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This will no doubt be a shorter and vaguer review than usual, because it will be hard to talk about Douglas Carter Beane's As Bees in Honey Drown, now being giving a satisfying and vibrant production at Pandora Productions, without giving away crucial secrets of this sneakiest of plots. I shall proceed with caution.
I can tell you that its two principal characters are Evan Wyler (Jeremy Sapp) and Beane's most iconic creation, Alexa Vere de Vere (Lauren Argo), and that those are neither of their real names. They are the brand names that they have chosen for themselves. Evan is a gay, Jewish, almost-famous novelist. Alexa is . . . it's never made entirely clear, which is by design of the author. Suffice it to say that upon publication of Evan's first novel, he is approached by Alexa to write the screenplay for the movie based on her extraordinary and so-unbelievable-that-it-couldn't-be-anything-but-true (right?) life.
Evan, of course, like any other rising star seeking fame and fortune would, jumps at the chance and soon he is following her around New York taking notes and engaging in the most unlikely romance since Christopher Isherwood and Sally Bowles. Or for that matter, Holly Golightly and Truman Capote. Note that these metaphors are not my own; they are Alexa's, and there is more truth in the metaphors than we realize at first. Indeed neither Evan nor we in the audience know what is about to happen.
What does happen is played out on a number of locations in Manhattan and Pennsylvania (courtesy of Karl Anderson's flexible and spare set, with no small debt of gratitude to Karissa Singleton's props and John Newman's economic lighting design) and involves dozens of characters played by a quartet of nimble supporting actors switching personalities almost as quickly as they change from one Donna Lawrence-Downs costume to the next.
Sapp and Argo turn in mostly good work as the leads. I would have liked it if Sapp – a heterosexual actor, but one of the best leading men in town – had toned down the swishy mannerisms just a bit (he actually played gay before, quite believably, in last season's BOOM!), but there's no way to tell whether this was his idea or that of director Michael J. Drury. What is more important is that he communicates the buried insecurities of the up-and-coming writer, particularly the gnawing suspicion that he may not have a second book in him.
Argo comes on strong – very strong – at first, as she should, but most everyone in the audience was completely taken in by her, as evidenced by the audible gasp when crucial information about Alexa is revealed. I've seen As Bees in Honey Drown before, in a wonderful production several years ago at University of Louisville, so I of course knew the secret all along, and the degree to which my fellow audience members were in the dark would be a perfectly respectable gauge of how the actress is doing, but there are plenty of other fine acting moments here.
Alexa actually undergoes several changes during the play; particularly in Act Two, we begin to realize that there is much more subtlety in the broad and eccentric performance than we could fully appreciate in Act One. There is a protracted flashback explaining the origins of Alexa Vere de Vere, and an especially chilling couple of minutes when we get to see Argo gradually transforming into her before our eyes.
It's chilling not only because of how good the performance is, but because it is a mirror, albeit an extreme one, of how today's celebrities have carefully cultivated their own public images. Is anyone really who they say they are today?
This brings me at last to acknowledge the real main character of As Bees in Honey Drown, which is fame itself. The relationship that Evan and the other New York artists, producers, photographers, publishers, agents, and powerbrokers in Beane's vision have to Alexa is ultimately a symbol of the love-hate relationship with the desire for fame. Or power. Or prestige. Or whatever name you give it. This is one of the signature themes of the Beane canon, but in today's Instant Celebrity atmosphere, it is more potent than ever.
- Reviewed by Cory Vaughn
Entire contents are copyright © 2010 Cory Vaughn. All rights reserved.
AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN
by Douglas Carter Beane
Directed by Michael J. Drury
Pandora Productions
P.O. Box 4185
Louisville KY 40204
502-216-5502
pandoraprods.org
Playing at the Historic Henry Clay Building
604 S. 3rd Street, Third Floor
Louisville KY 40202
Remaining Performances: March 18-20, 7:30pm, and Sunday, March 21, 2pm
Starring:
Lauren Argo (Alexa Vere de Vere), Jeremy Sapp (Evan Wyler), Corey Macon Long (Kayden and others), Leah Roberts (Amber, Secretary, Jenny and others), Chris Bryant (Mike, Skunk and others), and Susan Shumate (Bethany and others)
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Lauren Argo as Alexa Vere de Vere
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On January 31, 2006, a strong woman who helped lead a revolution of equality and justice slipped quietly away from this world. Most know Coretta Scott King as the widow of the most notorious civil rights martyr, and as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement after her husband's death as well as the Women's Movement.
