March 19th, 2012
Jordan Wright
Special to The Alexandria Times
 John Lescault as the enthusiastically delirious “Brother Russia”. Brother Russia is a great big full-out rock opera – of that there is no quibbling. With music by Dana Rowe and book and lyrics by John Dempsey – collaborators on the Witches of Eastwick and The Fix – its world premiere at Signature Theatre presents twenty-seven full-throated emotional numbers sung by eleven cast members – most doing double duty in multiple roles – in a tightly directed show with lots of romance, razzle-dazzle, a dash of gender bending and a soupcon of Slavic philosophy. But the play-within-a-play has me conflicted.
It opens with a ragtag group of touring actors, whose impresario translates as more Svengali than the purported mystic Rasputin the playwright would like you to believe. “Tonight’s story is the most Russian of all stories. It is my story!” he declares. And so the wheelchair-bound modern-day megalomaniac who calls himself Brother Russia rewrites history to suit his vanity and his second-rate cast.
 Natascia Diaz, as Anastasia, the Tsar’s daughter, sings "Crush Me" in the world premiere of "Brother Russia".  Rachel Zampelli (as the Witch) discovers young Grigori (Doug Kreeger), a “Child of the Wood” in "Brother Russia". John Lescault is tremendous in his portrayal of Brother Russia. He is the glue that holds the overly wrought piece together. Doug Kreeger plays his alter egos, both Sasha and Grigori. Kreeger is vocally and emotionally commanding, in a role that keeps him onstage through his rise from a lowly Siberian village to the luxurious Winter Palace in St. Petersburg and the massacres of the Russian Revolution. I hate to be a spoiler but he dies three times, twice by poisoning, but also stabbed, shot and other niceties to please the Brother Russia’s whimsical story telling. It is dizzying the amount of times he is brought back to life. “Compare an hour of life to death’s eternity,” he oddly proclaims.
In a tale of love and war, the show takes elements from the days of Czar Nicholas as well as classic Russian folk tales and convolutes them into total fiction. Is that good or bad? In any case it’s got plenty of the required murder, mayhem and sex wrapped up in royalty and peasants. If only it were told straight.
My issue with the show is that it swings in and out of quasi-history and into sheer fiction, batting about the audience’s emotions like a tennis ball in perpetual motion. No sooner are you invested in the characters and cozily enjoying a sweeping period piece, than they are lobbed back at you with sarcastic asides provided by the blustery and capricious Brother Russia and his disgruntled cast members including Nicholas played by the captivating Russell Sunday who is fierce in red patent leather platform heels.
 Grigori (Doug Kreeger, holding basket) is happily greeted by a group of strangers for his healing powers. Pictured left to right: Stephen Gregory Smith, Erin Driscoll, Russell Sunday, Rachel Zampelli. But don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater yet. The music is terrific and memorable, especially “The Spirit and the Truth”, “Elsewhere”, “I Belong to You” sung by Anastasia and Grigori and the show stopping “I Serve No Man” sung by Grigori.
Just don’t expect it to follow any semblance of Russian textbook history. This musical comes across as a mash-up of Mel Brooks Springtime for Hitler, Dale Wasserman’s Man of La Mancha and the Broadway version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. And if you like those shows – and who doesn’t? – that’s not all bad. It’s certainly got all the boxes-checked requirements of a hit Broadway show, yet one that is suffering from an identity complex. One can only hope for some editing of this meandering two and a half hour show before it is considered a fait accompli.
Through April 15th at Signature Theatre (Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org.
March 9, 2012
Jordan Wright
 GrooveLily band members (l to r) Brendan Milburn,Valerie Vigoda, and Gene Lewin - photo courtesy of The Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts GrooveLily band member and powerhouse electric violinist, Valerie Vigoda, talks with Jordan Wright about the group’s meteoric career and what fans will hear at their March 16th concert date.
Jordan Wright – How do you feel about performing for the first time at Wolf Trap?
Valerie Vigoda – Well, I grew up going to Wolf Trap so I’m very excited.
JW – What does it mean to you as a local?
VV – It’s something I’ve dreamed of doing in my younger days. I grew up going to Wolf Trap. My family and I came to many shows here as well as every Fourth of July. I remember one of my favorite concerts was seeing Jonatha Brooke playing solo at The Barns. I even ushered there one summer. It’s a place that’s been dear to my heart my whole life.
JW – Can you talk about your group’s autobiographical show, Wheelhouse?
