Month: April 2019

Rudy is a former child star, now middle-aged, who has hit on hard times. His substance abuse began when his sitcom was in its heyday, when he played a precocious kid and ghost hunter. The recent suicide of his grown son Jake, has only made his alcoholism and despondency worse. He has a definite shot at a comeback, but his agent Shirl and he have been squabbling over his lack of reliability. He can’t seem to knock off the sauce. Playwright Carla Parker stirs references to Danny Bonaduce into the mix. Bonaduce suffered comparable hurdles (parental abuse, benders, scandal) but managed to redeem himself when he publicly embraced his “Come to Jesus” moment. Rudy has yet to put his demons behind him.

When Remember Rudy opens, we find him in his study, seated on a sofa, wearing a smoking jacket, quaffing vintage bourbon. Rudolph may inhabit an impressive mansion, but he is clearly ill-at-ease, tormented by the ghouls and ghosts of unfortunate choices and antagonistic relationships. Jake’s soul watches on, trying to get his attention. Rudy has contentious phone conversations, trying to salvage his career. There are flashbacks of his popular television show, and how the stress eventually got to him. Musical interludes examine the realms and depths of his malaise, regrets, the downward turn of his luck, and his struggles with helplessness and despair.

Remember Rudy (consistent with other Ochre House shows) introduces a strong note of irony, black humor, the sardonic. Rudy, who played a boy ghost hunter, cannot evict the malignant entities that hold him prsoner. Pearl, his erstwhile costar and ex-wife, has become a medium. When she comes to visit Rudolph for a heart-to-heart, it almost seems like an exercise in futility. The goofy, ridiculous world of television comedy. The song lyrics that are often deadpan shtick. The hallucinatory satire of Justin Locklear’s puppetry. It all orchestrates to suggest the undeniable absurdity, the insidious way the past can mock present success. Carla Parker has written an insightful, sensitive drama exploring the life of Rudolph Raeburn, a child actor lost in the overwhelming world of mass media entertainment.

The Ochre House Theater presents Remember Rudy, playing April 20th-May 11^th, 2019. 825 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75226. 214-826-6273. OchreHouseTheater.org

Wolf at the Door confounds our expectations, reverses them. It begins with traditional ideas and rethinks them. The savior becomes the monster. The predator becomes the savior. You might say it’s feminist revisionism, but it’s so much more. Like most engaging folk tales it’s just believable enough to be relevant, and mystical enough to cast a spell. Just when it seems Isadora must endure a life of grief and despair, help arrives in a strange guise.

Isadora is about to give birth, when Wolf at the Door opens. She has a bruises from Septimo (her abusive husband) and is afraid her injuries will affect the health of her child. Her family will be arriving in a few days, to celebrate the new baby, not realizing she’s trapped in a marriage with a man who bullies and beats her. Before they actually married, he was charming, but now Septimo treats her disgracefully. He is counting on the arrival of the child, knowing his wife would never abandon her own baby. While she is out in the stable, Yolot (Isadora’s helper/housekeeper) discovers a naked woman, lying in the hay. Her name is Rocio and she is actually a wolf in human shape, caught between two worlds. Rocio, too, is pregnant.

Playwright Marisela Tervino Orta has crafted an absorbing narrative. The marriage/birth bed dominates the set. Isadora and Septimo’s home is bright yellow adobe. Isadora’s predicament: being at the mercy of a husband who exploits her role as companion and nurturer, is at the core of the drama. If Isadora were more self-sufficient, physically stronger, she could get the upper hand. But like in most patriarchies, Isadora comes from a culture where women are rarely encouraged in these skills. When Isadora crosses paths with Rocio, she, Yolo and the she-wolf are able to gather cunning and protect themselves.

Wolf at the Door doesn’t deal in broad strokes. Like many wife-batterers, Septimo has his moments of contrition and tenderness. He provides for his wife and gives her a lovely hearth. But lurking beneath this layer of benevolence is his unresolved need to degrade her, or whatever fuels his toxic rage. Orta challenges us to question what it means to be fierce, without being ruthless. She pits archetypal roles and assumptions against each other. When we hear the title, it evokes the idea of jeopardy, peril. It doesn’t cross our minds that the real danger might come from master of the house. Orta takes our preconceived notions and conjures some considerable havoc. But the result is sublime, and astonishing.

