Alan Rust and Rosina Reynolds in "Other Desert Cities." Karli Cadel Photography Having now seen Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities” twice – 12 years ago at the Old Globe and just Saturday night at Cygnet Theatre – I’m convinced that this is a tense drama that succeeds more because of its actors than its script.
In Baitz’s 2011 play, daughter Brooke Wyeth’s yuletide visit to her parents’ home in Palm Springs in order to get their approval for her soon-to-be-published, damning family memoir is muddled, motivationally speaking. She’s a grown woman, albeit with a troubled past. So why does she really care about their approval? Her relationship with them, owing to political and more serious familial issues, has been long difficult; and does she show up with this red-hot memoir, one painting her parents as “monsters,” as strident mother Polly Wyeth refers to it, actually believing they won’t freak? More lacking in the narrative is the reason why Brooke was driven to substance abuse and to the brink of suicide, and is still obsessed on a daily basis she says, with the brother she lost. A brother who went down those roads himself, was complicit in a deadly act of political statement-making, and did commit suicide? She spends much of Act One aching out loud about how she and Henry were soulmates, emotionally inseparable. But it isn’t until the very end of “Other Desert Cities,” in a postscript scene, that we’re told how the two siblings were so very close. “Other Desert Cities” is also overstuffed with the presence of Brooke’s other brother, Trip, a “lowly” television producer who is annoying in the first act before playing a more relevant role in Act Two. (This despite or because of, depending on how you look at it, the old dependable pot-smoking scene.) The same could be said for the character of Polly’s sister Silda, lately of rehab, broke and living with Polly and her husband Lyman. Her role in the drama, which doesn’t feel very essential at the start, also becomes more key to the story later on. All this said, as with the Globe production of “Other Desert Cities” a dozen years ago that was elevated by the performances of Kandis Chappell as Polly and Robert Foxworth as Lyman, Cygnet’s has Rosina Reynolds and Alan Rust playing the Wyeths. For me, the reaction of the parents in Baitz’s play is even more important than that of the Brooke character, portrayed at Cygnet with an edgy resolve by Melanie Lora. The scenes without them have nowhere near the reverberations generated by those that do. Neither Trip (Geoffrey Ulysses Geissinger) nor Silda (Debra Wanger) is really that complicated, try as Baitz may have done to make them so. Everyone else in this Christmas-time confrontation-fest – for that’s what it is – is on the surface strong yet beneath that fraught with doubts and hurts from long past. Brooke’s memoir, “Love and Mercy,” seems guaranteed to bubble everything to and over the surface. Much is made of the political difference between the Ronny and Nancy-loving parents’ and everyone else, but these references smack of contrivance. The interpersonal crises of “Other Desert Cities” are far deeper. As always, Reynolds commands the stage like few actors in town. She could speak the phone book (if we still had phone books) with eloquence and clarity, but more than that she never fails to create a character, and Polly Wyeth is the fulcrum of “Other Desert Cities.” Strong support from Rust adds to the perception and the understanding that Brooke’s parents may have been intoxicated by the early-2000s glamour and selfishness of the GOP upper crust but they still love their “lib” daughter, even as they battle with her like only family members can. The Brooke and Polly characters as written often speak in oratory in “Other Desert Cities.” Lyman and Trip and Silda less so. There are times when these people don’t sound real. Yet we do give a damn about what happens in this Palm Springs living room, a marvel of mid-century modern décor designed by Andrew Hull, complete with panoramic picture-window view of the San Jacintos. The Wyeths, mired in profound, roiling differences and complications that will only worsen as “Other Desert Cities” proceeds, will be forced to learn on all sides. Embraces are few. Mostly their salvos come from neutral corners of that cozy living room. Cygnet’s Sean Murray directs with the actor’s instinct with which he consistently directs. Voluble as it can be, “Other Desert Cities” maintains its momentum toward a surprising ending. Lora’s tortured but principled Brooke may not be a very sympathetic character for most of the going, but when her world gets rocked … well, find out for yourself. Then drive out to Palm Springs, where the San Jacintos and a more serene atmosphere await. “Other Desert Cities” runs through March 2 at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town.