VV – It has been on the back burner for many years. The show concerns the events of our lives over ten years ago. It is about the period when we gave up everything to tour in a used RV. It was a bad decision and everything went wrong almost immediately. It turned into a physical and symbolic millstone around our necks. Because after three months it sat at a repair shop and needed a ton of money to fix it. It was like a Catch 22 because we needed it to get to our gigs, which was our main source of income, which could ten pay for repairs. So we just spiraled down to the lowest point we have ever been. It was really tough. Part of what makes the Wheelhouse interesting and funny is that after all these years we now have the distance to look back at the situation and find the humor.
It took us a while to be very honest with ourselves and write about it. And Gene, our drummer whose character arc has always been of someone who had been very cautious with his life has been able to take a leap. Now Wheelhouse is about to be produced and will be directed by Lisa Peterson. We open in Palo Alto on June 6th.
When we come to Wolf Trap to do Sleeping Beauty Wakes we’re hoping to do some numbers from the show. We’ll do a concert version of some of our numbers but not in costume. We’ll also be able to give people a glimpse into the writing process.
JW – Can you talk about your work with Disney?
VV – We have been doing a lot with Disney since we moved to Los Angeles. The first thing was a one-hour musical adaption of the Toy Story film. It’s a story that has always been one of our favorite Disney productions, because it was one of the first dates that Brendan and I went on. That project led us to meet some people that work at DisneyToons and they are the people who are putting out the new Tinkerbell movies. They are coming out with new movies about once a year.
The first one we got involved with was the second movie Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure. We wrote the opening and closing songs for that as well as Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. From there we have written for Tinkerbell and the Secret of the Wings and we wrote two songs for that one as well as Tinkerbell and the Pixie Hollow Games that was a TV special that came out around Thanksgiving 2011. Up until that film the sound they wanted was very Celtic, like Enya, with pennywhistles and Irish bodhran drums. It was very lush. But the songs were not going up on the charts.
Lately they are using more pop songs and we wrote “Dig Down Deeper” for them. It was performed by the very charismatic performer, Zendaya, who sung it on the Build-a-Bear float at the Macy’s Day parade last year. It was very exciting and the song was nominated for our first 2011 Annie Award (industry awards for animated films). We are getting to explore a wider breadth of song styles under the Disney umbrella and we’ve loved working with them over the past six years.
JW – Lately your musical Striking Twelve has been staged by other groups who often perform it by expanding the roles to the size of the cast. Do you think that will continue?
VV – After 2007 we adapted it for larger casts like high schools who could have 25 people in one cast. It depends on the size of their cast and musicians how they put it on. It seems to really work well whether they have a cast of three like we do or many more. This past year there were productions in Helsinki in Finnish as well as Korea and Zimbabwe. We look forward to the opportunity to see other people performing it.
JW – What is the future of your solo performing?
VV – I’m thrilled about it. On a personal level, and in our household, the desire to perform is different between Brendan and myself. He doesn’t miss it but I really need it. In order to make us each be our happiest we put together something that I could perform on my own and we are currently producing a musical we wrote called Ernest Shackleton Loves Me.
JW – Can you tell me about your use of live ‘looping’?
VV – We realized we could take music from Ernest Shackleton Loves Me. We got a copy of Ableton Live which is an incredibly powerful program that people use for looping and deejaying and we put that together with my electric violin and the vocals and out of that what is possible is for me to create from scratch for the audience in real time. I can create soundscapes and full background rhythms and harmonic backgrounds to the vocal as well. It’s as if I have a band behind me that created it. It’s a really interesting way to build a song.
What we realized is that we could take music from Ernest Shackleton… along with mashups and stand alones of cover songs done in a new way I put together a whole solo concert. We plan to add some songs from this show to our March 16th concert.
Using this technology I have done two full-length solo concerts around the country that are on my website, www.ValerieVigoda.com. It’s one of the projects that we are currently juggling.
The group performs together less frequently than we used to since we live on opposite coasts, so when we do get together it’s extra special and extra fun. Now that we’re all parents the central story is even more resonant to us and performing together is one of the most beloved things we do. And in a wonderful venue like Wolf Trap, I can’t think of anything better.
Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Jordan Wright.
