Month: October 2023

Rover Dramawerk’s Bernhardt / Hamlet was an intriguing supreme pleasure. We find ourselves in 1897 France, where world renowned actor (actress?) Sarah Bernhardt has found herself in a pickle. Her last show was too cerebral for the hoi polloi (critical success though it was) and now she’s low on the dough and gambling on a Hail Mary! Notorious for her extravagantly eccentric antics, Sarah has cooked up a gimmick that will doubtless bring them flocking to the box office, the public and intelligentsia alike. Well, perhaps not a gimmick, exactly, but she’s confident that her choice to play Hamlet will be just the thing to resuscitate her floundering career. On this premise turns the drama.

When Bernhardt / Hamlet opens, Bernhardt is rehearsing Shakespeare’s difficult and taxing Hamlet (the Prince of Denmark) that many have called his most powerful and best. Sarah is crabbing about the excess verbiage and obtuseness of the script, carrying on and trying desperately to find her focus. Though she’s not the kind of diva who takes out frustration on colleagues. Close friends, critics, cast members, her son, and even her paramour, the brilliant playwright Rostand, say with admiration and respect, that she’s not in her right mind. She defends this dubious decision in various ways. In Shakespeare’s day, male actors played women. Succeed or fail, it will net a tidy profit. There is nothing that she (visionary genius) can’t achieve.

Playwright Theresa Rebeck has written a poignant narrative, a quandary on the nature of genius, based on historical fact. It raises all kinds of provocative questions, without assaulting the audience with a hammer. It’s not obsessed with the obvious. Bernhardt kvetches so much, you’ve got to wonder why she’s chosen this project. When she asks Rostand to write a simpler version, he asks why she wants to change “what makes Shakespeare, Shakespeare.” Rebeck depicts a woman, an iconoclast, who pays no attention to the petty concerns and gossip of unenlightened culture. It’s why she’s gained a reputation for being intrepid and unapologetically defiant. And yet Rebeck also suggests the reason for Sarah’s endeavor, is that mommy told her not to put jam on the cat.

Experienced, cunning director extraordinaire, Janette Oswald has taken on Bernhardt / Hamlet, guiding the performers with her nuanced, intuitive touch. She juggles the amusing, the despondent, the inquisitive, the skeptical, with skill and panache. She expertly steers this poised, introspective, pensive cast: agile enough to do comedy with panache, and the somber just above a whisper.

I must express my profuse apologies for not delivering my review in a timely fashion. Rover Dramawerks (who consistently presents scintillating theatre) has always welcomed me with open arms, and treated me with warmth and gracious kindness.

The Magnificent Cast

Carol M. Rice (Sarah Bernhardt) Brian Hoffman (Constant Coquelin) Jorge Marin Lara (Edmond Rostand) Chuck E. Moore (Alphonse Mucha) Ian Grygotis (Maurice) Scott Hickman (Louis) Jenny Wood (Rosamund) Marissa Mayfield (Lysette) Alexander de la Cruz-Nunez (Raoul) Sean M. Lewis (Francois).

Rover Dramawerks presented Bernhardt / Hamlet from October 12th-28th, 2023. 1517 H Avenue, Plano, Texas 75074. 972-849-0358. roverdramawerks.com.

In August of 1892, Lizzie Borden murdered her father Andrew, and her stepmother, Abby, with an ax, thus securing her name in history. Andrew Borden was wealthy three times over, and presided over the family fortune. After the demise of their mother, Lizzie and her sister Emma lived with Andrew and Abby, a stepmother who was hostile and greedy. She convinced her new husband to give generously to she and her relatives, while her stepdaughters had very little. The coup de grace came when she convinced himto cut his daughters from the will. This wasn’t just about avarice. Andrew Borden had more than enough money to keep everyone well provided for, but apparently had little feeling for Lizzie and Emma. It speaks volumes that despite the overwhelming evidence against her, and prevailing American attitudes of the 19^th Century, that a jury of twelve exonerated Lizzie Borden. She left court a free woman.