Kitchen Dog Theater presents Wolf at the Door, playing April 11th-May 5^th, 2019. 2600 N. Stemmons Freeway, Suite 180, Dallas, Texas 75207. (214) 953-1055. www.kitchendogtheater.org

I think once you’ve had your first quickening experience at live theatre, on some level, you’re always looking for it to happen again. A kind of stirring or exhilaration, that that jolts you to the marrow. You keep going back, and sure, you wouldn’t repeat it, if you didn’t enjoy live performance. You wouldn’t return if you just hated it, but, to reference the phenomenal Pauline Kael, when the lights go down, part of you, anticipates, expects, hopes. To recreate that implacable rush. And from time to time, it sneaks up on you. Your are utterly unprepared for this invasion of authenticity. Even if you don’t act on it afterwards, you’re never the same. Such is the case with Lela & Co.

Lela is so effusive, so exuberant, she’s almost embarrassing. She addresses us directly, as any teenage girl might, chattering, chattering. Describing her entry into the world. How her mother sang. She describes the girlish hilarity of having sisters. Like the school girls from The Mikado. How the one who’s all curvy and zaftig is such a pain. She talks about her girl’s life. Her first menses. Her dad keeps interrupting the story. He’s cheery and robust and all bravado, but he’s an interloper. An idiot. They keep describing an incident with a cake and her birthday. It’s supposed to be funny, but really, it’s how her life isn’t her own. Not even on her special day. The same actor plays her dad, her sister’s husband, the guy he fixes her up with. When Lela goes to visit her sister, he arranges for her to have something like a rendezvous with this guy he knows.

For some reason (without her consent) it’s understood Lela will go and set up house with this stranger. He makes a big deal of the fact that he buys furniture and appliances and clothes as if none of it’s for them both. He makes a ritual of her indebtedness, though not in so many words. So little of what is imposed on Lela is spelled out. When he has sex with her it hurts, but she doesn’t mention it. Gradually her life is reduced to a single act, repeated over and over. It’s during this time she meets the first man who is truly decent to her, and at least tries to to help. By the time their lives intersect, she is all but numb, but their short cycle of encounters has an effect, however subtle.

I’m loathe to use certain terms here, however accurate. Lela & Co is a condemnation of toxic, seemingly benign patriarchy, but intensely visceral, and I don’t want to diminish it, by too much cerebral evaluation. The story is so familiar. You’ve got to watch and listen carefully. Lela’s story overlaps the upper middle-class trap of American wives with the plight of village women whose sole value is measured on the scale of beauty. The more beguiling you are, the more leverage. Such as it is. Imagine subsisting on pastry so sweet it sets your teeth on edge, but it’s laced with vitriol. Playwright Cordelia Lynn explores the tacit, customary contract that puts women in a heterocentrist bind of provision and obligation. By the time Lela’s degradation loses all pretense, we’re shocked we didn’t notice. Lela & Co is a devastating, brilliant narrative, overwhelming and jarring in the best sense. Too rare to miss.

Second Thought Theatre presents Lela & Co, playing April 3rd-27th, 2019. Bryant Hall next to Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd., Dallas, Texas 75219-5598. 866-811-4111. www.secondthoughttheatre.com

 

Hector and Annie Nations are homesteaders in the Appalachian mountains, where the they farm more than one hundred acres. Annie takes care of the home: cooking, canning, sewing, making candles. Hector takes care of the harvest, and selling their produce. All three of their children are grown, though they might have preferred them to stay. Their son Dillard, a musician, moved out to pursue his career, though we sense some additional friction between he and his dad.

When Foxfire opens Annie is just now opening a delayed letter from Dillard saying he’ll be there today. She’s preparing a pig’s head (not a prop) for cooking. Next a developer named Prince Carpenter appears, offering an impressive sum of cash for Annie and Hector’s property. Land that has been handed down for generations. Soon, in a flashback, we see their doctor visiting to help Annie through a birth. Old Doc has to talk Hector out of some folk customs they use when a new baby is coming. Nothing especially exotic, just ineffective. All the same he’s respectful and reassuring. He gets Annie to sing to take her mind off the labor pains. An old family friend, Holly Burrell comes to visit. She and Dillard have been friends since childhood and now, she’s doing documentary research that includes the Nations family. When Dillard and she cross paths, she offers to take Annie to Dillard’s concert. With some persuading she agrees to go.

