STAGE REVIEW: FUGUE

Arnold Schoenberg (Jesse Fair) and Mathilde Schoenberg (Amanda Lovejoy Street) in Fugue. Photo Credit: Darrett Sanders.

Softcore theater

By Ed Rampell

Do you have a guilty pleasure? Your galavanting reviewer confesses to one that whiles away the hours during long haul flights: Reading booksthat stick their big noses into the private lives of geniuses. While soaring through the stratosphere over the Pacific Islands or aboard trans-Atlantic flights tell-all biographies of Pablo Picasso, John Lennon and Marlon Brando have been eagerly consumed. These prying eyes can’t get enough of those salacious details! It may be poor manners but there’s nothing like reading the personal letters, etc., of others to pass the time away (as our three amigos, N, S, & A well know!).

So it was with great interest that your curious critic attended the world premiere of the cleverly titled Fugue. In it, playwright Tommy Smith delves into the sex lives of not one, not two, but three -- count ’em three!!! -- musical geniuses! It’s a veritable tabloid-apalooza of invasions of privacy which Smith lays bare (but not bare enough, as you’ll soon see), exposing the purported behind-closed-doors peccadilloes of a trio of composers and their, uh, consorts and cohorts.

The musicians are: The brilliant Piotr Tchaikovsky (Christopher Shaw), who gave the world such supreme pleasure, with wonderful works such as “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker Suite”, etc., in the 19^thcentury. But bestowing such splendor upon his fellow humans wasn’t quite enough for patriarchal Czarist society, which stipulated that the gay composer also live up to its strict heterosexual code of behavior. To say the least, complications ensue when Tchaikovsky weds Antonina (Alana Dietze), and his long suffering bride/beard decides to, shall we say, shave. Ah, sMother Russia, land of pussy riots! (Astute cinephiles may recall a sort of comical reenactment of Tchaikovsky’s mock marriage in Ken Russell’s 1969 film, Women in Love, based on D. H. Lawrence’s novel -- and, BTW, one of the best cinematic adaptations of literature in screen history.)

Our next troubled talent is Arnold Schoenberg (Troy Blendell), the 20^th century Austrian innovator of atonal music and the twelve-tone technique (no, that doesn’t refer to a series of Kama Sutra positions, but to a type of music). Arnie’s wife, Mathilde (Amanda Lovejoy Street), takes up with the younger painter Richard Gerstl (Jesse Fair), who cuckolds his friend and sometime benefactor, the far more successful Schoenberg. (Hey, what are friends for?) Further complications ensue, as the threesome careens down a sexual skid row.

Our final tortured composer is somebody this writer had never heard of, the genuinely creepy Carlo Gesualdo (Karl Herlinger), a 16^th century Italian musician who, according to press notes, was of noble rank and wrote intense chromatic music. Gesualdo gives new meaning to the term “Renaissance Man,” as he was also something of a genius when it came to hanky-spanky sex. The musical sadomasochist’s practices would make Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey blush 50 shades of red. Jeanne Syquia plays his partner-in-slime Donna Maria, and Justin Huen has a double role, as Fabrizio and the priest Gesualdo “confesses” to in this confessional play.

Smith’s script is interesting and Chris Fields’ direction skillful, with a cinematic touch. Fugue sort of uses a split screen technique and we sometimes have three sets of actors performing onstage at the same time, albeit in different times and places. This method of presentation is not only filmic, but also, musically, fugue-like. Michael Mullen’s period costumes are a good fit. The thesps all acquit themselves well -- but, alas, your erstwhile scribbler has one quibble.

One imagines that the dramatist, director, company, et al, fancy themselves as being “daring” for presenting sex acts performed on the boards - albeit underneath blankets. Well, here’s a newsflash, and as Chuck Berry would say, “Tell Tchaikovsky the news”: Nudity has been legal onstage and onscreen since the 1960s in the United States. This reviewer refers you to the Living Theatre, Hair, etc., as well as to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed’s wrestling romp au natural onscreen in the aforementioned Women in Love. Unlike Julian Beck and company, performers today don’t have to worry about being busted for indecent exposure and the like.

