Wesley Taylor (Emcee), Rachel Schur, Jamie Eacker, Colleen Hayes, Maria Rizzo, Jessica Thorne in Cabaret at Signature Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman.
Willkommen into The MAX for Signature Theatre’s production of Cabaretand you’ll be transported to post World War I Berlin in Set Designer Misha Kachman’s replica of the Kit Kat Klub where half the audience is seated on bentwood chairs at café tables lit with silk shaded lamps and set with vintage telephones – – all the better to see the slinky chorus girls in their red and black lingerie and gender-bending men in leather and lederhosen. Close too, is a rotating stage rimmed in bare lightbulbs and backdropped by a Mylar curtain. Kachman adds reflective industrial metal panels along the theatre walls and a two-story catwalk with a winding staircase for the show-within-a-show. Off to one side two strapping bare-chested servers staff a wooden bar where patrons can belly up to German beer and Riesling at intermission.
As both Director and Choreographer, Matthew Gardiner doesn’t miss his cue when it comes to razzle-dazzle and flat-out sensationalism in this John Kander/Fred Ebb collaboration based on stories from Christopher Isherwood, that darling of Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury Group. There are high kicks and undulating spines, reminiscent of Bob Fosse, and plenty of titillating duets and risqué ménages. This may be the Kit Kat Klub, but there’s nothing kittenish about it.
Wesley Taylor (Emcee) in Cabaret at Signature Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman
Wesley Taylor plays the Emcee, a role that calls for major attitude. His character is meant to be both alluring and dominating, and Taylor pulls it off with aplomb managing to affect a character of sadistic amorality and razor-sharp charm in an atmosphere so sexually charged a single match could set the whole theatre ablaze.
Barrett Wilbert Weed (Sally) in Cabaret at Signature Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman.
Sally Bowles is played by the darling, doe-eyed Barrett Wilbert Weed – – a dizzyingly, captivating charmer with exquisite pipes that seems to have been recently sprung from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s imagination. Her Sally is softer than most, more vulnerable and madly in love with Cliff, a Midwestern English teacher who has chosen a rather inopportune place and time, during the rise of the Nazi regime, to write a novel. “I like this city,” he quips. “It’s both tacky and terrible.” Gregory Wooddell is masterful (and swoon-worthy) as Cliff – – managing to be both subtle and forceful in his interpretation of the lovesick innocent abroad.
Rick Foucheux (Herr Schultz) and Naomi Jacobson (Fraulein Schneider) in Cabaret at Signature Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman.
But it’s grim times for the couple and their new friends, landlady Fraulein Schneider (Naomi Jacobson), Ernst the smuggler and Nazi sympathizer (Bobby Smith), Fraulein Kost, the prostitute (Maria Rizzo), and Herr Schultz (Rick Foucheux), the fruit seller. Jackboots and turncoats keep encroaching on their merry life. For Sally, it’s her last chance for a life outside the cruel reality of a seedy nightclub in a rapidly changing world. But she is afraid to take it. “One must keep mobile,” she gaily tells Cliff before launching into a goosebump-worthy version of the ballad “Maybe This Time”.
Wesley Taylor (Emcee) and the Kit Kat Boys and Girls in Cabaret at Signature Theatre. Photo by Margot Schulman.
Look for all your favorite numbers – – “The Money Song”, “Perfectly Marvelous”, “Cabaret” and “Willkommen” to thrill as expected, especially as backed by a fabulous 9-piece orchestra led by Conductor and Pianist, Jon Kalbfleisch. Costumes by award-winning designer, Frank Labovitz run the gamut from sexy lingerie, beaded flapper dresses and 1930’s hausfrau frocks, to the sinister uniforms of the Third Reich.
Through June 28th 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.
Joshua Morgan (Steven), Natascia Diaz (Adrienne), Alex Brightman (Jonah), and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.
The world is ending and Charlie (Jessica Hershberg) is obsessed by the lurid headlines. Listening to broadcasts of the President’s speech declaring the planet’s demise, she becomes consumed by Wolf Blitzer. “His voice reminds me of my father’s,” she admits. Her dwindling stash of peanut butter explains her inability to rise up from the imagined safety of her sofa to venture out into the world to replenish it and she holes up in her tawdry East Village apartment while indulging in the schadenfreude of CNN’s apocalyptic reports of the devastating effects of climate change. Agoraphobic, depressive, defeatist and snide, she’s hardly anyone’s idea of a heroine.
Her sometime boyfriend, Jonah (Alex Brightman) can’t lure her outdoors and neither can her mother, Adrienne (Natascia Diaz), nor her roomie, Steven (Joshua Morgan). “I’m busy acknowledging the inevitable,” she moans, forgoing her dreams of starting a neighborhood bakery. And as she stays put in her apartment with her pet goldfish, Herschel, life goes on around her while the others appear and disappear both in the present and from the beyond.
Alex Brightman (Jonah) and Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood.