Though Foxfire didn’t feel like a musical, the program listed: “Book and Lyrics by: Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn.” And without a doubt, the pervasive, mournful, stirring Appalachian folk music was a key aspect of this drama’s experience. The salient aspect of Foxfire would seem to quash any quaint notion we might indulge of the lives of mountain folk. When Annie enlists Prince’s help in “dissecting” the pig’s head, the device is both humorous and revealing. Annie is neither Ma Kettle nor is she Olivia Walton. She’s just a normal, intelligent woman, with work to do. She may listen politely to Prince’s pitch, but she’s no pushover. She loves Dillard’s music, but, like many women her age, is not fond of loud concerts. Understandably, Annie is torn between devotion to her cantankerous husband, and Dillard, who’s merely trying to be his own man.

The contrast between the ancient folk wisdom of mountain communities, and the gentrification of urban “progress” is expressed in the unresolved antagonism between Dillard and his dad, Hector. Dillard never crosses the line into disrespect, but as he and his two siblings have learned the hard way, Hector cares more about winning than arriving at mutual truth. Cronyn and Cooper don’t stack the deck, we come to gather that while bucolic values have much to recommend them, science and industry aren’t altogether useless or corrupt. And while “civilization” may boast the appearance of sophistication, it doesn’t have all the answers.

The cast (Elly Lindsay, John S. Davies, Mark Quach, Whitney Coulter, Ian Ferguson, Stan Graner) under the direction of Emily Scott Banks was impeccable. Their performances are relaxed, involved, poignant and intuitive. Although Hector Nations is disagreeable, Davies saves him from being utterly reprehensible. Elly Lindsay’s acting is especially nuanced and touching.

Foxfire played Theatre 3 from March 14th-April 7^th, 2019. 2800 Routh St, Suite 168, Dallas, Texas 75201 (214) 871-3300. www.theatre3dallas.com

While recovering from an accident that has blinded her, Susan crosses paths in the hospital with Sam, a Vietnam vet and photographer coping with emotional troubles. It isn’t long before romance kicks in and the two marry after a few months. Though a gifted photographer in his own right, Sam does portrait and glamour photography to pay the bills, while Susan stays home, still learning how to manage the challenges of sightlessness. Sam pays a neighbor girl, Gloria (a teenage hormone case) to help Susan out, but she’s just another source of stress for Susan.

When Wait Until Dark opens three thugs are trying to locate a doll they’ve used to smuggle contraband. Their female associate ditched the doll in one of Sam’s bags, when they sat next to each other on the train. For reasons as yet unrevealed, said associate wouldn’t disclose the whereabouts of said doll, and now she lies dead in the bedroom offstage, because one of these villains got itchy. To his credit, playwright Frederick Knott has given each one of these characters distinct characteristics. One in particular, feels a bit deranged.

Before Sam leaves for work, it’s pretty clear there’s some strain in their new marriage. Though nothing fatal. Mike, an old war buddy of Sam’s, turns up looking for him. He has a few hours to kill before his connecting train. While exchanging pleasantries with Susan, a police detective arrives asking questions about the discovery of corpse and talk of a missing doll. Understandably, Susan is terrified, but luckily, Mike is there to take things in hand.

If you haven’t guessed by now (or knew already) Wait Until Dark’s most salient quality is suspense. Blind woman still learning the fundamentals of survival is put in danger, when her husband is turned into an unwitting mule. Sam is nowhere close when Susan must pull herself together, and find her resourcefulness, when (naturally) it would be easier to to give in. She doesn’t come by her heroism easily, and the strategy she needs to prevail is hardly obvious or even intuitive. But perhaps the best attribute of Knott’s drama, is a solid, compelling, touching narrative that engages us, apart from the problems at hand. It would have been easy to elicit pity for a blind woman, surrounded by felons. But instead, Knott gives the besieged Susan the opportunity to prove herself to them, to us, and to herself. Not because she’s brave, but because she won’t let herself surrender. And she has skills they never counted on.

Once again, The Core Theatre has come through with a gifted, canny, persevering cast and crew that delivers an absorbing, pleasurable, memorable performance. We feel the authenticity of the dialogue, the emotions are unselfconscious and resonant. As she comes closer and closer to catastrophe, we are right there with Susan, mind racing, fighting panic, searching for answers, counting every step.

