Month: May 2022

An untitled, early play by Anton Chekhov (adapted and directed by Joey Folsom) Sex, Guns and Vodka is set at a Christmas party, hosted by the Vonitsevas, a wealthy, convivial married couple. They are blowing balloons and sipping drinks, before the guests arrive.  They are the sort you see at a crowded bash. The quiet, beautiful woman under her husband’s thumb. The effusive, elated guy, kissing everybody. Drunk and happy to be alive. The older guy in the bad toupee, sharing “back-in-the-day” wisdom. The zaftig, Earth Mother. The squeaky, emotional woman. The exquisite, ethereal lass, almost too glorious to touch. The introspective intellectuals. The mischievous aristocrats. The awkward and loquacious.

Of particular note is Platonov, an obnoxious, appalling, insulting prick. He truly is a buzzkill, ignoring boundaries, shamelessly molesting the ladies, creepy and spoiling everyone’s enjoyment. Rasputin without the charisma. He seems to take pleasure in messing with people’s heads. As time passes, Platonov puts the moves on each of the female guests, and (much to my chagrin) succeeds! Perhaps it’s the intersection of privacy and opportunity. Perhaps some women (and yes, men) get a tingle from shtupping a guy with no warmth or propriety.

There are several phenomena that make for marvelous satire, and drama. The best parties have a profusion of guests, endless liquor, and proceed (or digress) till the last dog is hung. They wind down on their own clock. Alcohol is the playwright’s friend. It brings out frankness, and preposterous, reckless behavior. What more could you ask for? On a loftier note, in life and on the stage, these kinds of affairs create a quirky, rich, freewheeling cosmos. Guests take chances. They confide, they get philosophical. It’s a pensive, frothy pageant of humanity.

Director Joey Folsom manages Sex, Gun and Vodka with a keen, instinctive sense of pace, timing and tone. They are numerous moving parts, stories within stories, pathos juggled with insanity juggled with profundity juggled with the ridiculous. Folsom has brought us a nuanced, surprising, pleasurable view of what it means to be human, what it means to be seduced, what it means to be livid, what it means to be enraptured, what it means to intoxicated by the company of others. Guns are fired, mouths kissed, liquor gulped, egos stroked and rendezvous missed. Folsom hits the notes meticulously and brings out Chekhov’s playfulness without ignoring his affection for we pathetic, flawed, remarkable, broken mortals.

The Classics Theatre Project Presents Sex, Guns and Vodka (the untitled first play by Anton Chekhov) playing May 20th-June 11^th, 2022. The Margo Jones Theater at Fair Park, 1121 First Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75210. 214-923-1619. www.theclassicstheatreproject.com

 

We are thrust into a city besieged by military conquest. Explosions, gunfire, the kind of public announcement, propaganda broadcasts you might expect in Communist China. Resistance is pointless. Reject Western Decadence. Submit to the regime. The milieu is deepened and expanded by vistas projected on either side of the performance space. Surroundings are mostly demolished, dystopian, collapsing. We might be in the Ukraine or some Slovakian location. Natasha (Carla Parker) appears, dressed plainly with black face marks to help her hide. Sergei’s (Brian Witkowickz) stealthy approach startles her. She is terrified, before she realizes it’s her husband. Once they recognize each other, they embrace, relieved and elated. Like her, he wears a dark green coat, and bears the signs of exhaustion that come with constantly being on guard. They huddle, seeking something like refuge. Vigilant against possible attack. Not long after Kiki (Quinn Coffman) appears. We presently discover that she is, indeed, their daughter.

Part of their one-act, In the Garden series, Ochre Houses’s Futile Roses creates a lens, a few moments to focus and consider the atrocities happening as we speak. In another part of the world, yet intimate as television. The onslaught of carnage, annihilation, the details of genocide so overwhelming, it seems impossible to process. If nearly too apparent to mention, it’s nonetheless crucial to point out that Ochre House is providing context for events, we never imagined we’d see again. At least, not in our lifetime. The dubious election of a despot. The inexplicable charisma he holds over the uneducated and ambitious. His criminal negligence in the face of misery and rampant disease. His attempt to thwart Democracy by coup. Now ruthless conquest by another tyrant, and his brother under the skin. Comparisons to other times and places seem inescapable. To quote the great philosopher: Shirley Bassey (and The Propellerheads) It’s all just ……history repeating.