What is less known is that she held a degree in voice and violin from Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. While she never received as much attention as her husband, she touched the lives of many, whether they knew her personally or just heard stories of revolution and freedom from their elders and teachers. U of L's A Song for Coretta is not a theatrical biography of King, however. It is a tribute that explores how five women from different backgrounds and classes, who seem to have absolutely nothing in common on the surface, can share in the inspiration of King's life and legacy.
The play is set late on a cold February night just following King's death, outside of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, of which King was a member, where dozens are still waiting in line to pay their respects to her. Zora Evans (Frances Lewis), a college student and aspiring NPR reporter, is eagerly waiting outside to interview subjects for her story on King. She meets Helen Richards (Jaqueline Thompson), an elderly woman who met King when she was a child during the Montgomery Bus Boycott days, and who is as wise as she is stubborn, but with a warm heart and a fervent sense of pride. She has trouble seeing eye-to-eye with selfish and ignorant American youth, however, like Keisha Cameron (Treneice Walton) or Lil' Bit as she likes to call herself, but learns that despite her wisdom, she shouldn't be too quick to judge.
Mona Lisa Martin (Ebony Jordan), an artist and Hurricane Katrina survivor, has traveled all the way from still-soggy New Orleans, on a constant quest answer the question: what would Coretta do? Gwen Johnson (Tiffany Gist), an emotionally shell-shocked soldier on leave from the war in Iraq, learns she has more in common with Mona Lisa and the rest of the group that she could have ever imagined.
The Ensemble cast of Troy Bell, Sharron Sales and Angela Tellis sings beautiful and familiar church hymns, and the lighting design is the work of Shirley Prendergast, who was Broadway's first African American female lighting designer.
UofL's thrust theater can't be a more suitable venue for this performance. Being physically closer to the actors makes the experience of hearing the powerful stories more intimate, and all five of the actors are very relaxed and confident onstage, making the audience feel comfortable listening to them. The show has humorous, uplifting, and poignant elements gently woven together to create a lovely and fresh theatrical experience, celebrating King's legacy and demonstrating how it still lives on in the modern world, even in the most unexpected ways.
-Reviewed by Jane Mattingly
Entire contents copyright © 2010, Jane Mattingly
A SONG FOR CORETTA
by Pearl Cleage
Directed by Lundeana Thomas
University Department of Theatre Arts
2314 S. Floyd St
Louisville, Kentucky 40292
502-852-7682
mahenr04@louisville.edu
louisville.edu/theatrearts
March 3 - 7, 2010
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A Song for Coretta
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I'm looking out my window on this grey Sunday afternoon. The trees are bare. No, they're mossy. I'm here. But I was there, at the world premiere of Fissures (lost and found), the stunning second offering of Actors Theatre's Humana Festival of New American Plays. And I wish I were still there. But now, it's a memory for me to keep locked away in a box in my mind.
The Bingham Theatre's stage is completely white, with a few white benches and a staircase leading underneath the set. The four swinging doors at each corner are white, with small windows at the top. An actor (Casey Grieg) enters, dressed in white pants and a white jacket, with a yellow skullcap and black shoes. He engages the audience by asking us to think about the minutiae of our everyday lives - where are your keys?...do you live in a house or an apartment? ...where is the light switch? ...what's under the bed?
With perfect timing, a second white-clothed, black-shod actor (Nathan Keepers) enters, drawing us further into the dreamscape of this collaboratively written piece that explores the nature of memory and how we make sense of the past. He describes a memory of following his dead wife down a street and into an empty house, acting out the memory as he speaks. We sit up and take note, intrigued by his story. But we're suddenly pulled in another direction by a woman (dressed mostly in white) who explains that every time we remember something, we lose half the memory.
"Yeah, yeah, but what's the play about? Sounds awfully pretentious," you say. "No, no, not at all. You must throw out that old linear thinking, and go with the flow," I say. There is no plot. It's a bit like Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais' classic "New Wave" film about the manipulation of memory. Here, the scenes wash over you like waves of a tsunami, pulling you out to sea, then back to shore, until you merge with the ocean of tears. You feel yourself becoming more connected to the actors and to each member of the audience as it progresses. The play sneaks its way into your soul and takes it to another plane. You are alone with your own memories, yet connected to everyone else's at the same time. It is simply the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen.
