STAGE REVIEW: CHOIR BOY

(Michael Shepperd) in Choir Boy. Photo by Michael Lamont.

 

Hit that perfect beat boy

 

By Ed Rampell

 

Choir Boy’s setting -- Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys -- is, for this reviewer, the most interesting, unique aspect of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s gay-themed drama. Historically-black educational institutions have, on occasion, been featured in productions, such as Denzel Washington’s superb 2007 movie, The Great Debaters. But for your Caucasian critic this milieu is relatively untraveled terrain and of keen interest, especially as his father taught in Boys High High School, an all-black and Latino facility in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

 

But Drew is very different from Boys High, a public school that’s part of the New York City school system. In addition to being private, Drew is also a religious school. So, just as, say, New York is a character in Woody Allen’s 1979 Manhattan, Drew’s ambiance hovers over Choir Boy -- although institutionally, not so much geographically.

 

The title character is Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope), who aspires to becoming the prestigious choir master of Drew, which seems largely dependent for its economic survival on an annual fundraiser featuring the all male singers. Pharus must chart a tricky, precarious path as a gay youth completely surrounded by boys and men (alas, no female characters trod the boards in this play). This includes not only in the classroom, but in his dormitory in general, dorm room in particular, locker room and showers. Scenic designer David Zinn’s understated sets go with the flow, morphing from one scene to another depending upon their location requirements.

 

The play focuses on five young men attending the school, Headmaster Marrow (Michael Shepperd) and Mr. Pendleton (Leonard Kelly-Young has the role which was played by Austin Pendleton at Choir Boy’s Broadway premiere last year). He is this one-acter’s token white character. Pendleton is one of those archetypal (or stereotypical -- take your pick), rumpled Caucasians who has picked up the proverbial “white man’s burden” and is dedicated to educating minorities and Civil Rights. When he’s introduced, Pendleton goes verbally overboard, trying to impress the lads by getting down with the homies (or at least trying to). But later, with an impassioned speech about the “N” word which the homophobic, diffident Bobby Marrow (Donovan Mitchell) insists on using in full, Pendleton reveals his true colors as a Civil Rights crusader who’d marched with Dr. King.

 

(BTW, according to urban mythology, the physician and researcher Charles R. Drew helped invent the process of blood transfusions and died, when the hospital he was taken to after a car accident supposedly refused to give him a blood transfusion because they only had plasma from white people on hand. In any case, Drew did resist racial segregation when it came to donating blood. About a dozen schools are named after this medical pioneer, including a prep school, but none seem to be named the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys.)

 

The playwright does a good job providing back stories for the five young men, especially through their long distance phone calls back home. These provide insights into their characters, what makes them tick and why these scholarship or full-tuition-paying students are attending this private prep school. For most, it is perceived as their ticket to advancing on to university and achieving in modern America.

 

Against this complicated background, Pharus is trying to come of age. As the eponymous choir boy strives to become a choir man, the effeminate Pharus must navigate his emerging sexuality and the strict code of conduct of the prep school, with its official school song of “Trust and Obey” --Presbyterian hymn. There is some full frontal (and back) nudity in Choir Boy, and McCraney takes on the stereotypes relating to the anatomy of black males. If you listen closely to the dialogue, he may be trying to debunk that myth, not simply reinforcing it. As the well-endowed AJ, Pharus’ roommate, Grantham Coleman strikes the right tone as a big brother figure watching out for the confused Pharus as he strives to make and find his way in the moral universe of the religious school and beyond its presumably ivy covered walls. (Both Coleman and Pope reprise the roles they previously played on Broadway.)

 

The play ran for almost two hours without an intermission. Its ensemble is well-directed by Trip Cullman, who also helmed Choir Boy on the Great White Way.

 

 

 

Choir Boy runs through Oct. 26 at the Gil Gates Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310208-5454; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

 

L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book. (See: http://hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com/.) Rampell and co-author Luis Reyes will be signing books at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 6 at the bookstore Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105.  (See:Meet Ed..)     

 

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FILM REVIEW: BICYCLING WITH MOLIERE

Serge (Fabrice Luchini) in Bicycling with Moliere. 

Circling the stage

By John Esther

A somewhat witty, certainly revealing, tale of clashing egos, the latest film by Philippe Le Guay – whose previous film was the lackluster The Woman on the 6^th Floor – two French actors get together to see it they can collaborate on Moliere’s The Misanthrope.

Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a successful actor with a wildly popular TV show about a surgeon who saves lives regardless of circumstances. Give the good doctor a plastic knife and he can save a young girl dying in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Already popular, rich and handsome Gauthier still wants a little more out of life. He wants something he can really sink his teeth into, like The Misanthrope, considered Moliere’s most demanding play for actors.

If he is going to pull it off, he will need the help of a fellow actor, Serge (Fabrice Luchini). For three years, Serge has led a hermetic life on the Ile de Ré, a posh area on France’s Atlantic Coast.