The Core Theatre presents Wait Until Dark: playing March 22nd-April 14^th, 2019. 518 West Arapaho Rd, Ste 115, Richardson, Texas 75080. (214) 930-5338. www.thecoretheatre.org

Ti Moune and Daniel live on a lush, tropical island in the Antilles. The population is divided between the Beauxhommes, the aristocracy, and the working class, who struggle, but are happy. They live on the other side of the island, enjoying a cheerful existence. The gods are never far and acknowledged throughout daily life. Ti Moune, a small child, falls to the bottom of the ocean, and the gods save her, fomenting a spectacular storm, and depositing her in a tree. Two gods place a wager that when circumstances come crashing down, she will choose Death over Love. A sweet couple rescues and raises her as their very own daughter. (Please forgive me if I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.) Ti Moune grows to be a lovely, caring girl, warm and and brimming with joy. Daniel (one of the Beauxhommes) has a collision during another (?!) storm, and Ti Moune saves him and nurses him back to health. Romance between the two factions is strong taboo on the island, but Ti Moune believes in devotion above all else.

Like other folkloric, mythical musicals (Once Upon a Mattress, Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof) Once on this Island weds the sublime and improbable with recognizable human experience. In our lifetime there seems to be enough strangeness and grace intervening to make dull ideas (like coincidence, the status quo, plodding along) a poor explanation for destiny or fate or what the divinities have in mind. Once on this Island seems to manage just the right mix of the exhilarating with the melancholy. The despondent with the defiant. The story of the nurturing, somewhat miraculous attachment between the patrician Daniel and the endearing Ti Moune is surprising. Coming from my famished Western Wonderbread tradition it caught me off guard, and moved me with its particular, not implausible truth.

Glorious with fizzy pleasure, and buoyant, stirring music, Once on this Island is fanciful and vivid without being corny. The gods are characters in the story, as palpable as the human beings, and there’s a cozy blend of of worship, celebration and narrative with scintillating costumes(Jessica Layman) and jaunty, saucy choreography (Christian O’Neill Houston). The band provides intoxicating rhythms and sweeping, awesome crescendos. The set (Wendy Rene’e Searcy) is vast and elaborate, with great, quirky details and a bold, imposing tree emerging from the center. The special effects are vivid, masterful and swoony. There’s a splendid undercurrent of chaos and enchantment running through this gorgeous theatrical experience, chock full of humor and pathos and grand, charming moments.

Once on this Island plays The Firehouse Theatre from March 28th-April 14^th, 2019. 2535 Valley View Lane, Farmers Branch, Texas 75234. (972) 620-3747. www.thefirehousetheatre.com

Mae’s dad has been diagnosed with cancer but the future is unclear. She has moved in with him, for moral support, it seems, and to bolster their neglected relationship. Mae is a lawyer, looking to sign on with a firm, as she is currently unemployed. Her father is the soul of composure. He encourages her to schedule the interviews, step up and be independent. There’s unspoken tension, but obvious warmth and affection. Mae takes up with a high school acquaintance, who has mistaken her for her sister. She encounters a mysterious cowboy apparition that is taciturn, burly, take-charge. Mae and her siblings: Hannah, Matthew and Jenny converge in their dad’s hospital room to evaluate and navigate. The familiar, familial dynamics emerge.

You might almost think that playwright Clare Barron set out to defy intuitive choices for dramas dealing with intense, elemental subjects like terminal illness, loss of a parent, of control. There is grief, but we see no agony. There are disagreements, but no meltdowns. Immediately following a sudden physical episode, Mae is thrown into a blizzard, not merely suggested, but with fierce wind and convincing, ersatz snow. The scenery fractures. The previously mentioned cowboy arrives to rescue her, though their encounters sometimes take on a vaguely sexual undercurrent. He jumps right in, which is reassuring when you’re lost. He ties her up (with a lasso) but not without her cooperation. The time comes when Mae and her dad agree to part, for the sake of sanity and genuine, mutual care. When she gets the sad news, she’s in a different room.

I am not suggesting there’s one strategy for dealing with life’s traumas in theatre, or something miraculous in simply going with one’s strengths. What makes Barron’s writing most impressive is the nuanced strategy behind her choices. Nothing is really spelled out but intellectually, viscerally, spiritually, we surmise the outcome when Mae and her siblings gather and process to comfort their father as mortality comes to claim him. There are no outbursts or fits of weeping, but no reason to believe their dad isn’t revered, cherished and deeply, deeply loved. To some degree, I believe we’re asked to fill in the blanks. To imagine the unshown. How do we present the catastrophic, the sorrowful, the scramble to make sense when someone so crucial to our well-being is taken from us? You got older invites us to participate in those special moments as this cycle begins, and so the surprise ending was not so much a surprise. But also a grace.

You got older played at Kitchen Dog Theater from February 14^th -M arch 10^th, 2019. 2600 N. Stemmons Freeway, Suite 180, Dallas, Texas 75207. (214) 953-1055. www.kitchendogtheater.org