Depicting undercover sex acts onstage and onscreen veiled by beach blanket bingos is not only a sexual cop out, but an attempt to have your cake and eat it too: The production wants to titillate the audience with bawdiness without delivering the goods, while collaborating with America’s still puritanical norms and constraints. For example, just consider the fact that Showtime airs Masters of Sex, an entire fact-based series about those pioneering sex researchers Masters and Johnson, wherein not since 2013 has a single strand of pubic hair made its debut on this “shocking” series - although it is perfectly legal nowadays to do so on cable television. What sheer cowardice!

Artists went to jail, to court, etc., to win the right for free expression and to now have the legal right but for today’s talents to not make use of this hard fought for First Amendment protection is pretty spineless. If stage and screen productions are unwilling to depict people having sex the way they usually do in real life -- you know, partially or completely unclothed -- then they should keep sex acts relegated to offstage/ offscreen inferred action. Quit trying to have it both ways -- or go fugue yourselves.

Other than that, Fugue is a thought-provoking, well-acted two act play with an intermission. However, it will likely not be the cup of tea for ticket buyers who are offended, upset, etc., by violence onstage and/or simulated (even if hidden) sex acts. 

In any case, the next time this ranter and raver jet sets off to parts unknown he may read a copy of Fugue’sscript to make the hours slip more swiftly by while munching a bag of airline peanuts.


The Echo Theater Company’s production of Fugueruns through March 22 at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village, CA 90039. For more information: 310-307-3753; Fugue It!.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: SASSY MAMAS

A scene from Sassy Mamas.

Ought um

 

By Ed Rampell

 

Sassy Mamas, by prizewinning playwright Celeste Bedford Walker is a comedy-drama about three longtime girlfriends in Washington, D.C., who, in the autumns of their lives, find themselves flying solo.

 

Hospital administrator Jo Billie (the indomitable Iona Morris, who also helmed this remount) is recently widowed, while Mary’s (Elayn J. Taylor) ambassador husband has broken diplomatic relations with her by throwing Mary to the curb in favor of a younger woman. The never-married, career-driven National Security Adviser Wilhelmina (not Condoleeza), who is played by Honolulu-born actress Denise Dowse, has been too busy pursuing international relations to have a personal relationship. What’s a single woman to do?

 

Prodded by Jo Billie, who appears to be the sassiest of the gal pals, they ponder why it’s socially acceptable for a male to have a much younger female mate, and they decide to “flip the script.” So using their advantages in terms of social status, wealth and position the upper crust trio seek younger sex partners.

 

In the first act it seems as if Sassy Mama will be a raucous, raunchy farce about “cougars” - or, in this case, “black panthers” - and their, shall we say, young “bucks.” But over the course of almost three hours Walker’s two-acter reveals that there’s much more to her characters and plot than just an older woman-younger man paradigm.

 

Let’s just say that cum-plications and hilarity ensue, along with some drama and pathos. Jo Billie, who is portrayed by the youngest and sexiest of the three actresses, acquires a boy toy whom the businesswoman signs a contract with for his sexual services (paging Ms. E.L. James!). LaDonte (Jah Shams) and Jo Billie have an especially high-larious scene involving some hanky-spanky role playing, with the impish Morris wearing a sort of I Dream of Jeannie costume. This sidesplitting sequence is worth the price of admission alone.

 

 

Sassy Mamas runs through March 29 at Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., L.A., CA 90019. For info: 323-571-3232; Tickets 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: THE NIGHT ALIVE

Kenneth (Peter O'Meara) in The Night Alive. Photo credit: Michael Lamont.

 

Riders of the storm

By Ed Rampell

A poster from the 1963 movie ,The Great Escape, is a visual cue that provides a vital clue and key to what’s going on in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive. This one-acter, performed sans intermission during its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is essentially about five Dubliners who live marginal lives. The onstage action takes place in the untidy “apartment” - without so much as a refrigerator - that middle aged Tommy (Paul Vincent O’Connor) rents from an older guardian of sorts named Maurice (Denis Arndt), who insists on calling it a mere “room” in his Edwardian house. Doc (Dan Donohue) is a 30-ish, dimwitted hanger-on and laborer who drifts between sleeping at his sister’s home, Tommy’s place and a van.

