By: Tim Treanor

Whole Against the Sky, at Trumpet Vine Theatre

Paul Donnelly’s new play, Whole Against the Sky, has much going for it. The dialogue is witty, the characterizations are sharp, and there are scenes of enormous emotional authenticity and power. The play is still a few rewrites away from being the strong theater it could be, however. In particular, the flabby ending disappoints.

It is a measure of the hard, and good, work Donnelly has done so far on his plot to compare the play’s description on the Trumpet Vine website to what we actually see on the stage. Jack Rheingold (Jon Townson), a gay lawyer living in Washington, has returned to his Cincinnati hometown to witness the remarriage of his hard-bitten, domineering mother Carol (Jean Hudson Miller) to Ken, a right-wing Christian activist. (Returning from a pre-nuptial party, Jack observes, “I was the only one there who hadn’t heard Rush Limbaugh that morning”.) Jack and his big sister Linda (Ellie Nicoll) cordially detest their mother; Jack detests Linda’s manic-depressive husband Greg (Gerald R. Browning) and you can be certain that Linda will detest Ken as soon as she meets him. Regrettably, she never has the chance, as Ken gets a surprise one-way ticket to verify his religious beliefs the day she arrives.

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By: Tim Treanor and Valeria Lamarra

Haroun and the Sea of Stories   Theater Alliance

 

L to R: Ian leValley and Carlos Bustamante     Credit: Colin Hovde

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a children’s play, adapted from a children’s novel by the great Salman Rushdie. I am a 55-year old lawyer. Should I be reviewing this play?

I don’t think so. Children possess an imaginative faculty which is gone by adulthood. What might seem jejune or threadbare to an adult may hit the motherload of excitement or satisfaction to a kid.

If you doubt me, watch a gaggle of kids playing with an empty packing box. If you ever catch a bunch of theater critics doing the same thing, let me know, and I will withdraw my claim.

Until then, it is my belief that children are better judges of children’s theater productions than are adult critics. Therefore, for this play I have subcontracted my reviewing responsibilities to Valeria Lamarra, an interesting 11-year-old of my acquaintance notable for her good judgment and command of the language. Valeria is also familiar with performance needs and values, being herself (among other things) a circus unicyclist.           

Valeria, take it away:

This is a very nice show. Not only is it a good show for kids but it has a deeper message, about how children and parents love and can miss each other. Salman Rushdie wrote it while he was under a fatwa and he was in hiding. He had to be separated from his son at this time and it must have been very sad for him. Even though there is great sadness in the story, there is much comedy as well. (You can’t have a children’s show without comedy.)It is the story of a young girl, Haroun (Anu Yavid), who saves her father’s career. Her father, Rashid (Ian LeValley), was a storyteller, but he became sad and
couldn’t tell stories. The reason he was sad was that his wife Soraya (Erica Chamblee) left him. Worse, after Rashid lost his wife, Haroun became angry with him and said, “What’s the point of telling stories that aren’t even true?” And after that he couldn’t tell his stories any more.

But telling stories was his whole life. Without being able to tell stories, Rashid was no longer special. So in order to help her father find the source of his inspiration, Haroun travels all the way to an alternate world which has two cities, totally opposite to each other. She discovers that the sea of stories, where all stories come from, is itself in danger. She joins forces with magical creatures and fights deadly enemies who have even greater magical powers. In order to free the sea of stories, she has to concentrate so hard it brings light to a city of darkness.

This is a complex story, but not a confusing one. Both the sad things and the funny parts were very clear and easy to understand. I have four sisters, ages from five to seventeen, and I believe they would all thoroughly enjoy it.

For one thing, the actors were convincing, and the story itself was very interesting. I liked Ms. Chamblee, who played a lot of roles, and was happy and sad and everything in between. Ms. Yadev as Haroun was a mix of emotions, but each one was clear and understandable and convincing. Butt the Hoopoe (Carlos Bustamante) delivered his punch lines at exactly the right moment. I also liked Mikal Evans as the page, Blabbermouth (who was so much a page that she wore pages out of the book). Ms. Evans was a good acrobat as well as a good actor – she played a girl pretending to be a boy, and I really thought she was a boy until her helmet came off.

There was seating on three sides and all the action was in the middle. The seating was good because no matter where you sat, you had a good view of the action.

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By: Tim Treanor   Fanny’s First Play – WSG

The stage can be a forum for ideas. A socially conscious playwright, if he is clever and sensitive, can use his art to present his solutions to the great social dilemmas of his day. Throughout his lengthy career, George Bernard Shaw exploited that theatrical potential as well as any playwright in history.

So the question confronting producing companies in 2006 is this: is there any reason to stage a ninety-five-year-old Shaw play today? Fanny’s First Play, which was first produced in the same year Ronald Reagan was born, shows Shaw as a cuddly curmudgeon, taking broad potshots at 19th-century British concepts of class and respectability. Does this justify a revival?

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By: Ronnie Ruff   God Of Hell – Didactic Theatre 

Adrienne Nelson and Colby Codding, photograph taken by Elish Healy

Sam Sheppard’s latest play is a sarcastic look at the nationalistic^* themes promoted by the current administration or to quote the playwright “a takeoff on Republican fascism.” A comedy in three scenes, the play uses more red, white and blue than the Republican National Convention. Ceramic republican elephants, vinyl banners, flags, patriotic neck ties, all with the stars and stripes and all being waved about with enthusiastic abandon.

Frank and Emma live in dairy land, Wisconsin that is, where Frank tends to his cows with a love only equaled by his feelings for Emma or maybe not, now that I think about it. The cows are number one on Frank’s priority list. The couple have a visitor as the play unfolds, and old friend of Frank’s by the name of Haynes is hiding out in the basement after a little accident at his job that may or may not be a plutonium spill. “Do you know what plutonium is named after, Frank?” asks Haynes, who produces vicious blue electric sparks when touched. “No-what?” answers the clueless dairy farmer. “Pluto-the god of Hell,” Haynes says. “Oh,” says Frank, “I thought he was a cartoon.” Now we all know the Feds are not going to let poor Haynes get away so easily — they send a schizoid agent posing as a cookie salesman to the farm to bring him back into the fold. Peddling red, white and blue iced cookies, our man Welch, part salesman, part flag waving super agent, is there to provide containment for this uncomfortable situation that has been deemed problematic by the government. Welch has his way with everyone’s mind like bird the flu in a hen house. When Emma asks: “What does that mean, ‘our government’?” and Frank answers “That means he knows more than us – he’s smarter than us – he knows the Big Picture, Emma – he’s got a plan” we understand that this is great stuff.

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By: Tim Treanor          Jvlivs Caesar at Caesar’s Palace, presented by Vpstart Crow

There are a thousand things wrong with this misconceived and poorly-executed production, beginning with the theme. There is no imaginable reason to place Julius Caesar in Caesar’s Palace, except as a play on words. But where does this lead us? Hamlet in a hamlet? King Lear in a Lear jet? MacBeth in a McDonalds?

I mean, whose idea is this? At the opening of the show, we are on the floor of Caesar’s Palace. We know where we are because we have been told by Marc Antony, in a speech in which he also told us to turn off our cell phones and devices of recording. It looks, however, like a VFW Hall on Mardi Gras night. Brutus (Jay Tilley) and Cassius (Terry Spann) are bellowing at each other about some bit of corruption by one of Cassius’ followers. We are not at the familiar opening scene of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but deep in the fifth Act, where, unbeknownst to us, the assassination has already taken place and Brutus and Cassius are already at war with Marc Antony.

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