring Twenties? Nothing. Such gimmicks only cheapen an otherwise professional production.
The musical end of the production provides higher values. Under Phillip Collister's direction, the impressive orchestra provides a clear and sensitive account of Arthur Sullivan's score. The different textures of the score (lyrics, patter songs, satires, pleas) are faithfully evoked by the well-disciplined ensemble. Wanner, Waltson, Tantau, and Williams bring fine voices and carefully sculpted interpretations to their respective characters.
The Young Vic's production of Iolanthe generates some charming fairy dust in its handsomely sung version of G&S, but its gratuitous gadgets indicate that Sullivan actually knew what he was doing when he wrote the original libretto.

The Violent Bear It Away

Currently playing at the Copeland Theater at Notre Dame College, Susan Middaugh's Black Widows is a delicious black comedy concerning two widows with a taste for larceny, fraud, and murder. Directed by Barry Feinstein, the drama is the most recent entry in this year's Baltimore Playwrights Festival.
At the center of the play stands the unlikely couple of Vera and Gwen. An embittered refugee from Russia, Vera is the cynical landlady for whom the accumulation of wealth is the only conceivable goal in life. No moral rules apply if you can get away with it; ethical objections to crime are only the sentimental bleat of the world's losers. Against this Nietzschean virago stands the timid Gwen, one of the world's sentimentalists. Her passion to protect stray dogs is matched by her passion to protect stray homeless alcoholics who dot her neighborhood. Having successfully tapped Gwen's streak of greed, the irresistible Vera expertly maneuvers the docile Gwen into escalating acts of minor theft, insurance fraud, and finally murder of the homeless men whose insurance policies they have commandeered for themselves.
The vibrant performances of Ann Mainolfi (Vera) and Babs Dentz (Gwen) are the treasure of the evening. Vera's cynical treatment of humanity and of the hapless Gwen exudes an ecstatic joy as she mows down her victims physically or verbally. The occasional flashbacks to the annihilation of her family at the hand of the Nazis evoke the source of this cynicism. Mainolfi's ability to change from beaming charmer to threatening bully in the space of a second brings the destructive but beguiling character alive. In her haunting character of Gwen, Dentz provides the evening's most moving performance. At first the caricature of the deranged pet-lover, Dentz shows genuine affection for the homeless men the duo is attempting to con. Her anguish over the escalation of crime is powerfully conveyed. Her final confrontation scene with the imprisoned Vera shows Gwen at last freed from the domination of the manipulative Vera and free to enjoy such humane pursuits as dog shelters, waitressing, and just being kind to the down and out.
Complementing the expert performance of the lethal duo is Glenn Vitale's cagey performance as John McArdle, a homeless vet who maintains a proper suspicion of the gifts showered upon him by these two alleged church ladies. In one of the evening's more entertaining twists, McArdle actually begins to recover from what had seemed a fatal addiction to alcohol. His unwelcome longevity causes Vera to mow him down in a trumped-up car accident.
The strength of Barry Feinstein's direction lies in the strong performances and ensemble feel he has elicited from his talented cast. The piece's dark humor and sincere sentiment about human suffering are kept in good balance. Unfortunately, at the opening night performance at least, the technical glitches indicated that the production was not quite ready. The many lighting miscues, confused movements, and flubbed lines broke the flow of the performance. The set gave the play a rather inert look, but the recorded original score (trumpet by Joseph Conway and guitar by Charlie Sigler) used the instruments cherished by the two homeless characters and gently recalled their ambitions to become jazz musicians in earlier times---another humane touch in a dark comedy with a soul.