Enter into the pecking order and drab, lonely lives of these three solo men aimless Aimee (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), a 20-something woman with a murky past whom Tommy rides to the rescue of on a white horse, saving this total stranger from a dire predicament. In offering her refuge he turns the three men’s presumably celibate lives upside down. In the process, Tommy believes he comes alive and is being given a second chance at life.

Although, as said, The Night Alive is a one act play, what could pass for, more or less, Act I, is quite low key and uneventful - some might even consider it talky and dull. But things really pick up when Kenneth (Peter O’Meara) enters, stage right, from out of nowhere as a kind of bogeyman, turning things topsy-turvy as we learn more about who Aimee really is, and why she needed sanctuary.

This play is essentially about fringe characters yearning to get away from their boring existences. In particular, Tommy is a study in male menopause and mid-life crisis. Separated from his wife and children, somehow eking out a living by tending to “bits and pieces”, residing in Maurice’s room/apartment, he believes Aimee presents him with the opportunity to break free of the mundane, ho-hum routine of his sexless day-to-day monotony. His legs aren’t so much limbs as they are stumps; clearly, this aging, balding man has seen better days. (But maybe not much better…) The details of his and Aimee’s sex life, or what passes for it, are pretty grim - listen closely (there’s a good joke about what causes “repetitive strain injury”). But it’s better than nothing - Doc offhandedly confesses that he’s impotent, while the forlorn Maurice mourns his deceased wife.

Tommy constructs a wild plan to flee Ireland to start anew with Aimee in a place this reviewer has never before heard referred to as a haven for shattered souls seeking a second lease on life. (Really?) Be that as it may, the aforementioned The Great Escape poster tacked to Tommy’s wall is a pop culture reference to the inner meaning of McPherson’s drama. In that John Sturges World War II classic, Allied POWs plot to escape from a Nazi prison camp. As the “Cooler King,” Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director) nears the border with neutral Switzerland, desperately trying to jump the barbwire fence on a motorcycle in a scene that encompasses humans’ existential struggles for freedom. This sequence is indelibly etched in the mind’s eye of anyone who has ever seen it onscreen, and no one can fail to root for McQueen and his valiant effort to escape from the Nazis to freedom in democratic Switzerland, so near yet so far across the barbed wire.

For Tommy, Aimee is arguably his motorcycle. Will he jump the barbed wire to find freedom?

In any case play is able, ensemble acting is well-directed by Randall Arney, who previously helmed American Buffalo at the Geffen. This seems appropriate, as Alive’s down-and-out characters brought to mind David Mamet’s characters in his 1975 Buffalo. (The interactions between Tommy and Doc are also reminiscent of the relationship between George and Lenny in John Steinbeck’s heartbreaking Of Mice and Men.) Takeshi Kata’s set, with its high ceiling, strikes just the right sordid note of dinginess. Daniel Ionazzi’s lighting comes, well, alive in the mystical grand finale.

O’Meara’s Wolfman-like Kenneth puts the “fear” into McPherson’s drama, which takes unexpected turns. O’Shaughnessy, who previously played the title role in Oscar Wilde’s Salome at the Gate Theatre Dublin, isn’t particularly sexy as Aimee. But perhaps that’s precisely the point: O’Connor invests Tommy with so much desperation and sexual longing that any female in her twenties seems to have the erotic powers of an Aphrodite.

In 2014, Conor McPherson adapted a new version of The Dance of Death for A Noise Within’s L.A. production of Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s 1900 play. The much-touted and awarded Dublin-born McPherson, who previously wrote The Weir, is in the tradition of those great Gaelic scribes, such as Sean O’Casey and James Joyce, and the Welsh Dylan Thomas. McPherson may perpetuate that image of the Irish as storytellers by making the dopey Doc a writer, who scribbles (guess what?) into his notebook, but thankfully, although there is some drinking in Alive, he eschews the stereotype of the Irish as drunks. The Geffen’s production of McPherson’s 2013 play, with its magical realist, enigmatic ending that had theatergoers scratching their noggins (again, this reviewer/roadmapper to inner meanings, refers you to The Great Escape poster and another pop cultural signpost: a rendition of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On), gives Angeleno audiences another opportunity to sample this bard’s vision.     