Jordan Wright
February 25, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Tina Anderson, Kacie Greenwood and Gayle Grimes - photo credit Eddie Page For whatever reason the thought of attending a class reunion can turn even the most sensible woman into a bundle of nerves. Will an old flame turn up? Can I lose 10 pounds in two weeks? What will I wear? And should I book a hair and Botox appointment on the same day? Mercifully none of these options are considered by The Dixie Swim Club, whose reunion is an all-girl affair in this rollicking bit of sitcom froth from Port City Playhouse. Faithfully returning to a modest cottage on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, five former swim team members make an annual pilgrimage to recapture their glory days. And though one of the ladies prefers to vamp for the men at the fruit stand, swapping tattoo views for blueberries, the women are mostly there to rekindle their friendships.
 Anderson, Hayes. Grimes, Mitchell & Greenwood - photo credit Eddie Page Sheree Hollinger (Tina Anderson) is the group’s ex officio life coach, a no-nonsense drill sergeant cum cheerleader with a knack for organizing and a penchant for bizarre health food munchies, much to the horror of Lexie Richards (Barbara Hayes), an endearing mantrap dripping with Southern charm and sass who calls Sheree’s seaweed canapés of mung bean paste, goji berries and heron oil, “regurgitated ferret food.” A self-acknowledged proponent of three-year marriages and facelifts, she cycles through spouses like a washing machine. “The trouble with husbands,” she admonishes, “is they always say they’ll die for you…but they never do!” Her counterpoint, Dinah Grayson (Kacie Greenwood), a spine-straight Atlanta corporate lawyer, prefers the boardroom to the bedroom and martinis to men.
Jeri Neal McFeeley (Laura Champe Mitchell), who “genuflects at the sight of Miracle Whip”, is a nun reaching out for a second chance at life outside the convent. Her polar opposite is the wisecracking Vernadette Simms (Gayle Nichols-Grimes), an accident-prone perpetually unemployed housewife. “Vern” reports on her children’s regular incarcerations and sermonizes on the joys of biscuit baking.
 Greenwood and Hayes - photo credit Eddie Page The humorous yet sweetly sentimental play, by the veteran comedy writing team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten (you’ll love the comic slugfest if you’re a fan of Wooten’s long-running series, The Golden Girls), covers three decades of the women’s personal triumphs and failures marking time with cocktail-fueled weekends of swill-and-tell.
The entire cast is up for the snappy repartee with Nichols-Grimes stealing the show with her deadpan delivery . Director Eddie Page, a self-confessed veteran of “guys” weekends at Nags Head, handily taps into the zeitgeist to achieve an evening that goes down like a well chilled martini served straight up.
 Anderson, Grimes, Greenwood and Hayes - photo credit Eddie Page Port City Playhouse through March 10th at The Lab Studio Theatre at Convergence, 1819 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, VA 22302. For tickets and information visit www.portcityplayhouse.com
Jordan Wright
February 28, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 John Shackelford (Max Levene), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton) and Cal Whitehurst (Mr. Jordan) - photo credit Doug Olmsted The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s production of Harry Segall’s stageplay, Heaven Can Wait, got off to a rocky start last night when the play’s Co-Producer and Assistant Director, Mary Ayala-Bush, had to jump into the part of Messenger 7013. Unfortunately she had gotten the part at 2 PM that same afternoon and, truth be told, she was reading lines off a clipboard and adlibbing the rest. No matter, she’s a pro, and by the time you read this she’ll have it down pat, but it was touch and go on opening night.
But even a cast glitch could not have gotten in the way of this lively production, enhanced mightily by the superb portrayal of boxer Joe Pendleton, by Brandon DeGroat, who in real life is a pro wrestler, movie actor and professional stuntman. DeGroat proves that he can handle the topsy-turvy role with more than just swarthy matinee idol looks. Throughout his performance he wows the audience with his talent for boxing feints, jumping rope double time, sofa vaults and stage-shaking pratfalls.
Historically the play found film incarnation with Here Comes Mr. Jordan starring Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains. Later it emerged as Oscar-winning film, Heaven Can Wait, starring Warren Beatty as football hero, and more recently as Down to Earth with Chris Rock as a comedian. No stretch there.
 Colin Davies (Doctor), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton), Geoffrey Baskir (Passenger), Michael Gerwin (Williams), Geoffrey Brand (Lefty), and John Shackelford (Max Levene) - photo credit Doug Olmsted In this version Joe is a boxer and erstwhile fighter pilot taken for dead by an over-zealous angel. When the mix up is discovered at the Pearly Gates, the celestial doorman Mr. Jordan, elegantly played by Cal Whitehurst, promises Joe he has another 60 years to go before his number is up. “I could put you in the body of a gnat”, Jordan asserts, and the two go off in search of an appropriately athletic body for Joe to continue his blossoming career. But before he can locate the perfect athletic specimen Joe must first assume the body of murdered millionaire investor, Leo Farnsworth, and it is as Farnsworth that Joe meets the love of his life, Bette Logan (Melissa Berkowitz).