After the Madness

Currently playing at the Strand, Afterthoughts is a probing meditation on the massacre of students by a deranged fellow student. Loosely based on the Virginia Tech killings in 2007, the play focuses on the recollection of the massacre by five survivors: three of whom have died and wander through the afterlife and two of whom are still tethered to the earth. Written and directed by emerging playwright Alec Lawson, the brief drama (running time of one hour) provides a vivid portrait of the effort to make sense of what is senseless.
The drama presents this recollection of horror on two levels. In center stage, a triangle of the deceased try to understand the killings and make sense of the gloomy afterlife they have awakened to. Two murder victims (Will, played by Dan Walker, and Alison, played by Sheila Toomb) confront the killer (James, played by Michael Geib), who committed suicide at the end of his spree. The dialogue here is uneven. The in-jokes about theater majors age quickly; the "wisdom of life" remarks are often moralizing; the speculation on the afterlife has a grade-B "Twilight Zone" quality. The performance of the trio of actors is oddly restrained; little of the shock of the massacre comes through. Still, the expert blocking of the actors gives an appropriate sleepwalking quality to a trio wandering on the border between life and eternity.
More convincing is the simpler duet of survivors (played by Cordelia Snow and Courtney Williams). Perched on a balcony, the two survivors recount at a distance the events, the personalities, and the time-line of the fateful day. Their sober testimony ultimately proves more moving than the rambling debates of the trio in purgatory.
Enhancing this portrait of inexplicable violence is the brilliant set and lighting design by Kendra Richard. The black-and-white sculptural set of tumbled platforms and splintered fragments freezes the violence of the massacre and provides a haunting platform for the survivors' tales. The effective lighting, especially of the two living survivors dangling from the balcony, underscores the dream-like quality of the drama. One of the aesthetic strengths of the Strand Theater is its complete reconstruction of performance space for each production. Richard's reconstruction for Afterthoughts is an extraordinary achievement.

Global Crunch Comes Home

At Fells Point Corner Theater, Kathleen Barber's In the Shadow of Lushan skillfully turns the political turmoil of globalization into the personal crisis of one woman. Jo-Jo Banaker (Peggy Dorsey) valiantly defends her family-owned company against the conniving efforts of Caz (Mark Scharf), director of a rival company, to take over Banaker's by financial manipulations.
The battle between Jo-Jo and Caz inflames the entire staff of the tottering company. Chic (Richard Peck), the genial foreman, worries about the future of a middle-aged man who knows only the informal mom-and-pop environment of Banaker's. Frannie (Peggy Friedman), the faithful employee, cringes at the low-paying, low-skills job that await her if the company folds. Bobby (Vic Cheswick, Jr.) blames the company's turmoil on job-stealing immigrants, too visibly represented by a new mysterious worker, the Mexican Mateo (Michael Zemarel). As the business confrontation between Jo-Jo and Caz defrosts into chapters of romance, stalemate, and mutual admiration, the relationship among the employees deteriorates into mutual suspicion and desperate scapegoating. The opening company fun, where employees mock Japanese business "shame circles," turns into an angry knife assault.
The solid cast successfully gives the turmoil of globalization a human face. Foreign competition, price wars, illegal immigration, aging industries, and "Bidding Olympics" flow off the stage as the words and gestures of the increasingly angry and exhausted workers. At the center of the meltdown, Peggy Dorsey ably presents the charm of a successful executive comfortable in working in an old-fashioned family mode but uncertain in the cutthroat politics of the new world market. Slipping abruptly from adversarial to romantic partner, Mark Scharf is a sharp, sandpaperish foil to Dorsey's more maternal persona. Vic Cheswick is especially strong as the charming Bobby, who quickly turns from fun and games to xenophobia and attempted murder.
Josh Bristol's direction of the piece is serviceable, but the multiple exits and entrances seem interchangeable. The actors are often frozen into awkward positions, as when George (E. Martin Early) speaks into the back of Jo-Jo. The movements in the sudden romance scene and the sudden knife attack seem stilted. The nondescript set conveys the gray, metallic nature of the factory (and of the gloomy world economy looming just beyond the door), but its drabness only accentuates the halting character of the player's movements.
Barber's play marks a promising beginning for this year's Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Global economic conflict becomes intimate family anguish.