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Leigh Scarritt (left) and Rachael VanWormer in "The Half-Life of Marie Curie." Photo by Daren Scott Lauren Gunderson knows how to write about women and she knows how to write about science. That’s a simple – OK, overly simple – takeaway from her one-act “The Half-Life of Marie Curie,” currently onstage at New Village Arts Theatre.
The story of an exceptional friendship between the Polish-born woman who discovered radium and polonium and British electrical engineer and suffragette Hertha Ayrton is an engrossing one, particularly as both women (especially Curie) are portrayed by Gunderson as real people with real flaws and not as super-scientists or super-women. At NVA, Kym Pappas directs Rachael VanWormer (as Curie) and Leigh Scarritt (as Ayrton) in a 90-minute two-hander that focuses on three years in the pioneering women’s lives. (It does go beyond that, all the way through each’s passing.) These are larger-than-life performances. VanWormer wrings every possible deeply embedded pang out of Curie’s torment over having become a target of public derision (and rejection by her own scientific community) because of (horrors!) an affair with a married Frenchman. As her confidante and crony who entices Curie to England for refuge, Scarritt is worldly wise and cheerfully indomitable. That these are portrayals likely more flamboyant than were the actual historical figures themselves – though who knows? It’s not like we have YouTube video of either woman as reference – gives dramatic and occasional comic life to “Half-Life” and, as Gunderson always does so deftly, demonstrates that science is a practice and a discipline of human beings and not merely Nature’s inexplicable wonderwork. Much of the first half of the play finds Ayrton tirelessly attempting to bolster and cheer up a joyless, agonizing Curie (with VanWormer appropriately dressed in black), pointing out in the process, rightfully so, that the treatment she’s getting from both the scientific intelligentsia and the hoi polloi would never be given to men. Ayrton’s frustration could become ours, as the Curie character comes off as resigned to victimhood. But just as Gunderson’s play finds its footing as it goes along, so does Ayrton’s unfailing resolve and good humor win Curie over, and the tone of “Half-Life” changes for the better, for characters and audience alike. The scene where the two get giddy on whiskey is a relief and a laugh. As VanWormer remarked to me in an interview I did with her for the San Diego Union-Tribune, these two women’s relationship was more than just that of BFFs. They had their differences and their set-to’s. This production’s major conflagration comes when Ayrton confronts Curie over the vial of radium she carries around with her like a beloved rosary. Harsh words are exchanged in the way that close friends never mean to exchange but inevitably do at some point in a complex and longtime relationship. Playing the far lighter of the two characters allows Scarritt to dominate many of the scenes in “Half-Life.” The fun she’s having comes close to wink-wink at times, but who can fault an actor for enjoying a role like this? The friend almost anyone, female or male, would love to have. VanWormer’s role demands much physicality – and more than a little coughing. But as she’s shown over the years in a variety of productions, she knows how to play figures from another time in history and give them resonance. Oh, yes. Speaking of resonance. A congratulatory bow to sound designer Harper Justus at NVA. Every tiny but significant effect, from radium transforming itself to the off-stage piano playing of Curie’s 7-year-old daughter, contributes to the production’s emotional atmosphere. Marie Curie, as the play tells us, died at 66 having lived a too-short life nevertheless marked by history-changing achievement. It was not lived, also as the play shows us, without pain but, happily, also not without a soulmate friend. “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” runs through Feb. 23 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. Left to right: Daniel Petzold, Maggie Lacy and Steve Kazee in "Appropriate." Photo by Jim Cox Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” is not a haunted-house drama. Or is it?