 

The Night Alive runs through March 15 at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., LA CA 90024. For info: 310-208-5454; www.geffenplayhouse.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: THE DANCE OF DEATH

Alice (Susan Angelo) in Dance of Death. Photo by Greg Schwartz.

Here comes Alice

By Ed Rampell

This A Noise Within production of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s 1900 The Dance of Death is expertly acted and directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott. The latter also co-stars as the former artillery captain Edgar, who is enmeshed in the most miserable marriage this side of Edward Albee’s George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, not to mention those suffering Scandinavian spouses in many films from Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

In The Dance of Death ANW Resident Artist Susan Angelo masterfully depicts has-been actress Alice, the other half of this unhappy marriage -- or perhaps I should say the other “third” of what becomes a triangle, once the couple’s old “friend” and Alice’s cousin, Kurt (Eric Curtis Johnson), enters the fray. In a way Angelo is playing an updated version of the character she also splendidly portrayed in last summer’s Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, wherein her Beatrice bickers and verbally jousts with Benedick, in an Elizabethan England version of the not-so-merry war between the sexes.

ANW’s The Dance of Death is a new version adapted by the noted Irish playwright Conor McPherson. What ANW presented on stage seems to be The Dance of Death I, not including the second part of the play, which Strindberg also wrote in 1900. McPherson’s adaptation stresses the gallows humor aspect of Strindberg’s work, and many in the nearly sold out opening night aud, laughed and smiled at the black comedy elements -- although many of the not-quite guffaws might stick in your throat.


The Dance of Death runs through Nov. 23 at A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91107. For exact times, dates and more info: 636-356-3100, ext. 1; www.anoisewithin.org.  

 

 

        

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: COCK

Blow job

By Ed Rampell

Ticket buyers who love their theater pure will be suckers for Cock. British playwright Mike Bartlett’s stellar one-acter is pared down to the theatrical essence of dialogue and acting -- no special effects, dance numbers or storyline derived from comic books, Hollywood blockbusters, other plays, etc. (although Bartlett did win a 2013 National Theatre Award for a work named Bull -- so one can honestly report that he’s written Cock and Bull stories). The cast is flawlessly directed by the award winning Cameron Watson, and the four actors hold forth in a cleverly designed space (per the dramatist’s intent) on a stage surrounded by seating at the Rogue Machine that suggests a cockpit (or cock ring), giving a whole new meaning to theater-in-the-round.

Be that as it may, there’s nothing square about this up-to-date drama with laughs that takes a, uh, cockeyed view of sexuality. In a series of rapid scenic transitions signaled by the lights, the story, such as it is, unfolds. As Cock opens John (Patrick Stafford) and M (Matthew Elkins) are mulling over their relationship.

As the tale evolves we see that the handsome, if slightly built John, has also become sexually involved with W (which stands for “Woman”?), a lonely 28-year-old who has fallen for him (Rebecca Mozo). So the play quickly unfolds into a not-so-classic triangle saga, with a tug of war ensuing for John’s affections and attention (and of course for the play’s titular member of the cast). (BTW, W’s witty term for the female equivalent of a “hard on” is almost worth the price of admission alone -- well wordplay-ed, Ms. Mozo and Mssr. Bartlett.)

John is the central character at the apex of Cock’s triangle and the nature of his sexuality is at the heart of the play’s theme. Is he gay, straight, bisexual? Or is his sexuality not predicated upon gender but on the individual he is involved with, no matter what his/her sex? Bartlett seems to be asking: If sexuality is a matter of pleasure and intimacy does the gender of one’s partner(s) really matter?