Thin Satire

Will Eno's Tragedy; tragedy is a compact satire on American television news. But even at seventy minutes in running length, the play becomes one weary joke.
The comedy's news team must wrestle with an astonishing piece of non-news: The sun has set and it is night. The avuncular anchorman (coolly played by Rich Espey) attempts to tease some news out of his clueless news team. Constance (Jessica Garrett in an offbeat performance) tries to drum up some local interest in reaction to the news, but there is little more to report than shifting fog and rain. In an edgier performance, the earnest John (Nathan Cooper) manages to snag a man-in-the-street (Michael Salconi) whose reactions amount to one-minute negatives. An increasingly deranged Michael (played with manic energy by Nathan Fulton) reports the political blather of the governor, unable to cope with the encircling gloom. As the non-news event progresses, the psychic nights of each baffled commentator emerge through the non-sequiter prose. Old resentments about distant parents and childhood names scratch the vacant journo-babble. But the existential huffing-puffing cannot redeem the one-note satire.
Under J. Buck Jabailly's capable direction, Eno's sketch is given a polished production. Set in a series of life-size boxes, the various news personalities suffer visual as well as psychological isolation as night (and the absurdist reactions to night) envelop them. Each character moves from fumbling, vacuous reportage to anxious self-disclosure and desperation. Even the box isolation begins to break down as Michael, the most unhinged of the commentators, walks right into the audience to deliver his valedictory on the mysterious governor. But despite the occasional fury and Beckett echoes, the play cannot overcome its SNL-sketch limits.

Japanese Enchantment

Naoko Maeshiba's Paraffin is a kinetic wonder. Returning to Theatre Project this weekend, Maeshiba's performance troupe Kibism mesmerizes the viewer with one mysterious tableau after another. Employing mime, aerial movement, and muscular choreography, the various scenes evoke search, love, oppression, and death.
Three particularly haunting scenes remain in the memory. Wrapped in golden dresses and tissue-paper headdresses hiding the face, three women taunt three athletic men writhing in their dark suits. In a melancholic picnic pursued under the rain, three characters evoke the jealousies and shared memories of family life through the rhythmic movement of pot, bowls, and blanket. Evoking mechanical oppression, a troupe of white-uniformed technicians reduce a patient to a suffering object under the ballet of their probes and charts.
Far from narrative, the performance evokes the raw passions of fear and desire as the body is stretched to its physical and expressive limits. Presiding over the performance as a regal, expressive angel on a trapeze, Maeshiba develops a choreography remarkable for its energy and sculptural precision. Her movement is ably complemented by her electronic musical score and by Kel Millione's lighting design, which bathes the entire production in an ethereal golden light.

Cerebral Entertainment

One of the more offbeat theatrical offerings of the moment is Think Twice at Spotlighters. Directed by Rodney Bonds, the program is actually two one-act plays, Lecture with Cello by Robert Moulthrop and Sapiens! by Rich Espey. In each one-man play, a monologue explores the complexity behind some commonplace truths.
In Lecture with Cello a formally dressed musician gives a lecture on---you guessed it---a cello. The lesson gradually deteriorates into philosophical musings on the nature of truth and then into a furniture-throwing rant ignited by a lost passion. Employing the full gamut of emotions and gestures, Rodney Bonds astutely portrays the Chekhovian lecturer as he deteriorates before the audience's eyes and practically in the audience's lap. But running over an hour in length, the monologue's more metaphysical musings became tiring.
In Rich Espey's more accessible Sapiens! a young science teacher reacts in shock as some of his students challenge the theory of evolution. As the teacher seeks help from dialogues with other scientists, his wife, and memories from the past, the teacher slowly realizes that even many scientific "facts" rest on high probabilities and that certain truths about cosmic and human events might legitimately derive from religious or emotional premises. Like Bottom, Joshua Snowden winningly creates all the parts: Adam the teacher and all his imagined interlocutors. What began as a predictable tale of enlightened evolutionists vs. rabid creationists finally emerges as a cautionary tale on intellectual humility.
These two austere monologues are not standard summer fare but, directed and acted with incandescent passion, they are challenging, complementary explorations of the obscurity of truth, artistic or scientific.