Philadelphiatheaterarts

Review by Neal Newman

June 19, 2022

The great black artist, Hattie McDaniel, when asked by a not too bright reporter why she only played maids, once quipped, “Honey, I can get $500 a week playing one, or $50 a week being one.” 

There were no choices for Black actors in Depression-era Hollywood. Performers with Shakespearian training had to speak in the expected dialect and act as subservient as possible. Many, like McDaniel, managed brilliant performances despite the limitations. Things have changed somewhat today, but those films still remind us of who we were and still are.

After terrifyingly brutal works like SWEAT or RUINED, playwright Lynn Nottage turns her hand to farce, which is deliriously funny. The show closes on June 26, so set your calendar now. The audience on Father’s Day/Juneteenth was small and socially distanced, but the laughter was loud and hearty.

The play’s premise is so outrageous that I’ll allow the director’s notes to explain it.

Vera Stark is a Black actress who gets thrust into pre-Code Hollywood fame because of her role in a “Southern Epic.”  We see Vera and two other Black actresses as they all vie with humor, innovation, and frustration to “make it big” on the silver screen. Vera’s sudden and unexpected stardom leads to both a long career in movies and, later in life, to controversies addressed in TV shows and symposia decades later.

The first act is pure farce and, as beautifully staged by skilled director Suki, is hilarious. The three actress roommates go through countless humiliations to audition in their real-life maids’ outfits for roles in this obviously racist film.

Act Two breaks a cardinal playwrighting rule: Never switch styles in the middle of the play. The second act, set in modern times, is in a college lecture hall and a TV studio. Now there is more satiric comedy as three modern professors discuss the current racial situation and hawk their books. Audience members may be disappointed if they were hoping for more farce as the depression actresses climbed the Hollywood ladder. But if you are Lynn Nottage, you can get away with anything. I liked it. This allowed the playwright to offer her thoughts on the contemporary situation.

The director Suki has found an exceptional cast who deserves the extra space below. Most are making their Barnstormers debut, with some appearing on stage for the first time. Darrah Lashley is delightful as Vera, as both the eager young actress and the cynical older woman years later. She makes her stage debut here and carries the show with ease. Tanya O’Neill and Candace Miller add to the comedy as the older Shakespearian roommate and the floozy who gets ahead by “acting” as exotic foreigners. Later O’Neill becomes a Ph.D. in Black Studies with an African outfit and attending “attitude.”  Miller appears as a lesbian pundit with an equal “attitude.” The erudite host of the symposium is skillfully characterized by Tyler Andrews, who in Act One was a horndog hustler who claims to be a great trumpet player but works as a chauffeur. Elena Nahrmann plays Gloria, an overage child actress once known as “America’s Cutie Pie,” but is now desperate for the leading role in the upcoming epic. Being white is an obvious advantage to Gloria, as her IQ is in the single digits, proving that talent is not necessarily a requirement for screen stardom. Nahrmann is terrific as this actress who is never off stage. Later she visits Vera in the TV studio. Vera has had limited opportunities and is dissolving into drugs and drinks, but Gloria remains as narcissistic as ever. The two white men (Tom Tansey and Brian Scott Campbell) offer some age and experience as two Hollywood big wigs reminiscent of Louis B. Mayer and Michael Curtiz. Later Tansey plays an obnoxious Merv Griffin-type TV talk show host, whose guests include Campbell as a stoned British rock star. I want to see these actors in their subsequent roles. I hope they’ll let me know.

Costumes by Jen Allegra, Claire Adams, Janet Gilmore, and Joan Blake fit the characters perfectly with maid uniforms and tuxedos for the first act and a riot of 1970s clothing for the 1973 TV show. The set by Scott Killinger effectively crams the many settings onto the time stage, but the set decoration fails to convey the vulgar narcissism of the star’s living room and the TV show. There is also an excellent film clip showing a scene from the “Epic” film. It is great fun with effect 30’s style melodramatic music.

Nottage has written another skillful historical event that challenges White and Black audiences to evaluate current society.

Running Time: Two hours and thirty minutes with an intermission. Masks and vaccination proof are required.

BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK plays through Sunday, June 26, 2022, at the Stagecrafters Theater – 8130 Germantown Avenue, in Philadelphia, PA (Chestnut Hill). Call the box office at (215) 247-9913 or purchase tickets online.

Review by Neal Newman

June 16, 2022

American History is filled with little-known details that, when discovered can fascinate. Did you know that after the Civil War, formerly enslaved people migrated to the Midwest to claim land grants due to the Homestead Act?  Two enlightened men founded the town of Nicodemus, in northern Kansas, intending to create an all-Black community.  After much hard work, hardship, and violence, the community prospered and today is a national historic landmark as the only remaining all-Black township.