In Soon a compact musical with book, music and lyrics by Nick Blaemire, the four intersecting lives are highlighted through some pretty quirky tunes. “Peanut Butter” and “Bar Mitzvah for the First Jewish Fish” are two of the eleven numbers that express the mood of the characters.
Director Matthew Gardiner, who last year brought us the brilliant Sunday in the Park with George, has assembled a capable cast of top-drawer talent to push this musical to the next level. In particular Natascia Diaz, who we raved about in last year’s The Three Penny Opera, and Joshua Morgan, whose performance as the campy gay roommate electrifies the stage and provides necessary comic relief.
Also of note are the production values enhanced by the work of Projection Designer, Matthew Haber, who splashes across the walls the gloom-and-doom newsreels of the world’s natural disasters; and Dan Conway whose set design, replete with crime prevention bars on the apartment, reflect Charlie’s self-imposed, emotional prison.
Jessica Hershberg (Charlie) in Soon at Signature Theatre. Photo by Teresa Wood
My only complaint is with the story. It is overly challenging to drum up empathy for Charlie, even when we discover that she has contracted a disease through her own mother. She is heartless and dismissive to Jonah, who begs for her affections. “Everything I ever wanted never happened,” she whines. Who puts up with that? Well, the long-suffering Jonah, the man who gives her a goldfish in hopes that it will bond him to her forever, does. Even in a particularly tender moment when he tells her that his parents have offered to pay for her medical care, she blows him off.
By the time we get to the fairytale ending and Charlie has caved to Jonah’s unfathomable love, it is of little satisfaction to watch them picnicking while the world ends to the strains of the number, “Make Love”. Think post-apocalyptic sci-fi romance. Millennials will thrill to the futility and despair.
Through April 26th in the ARK Theatre 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.
Jake Winn (Luke) and Christiane Noll (Eileen) in Kid Victory – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Luke is frightened. He can’t relate to anyone anymore and can’t explain where he’s been. At seventeen he vanished and now, one year later, he’s returned to his middle class home in small town Kansas. Was he taken or did he leave on his own? The police and the searchers never knew if they’d find him dead or alive. How will he explain his disappearance to a grieving community, a family whose deeply held religious convictions couldn’t, and can’t, help him and a girlfriend whom he refuses to see? “Why did you stay? What went on?” Detective Marks (Bobby Smith) asks of him. A cursory examination of the Stockholm syndrome would explain the conflict Luke endures.
Kid Victory is a haunting musical written by the legendary composer, John Kander (Chicago, Cabaret) and playwright Greg Pierce(Slowgirl). Its themes are both compelling and disturbing. They tell of a boy who’s made dangerous decisions he can’t come to terms with and a family who has too much invested in the prayer circles of the Heavenly Day Church to see beyond their blind faith to real human connection. Donna Migliaccio plays Gail, the family’s religious guide.
Donna Migliaccio (Gail), Bobby Smith (Ensemble), Laura Darrell (Ensemble), Parker Drown (Ensemble), Jake Winn (Luke) in Kid Victory – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Jake Winn plays Luke, aka ‘Kid Victory’, a name thrust upon him by Michael, aka ‘Yachticus’. Through an online gaming site the older Michael befriends the wide-eyed Luke, inviting him to meet up for a day of sailing. Jeffry Denman crafts a credibly evil portrait of a psychopath whose pastime is dreaming up Viking adventures that provide the plot with unusual musical levity while conversely contributing Michael’s ominous line to Luke. “To the west of pain is paradise,” Michael convincingly declares.
Jake Winn (Luke) and Jeffry Denman (Michael) in Kid Victory – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Christianne Noll as Luke’s Mother plays a domineering woman more concerned with china collections and churchgoing than her son’s mental anguish. She is perfectly partnered with Christopher Bloch, Luke’s Father, a man so accustomed to being dominated by God and his wife that he is emotionally out of touch.
Christopher Bloch (Joseph) and Jake Winn (Luke) in Kid Victory – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Against his mother’s wishes Luke takes a job working for Emily (Sarah Litzsinger), an offbeat garden shop owner reminiscent of author Armistead Maupin’s quirky Haight-Ashbury characters. Emily is a free spirit and Luke takes to her uncomplicated life like a fish to water. In “People Like Us” she lets him know that it’s okay to be different. Litzsinger is marvelous as the take-no-prisoners hippy who can travel to Kenya to help the poor, but can’t care for her own daughter, Mara (Laura Darrell).
Sarah Litzsinger (Emily) in Kid Victory – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Scenic Designer Clint Ramos creates the perfect triptych, dividing the stage into a living room, a boy’s bedroom adorned with childishly drawn sailboats, and Emily’s gnome-filled shop. A photographic backdrop of the beautiful Kansas wheat fields frames the conflict between freedom and isolation. Ramos draws in the dark side with a revolving bed that takes us into the clashing worlds of innocent boyhood dreams and Michael’s diabolical mind games.
