Jordan Wright
July 30, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Photographer Shane Canfield It’s Olympics Week and we’re in London. Well, not really Dearie, not the London of the Tower Bridge and the colored rings, but a smidge more local, at The Little Theatre of Alexandria far closer to the Potomac than the Thames. No, my friends, this is the London of Sweeney Todd, “who would blink and rats would scuttle” as he “served a dark and vengeful god.” Close enough, I’d say. Maybe too close.
From the opening salvos the 20-member cast of Stephen Sondheim’s spine-tingling Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will sweep you off your feet and smack dab into a Dickensian world filled with high dudgeon and deep depravity. The musical is a fierce story of love, loss and revenge merrily served up in all its carnivorous glory with a spot of tea and a stiff upper lip – body parts included. It’s a grisly horror story dripping with blood and British charm and some of Sondheim’s best songs.
 Photographer Shane Canfield We are introduced to Sweeney Todd alias Benjamin Barker upon his return to London to avenge the death of his wife by the evil and perverse Judge Turpin (Chris Gillespie) and his conspiratorial cohort, Beadle Bamford (Christopher David Harris), and to reunite with his daughter, the beautiful Johanna (Roxanne Scher), who is being held captive by the judge as his ward and future bride.
Todd falls in with Mrs. Lovett, an ambitious and wily widow with a failing meat pie shop. They strike up an unlikely and diabolical alliance and, in a stroke of business genius, Mrs. Lovett provides Todd with a tonsorial parlor above her store where they gleefully combine the two disparate businesses. “Think of it as thrift,” she chirps with a dash of gallows humor. “It seems an awful waste with the price of meat what it is.”
The Little Theatre knew Sweeney Todd was going to be a monster of a production and commandeered three producers to keep it on track. That it is one of their finest productions to date is due in no small part to Andrew JM Regiec, who appears to have his hand in most elements of the play. His superb directing, top-notch choreography and staging, including collaborating on set design with Dan Remmers, take this theater and its twelve-piece orchestra to dramatic new heights. Throw into the mix the award-winning team of Jean Schlichting and Kit Sibley who have costumed the show in high Victorian poverty splendor all the way down to the beggar women’s bloomers. Another clever touch they employ are the scarlet red silk flourishes worn by the ensemble in the opening number, the “Ballad of Sweeney Todd”, that reveals shades of things to come.
Harv Lester tackles the dark vengeful Todd with masterful aplomb. From his opening number “No Place Like London” Lester puts the entire audience in his thrall with his tremendous baritone and powerful presence. His fresh portrayal made me feel as though I were seeing it for the first time.
As Mrs. Lovett, Jennifer Lyons Pagnard, is on par with original Broadway cast member Angela Lansbury (whom this critic remembers fondly). Pagnard is captivating with gestures so naturally balanced between her left side and right side so as to present a continuous self-portrait. It was a master class in acting effortlessly. In addition her fifteen years as a vocalist with the US Air Force Band’s “Singing Sergeants” has gifted her with a performance ability more often honed on a professional stage. Pagnard knows how to memorialize a character – in spades!
 Photographer Shane Canfield Christopher David Harris is terrific as the smarmy and foppish Beadle whose ghastly encounter with a blind nightingale led my seatmate to let out a shriek heard throughout the theater… and perhaps across the pond. Keep an eye out for Zachary Frank in the role of Pirelli whose portrayal of the Italian barber is a hilarious foil to the murder and mayhem.
Countless elements contribute to the realism of the show. Art Snow adds much in terms of special effects including designing blood-spurting razors synchronized to the slashing of Todd’s victims’ throats, a chair that sends victims sliding into an abyss, and a dungeon-worthy oven billowing smoke and flames. The technical complexities of the show are impressive – as in the two double-decker turntable stages that rotate an astonishing 64 times. Add to that the more than 80 sound cues and dozens of mood-shifting lighting cues designed by the WATCH Award-winning team of Ken and Patti Crowley and you have a tremendously dynamic stage set.
Highly recommended.