Quintessence Theater Group is dramatizing a small part of this story in Pearl Cleage’s 1994 play FLYIN’ WEST. The setting is a small prairie house in 1899, owned by three black sisters, the children of slaves. Life still consists of constant toil and deprivation, but it is possible to believe that this wilderness might someday become the dreamed-of Utopia.

Playwright Cleage (a best-selling novelist, WHAT LOOKS CRAZY ON AN ORDINARY DAY) creates characters that could challenge Chekov in depth and complexity. Sophie (Deanna S. Wright) is a tough-as-nails survivor who is perpetually grumpy and looking out for the good of the entire community.  Costumer Ali Turns dresses her in tough leathers, cowboy hats, and the ever-ready pistol by her side. Wright powerfully plays Sophie, who has every intention of turning her plot of land into a paradise and will fight anyone who stands in her way.  The second adopted sister, Fannie (Maya Smoot), wears simple but attractive outfits and is intent on enjoying the pleasures of life.  She takes walks in the flower-strewn outdoors and contemplates having a boyfriend.  The youngest, Minnie (Billie Wyatt), who enters in elegant high fashion, has left Kansas to marry Frank (Dax Richardson) a light-skinned black from London, who treats her to the high life in Europe.  Frank is also a self-loathing racist and wife abuser.

The first act has little conflict as these well-portrayed characters come to life.  Patient audience members will be rewarded as the action picks up in the second half when Frank arrives in Kansas and is appalled by the pioneer lifestyle.

Cleage’s first theme is the heroism of our ancestors’ intent on building a new life after the Civil War.  A secondary and more controversial theme is the necessity of violence to create a better world.  No one agrees with this idea but when Sophie and Frank come into conflict, the choices are few.

Brian Sidney Bembridge’s setting and lighting create an attractive mood.  The shiny tiled floor of CAMILLE (played in Repertory with FLYIN’ WEST) is replaced by unvarnished mismatched wooden floorboards.  The in-the-round room is surrounded by flowers to suggest the growing success of the community.

All the performances are excellent.  Smoot as Fannie grounds the play with attractive optimism, and Wyatt as Minnie gives a touching rendition of a woman who loves her man too much.  Richardson as Frank captures the self-abomination that leads him to beat up on anyone around him. and his greed for the money that will allow him to escape Kansas is palpable.  Phillip Brown brings a touching simplicity to Wil, the would-be boyfriend.  There is also Miss Leah, the cantankerous older neighbor who remembers slavery well.  She is portrayed with much cackling and snorting by the director Zuhairah “Z” ‘McGill, which brings some humor to the somber proceedings.  Her function in the play is to remind us that we must never forget our past and those that came before us.  McGill, the actress, is not a trained storyteller, and some of her long speeches are difficult to understand and follow. Kudos to McGill the director, for the excellent designs and performances.

Quintessence Artistic Director Alexander Burns has tried the impossible.  A repertory company performing a modern black play in tandem with a 19th-century classic, CAMILLE. The famed Broadway director George Abbot always hated “rep” because he felt that the job should go to the performer who best embodies the role, not the most talented actor.  Repertory directors think the opposite. There is no doubt that this cast is vastly more comfortable in Kansas than in 19th-century upper-class Paris. Nonetheless, they certainly welcomed the challenge.

The beauty of the play, set, costumes and performances make this a highly recommended event that runs through June 30.

Running Time: Two Hours and thirty minutes with an intermission.

Masks and vaccination proof required.

Flyin’ West plays through June 26, 2022, in repertory with Camille at the Quintessence Theatre Group, performing at The Sedgwick Theater – 7137 Germantown Avenue (Mount Airy), in Philadelphia, PA, for tickets, call (215) 987-4450, or visit quintessencetheatre.org.

June 8, 2022

By Neal Newman

If you are, like me, a theatre fan who enjoys seeing lost classics from the historical past (think EAST LYNN or FRANCESCA DA RIMINI), hurry down to the Quintessence Theater Group to catch the 1852 Dumas blockbuster CAMILLE. The production isn’t perfect, but bravura performances from the two leads make this a worthwhile endeavor.

Dumas fils wrote the novel LA DAME AUX CAMELLIAS after having an affair with a famous courtesan who died at the age of 22. The play became a monster hit later, featuring such theater legends as Elenora Duse and Sara Bernhardt. The story tells of Armand, a young nobleman of mid-nineteenth-century Paris, who falls in love with the famous lady, Camille, and she with him. Her passion causes her to reform, but their planned marriage is thwarted by a visit from Armand’s father, who says the family cannot survive such a disgrace. She returns to her bawdy lifestyle leaving Armand ignorant and bitter.