When the extended Lafayette family in the wake of their patriarch’s death descends upon the rundown Arkansas plantation mansion in which he resided the horrors come quickly. First, the discovery of a photo album containing graphic images of lynchings along with a few other “artifacts” in jars that suggest a history of violent racism. Second, there’s the horrible family itself. The eldest of the Lafayettes, Toni, is raging with anger and bitterness over the many ways in which life has turned against her, all while trying without much luck to be a mother to a troubled teenage son. She’s been named the executor of her father’s estate, the disposition of which has brought her estranged relations to Arkansas. Among them is middle brother Beauregard (“Bo”) from New York with his wife and two children, a lot of impatience and no small resentment over Toni being executor. Youngest brother Frank, the acknowledged family f-up, shows up with a much-younger fiancée who’s right out of the Transcendental Granola Catalog. Frank, now calling himself Franz, brings with him a lurid past that includes alcohol and drug abuse and a sex-crime conviction. The premise is that the surviving Lafayettes are there to hold an auction and an estate sale to pay off their father’s debts and collect (if not split up evenly) whatever’s left. Then the photo album enters the picture. The Old Globe Theatre under the direction of Steve H. Broadnax is staging this absolutely wrenching production of “Appropriate,” which last year won the Tony on Broadway for Best Revival of a Play. I can’t remember the last time I experienced a dramatic production as unsettling and frequently unpleasant as this one while at once being completely engrossed. Talk about a train wreck you can’t turn away from. The battling Lafayettes and those attached to them (Bo’s pugnacious spouse Rachael, Frank’s “enlightened” partner River, Toni’s sulking, self-pleasuring son Rhys) in no time flat turn the magnificently brooding set designed by Arnel Sancianco into an arena of verbal and even physical assault. What the damning photographs mean, what they say about the family patriarch, and what the hell to do with them is only half of the no-holds-barred conflict. The other half is the sibs’ wars with each other, on multiple fronts. Toni, played with sheer ferocity by Maggie Lacey, careens from being attacker to martyr and back again. I could sense the recoil in the Globe audience. What would this character say or do next? Steve Kazee’s Bo tries to play peacemaker until he no longer can; for a while he’s the only remotely sympathetic sibling, but ultimately his greed will tamp down any sympathy for him. Frank (played very much on the razor’s edge by Daniel Petzold) is at the plantation ostensibly to make amends, as his AA or NA rehabilitation would dictate, for the many hurts he caused family members he hasn’t seen in years. He will soon be consumed by the toxic mood, bleak environs and by his demons that can never be stanched completely. One yearns for even a moment of genuine tenderness among this bunch but it is elusive if not impossible. Bo and Rachael’s 13-year-old daughter Cassie is the drama’s one guileless character, though I wouldn’t call her innocent. The strength of Broadnax’s direction is taking a play that is easily two and a half hours long and, calling upon the skill of a tremendous cast and prizefight pacing, never letting the action and physicality written into the play wane, no matter how talky – let’s make that shouty – the proceedings become. The atmospherics at the Globe create a suffocating ambience something like an amalgam of the end of days and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Besides Sancianco’s set with its winding, dusty staircase, worn furniture and conspicuous chandelier, the shadowy lighting by Alan C. Edwards and the ever-audible sound of cicadas outside the mansion (design by Curtis Craig) manifest a forlorn and dreary inner world just made for stark confrontations and terrible secrets. “Appropriate” has all that -- and an ending you won’t soon forget. “Appropriate” runs through Feb. 23 at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park. Tavis Kordell (left) and Matt Loehr in "Some Like It Hot." Photo by Matthew Murphy The word “madcap” is frequently employed when describing Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy classic “Some Like It Hot.” This is true.