Through August 18th 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
June 11, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Sarah Holt, Ric Anderson, and Robin Parker Photos by Doug Olmsted Everybody loves Elvis. The man was larger than life. “The King of Rock and Roll”, who helped shape a mid-century pop culture and was a distinct influence on American music, is still with us today. Rent-an-Elvis impersonators in cheek-hugging sideburns make pilgrimages to Memphis, Tennessee to gawk at his stately colonial mansion. Graceland, the holiest of rock and roll shrines, where wife Priscilla, the envy of bobbysoxers everywhere, along with the King, raised their only child, Lisa Marie. So naturally a show about Elvis’s women would include them, right? Well no, not in this imaginary retelling.
All the King’s Women is an homage to Elvis Presley played out in vignettes by ordinary people Elvis came in contact with at different points in his life. And despite the title they are not the most important women in his life, as you might surmise. Priscilla, Lisa Marie, and mother, Gladys have no roles. So don’t expect a love story here. And in a bit of a misnomer there are four male characters in the play and no hip shakin’ goin’ on.
 Ric Andersen and Jennifer Finch – Photos by Doug Olmsted The play opens in Mississippi at the Tupelo Hardware Company. It’s 1946, Elvis’s 11th birthday, and a virtual Gladys has taken him shopping for a twelve dollar Kay guitar in place of the rifle he was promised. Sarah Holt plays the shop girl who drips with that peculiar combination of good manners and behind-your-back gossip called Southern charm. Holt has the inflections and mannerisms down pat. In fact every character she plays will endear you to her. Heads up for her hilarious three a.m. banana-and-peanut butter scene with Elvis in the supermarket.
Eight short vignettes are told though the eyes of the unknown women and men that drifted, if only temporarily, into his sacred sphere – the nameless secretaries, saleswomen, assistants and shoppers whose worlds were rocked by a chance encounter.
During scene changes photo slides from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s are splashed onto a screen mounted on the back of the stage – iconic photos of Elvis’s pink Cadillac along with movie stills and a photo collage by Andy Warhol – providing a visual scrapbook of the King’s celebrity life and images of the day. But it does seem strange not to have an actual Elvis in the play.
Instead four actors tackle seventeen roles including the auspicious hardware store purchase, a confab among Warhol’s effete staff and a well-publicized meeting in the White House with then president Richard Nixon in which Presley offered his service to the country as a federal agent while dressed in a purple velvet cape with matching slacks and a flashy 6-inch belt buckle.
 Jennifer Finch and Robin Parker – Photos by Doug Olmsted One scene describes an early appearance on the Steve Allen Show. Although Presley had yet to appear on television his scandalous hip gyrations were renowned and nearly got him banned from The Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular family variety show of the 1950’s. In a meeting between Elvis’s press secretary, the network censor’s assistant and Allen’s secretary, Presley is instructed to wear top hat and white gloves. He agreed to those conditions but insisted on wearing his blue suede shoes. Allen finally demurred telling the censor’s assistant, “As long as his shoes are nailed to the floor!”
The cast works well together and the jokes are lighthearted. A simply furnished set focuses the attention on the characters while familiar hits like Hound Dog and Amazing Grace are heard playing in the background.
See it if you want your funny bone all shook up.
Through June 30th 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
May 21, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Sonny (Charlie Brady, center) goes 1980’s glam rock. Mark Chandler (left) and Nickolas Vaughan. "Xanadu" Virginia’s Signature Theatre. Photo: Scott Suchman Dial back to the ‘80’s and Venice Beach, Cali. It’s the days before auto-tuned singers and earbuds, a simpler time when listening to music meant cassette tapes and a boombox the size of carry-on luggage. Scrunch a pair of leg warmers over your roller skates (in-lines had yet to be invented) and channel your inner Olivia Newton-John or John Travolta. Remember that now much maligned era of disco fever and mirrored balls – when dancing to Donna Summer fast tracked your life? Well, it’s back with the pop musical Xanadu to the tune of fourteen huge hits like I’m Alive, Evil Woman, Strange Magic, Suddenly and Have You Never Been Mellow.