An expert on Moliere and a misanthrope in his own right, Serge would seem to be the perfect actor for the play’s protagonist, Alceste. But Gauthier wants to play Alceste, with Serge playing his Alceste's friend, Philinte, which is a smaller part.

Since Serge wants to play Alecste, too, the two of them agree to alternate rehearsing different roles. They may even do this for the play itself with the two alternating roles each week.

As the two rehearse over the next few days many conflicts arrive. Cellphones, bicycle accidents, a lover interest and bad plumbing interfere with the creative process. But what threatens any future production the most is the role of the egos of the actors. Every time progress is made, another setback comes along. On with the play, I say.

Certainly worth a view, Bicycling with Moliere has many charming warm moments about friendship, camaraderie and artistic and literary integrity in a world not to fond of that kind of thing; although France, in general, is significantly appreciative of great theater than the United States. You can bet far more French people, per capita, know a Moliere play more than Americans know one by Tennessee Williams or any American playwright for that matter. 

But the real strength of the play comes from watching the two experiencing the joys of working through a great piece of drama. How does one interpret a role, especially one from the 17^th century? How does one follow Moliere’s rhythm and still make it sound relevant to modern audiences...and other artistic/acting questions? While these can be great challenges to any actor, especially the more narcissistic ones, there are great joys to be found while playing with the play. Indeed, Bicycling with Moliere should not be missed by actors. 

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THEATER REVIEW: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Puck (Will Hickman) in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Puck yes

By Ed Rampell

 

What is even the point of writing a review about such inspired madcap mystical mirthfulness? Honestly Dear Reader, you should save your reviewer the effort and simply just go see the concoction and confection that is the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Geers’ effervescent version of the Bard’s dream-like yarn is such rip-roaring good fun that it should suffice to say, that if you love yourself and believe you deserve to have a good time, get thee to a Topanga amphitheater.

 

Yet review it I shall -- once more into the literary breaches, lads and lasses! Where shall I begin in describing this surreal romantic romp written with quill and ink way back when Amazons were female warriors and not online book retailers, and pixies not pixels reigned? William Shakespeare’s frothy supernatural tale with its plot about lovers blithely switching partners the way most people change their socks inspired Woody Allen’s 1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.

 

Costumer Katherine Crawford’s regalia -- especially of the motley crew of faeries -- is the best pixie-ish apparel this side of Tinkerbell. As usual, the troupe’s organized mayhem of mise-en-scene, co-directed by Willow Geer and her auntie, Mellora Marshall, takes full advantage of the surrounding woods and hills, literally putting the Botanicum into the Theatricum. But in this production the WGTB outdoes itself, offering something I haven’t seen before on this stage amidst the sylvan glade: Puck (played by the athletic Will Hickman) swings above the boards, Tarzan-like, on a tree-attached rope -- not a vine, although the theatrical effect remains divine.

 

Although methinks A Midsummer Night’s Dream is age appropriate for children of all ages, the opening is quite sensuous with sinewy, sexy Sydney Mason as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, adorned by war paint in a revealing outfit, embracing Theseus, duke of Athens (the lucky J.B. Waterman; Valeka Holt generally plays Hippolyta). Leaping leopards -- a sort of leopard skin-garbed, war whooping Tanya Edwards is a standout in the ensemble of Amazons.

 

The shape shifting Mellora Marshall, who sheds genders the way we mere mortals change garments, surpasses herself here, playing a character who isn’t even human. The grand Marshall is neither a man nor a woman -- portraying Titania, she is Oberon’s fairy queen. As Helena, Marshall’s co-helmer, Willow Geer, is confronted by a creative challenge: Somehow this young woman who is, offstage, a radiant redheaded beauty, must somehow convince audiences she is a plain Jane. That through her dramatic sleight-of-hand Willow manages to do so is proof that she’s one of L.A. finest stage actresses.

 

And now we come to the bottom of Will’s bill, with Katherine Griffith’s hilarious cross-gender turn as the male, mustachioed, bellowing Bottom. Shakespeare, of course, slyly comments on the art of acting and those who do it in Hamlet, wherein “the play’s the thing.” The Bard also does so in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bottom is part of an itinerant troupe of actors (or something or other) who perform a play-within-the-play about the Roman mythological characters Pyramus and Thisbe (Ovid tells their tale in his Metamorphoses) to celebrate the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta and company. Griffith’s Bottom is a bottomless pit of ego magically transformed by some stage effects into Shakespeare’s notion of what the playwright thought of hammy actors.

 

To be sure, the Botanicum Theatricum, as usual, does the Bard proud. Nevertheless, the most magical thing about A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s vision and his deathless dialogue. Go Puck yourselves and allow the enchanting, irreverent revels of this tidbit of Topanga tomfoolery cast a spell on you.

 

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For more information: 310-455-3723; www.Theatricum.com.

 

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