The bare set (designed by Michael Raiford) allows you to fill in the details with your own memories. This is not only a collaboration among the playwrights, actors and crew, but with the audience as well. It's truly breathtaking. And it will shake you to your core without being able to explain why. I barely stifled an audible sob near the play's end, when all the actors are engaged in writing their memories on the white set during Dominique Serrand's brilliant performance. I noticed one of the actors sobbing along with me during their curtain call. Now, that's something I've never seen. Clearly, we were all transported to a magical realm on that grey Sunday afternoon, and no one wanted to return.
To say it's "genius," or "brilliant" is meaningless. But that's what it is. It is moving, yet not heavy-handed. There are moments of good humor mixed with the poignancy of one person's exploration of the compartmentalization of memory (nicely shown through the repetitive use of boxes as props).
If you see only one play of this year's festival, or even in your whole life, this is it. How can I be so cocksure of myself, when the others have yet to be unveiled? Because I simply cannot imagine anything better than this. And I have never seen anything like it. Sure, I'm gushing. But with this play, I can now say my dream of experiencing theatre the way it's meant to be -- indeed, the way it must have been in the beginning of theatre itself -- has been fulfilled. All of your senses are engaged, while your rational mind is distracted by the seemingly simple actions of the players, who seem to be clowns in human form. (And I mean that as a compliment.) This is physical theatre at its most elegant.
I won't say any more about the play because I know you will want to experience it for yourself. And to say anything more would be to ruin your experience of it.
I will, however, give you a bit of background about the people and process involved in creating this work, commissioned by Actors Theatre and The Playwrights' Center. Director and co-playwright Dominique Serrand was a co-founder of the renowned Theatre de la Jeune Lune, a Minneapolis-based avant garde theatre that existed from 1978 until 2008. The theatre, whose name means "Theatre of the New (or young) Moon" was founded in Paris in 1978 by graduates of the Jacques Lecoq school of physical theater, and moved to Minneapolis in 1985. Serrand's awards are too many to list. He has been knighted by the French government in the Order of Arts and Letters. For brevity's sake, I simply call him "genius with sex appeal."
Co-playwright Steve Epp was co-artistic director of the Theatre de la Jeune Lune from 1983 until 2008. He co-authored Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, along with Serrand. He has appeared at Actors Theatre in Molière's The Miser. He's the author and performer in The House Can't Stand, a one-person show.
Cory Hinkle, Dominic Orlando, Deborah Stein, and Victoria Stewart, all distinguished playwrights, also collaborated on this work. This was a new experience for all involved, as they melded diverse storytelling styles with the physical theatre of the Jeune Lune artists. "We wanted to find a way to track the memory of the audience," said Serrand, " so that this open page of the theatre space becomes occupied by their memories."
The authors brought bits of text and raw ideas to the table, and everyone (including the playwrights) explored them further through improvisation. They noticed certain pieces that were common "touchstones" which they explored further until the piece cracked open. The play succeeds on all these levels, and more.
- Reviewed by Sherry R. Deatrick
Entire contents copyright (c) 2010, Sherry R. Deatrick
Fissures (lost and found)
by Steve Epp, Cory Hinkle, Dominic Orlando, Dominique Serrand, Deborah Stein and Victoria Stewart
Directed by Dominique Serrand
Commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville and The Playwrights' Center, Minneapolis, MN
Part of the 34th Humana Festival of New American Plays
316 W. Main Street
Louisville, KY 40202
Box Office: (502) 584-1205 or 1-800-4ATL-TIX
TDD: (502) 371-0956
Performances run through March 28, 2010
Sunday-Thursday & Weekend Matinees: $30 - 35
Friday-Saturday Evenings: $35 - 40
(featuring Casey Grieg, Megan Hill, Emily Gunyou Halaas, Nathan Keepers, and a surprise actor)
Visit actorstheatre.org for details
Photos by Harlan Taylor
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Emily Gunyou Hulaas, Dominique Serrand, Megan Hill, Nathan Keepers
Casey Grieg
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I am no expert in the ballet, but I had a great time at last night's opening performance of the Louisville Ballet's three-act anthology of music and dance styles, Three Reflections, nonetheless. It helped that my guest for the premiere has studied dance for a number of years, and was in fact my own dance partner in a production we worked on together last year, so she knows how to translate Dancer Language into terms that a dance neophyte like myself can understand. I prefer to think of this review as a collaborative one; she providing the perspective of a ballet insider, and I that of a ballet outsider.
The three short ballets in Three Reflections have little connection with each other, are self-contained, and as far as this critic can tell, do not attempt to tell any sort of story, but each is engrossing in its own way. One need not have a comprehensive knowledge of the various steps and positions to appreciate the athleticism and grace involved in the ballet, and the artistic merits of the musical and visual styles being interpreted by the dancers.