 Erin Weaver (center, as Kira) with her Greek Muses (from left to right) Nickolas Vaughan, Kellee Knighten Hough, Nova Y. Payton, Sherri L. Edelen, Mark Chandler, and Jamie Eacker. The musical comedy "Xanadu". Photo: Scott Suchman In a mix and match of muses, roller disco and a World War II female quartet, Sonny and Kira fall in love. That’s the easy part. Plot-wise the musical tosses in everything but the kitchen sink and throws out more wacky punch lines than Laugh-In. But it’s the electrifying, feel-good musical score by composers Jeff Lynne and John Farrar that provides the Krazy Glue that holds it all together when mythical gods and goddesses conspire and partyers in silver Lurex and platform heels camp it up on a stage designed to send skaters sailing straight through the aisles. In Misha Kachman’sset, complete with soaring catwalk and palm trees silhouetted against an amber sunset, there’s a bigger-than-life backdrop to this eponymously titled send-up of the 1980 cult classic film.
 Kira (Erin Weaver) goes weak in the knees in the arms of Sonny Malone (Charlie Brady). Photo: Scott Suchman Sonny is an untalented sidewalk chalk artist who can’t even conjure a compelling suicide note. In the midst of his desperation he meets Kira, a Grecian muse, aka Clio, on the Santa Monica Pier. She vows to help the disconsolate Sonny become successful. But following her father Zeus’s edict to all muses, she must not fall in love with a mortal. Bummer, right? In all of the great Greek tragedies the infighting muses have an axe to grind – and this one’s got Kira’s name written all over it.
 Harry A. Winter (as Danny Maguire) and Erin Weaver (as Kira) sing “Whenever You’re Away From Me”. Photo: Scott Suchman 
As in the original Broadway production a cast of nine handles, what by quick count appears to be, an astonishing 25 different roles. Are they up to it? “True dat!” as the slang-prone muses say. Credit Costume Designer Kathleen Geldard and a wardrobe mistress as speedy as Mercury who manage some lightning quick wardrobe changes as the cast goes from diaphanous togas to skintight spandex and back again.
Hunky actor Charlie Brady plays the hapless Sonny Malone to adorable Erin Weaver’s Kira. Weaver is utterly winsome and creates a force field all her own, breathing mega-energy into the familiar show.
The script has plenty of audience-conscious lines. When Kira asks her former boyfriend, now real estate tycoon Danny Maguire (played by Harry A. Winter), to let them turn his old theater into a roller disco, he agrees telling her, “Nothing turns around a crappy neighborhood like the Arts.” Knowing laughs from the Shirlington audience who remember when the theater was in an auto shop. But the line of the night goes to Hermes, played with perfect comedic timing by Nickolas Vaughan who when Kira asks him, “Why does Zeus accuse me?” – he cracks, “Bitch, I don’t know your life!”
Sherri Edelen (Calliope/Aphrodite) who recently appeared in Signature’s multi-awarded Hairspray is a riot as is Nova Y. Payton (Melpomene/Medusa) whose rich voice and sass put the show in the “Memorable Evening” category.
Through July 1st 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.
Jordan Wright
May 14, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Eric Sutton and Michael Russotto in Lonely Planet by Steven Dietz Photo credit: Christopher Banks When an entire cast consists of only two characters, such as in Steven Dietz’s play Lonely Planet, be assured the piece will reveal a deep exploration of the psyche. This thoroughly engaging Ionesco-influenced drama affords a 1980’s gay perspective of a time when the HIV/AIDS crisis was at its apex and death was the prolonged yet assured outcome. It is a window writ large into the private fears and anguish of those who faced the daily loss of their loved ones.
Jody is the urbane proprietor of Jody’s Maps, a cartography shop in Anytown, USA. He is consumed with the incongruity of wonky-proportioned Mercator maps its out-sized dimensions of Greenland. He wants a world more clearly defined by Peters’ Equal Area Maps that reflect the actual scale of the continents. He is trying to resolve these conflicting issues and sell maps at the same time.
His friend Carl is a fantasist who adopts new professions as seamlessly as a chameleon changes color. On each visit to Jody’s shop he spins new tales of his day. Sometimes he’s a crime scene investigator, or an auto glass repairman or a fine art restorer. Grappling with the constant reality of the death of his friends, he confesses, “I don’t make up things. I lie.” But what’s his angle? Is it a coping mechanism, an innocent transference, or is he a con artist? Jody is wary but captivated.