Of course, for some, there’s more to sex than that, such as playing power games of control, dominance and manipulation. Such seems to be the case for M, who is far bigger than John and in addition to being physically domineering, can be psychologically overbearing. M seems to be henpecking John, and some pro-gay rights advocates may read an anti-gay theme into Cock, in that M is coercing John to choose homosexuality over heterosexuality. Although repeatedly alluding to John’s job, it is never disclosed and he seems to be a confused man unsure of himself. On the other hand, M’s career is revealed, and of course he’s some sort of capitalist. Plus there’s no question re: M’s sexual preference. While this reviewer has no idea if it was the playwright’s intent to consciously or unconsciously insert an anti-gay POV into Cock, a reasonable viewer could assume that this is a point the play makes.

Not all love, of course, is sexual (Freud calls various platonic types of relationships “aim inhibited” because they don’t result in orgasm), and towards the end of Cock Bartlett tosses yet another ingredient into this roiling stew, which could be filed under the “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” heading: Enter M’s dad, who is called F -- perhaps for “Father”? -- played by Gregory Itzin.

F injects the whole parent-child, father-son nexus into an already complex relationship. F is commendable in that he stands by his son, no matter what his sexual preference. But as Itzin sort of indicated to this critic after the play, this “no matter what” stance can prove to be problematic. Because if love is completely unconditional, one is not constrained by disapproval and the like from loved ones for perpetrating bad behavior. Which can lead to acting with impunity, minus any fear of being held accountable for one’s actions -- you know, sort of like the way Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t imprisoned a single Wall Street big shot, even after these banksters wrecked the economy (although Holder has no hesitation throwing the book at whistleblowers and low level offenders, but that’s another gruesome story).

The play is meant to take place in Britain and all of the thesps have what sounds to this Yank’s untutored ear authentic British accents, although none of the actors seem to actually be Brits. (Indeed, Mozo is a Jersey Girl -- and I don’t mean from the isle off Normandy’s coast but from the Garden State off of Manhattan’s west coast.) To tell you the truth, although the Oxford-born Bartlett who studied drama at the University of Leeds is British, this reviewer doesn’t know whether setting Cock’s action in not-so-merry olde England makes a difference compared to simply staging it in the not-so-good ol’ USA, but that’s beside the point.

Another thing about Cock’s British-ness -- most Yankees have preconceived ideas about the Brits as being Caucasian. But at some point during the 85-minute or so play it dawned upon your humble scribe that Mozo is not a stereotypical white Anglo Saxon, and indeed, it turns out that this gifted actress is half-Brazilian, half-American. This may be merely coincidental or just could be a bit of clever casting in that it further complicates and raises Cock’s main theme.

Like the current movie, Dear White People, Cock is largely about the notion of identity. Who am I? How do I identify? This is the quest that John is on, and his lack of knowing the answer is at the root of his lack of self-assuredness.

Although Cock is not for the squeamish it is yet another reason why L.A. theatergoers are going Rogue. Producer and artistic director John Perrin Flynn’s Rogue Machine remains one of L.A.’s best theaters, presenting topnotch, thought provoking, entertaining works of art on the live stage. Experiencing Stafford, Mozo, Elkins and Itzin have at it gave this critic the same sensation he has when watching a magic show: How do theydo it? From the accents to their intensity in character, how do these actors conjure up this spell that their dramatis personae are real? Of course, deft directing and superb scripting while keenly commenting upon the human condition help, but this is what great ensemble acting and theatre are all about. It’s enough to make Rogue Machine act, well, cocky.

 

Cock runs through Nov. 3 at Rogue Machine, 5041 Pico Blvd., L.A., CA 90019. For info: 855-585-5185; Cock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: 1969

A scene from 1969.

 

Back in black

By Ed Rampell

 

One of the great things about the theater is that it can dramatize history, and the people who make it and shake it. Actual events can be given shape and form when expressed in the theatrical medium. Playwright Barbara White Morgan attempts to do this by taking on the heady late sixties, when revolution was in the year, with the Towne Street Theatre world premiere production of 1969.