Well, the stage adaptation of “Some Like It Hot” with music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”) enjoys a wowzer of a madcap moment with the frantic-chasing, door-slamming “Tip, Tap Trouble” number. It’s the comedy highlight of a show that’s never as funny as the film on which it’s based. Though let’s be fair – could any adaptation compete with Tony Curtis and (especially) Jack Lemmon in drag, AND Marilyn Monroe in the bargain? As the national touring production of the 2022 “Some Like It Hot” demonstrates, the stage book’s authors, Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin, were smart enough to avoid a gag-by-gag retelling of the original story co-written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. The premise is the same, if tweaked here and there: Down-on-their-luck Chicago jazz musicians Joe (Matt Loehr) and Jerry (Tavis Kordell) witness a mob execution and to escape the baddies dress up as women and join up with Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators, an all-female band heading out on the road. But with modern sensibility in mind (the film, remember, is now more than 65 years old), Lopez and Ruffin have built gender fluidity and awareness of racial discrimination into the “Some Like It Hot” story – never mind that the it’s still set in the ‘30s. There’s even an acknowledgement out loud by one of Sweet Sue’s troupers that women get paid less than men for doing the same job. Trumpers would call these updates to the tale “woke.” Let ‘em. While this musical can be soap-boxy at times, its bid for greater relevance is welcome, and that takes nothing away from the beloved movie. Broadway San Diego has brought to town a likable and tap-dance-happy (too much tap for me, I have to say) show that is escapist entertainment and a tribute to if not a copy of Wilder’s film. The star as Jerry/Daphne, just as Lemmon was on screen, is Kordell. Not only is his character the focal point of what the story wants to say about identity and acceptance, but Kordell is a talented dancer and physical actor in general. Really the only problem with this casting is that he’s a head taller than everyone else in the large ensemble, including Edward Juvier who plays the smitten millionaire Osgood Fielding III. Kordell can’t help being tall, so I’ll let that go. Loehr is less appealing to me in the Joe/Josephine part, but maybe my judgment’s clouded because I always thought Tony Curtis was the weak link in the movie. As the band’s sexy chanteuse Sugar Kane, Leandra Ellis-Gaston gets three tunes to sing – “A Darker Shade of Blue,” “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather” and “Ride Out the Storm” -- and she possesses the lush voice and high style to deliver each with mood and finesse. Kordell may take the last bow at show’s end, but Ellis-Gaston is the musical star of this production. As with the film, supporting characters get their due. Bandleader Sweet Sue’s role in the story is increased considerably onstage, with Tarra Conner Jones well up to the task. Juvier’s Osgood is a more dashing Osgood than Joe E. Brown was in the movie and his immediate infatuation with Jerry/Daphne is more schoolboyish. Devon Goffman’s Spats Columbo gangster is no George Raft. “Some Like It Hot’s” musical score ranges from the rousing title tune to the shuddering “Fly, Mariposa, Fly” (Osgood’s entreaty to Daphne, weighed down by precious metaphor-making). Most of the time the songs feel like an excuse for someone or everyone to break out into dance. Tap tap tap. And tap again. Few will have this show’s songs in their heads the day after seeing it. Maybe tap lessons signed up for instead? The costume design by Gregg Barnes is superb and the choreography by Casey Nicholaw (who also directed) absolutely ace. Is it any wonder this is a dance show? This was a relief on opening night: The musical’s script calls for Sweet Sue’s band to head not to Florida as in the movie but to California and the Hotel del Coronado, a clear nod to the location where much of Wilder’s flick was filmed. This being the case, I expected audience howls every time “San Diego” was uttered onstage. Parochialism at its most embarrassing. But thankfully, the howls weren’t that loud. Could it be that San Diego’s finally big enough that we don’t need to applaud its presence in movies, TV or theater? Now who’s getting soap-boxy? Sorry about that. “Some Like It Hot” runs through Feb. 2 at the Civic Theatre, downtown. Jin Park (left) and Marielle Young in "The Heart Sellers." Photo by Aaron Rumley The first show I’ve seen in 2025 is one I wish that Donald Trump – and everyone who voted for him – would see: a production of Lloyd Suh’s “The Heart Sellers.” Without being a preachy “message” affair, this 85-minute play reminds us that those who immigrate to this country are PEOPLE. People with dreams and vulnerabilities, grateful to be in America even as they miss what and those they left behind in their home countries. But now this – America! – is home, and it’s sometimes as scary as it is full of hope.