The men pass the time with mock tales of Richard Nixon-inspired Shakespearean skits and swordplay with rolled up maps. “We need to play our game,” Jody challenges. “The game where we tell the truth? I prefer to lie a little longer,” Carl admits, spinning tales of Jesus-imaged china as they bear constant witness to the mind-numbing reality of losing their friends.
Each day as their relationship deepens and Carl delivers more chairs to Jody’s small shop, Jody’s disconnectedness grows into agoraphobia. “No one prepares you for the fear,” he reveals with resentment of how the “straight world” views the deaths of gays from AIDS. But this play is not a redux of Ionesco’s absurdist farce Les Chaises (The Chairs), nor Angels in America. It is an intimate and darkly humorous portrait of universal love and loss and the methods we use to cope. In Carl’s case signified by the burgeoning collection of metaphorical chairs representing his late friends.
Kudos to award-winning Director John Vreeke and Set Designer Jane Fink, a local grad student from George Washington University, who does a brilliant job of evoking a musty map store with all its nooks and crannies. Memorable performances by Michael Russotto (Jody) and Eric Sutton (Carl) who create a believable bond in the face of unimaginable loss with ferocity, humor and fluidity.
At MetroStage now through June 17th. 1201 North Royal Street, Alexandria, 22314. For tickets and information call 703 548-9044 or visit www.metrostage.org.
Jordan Wright
April 23, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Michael (Andy Brownstein, far right) makes a stand as Alan (Paul Morella), Veronica (Naomi Jacobson) and Annette (Vanessa Lock) look on. "God of Carnage" plays at Virginia’s Signature Theatre through June 24, 2012. www.signature-theatre.org. In the 2009 Tony award-winning play God of Carnage, French playwright and social satirist Yasmina Reza introduces us to two upwardly mobile New York couples whose rowdy sons have gotten into a scrap in the neighborhood park. At a meeting in the bourgeois book-filled apartment of the victim’s parents to discuss the incident, the couples seem to present a united front while exchanging pleasantries over coffee and Veronica’s home made pear clafouti.
 Andy Brownstein (Michael Novak) and Naomi Jacobson (Veronica Novak) make a strong alliance.  Veronica Novak (Naomi Jacobson) laughs as she may have had one too many, as Alan Raleigh (Paul Morella) looks on. Initially the well-mannered grownups appear to take responsibility for their children’s actions resolving to discipline the boys and urge them to make up. Veronica, a writer on atrocities in African culture, has high-minded principles and futilely attempts to steer her husband Michael into laying the blame on Annette and Alan’s son. “It could have been the other way around,” admits Michael, “Our son is a savage,” he adds trumping Veronica’s well-orchestrated plans.
Annette on the other hand is a straight-laced suit working in wealth management and married to Alan an attorney/spinmeister who’s more wedded to his business than his wife. Between persistent cell phone calls he tries to keep pace with the mounting diatribes. “People struggle until they are dead,” Alan philosophizes.
Initially Annette tries to stay above the fray, pleading with her husband to back off, but as she sits on the sofa leafing through some well-placed coffee table books she picks up a book on existentialist painter Francis Bacon, “Cruelty, majesty, chaos and balance,” she offers and with that small remark the play’s tone is set.
Soon all decorum is tossed aside as the confab turns into a verbal slugfest with the couples pushing each other’s emotional buttons and the parents quickly devolving from respectable middle class professionals into screaming, name-calling kids on a playground. “You can’t control the things that control you,” Michael offers.
 Michael (Andy Brownstein, left) and Alan (Paul Morella) happily finding some common ground in "God of Carnage".  Vanessa Lock (left, as Annette) and Naomi Jacobson (as Veronica) share a laugh and a drink. After Michael confesses to tossing his daughter’s hamster out into the street, his credibility as the nice guy flies out the window and the women bond in their anger against him. Soothing his bruised ego he shares a bottle of his “well-aged Antiguan rum” and with that all the white gloves come off. Soon allegiances shift and the women gang up against their husbands as the men proudly profess to be Neanderthals. “Is alcohol bad for you?” Annette ponders.