The play begins to breath fire when Joe, as Farnsworth, reunites with agent Max Levene (John Shackelford) to reschedule the pivotal fight that will place him in the pantheon of the world’s greatest boxers. But first he has to convince Max that he is indeed the same Joe…albeit in a millionaire’s body.
 John Shackelford (Max Levene), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton) - photo credit Doug Olmsted Shackelford and DeGroat are electrifying when they share the stage – which thankfully is the heart and soul of this production. I can’t say enough about Shackelford’s beguiling brilliance in the role of Max, the agent who has one eye fixed firmly on his client’s newly acquired wealth and the other on his old buddy’s success. He’s got a keen sense of timing coupled with a canny ability to seamlessly morph his character from naive to crafty. His performance is nothing less than riveting.
If you’re up for a comedy rolled into a drama and wrapped in a love story, catch this one soon.
Through March 17th at The Little Theatre of Alexandria 600 Wolfe Street. For tickets and information call the box office at 703 683-0496 or visit www.thelittletheatre.com
Jordan Wright
February 14, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo wants his audiences to know that his play was inspired by three seminal moments in his young life. The first was seeing Doubt, a play by John Patrick Shanley that filled him with both excitement and dread. Excitement that “Theatre could be amazing,” and dread that it, “operates on very few rules and offers no guarantees.”
His second aha moment was, “…the unfolding of an investigation concerning several college students’ involvement in a brutal crime in the months before my graduation from NYU.” – an event that challenged the senior to rethink his own relationships and the questionable character of his peers.
The book by Jean Twenge, Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – And More Miserable Than Ever Before was another influence. “I thought of myself as an obvious exception, when in reality, that mentality alone made me the prototype,” he reveals with a refreshing honesty.
It’s difficult to be patient with the Generation Me college students in Really Really because they are depicted as crass, self-indulgent wannabes, utterly lacking in personal responsibility, while living in a bubble of entitlement and lax morals. Sound familiar? But Colaizzio wants us to take them as they are, “members of what the older generation have created,” as he describes it. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but fodder for reflection.
The world premiere play, an X-rated production oddly reminiscent of the long-running sitcom, Friends, shows Colaizzo’s formidable talent as a comedy writer. Yet aside from the clever comic relief, we are still faced with the dilemma of caring about a self-serving, scurrilous, homophobic, sexist and conniving group of students with paper-thin allegiances – quite a poisonous brew that’s compounded by binge drinking and interminable attempts to hook up and share the deets.
 (from left to right) Danny Gavigan (as Jimmy), Paul James (as Johnson) and Evan Casey (as Cooper) talking about last night’s big party in "Really Really". Photo: Scott Suchman. Grace (Lauren Culpepper) and Leigh (Bethany Anne Lind) are roomies. Their male counterparts Johnson (Paul James), Davis (Jake Odmark), and Cooper (Evan Casey) are on the rugby teammates sharing a frat house-style apartment replete with the requisite beer refrigerator and video games. Jimmy (Danny Gavigan), Leigh’s conflicted boyfriend and son of the college’s dean, comes by regularly for booty calls, much to Grace’s dismay. Smooth scene transitions are accomplished by Misha Kachman’s set design, which places their two apartments side-by-side on the Ark’s long yet narrow stage.
The play opens as Grace and Leigh stagger home laughing hysterically after attending the boys’ annual blowout kegger. The following morning Grace leaves town to deliver a speech to the Future Leaders of America and we begin to sense the morality theme of the play. Hoping to inspire her young attendees to take personal responsibility for their actions, she prophetically warns, “A great part of the formula for success is the ability to say ‘no’,” and notes ironically that all the personal communications devices used by the Me Generation start with the letter “I”.
After an accusation and follow-up investigation of the party’s activities, the friends are forced to face the consequences of their reckless lifestyle and betrayals rise to surface like fresh beer suds, as battle lines are drawn between the sexes and lies of convenience are held out as barter. But memories of the fateful night are clouded. Was there a date rape? Or was it a fantasy? Everyone’s too drunk to remember, or are they?