 

In it, Ajamu (Jaimyon Parker) wears the era’s obligatory uniform of black leather jacket, shades (even indoors and at night) and Afro, which were de rigeur for the period’s black militants. His comrade, Lewis (Lamar Usher) also even dons a beret. Ajamu is the leader of the Afro-centric Blacks United group, which occupies a building that the city government, led by City Councilman Ernest Butler (Kenny Cooper), wants to redevelop and turn into a youth center. This sets the two -- both African American but from different sides of the ideological tracks -- on a collision course.

 

In doing so, this two-acter directed by Kim Harrington poses and dramatizes questions that were very much in the air circa 1969. How will the oppressed advance and attain liberation? By staying within the system or by straying outside of the prevailing established ways of doing things? In Morgan’s play, integration collides with black nationalism, nonviolence with militancy, civil rights with black power, the ballot with the bullet.

 

While Blacks United is a fictional group, it seems like a synthesis of, or suggested by, actual organizations, such as the Philadelphia-based MOVE and the Black Panthers (although they were actually Marxist Leninists, not what Huey Newton and Bobby Seale mocked as “pork chop nationalists”). Indeed, the staged standoff at the Blacks United headquarters calls to mind the similar impasse at MOVE’s HQ, which resulted in the U.S. government’s only domestic aerial firebombing of the 20^th century. In any case, SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) is also alluded to, while Ajamu seems like a composite character composed of Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Huey, etc.

 

The earnest Ernest believes in more incremental change through the electoral process, and seems emblematic of the wave of African-American politicians who attained office in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act, which saw the late sixties elections of Carl Stokes and Richard Hatcher as the black mayors of Cleveland and Gary. 1969 ponders whether these changes at the top will engender true black empowerment -- or the creation of a new African-American establishment. The fact that the drama’s city councilman’s last name is “Butler” -- long a stereotypical and subservient role for blacks -- may indicate where Morgan stands on that issue.

 

Megan Weaver is fetching as Ernest’s wife, Grace Butler; has the city councilman’s wife, with her Afro wigs and fur coat, gone bourgie? Grace’s (presumably) younger, less together sister Edna (Lina Green) is trying to pull herself together. As 1969 was rather famously also when Woodstock took place, no play about that year would be complete without a flower child, and Samantha Clay has some scene stealing fun as the stoned out hippie chick, Joyce, which displays her background with the Groundlings improve troupe. In a double role she also plays Mayor Evans’ (Jonathan Harrison) bourgeois wife Sylvia, who may well be the flip side of her countercultural alter ego. Another Caucasian thesp, Andy Ottenweller, portrays Dave Epstein, radical host of a talk show in, perhaps, the David Susskind mode (although Epstein’s Dave is hipper, younger and to the liberal Susskind’s left), who sympathizes with Ajamu and his cause.

 

All of the elements are here for a combustible concoction set against the background of the sizzling sixties. Alas, this Molotov cocktail never explodes. Although your reviewer was intellectually absorbed by 1969 it rarely became emotionally engaging, even when high stakes were being played. Perhaps this was due to the acting, directing or maybe the writing -- or perhaps all three? For one thing, the staging is a bit repetitious. The play’s credits do not list a set designer per se, and it shows, considering the very standard artwork that decorates the Butlers’ apartment (although it may be meant to cleverly reveal the couple’s being divided between their black sides and the bland middle class values they seem to aspire to). In any case, this is supposed to be live theatre, not a pamphlet or leaflet.

 

Having said that, Morgan’s plot does have some twists and turns which your reviewer did not see coming down the road, which is to the dramatist’s credit. As is the effort to render a play with characters who embody the social struggles of 1969, and a story that dramatizes that era’s almost revolution. (Alas, our side lost and we must soldier on.) Especially as the civil unrest unfolds in Missouri, showing that, beneath the surface, America remains a powder keg ready to blow. 1969 is presented by the Towne Street Theatre, which was created after the 1992 L.A. riots “to create, develop and produce original work that is reflective of the African-American experience and perspective…”

 

Perhaps next stop for TST’s 1969 is Ferguson? The fire next time!

 

 

1969 runs through Nov. 2 at the Stella Adler Theatre, Main Stage, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2^nd Floor, Hollywood, California, 90028. For info: (213)712-6944; www.townestreetla.org. For online tickets go to: 1969.

 

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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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