The famous story has been retold countless times, notably in the Verdi opera LA TRAVIATA and the Garbo film CAMILLE.

The author throws some problematic challenges to modern actors. When Sarah Bernhardt played the role, acting was a cold, technical art devoid of modern emoting. Modern audiences expect something different. There are also reams of dialogue and monologues that would challenge the best Shakespeareans in Matilda Heron’s 1857 translation. (No, the original French isn’t any better.)  The two leading performers carry it off easily while some of the supporting cast struggle with the language and the demands of portraying the French upper class.

The covid crisis caused Quintessence to lose all the scheduled previews, and performance jitters filled the first 10 minutes. Still, with the entrance of Dax Richardson as Armand, everything calmed down, and the advantages of the in-the-round intimate staging began to emerge. Richardson catches all the aspects of his character. He is believable as the naive young man who meets the famous Camille and as the lovestruck fiancé. When she rejects him, he returns to Paris with well-portrayed righteous rage. Some of the dialogue is purple, and many of the scenes are overlong by modern standards. But Richardson’s performance conquers all. He is also exceptionally handsome.

Bille Wyatt is equally abetted as Camille, the beautiful courtesan who loses everything for love and gets one of theater history’s great death scenes. Wyatt is convincing as a French lady, and plays her scenes with Armand with touching and finally wrenching devotion. She is the STAR. The supporting cast has some bright spots. Liam Mulshine and Deanna S. Wright lighten the proceedings with a quick turn with a comic line, while Julia Sims, Maya Smoot, and Kahula A. Wyatt provide gravitas as Camille’s few friends.

The play is presented in repertory with FLYIN’ WEST telling the tale of black women in the old West. The color-blind casting gives CAMILLE a delightfully BRIDGERTON appearance.

The director, Steven Anthony Wright, ably abetted by set and lighting designer Brian Sidney Bembridge, charmingly stage the play in the round, a format Dumas fils never contemplated. The lighting highlights the well-staged action, while the music by Tom Carman adds a practical modern touch. The ladies’ costumes are sumptuous (designed by Anna Sorrentino), but why would Armand appear in a lady’s drawing-room in shirtsleeves with a modern wristwatch?

Some exciting differences appear for those accustomed to the opera and the film. In the opera, Camille is discovered in an alluring costume consuming magnums of champagne. There is no doubt that this person lives only for today. Later, when she falls in love, she changes to a proper country outfit fit for Armand’s world. This discovery is a shock, but in the play, we only see the more sedate Camille, with the background filled with pages of tedious illustrative exposition. As modern prlawyights say, “Show it. Don’t talk about it.”

Fans of the movie will remember Lionel Barrymore and Henry Daniell as the father and the aristocratic suitor. These roles were expanded in the film and seem now sadly underwritten in the original. Hopefully, the actors, Phillip Brown as the father and Lee Thomas Cortopassi as the aristocrat, can find ways to bring more subtlety and vocal variety to these roles.

Can we expect the audience to dissolve into sobs at the tragic ending? Sorry, but the world Dumas fils lived in is gone. Today, having a good time is not frowned upon, and hereditary noblemen are not treated as gods. But if you can put yourself into the mindset of the audience of 1850s Paris, you will be rewarded.

Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes with intermission

Camille plays through June 26, 2022, in repertory with Flyn’ West at the Quintessence Theatre Group, performing at The Sedgwick Theater – 7137 Germantown Avenue (Mount Airy), in Philadelphia, PA, for tickets call (215) 987-4450, or visit quintessencetheatre.org.

By Neal Newman,

February 28, 2020

Why is the Irish Theatre so extraordinary? Certainly, this rich, green land has had its history of troubles: Remember the invasion of Henry VIII’s armies in 1529? Or the great famine of 1840 which began the diaspora that continues to this day? Or the Easter Uprising? Or the great troubles of the 1970s? All of this misery has occurred, but through some majestic magic, the Irish poets have somehow turned this gruesome history into beautiful art. The Easter rising, unspeakable as it was, has produced so many fine plays, and glorious songs that the soul thrills to the resplendent beauty of these works.