North Coast Rep in Solana Beach, which enjoyed a fine 2024 (namely “Sense of Decency” and “A View from the Bridge”), is off to an auspicious start with its production of “The Heart Sellers,” directed by Kat Yen, the first La Jolla Playhouse Directing Fellow. It’s the story of two young wives (one Filipino, one Korean) whose husbands’ medical residencies have moved them to the United States. The year is 1973, eight years after LBJ signed into law the Hart-Cellar Act that repealed immigration quotas based on race or ethnicity. The day is Thanksgiving, and Luna (Marielle Young) from the Philippines has invited Jane (Jin Park) from Korea, whom she encountered while shopping, to her home for cooking, conversation and companionship. That’s the premise. It might seem a scant one for an entire hour and a half, but under Yen’s crisp direction the narrative moves right along, propelled by the gabbier, more emotional Luna who moves excitedly about the ‘70s-motif apartment designed by NC Rep’s Marty Burnett. The at-first diffident, certainly more timid Jane gradually comes out of her shell, and more than a few swallows of wine gets the two wives talking, confessing, sharing and laughing. Being 1973, Richard Nixon is evoked with deserved derision, and as the women get to know one another and open up they express their disgust at power-hungry men in general, from Ferdinand Marcos to Tricky Dick. But “The Heart Sellers” is political only up to a point. It’s more personal than political. The strength of Suh’s script, affectingly brought to fruition onstage by Young and Park, is in each woman’s personal struggle with loneliness, with disorientation, with the double-edged sword that is assimilation. Each acknowledges the country she left behind is troubled, even dangerous, but each clings to something still there. (An early, heart-rending admission from Luna is that she regrets she won’t be in the Philippines when the family’s beloved 16-year-old dog dies.) Not to be overlooked is that “The Heart Sellers” is frequently quite funny, and not at the expense of either Jane’s broken English or because of hapless sight gags in the kitchen. In fact, there’s far more laughter than tears in the storytelling. When “The Heart Sellers” does turn weightier, it’s in Luna’s spoken metaphor that those who give up their country for another are “selling their hearts” in the process. This obviously is where the title of the play originates. To me, it’s a bit heavy-handed and that title aside, a bit pious too. In any case, Young and Park are a pleasure to watch, animated and enjoying great chemistry as the two strangers who are destined to become BFFs. Though Park has the more reactive role, at least for the first one-third of the play, she becomes the steadying force by its end. “The Heart Sellers” is not the first production I’ve seen in which the setting is two or more actors playing out a story while preparing a meal. The concept’s practically become a dramaturgical trope. Suh’s tale could probably work even without cooking a Thanksgiving turkey. As long as the wine was open. “The Heart Sellers’ runs through Feb. 2 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. Tolstoy was never like this: "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comedy of 1812." Karli Cadel Photography You’re seated in the theater. The lights dim to darkness. Then they come up again.
You’re in another world. No television watching, streaming or multiplex experience can compare. Call it escapism? Maybe. Looking back on the past six weeks or so of 2024, I’ve rarely wanted to escape as badly as I do now. The presidential election has left me crushed. Angry. Dismayed. Grappling for hope. This is where theater comes in, and it certainly will in 2025 when the awful realities of what America has done to itself begin to crystallize. But live theater is not merely an escape. No, it’s a heightening of the spirit, a cleansing of the soul. It’s somewhere to go for inspiration and entertainment, and also for critical thinking and belonging to a community that cares about the collective humanity, and about a craft that examines that community with the fullness of who we are as people. The politics of ’24 may have been a nightmare, but the year in San Diego theater provided every inch of that aforementioned inspiration and entertainment. Let’s look back on, to my mind, the top 10 productions of the year. 1. “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” Cygnet Theatre. Tolstoy was never as much fun as this extraordinary operatic musical drawn from a 70-page sequence of “War and Peace.” Cygnet’s West Coast premiere of Dave Malloy’s imaginative spectacle was transformed by the team of Sean Murray (director) Patrick Marion (musical director), Katie Banville (choreographer), Shirley Pierson (costume designer) and Mathys Herbert (scenic designer) into a thrilling, immersive experience that was great fun while also exploring the depths of human existence. Leading a game cast was Kurt Norby as the melancholy Pierre whose first-act solo turn was for me the most stirring emotional moment of the 2024 theater season in town. 2. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” CCAE Theatricals. Among the most ambitious productions of the year, “Curious” was a remarkable achievement for the still-young CCAE Theatricals and director J. Scott Lapp in Escondido. Based upon a novel by Mark Haddon, “Curious” is an alternately enlightening and harrowing adventure inside the neurodivergent brain of a 15-year-old boy whose investigation of the killing of a neighbor’s dog becomes much, much more than that, challenging his sense of self and confronting a more personal loss. Daniel Patrick Russell (“Billy Elliot,” “The Music Man” on Broadway) portrayed teenager Christopher Boone with uncommon energy and sensitivity. 3. “Into the Woods,” Moonlight Stage Productions. What would a theater year be without Stephen Sondheim? Missing something – that’s what it would be. So bravo to Moonlight’s own Steven, producing artistic director Glaudini, for bringing James Lapine and Sondheim’s deconstructed musical fairy tale to Vista for the first time in more than 30 years. Fittingly, Glaudini’s spouse, Bets Malone, who played The Witch in that production, reprised her role this past spring. She was part of an amazing ensemble that also included Larry Raben, Allison Spratt Pearce, Courtney Blanc, Brooke Henderson and Steve Gunderson – all of them clad in costumes from the original Broadway production of “Into the Woods” from ’87-’89. 4. “Fat Ham,” The Old Globe. A highlight of the Globe’s ’24 season was this re-staging of the Broadway production of James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning take on “Hamlet.” In lieu of a ghostly Denmark, the setting is a backyard barbecue in the American South and the dramadies therein of a family in crises, major and minor. The “Hamlet” character is Juicy (Sola Fadiran), who is fighting to assert his sexuality among relations for whom self-assertion is sometimes explosive. Directed by Sideeq Heard, “Fat Ham” did serve up lots of laughs at its onstage BBQ, but its signature moment was a poignant one – when Juicy bravely belted out Radiohead’s “Creep.” Audiences responded with standing ovations. Deservedly so. 5. “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company. A highlight of 2023’s theater year was the confrontation between Deborah Gilmour Smyth and Jessica John as broken mother and daughter in Backyard Renaissance’s production of “August: Osage County.” Round Two, albeit inhabiting different but equally broken mother and daughter characters, found Gilmour Smyth and John in Martin McDonagh’s torment-driven “Beauty Queen.” In the confines of the Tenth Avenue Arts Center, Mag (Gilmour Smyth) and Maureen (John) battled demons and each other. Meanwhile, anyone watching, myself included, had to have been battling claustrophobia as the walls of the Irish cottage closed in on the combatants. 6. “Henry 6,” The Old Globe. It’s hard to know where to start with this epic undertaking conceived by Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, the production of which capped the theater’s feat of having produced all 38 of William Shakespeare’s plays. The two-part “Henry 6,” presented on rotating nights, featured 30 actors playing 60 parts. Dubbed “Flowers and France” and “Riot and Reckoning,” the plays tracked The Bard’s “Henry VI, Part 1,” “Henry VI, Part 2” and “Henry VI, Part 3.” As always at the Globe, the production values, costumes and set pieces were outstanding, and many stellar performances were delivered in both “Flowers” and “Riot.” As spectacle, “Henry 6” was in a class by itself this past year. 7. “Sense of Decency,” North Coast Repertory Theatre. The only world premiere on this list was a taut and very tense adaptation of El Hai’s 2013 book about the sessions conducted in a Nuremburg prison between Army psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley (played at North Coast Rep by Brendan Ford) and Nazi field marshal Hermann Goring (Frank Corrado, in a strong, layered performance). Jake Broder wrote the script for this theatrical adaptation of Hai’s book, and it’s a compelling one that relies heavily on the mind games Goring plays with the probing but nervous Kelly. What was illuminated at the end of the play, besides the nature of evil, was the reality that the Nazis had America’s own terrible history with slavery as inspiration. 