The evening begins with the world premiere of Smiling Underneath, with choreography by Amy Seiwert to the music of Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor. In Movement I, Seiwert employs relatively simple arm movements (particularly in the case of the male dancers), but weaves them into intricate and complex patterns, and has the company execute them with daunting precision. At one point, the female dancers make an entranc en pointe, employing such subtle movements of their feet and legs that they seem not to be moving at all, almost floating, as if on a revolving stage.
Without even once giving any physical indication of how hard they are all obviously working, the ladies and gentlemen of the Corps de Ballet listen to each other's bodies and the music very intently to create a kind of symbiosis with each other and with Michael T. Ford's pools of brilliant light. In the later movements, Ford's lighting plot suggests rays of sunlight shimmering through the canopy of a wooded setting, where several featured dancers emerge from the ranks in a series of athletic pas de deux and one especially challenging pas de trois showcasing the physical dexterity of the female and the comic personalities of the males. Alas, although the names of the Principals, Soloists, Corps, and Apprentices are all printed in the appendix to this review, we do not know who did what.
For their second act, the company darkens the mood considerably in Adam Hougland's Cold Virtues, a piece originally performed by the Louisville Ballet in 2003. Hougland thrusts the dancers into a stark urban wilderness; after the principal dancers emerge, seemingly from out of the shadows, the Whitney Hall stage's back wall just as gradually comes into view, and hanging fans whir to ghostly life, their spinning echoing the moody arpeggiated tremors of the string score. Philip Glass's eerie Concerto for Violin and Orchestra adds to the seductive and dreamlike atmosphere. Against this backdrop, Hougland's tense, muscular choreography does not blend in; in fact, it clashes, and we suspect that this was the choreographer's intention all along, as it lends itself to an unsettling effect. This movement is led by two parallel couples, danced to perfection at opening night by Mikelle Bruzina, Helen Daigle, Pete Lay, and Morgan Hulen.
The final act was clearly the audience favorite, as it reportedly was during its local premiere last season. Celts, with choreography by Lila York and staged by Harald Uwe Kern, is a series of danced pastoral vignettes, with Irish riverdances, Scottish jigs, and even a crowd-pleasing Scottish wrestling match, set to music by The Chieftains, Bill Whelan, and William J. Ruyle. The five leads – Mariano Albano, Mikelle Bruzina, Joseph Nygren Cox, Christy Corbitt Miller, and Kristopher Wojtera at Friday night's performance – are exceptional, although again, it was hard to ascertain who was whom, as only their costumes (by Tunji Dada from the Atlanta Ballet's production) distinguish them visually from the company and from each other. We could go into a much more detailed description of this third act, but we prefer to let the dance speak for itself. That is, if the thunderous ovations it received last night do not speak loudly enough.
During their curtain speech, Artistic Director Bruce Simpson and Executive Director Dwight Hutton dedicated the performance to the memory of veteran follow spot operator G.W. Carroll, who passed away on Monday.
Reviewed by Cory Vaughn, with thanks to Sarah Tyler
Entire contents are copyright © 2010 Cory Vaughn. All rights reserved.
The Louisville Ballet presents
THREE REFLECTIONS:
SMILING UNDERNEATH, choreography by AMY SEIWERT
COLD VIRTUES, choreography by ADAM HOUGLAND
CELTS, choreography by LILA YORK
The Louisville Ballet
315 East Main Street
Louisville KY 40202
(502) 583-3150
lwilson@louisvilleballet.org
www.louisvilleballet.org
Playing at Whitney Hall,
Kentucky Center for the Arts
501 West Main Street
Louisville KY 40202
Remaining Performance: Tonight, February 27 at 8pm
Principal Dancers:
Natalia Ashikhmina, Mariano Albano, Mikelle Bruzina, Joseph Nygren Cox, Phillip Velinov, Helen Daigle, Erica de la O, Christy Corbitt Miller, Kristopher Wojtera, Amanda Diehl, Robert Dunbar, Kathleen Dwyer, Eduard Forehand, Brian Grant, Morgan Hulen, Yuki Komazaki, Pete Lay, Emily Reinking O'Dell, Nobuyoshi Okada, Douglas Ruiz, Kateryna Sellers, Tawnee Thompson, Rachel Cahayla Wynne, John Cartwright, Monica Munoz, Benjamin Needham-Wood, and Edward Urwin.
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Theatre Lou.