Novelist-poet-playwright Sebastian Barry has exorcised the memory of his great grandfather in THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM. This notorious policeman here called Thomas Dunne, was the master of Dublin Castle, the center of British rule, in the brutal years of 1913-1922. Believe it or not, he was a Catholic, and loyal Irishman who viewed the Brits through a Rudyard Kipling kaleidoscope. But this is not like the well-known film SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL as the author chooses another concept. He has set his play in a Wicklow County asylum ten years after the creation of the Irish Free State. Here a 70-year-old madman drifts in and out on lucidity in the year 1932. His addled mind meanders back to 1923, the year of his downfall. His three daughters continually drift into his visions, while one of them, a bitter spinster, actually visits him in reality. Theatergoers will notice the influences of James Joyce, O’Neill’s TOUCH OF THE POET, and KING LEAR. In this case, the scene on the heath runs the entire two and one-half hours playing time.

Irish playwrights create for a public that knows Dublin’s history well. There is, therefore, no attempt to illuminate these days-of-old stories for American audiences which can be frustrating. Fortunately, dramaturg Amy Hodgdon has written an outstanding program glossary detailing the entire epic. If the words “DMP”, “black and tan” or “Michael Collins” are meaningless to you, be sure to arrive early to ponder it all.

The production at the Irish Heritage Theatre, (co-produced with Plays and Players), has much to admire. Local artist Hugo DeLao has designed a simple but striking set that weaves easily between the timespans, while Andrew Cowles wonderfully atmospheric lighting keeps the audience aware of which time period we are in. The uncredited costumes were apt, (except for Dolly’s modern dress and shoes), and dialect coaches Kirsten Quinn and Michael Toner assisted the strong cast in capturing the music and sounds of Irish speech. This performance does not sound like Americans trying to “do” Irish.

It must be admitted that Sebastian Barry is an incredibly dense poet. When I first studied the script, I noted the beauty and brilliance of the imagery and the rhythm and tempo of the words, especially in the multitudinous lengthy speeches for Dunne which comprise more half of the play. What works on the page seems overwritten or incomprehensible on the stage, which might mean that Barry is a better poet than playwright, or that leading actor Monroe Barrick has yet to orchestrate the verbosity for maximum theatrical effect. The answer is probably both.

Director James Schlatter has staged the play well, always clarifying where or when we are. He has wisely concentrated on character and has elicited deeply felt, complex performances. This is a good thing because Barry is not the most dramatic of writers. For example, for the grand event of Act Two, Dunne takes his uniform’s sword and threatens his daughter. This eventually sends him to the asylum. For a play about the “Devil of Dublin Castle” that’s not much of a dramatic moment. The evening also needs more shaping and rhythmic pacing to create a theatrical event that will lead to an evening’s end climax. This playwright needs all the help from the director he can get. The action, as directed, is also too small even for the intimate Plays and Players theater. Many of the moments seem more appropriate for film or television, rather than the stage, with many events going unseen or unheard.

Since Thomas Dunne is frequently musing in his own mind, the best scenes involve the three daughters. Brittany Holdahl, (Maud), cleverly handles one of the play’s few comic moments when she strives to admit a suitor into Dublin Castle. Donovan Lockett, (Dolly), exudes warmth, (another rare quality here), as the favorite daughter who will soon depart to make a home in America. Stephanie Iozzia gives the richest performance as the bitter Annie. She is the one person who has the maturity and good sense to understand the importance of the revolt and the consequences of the family being forced to move to a farm in the new Irish State. She is a marvelous listener and her deeply felt reaction to her father’s dismissal of Michael Collins is a highlight. But where was the polio swayback? John O’Donnell and Peggy Smith are fine in smaller roles. Lincoln Millard, a recent college graduate, is sensitive and effective as the ghost of the lost son, still in his World War One uniform. Much of the power of the role, however, is lost by not casting a twelve-year-old in the part as the script demands. Older people frequently tend to only remember sons and daughters as children, and dressing a young boy in a war uniform is one of Barry’s few intriguing theatrical strokes.

THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM is very nearly a one-man play. Dunne never leaves the stage and Monroe Barrick is a compelling presence in his ever-present filthy longjohns. He is a convincing policeman who believes that he is truly a steward of the magnificent British empire. He cares for his family in his own obtuse way, and there are many inspired exchanges. Many of these moments, sadly, do not make it past the third row, and much of his dialogue is difficult to understand.

This is play for SERIOUS theatergoers, and Artistic Director Peggy Mecham is to be applauded for bringing it to Philadelphia. The characters and emotions commend the evening even if the poetry demands the purchasing of a script.

RUNNING TIME: Two hours thirty minutes, including intermission.

THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM plays through Sunday, March 15 at the Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancy Place in Philadelphia. Tickets can be purchased at the box office, 215-735-0630. or at irishheritagetheatre.org.

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