Reza wields humor with a surgeon’s scalpel. Her observations of couples’ conflicts, and their ability to emotionally destroy each another, are just as incisive. And our laughter at their infantile antics is a universal response to the belief that we are all born into a culture of violence. “The God of Carnage has ruled since the beginning of time,” Alan reminds them.
 The Raleighs and the Novaks in a heated war of words in "God of Carnage". From left to right: Vanessa Lock, Paul Morella, Naomi Jacobson, Andy Brownstein. Award-winning director Joe Calarco does a yeoman’s job of molding actors Andy Brownstein (Michael), Naomi Jacobson (Veronica), Vanessa Lock (Annette) and Paul Morella (Alan) into a cohesive unit of controlled stage mayhem.
Through June 24th 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.
Jordan Wright
April 19, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Sam Sheinberg (Court Wader), Russell Silber (Leonard), Bruce Schmid (Barrister), Dan Beck (Clerk of the Court), Jeffrey Clarke (Justice Wainright), John Johnson (Barrister), and Mark Lee Adams (Sir Wilfred Robarts, QC) - photo credit to Doug Olmsted. In a whodunit filled with more red herrings than a kettle of fish, veteran Little Theatre director Eddie Page takes a cast of nineteen actors and packages them into a tidy piece of silken stagecraft. That the plot may be familiar to those who remember the 1957 Billy Wilder-directed film of the same name, and that starred Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich, should in no way deter an appreciation of this well-acted version. The play, unlike the film of the same name, adheres to the original as written by Agatha Christie in 1953.
The likeable but enigmatic Leonard Vole is accused of murdering of a wealthy older lady. Or to be politically correct, allow me to amend it to “ a well-to-do senior citizen”. Miss French’s senior status should be noted here since, when it is revealed that she is 56 years old, it makes for some snickering in the audience, sounding as it does by today’s standards a rather archaic notion. Leonard becomes the main suspect when it is revealed that he is the chief benefactor in the lady’s recently revised will.
 Robert Ford (Detective) and Russell Silber (Leonard) - photo credit to Doug Olmsted Miss French, who befriends the impoverished mechanic after he chivalrously rescues her from being run over on a London city street, is neither seen nor heard during the three acts which, being quite dead should be reason enough, but for we amateur sleuths there’s not much to chew on save a haze of supposition, conflicting testimony and inexplicable evidence leading helter-skelter down a blind alley.
Mark Lee Adams deftly plays Leonard’s counselor Sir Wilfrid Robarts, Q.C. Robarts, who had up till then sworn off murder trials, agrees to take the case after becoming convinced of the poor man’s innocence.
As the case unfolds in the courtroom of the Old Bailey, we meet Miss French’s feisty yet devoted housekeeper, Janet McKenzie, played rivetingly by Cheryl Sinsabaugh whose spot-on Scottish brogue is as crusty as week-old haggis. Janet has reason to point the finger at the ambitious Leonard Vole. He’s usurped her territory and stolen her mistress’s affections. But we like the charismatic chap anyway.
 Robin Zerbe (Romaine) and James McDaniel (Mr. Meyers, QC) - photo credit to Doug Olmsted.  Robin Zerbe (Romaine) and Mark Lee Adams (Sir Wilfred Robarts, QC) - photo credit to Doug Olmsted. Russell Silber does a fine job of portraying the likeable Leonard in counterpoint to his wife Romaine, the Teutonic ice princess tautly acted by Robin Zerbe. Though Leonard marries her to facilitate her escape from wartime Germany, in an ironic twist Romaine becomes witness for the prosecution and against her adoring husband. “One can get tired of gratitude,” she stoically declares.
At times you may feel that you are in the middle of a game of Clue. There’s no rope here but a blood stained jacket, mountains of motives, a bludgeoned body and a large kitchen knife loom largely. Did I mention all the circumstantial evidence? Nothing appears to be indisputable, not least of all the exact time of the murder.
In Christie’s stage version the bewigged barristers address the audience as jury and you may feel quite invested in divining the outcome of this charming slice of skullduggery. Though your efforts may prove meaningless as the ending trumps the most invigorated mystery hounds among us. And isn’t that exactly what we adore about Agatha Christie?
Through May 12th 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
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