 Bethany Anne Lind (as Leigh) returning home from an on-campus party in "Really Really". Photo: Scott Suchman. Really Really is a cautionary tale with a familiar ring – that of the headline-grabbing Virginia trial of privileged college scion George Huguely V in the ongoing Yardley Love case, where similar patterns of alcohol, parties, hook ups and violence are a familiar campus way of life.
Fine performances from the ensemble cast, with Lind in the lead crafting a nuanced portrait of the sociopathic coed, Leigh. Wait for the entrance in the second act by Kim Rosen, as Leigh’s feisty sister Haley, who is memorable as the prep outsider conjuring up Snooki from MTV’s Jersey Shore.
Through March 25th at Signature Theatre (at Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org.
Jordan Wright
February 7, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 James Alexander, James T. Lane, Zurin Villanueva, Aisha de Haas, Debra Walton Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography Josephine Tonight hurtles the down the track at lightning speed with a fast-paced, musical bonanza about the legendary Josephine Baker’s early life and meteoric show biz career, beginning with her days as a street performer and on to Harlem’s Cotton Club and the Folies Bergere. Broadway veterans Sherman Yellen, who wrote the book and lyrics; the late Wally Harper, who composed the show; and the megawatt choreographer, Maurice Hines, who took on the additional role of director in this world premiere production. Working with a cast of five seasoned actors, whose bios read like a New York playbill and who play over a dozen roles between them, Hines and co-director Mel Johnson, Jr. bring this dazzling show to Alexandria’s MetroStage.
DC area theatre buffs will remember Hines won a Helen Hayes award in 2009 for his choreography of Cool Papa’s Party at MetroStage and the following year starred in the blockbuster Sophisticated Ladies at the Lincoln Theatre.
 Aisha de Haas as Big Bertha Smith - Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography The story of Josephine Baker’s life is complex and riveting. A bleak childhood on the mean streets of East St. Louis at the turn of the 20th century didn’t provide many avenues to success for a lanky black girl whose mother was a laundress and whose grandmother a slave in South Carolina.
When we meet Josie, “my little blackbird” as her mama calls her, the tough and willful teenager is dancing the chicken strut in front of the local Piggly Wiggly, busking for nickels and dimes and, “Shakin’ her bottom and tossin’ her top,” as the scandalized Reverend Loomis tells Josephine’s mother. Enter The Jolly Jones Family, a minstrel troupe who teach her the ropes and whisk her off with her mama’s approval to play black vaudeville houses on ‘The Sharecropper’s Circuit’.
As Josephine Baker, Zurin Villanueva (who last tread the local boards in Crowns at Arena Stage) has all the right sass as she taps, struts and slinks into your heart with the ferocity of a lioness, capturing Baker’s persona from gangly teen to the toast of Paris. Her sinuous interpretation of Baker’s notorious banana dance in a skirt of the waxy fruit and a top of marshmallow-sized coconuts, is mesmerizing.
Aisha De Haas, another veteran of Ain’t Misbehavin’, (are you feelin’ the Fats Waller vibe yet?) plays two characters that are polar opposites, Baker’s mother, Carrie, and Big Bertha Smith, her confidante and mentor, yet she segues seamlessly between them. Her voice is a rich blend of powerhouse gospel, blues and red-hot sizzle, and when she delivers the number “Pretty Is” in the second act, it’s guaranteed she’ll rip your heart out.
With smooth Astaire-like steps, precise and lightening quick, and a tender soulful voice in his rendering of the song “Never Thought I’d Find You Tonight”, James T. Lane displays elegant restraint playing both Eddie, Baker’s first love, and Paul, her Parisian Pygmalion, who introduces Josephine to a life of luxury and sophistication.
 Zurin Villanueva and James T. Lane as Josephine Baker and husband Eddie Baker - Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography The small adaptive cast is rounded out by the high-energy super-adorable Debra Walton (Broadway veteran of Ain’t Misbehavin’) and the old-school cool James Alexander.
Settle in for more than two dozen terrific toe-tapping numbers backed by arranger, conductor and pianist David Alan Bunn and a five-piece band whose members have played for the greatest names in the music business from Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Holiday to Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie.
Josephine Tonight is sheer entertainment from start to finish with all the delicious ingredients to fast track it to Broadway – joke-cracking, high-stepping, hard times and love songs featuring a strong cast that delivers its emotional heat with heart and soul.
Through March 18th at MetroStage 1201 North Royal Street, Alexandria, 22314. For tickets and information visit www.metrostage.org.
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