Theatre Three’s current production of Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Steven Hewett’s Lizzie is nothing short of electrifying. The all-female cast: Presley Duyck (Lizzie) Ja’Naye Flanagan (Emma Borden) Lauren Urso Gray (Alice Russo) Lauren LeBlanc (Bridget) are angry and ferocious, wailing and roaring and stomping and gobs of howling despair. There are no men in the cast, so the story is told without distortion by the sisters, Bridget the housekeeper, and Alice, their neighbor. We never see the parents, and disturbing incidents (such as the actual murder) happen offstage. More explanation than execution. Like volcanic opera, spoken dialogue is nearly non-existent, and the emotions soar. They pace the stage like caged tigers, in a state of barely contained frenzy. It’s less an allegory on female oppression than a furious indictment of male-dominated culture. A secular beatification of a female hero that turned on her oppressors. There’s also a demented, defiant ghoulishness that makes no apologies for the blood that drenches Lizzies clothes.

So what’s going on in Lizzie? I wonder if younger members of the audience would gather the upshot? The attitude of the actors, their disappointment and frank witness to what it means to inhabit a world that will never let them prosper, or succeed, or defend themselves or simply taste the sublime. These churning degradations and wounds and sorrows are so well articulated, so authentic, so canny. It doesn’t seem to leave room for doubt. It’s a seething, alarming, brazen spectacle with blazing colors and the fearlessness of acting out without apology. It could have easily digressed to political screed or ideological rant, but instead we feel the tragic enactment of ruined lives. Perhaps a mashup of Marat/Sade, The Threepenny Opera and My Sister in This House?

Theatre Three presents: Lizzie, playing September 28th-October 29^th, 2023. 2688 Laclede Street, Suite 120, Dallas, Texas 75201. 214-871-3300. theatre3dallas.com

Brad and Janet (a young, bourgeois, heteronormative couple) blow a tire one night, in a downpour, on the way back from a wedding. They spot a castle and venture a knock at the door, in hopes of borrowing the phone. The door is answered by Riff-Raff (the butler) and Magenta (the housekeeper) who usher in the two. They explain to Brad and Janet, it’s a special night for The Master (aka Dr. Frank-N-Furter) as he will be unveiling his “creation”. The revelers (same as Riff-Raff and Magenta) are bizarrely dressed. Despite Janet’s protestations and somewhat disturbing surroundings, Brad is convinced there’s nothing to fear.

Writer, composer and lyricist Richard O’Brien’s glorious, notorious spectacle, The Rocky Horror Show has been around since the 1970’s, and too easy to take for granted. O’Brien found the intersection between Science Fiction film and Anarchy of the Disenfranchised. Consider films like: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, War of the Worlds. The lives of tepid, Caucasian heterosexuals collide with extraterrestrial “deviants”, resulting in a mind-blowing, chaotic, Sodom and Gomorrah, with fabulous costumes. Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and his guests, et al, have nothing but barely concealed contempt and withering disdain for the sweet, innocent, ingenues. They’re too clueless to get that they’re being mocked and exploited. That their values are the source of hilarity. O’Brien has struck a satirical tone, but no one is spared. Each character in their turn, is the object of buffoonery and bitchy humor.

Director Blake Hackler has detected what can only be described as O’Brien’s celebration of the subversive. It may be concealed by comedy and implication, but anger and disgust for Wonder Bread oppressors is palpable. It’s a mashup of camp, defiance and the outre’. It’s intriguing that this particular production calls out the Cold Water Bible Belt by name. The brand of Christianity that ignores its own hypocrisy and thrives on persecution, is skewered and held to account. The particular lines are not amplified but neither are they throwaway. As much as I admire and savor these impulses, I’m not sure they’re in sync with the rest of the script.

Hackler and this rogue’s gallery of merrymakers spark a sense of rambunctious jubilation. Rocky Horror would seem to turn on rebellion disguised as facetious shtick. This ramshackle cast of 18 performers dive-in, headfirst (like Esther Williams) to spirit of the piece. Blake Hackler has welcomed us, with open arms, into this giddy, Dionysian blowout. In the tradition of comics who have managed to speak truth to power, by the mere affectation of hi-jinks and mischief, this Rocky Horror tickles us while slipping something in our drinks.

The Dallas Theater Center presents The Rocky Horror Show, playing September 23rd-October 29^th, 2023. Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75204.

214-522-8499. ticketing@dallastheatercenter.org