8. “Jersey Boys,” CCAE Theatricals. If there was any doubt about Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s now-20-year-old show about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons being the granddaddyof all jukebox musicals, that was dispelled by this faithful and flamboyant production in Escondido. How do I know? I attended with someone who’d never seen “Jersey Boys” before and who wasn’t particularly interested in the pop group that soared high on the charts in the ‘50s and ‘60s. She was cheering halfway through. T.J. Dawson’s direction of a dynamite Nicholas Alexander as Valli and a worthy supporting cast was complemented by the glittery period costumes by Janet Pitcher and Dana Solimando’s kinetic choreography. 9. “The Color Purple,” New Village Arts Theatre. One of the most gifted casts of 2024 elevated this triumphant production of the 2004 stage musical based on the novel by Alice Walker. Specifically: newcomer Nio Russell as Celie; Hadiyyah Noelle as Shug Avery; Taylor Renee Henderson as Celie’s sister Nettie; Eboni Muse as Sofia; and Jasmine January as Squeak. NVA should be applauded for accommodating and choreographing a full cast of 17 on its relatively compact stage all while maintaining a bigger Broadway feel. The only disappointment was the ensemble’s singing to prerecorded music rather than to a live band or small orchestra. Something for the Carlsbad theater to aspire to? 10. “English,” The Old Globe. Before it staged beginning in late May the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner with “Fat Ham,” the Old Globe opened in January a production of the 2023 winner, Sanaz Toosi’s thought-provoking drama “English.” Set in a classroom near Tehran where a group of students is preparing to take the TOEFL exam, this smart and relevant play broached with intensity the quandary of assimilation. It was a talky drama for sure, but one that had so much to say, especially as we approach an ominous future in our own country, one in which identities will be questioned – Americans’ and those who long to be among them. “English” was directed by Arya Shahi, a founding member of New York’s Pigpen Theatre Co. Honorable mention: “A View from the Bridge,” North Coast Repertory Theatre; “Beautiful The Carole King Musical,” Moonlight Stage Productions; “Outside Mullingar,” Lamb’s Players Theatre, “Misery,” Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company Francis Gercke and Maggie Carney in "Misery." Photo by Daren Scott With its taut and terrifying production of William Goldman’s “Misery,” Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company caps an exceptional 2024 season that also included Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” and Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.” Each show more unnerving than the next, Backyard demonstrated – as it has practically from its very beginning – that its work is bold and unafraid to unsettle.
“Misery,” of course, is Goldman’s adaptation of horror novelist supreme Stephen King’s 1987 novel which three years later became a film (written by Goldman and directed by Rob Reiner) best remembered for a towering performance by Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, imprisoned writer Paul Sheldon’s “No. 1 fan.” Under the deft direction of MJ Seiber, Backyard Renaissance’s production exploits the smallish confines of the Tenth Avenue Arts Center theater to create a thick air of claustrophobia essential to the storytelling. Not only is crippled Paul (Francis Gercke) trapped in the little Colorado house that belongs to wackadoodle Annie (Maggie Carney), but so are we the audience. It isn’t 10 minutes into the story before we want out of that bed, out of that house, out of the clutches of Annie, whose initial solicitude gives way to mania. Furthering the suffocating atmosphere are Curtis Mueller’s muted lighting and sudden bursts of sound (including a kitchen alarm clock and later a horrific gunshot). For this production, Logan Kirkendall is sound designer, Jeffrey Neitzel special effects coordinator. I’m not sure why the between-scenes playing of mostly ‘60s pop songs works as well as it does, too. Maybe it’s the incongruity of hearing the cheerful, jangly tunes in the midst of this frightening tale. The production opens with Paul already in a sickbed, having been pulled from the wreckage of his ’65 Mustang (hey – that works fine with the pop tunes!) by Annie, a trained nurse who is ministering to him mainly out of sheer adoration. She lives for – and she tells him so, over and over – his “Misery” romance novels, Victorian sagas of heroine Misery Chastain. It quickly becomes obvious, to Paul and to us, that Annie’s devotion is rooted in the crazy zone. Still, as she goes off the rails we’re startled, even when we know something violent is forthcoming. I’ll leave out the particulars but will say that they’re as graphically portrayed as possible in a stage production. As with Hitchcock at his sliest or Spielberg with “Jaws,” the terror resides in what is not seen or shown … until it is. Goldman’s script of King’s novel, and this Backyard Renaissance production, employ that same dread anticipation and smoldering