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.
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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. |
AuthorDavid L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic. Archives
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