Written and directed by Kevin Grammer, Futile Roses captures the experience and mercilessness of war. The sudden, catastrophic and arrogant dehumanization of other cultures, for the sake of acquisition and expediency. The families, children, parents, grandparents. The elderly and disabled, all brushed aside, in a particularly vicious kind of metaphysical cannibalism. Mr. Grammer’s script is meticulous, observant and impressive, kindling warmth and empathy. The mother’s outburst of frustration and utter despair. The cynicism the daughter acquires, lest she go to pieces. The mischievous (if harsh) game that husband and wife play, a side affect of brutal change of circumstances. What we lose. What we clutch. What we accept. What we won’t. It is pretty much the stuff of fledgling writers that profoundly disturbing content must be presented with discretion and understatement. That is to say: a melting snowflake is a tragedy, a flood, commonplace. Mr Grammer has achieved this key distinction to powerful effect. He has explored his subject with clarity and somber wisdom.

Ochre House presented Futile Roses from April 20th-30th. It closed April 30^{th, 2022}. 526 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75226. 214-862-2723. www.ochrehousetheatre.org

Macbeth, tantalized by meddling spellcasters who dangle opportunism like a fish before a tomcat, and his Lady wife, who jettisons virtue for expediency, would seem to be engulfed by circumstances. When he grasps for ethical traction (all that’s needed, after all, is patience) Lady Macbeth seems determined to shame him into action. This frantic, almost solemn contrast between masculine heartlessness and feminine nurturing, is at the core of Shakespeare’s tragedy. No intersection existing between compassion and voracity, Macbeth must choose between the milky and the malicious. The theme is consistent throughout: “unsex me here, you spirits”, “milk of human kindness”, who knew that being female was so contemptible? Might be interesting to consider the witches as embodiment of female duplicity?

Once the newly crowned Thane of Cawdor has the taste in his mouth, he sheds any pretense of civility, layer by layer. He follows (what he chooses to believe) is his destiny, to its logical conclusion, ultimately losing his mind. Along the way, he never figures out that none of the witches’ promises come without a catch. Ironically, Lady Macbeth commits suicide, though Shakespeare mercifully reveals her ambivalence in the famous sleepwalking soliloquy. She does, however, escape accountability. When MacDuff closes in, Macbeth isn’t really clutching to life. He’s been shoved (more or less) in a particular direction, but undeniably, it’s no excuse.

Attending Macbeth (or any Shakespeare play) certain questions arise. Will the company in question bring anything new, intriguing, compelling to this familiar classic? Will the language, the sensibility, the sentience, of the script be accessible? Also: will the result, the performance be entertaining? Will it drag or pop?

Fair Assembly’s current staging of Macbeth, for the most part, is a ringing success. Their interpretation of Macbeth’s swift rise to power, is fresh, assured, vivid and absorbing. The tone is pensive, but urgent. Shout out to cunning Costume Designer Steven Smith. Dressing the characters in contemporary clothes was a savvy choice, it mitigates the unfamiliar Scottish realm where we find ourselves. The actors embrace the lyrical, metaphoric dialogue, ignoring the temptation to recite. They lean in to conversation, which is thorough, if a bit heightened. Their focus leads us down the right path. The three women who portray the witches, in their simple black tunics, are obviously dancers. Their movements, both symbiotic and as one, sublime. Their sense of speaking incantation and prophecy was earnest, if not quite there.

Co-Directors Emily Ernst and Morgan Laure’ have composed the cast, I’d say, intuitively, according to their strengths. They know how to set the mood for each scene, whether comic, disturbing, somber or violent. The instances when we witness more of the actual murders (instead of hearing about them) are unsettling and surprising. Macbeth’s (Brandon Walker) moments of self-doubt have that crucial, tentative quality. He’s taciturn yet forceful. Lady Macbeth (Emily Ernst) has that cunning, understated quality. She has the cache’ to carry off those scrumptious gowns. Dennis Raveneau is instinctively, subtly patrician as Duncan and inspired as the porter, unruly roused from drunken slumber. Shawn Gann, as the Thane of Ross, is touching and articulate. His lines express some of the drama’s enlightened, more spiritual observations, and Gann makes them memorable.

Fair Assembly presents Macbeth, playing May 12th-15th, 2022. Arts Mission Oak Cliff, 410 South Windomere, Dallas, Texas 75218. www.artsmissionoc.org. 214-808-0975