suspense. The looming question is: Will Paul get out of this? None of this would be as effective and gripping without the right Annie and the right Paul. This production has both. Carney, who relocated to Los Angeles several years ago but returns to San Diego (as she did last year for Backyard’s “August: Osage County”), ideally mixes Annie’s doting folksiness and eruptions of ferocity, all while not trying to channel Kathy Bates’ definitive portrayal. Carney’s is an Annie all her own – changing on a dime from hero worship to insanity. Gercke is not shackled by the restrictions of playing a character who can’t walk. His anguish and agony, and the cunning Paul employs in attempts to extricate himself from his living nightmare, are vivid and visceral. Just his cries of pain when he tries to crawl on the floor get under our skin. It’s a stout performance that has a desperation all its own. Alex Guzman appears for a couple of scenes as Buster, a sheriff who is rightly suspicious of what might be going on in Annie’s house. He’ll be sorry he was curious. As a writer, I wonder what I would do if I encountered an obsessive fan. Being neither Stephen King nor Paul Sheldon, I doubt this will happen. But should I ever find himself driving through a blinding snowstorm, I’ll be sure to take it slow and cautious just the same. “Misery” runs through Dec. 7 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown. Bryan Banville and Cody Bianchi in "Midnight at the Never Get." Photo by Talon Reed Cooper The two-hander “Midnight at the Never Get” might seem like a small show for Diversionary Theatre to open its 39th season with. But the West Coast premiere of this play-with-music by Mark Sonnenblick has big and meaningful things to say about love, identity and social justice.
Bryan Banville stars as Trevor, a cabaret singer in the Village of the 1960s who because he’s gay and his audiences are is relegated to back-room “members-only” clubs that he tells us are subsidized by the mob and regularly raided. But as much as Trevor is devoted to performing, his true love is Arthur (Cody Bianchi), a keyboardist and songwriter he meets who becomes his lover and also his partner at one particular cabaret: the Never Get. Banville is center-stage at Diversionary, with Bianchi on keyboards and a sublime three-piece band to their right. The 90-minute show directed by Stephen Brotebeck finds Trevor singing the Great American Songbook-like tunes written (to him) by Arthur while telling the story of their aspirations beyond the Never Get, the arc of their romantic relationship and, achingly, the forces that would divide them. Let me step aside for a moment and credit the wonderful, atmospheric songs Sonnenblick composed for this show. The opener, “Mercy Of Love,” and closer, the heart-rending “When It’s Spring Again,” are poignant ballads worthy of that aforementioned Great American Songbook. So are, in between, “Too Late For Me” and “Dance With Me.” He’s also written clever, jaunty tunes like you’d hear in a crowd-pleasing cabaret act -- “Bells Keep Ringing” and “Why’dya Hafta Call It Love” to name two. A sensitive singer and an actor with a strong musical background, Banville embraces all of these with sparkling and tender results. Bianchi may be there more to play the piano than to sing, but it’s his subtle emotion that carries “When It’s Spring Again.” It becomes clear early in the going that the cabaret piano player is more than that, and it’s quite easy to accept that Trevor and Arthur are there, resurrecting the past, before our eyes. Their chief conflict will be clear as well: The needy Trevor loves Arthur most. The ambitious Arthur loves his music most. Where “Midnight at the Never Get” is most impactful, however, is looming above the relationship between Trevor and Arthur: the harsh reality of a shameful period in American history in which gay men were forced into the shadows and, if they emerged, subject to false arrests, beatings and even worse. You know where Trevor’s and Arthur’s tale is headed, but the ending is still a stirring surprise. Already a versatile actor as comfortable in a musical as he is in a play, Bryan Banville reaches another level of excellence in this part, reflecting Trevor’s desperate pain while clinging to hope and to his singing. Bianchi, in the more restrained and less likable role of Arthur, is a more than able counterpart, and he plays the piano the way I dreamed of playing back when I was taking lessons. In the end, love is complicated beyond lovers’ comprehension, it’s fraught with pain, and sometimes not even the right song can heal, much less promise a happy ending. “Midnight at the Never Get” runs through Nov. 17 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights. |
AuthorDavid L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic. Archives
February 2025
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