How, you might imagine, can seventeen songs accompany this plot? Though the music and scenes transition through ballads, blues and comedic slapstick, they appear to do so seamlessly – – so seamlessly that some numbers segue one into another.
Liesl Tommy directs this riveting tale that will leave you indelibly moved.
Through March 22nd 2015 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.
Mary Kate Morrissey (Sharon Falconer), Nova Y. Payton (Mary Washington) and Charlie Pollock (Elmer Gantry) – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer has gone back to the well to remount Elmer Gantry, a show he co-produced in DC with writer John Bishop, composer Mel Marvin and lyricist Bob Satuloff sixteen years ago. Reimagined by the original team, this massive musical based on Sinclair Lewis’ quintessential novel now boasts several new numbers and a re-worked script.
Backed by a ten-piece orchestra, there is a great deal of heart and soul in this redemptive tale of a down-on-his-luck preacher and a young, ambitious evangelist, Sister Sharon Falconer. When Gantry (Charlie Pollock), a traveling farm equipment salesman on his last dime, watches the second-rate religious troupe at a revival meeting, he seizes the opportunity to join them, wooing the beautiful Sharon and transforming their hokey act into a big time, holy roller spectacle filled with gospel singing, Sunday go-to-meeting psalms and mournful folk songs. “People want to feel that heat in their lives. They want to laugh. They want to cry!” he tells her. And by the time they get to Topeka, Gantry has created a full-blown, berobed, hallelujah choir, and the pair’s sermonizing has reached a feverish pitch.
Ashley Buster (Epatha Washington), Nova Y. Payton (Mary Washington), Daphne Epps (Grace Washington) – Photo by Margot Schulman.
It’s at this point, midway through Act I with the addition of three gospel-singing sisters led by Nova Y. Payton, where the show truly catches fire. The Washington Sisters played by Payton, Ashley Buster and Daphne Epps bring a huge, near dwarfing presence to the rest of the chorus. In “Carry that Ball”, a football-themed spiritual that substitutes the word “touchdown” for “hallelujah”, Payton takes her singing to the rafters, electrifying the audience and juicing up the show.
Mary Kate Morrissey (Sharon Falconer) and company – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Mary Kate Morrissey does a fine job as the ambitious and charismatic Sister Sharon whose past is as suspect as Gantry’s. In the tender tune, “You Don’t Know Who I Am”, she lets him know she has had to reinvent herself in order to evolve.
Unfortunately believable and powerfully passionate performances by Morrissey et alia are not matched by Pollock, whose uneven performance especially in Act II (he runs out of steam in their big duet “With You” and his solo turn in “My American Dream”), unreliable voice, and buzz cut hairstyle with trendy facial stubble, all contribute to his seeming out of date and out of sync with the other actors.
Charlie Pollock (Elmer Gantry) and Bobby Smith (Frank Shallard) – Photo by Margot Schulman.
Watch for Bobby Smith, outstanding as Frank Shallard, Gantry’s slick-as-a-snake associate; and Harry A. Winter as Bob Faucher, the unscrupulous banker, to keep this revival afloat.
Through November 9th 2014 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.
On the off chance you might not read this review all the way through and that perhaps you’ll skim through to get to the meat of the matter – – the rating! – – I’ll give it to you in the first paragraph. Sex with Strangers may be one of the best comedy/dramas I’ve seen this year – an engaging, challenging, hilarious, deliciously sexy, stylishly clever, utterly modern relationship conundrum performed by a pair of actors utterly in tune with each other. Playwright Laura Eason’s snappy, sexually charged repartee will be familiar to those who have seen Netflix’s House of Cards where she was part of the writing team of season two and three.
If you’ve read this far, here’s the set up. Ethan, a successful young writer, arrives at a secluded writer’s retreat in the midst of a blizzard where he encounters Olivia, a 40-ish writer working on a new novel after her first book went nowhere fast. He has already scoped out Olivia’s work through a mutual friend who told him she was staying there. Is he there to work on his novel, or is it just a ruse to publish hers? Along with Olivia we are in a constant state of bemusement, and any attempts to decoct the plot will prove fruitless.
Holly Twyford (Olivia) and Luigi Sottile (Ethan) – Photo by Theresa Wood.
Four-time Helen Hayes Award winner Holly Twyford plays the tech-challenged Olivia, and Luigi Sottile plays Ethan, a New York Times bestselling author of sensationalist books that owe their success more to internet marketing techniques than whatever talent he might have. “Critics say they’re lower than fortune cookies,” he confesses, explaining how the books evolved from his blogs about weekly hook ups with strangers. Still she’s intrigued by him, his knowledge of the wonders of self-publishing and his familiarity with the instantaneous allure of technology. Instead of rejecting this Lothario she’s eager to learn about his development of an app to publish books online. Though his history of debauchery comes up, it is a mere bump along the road to their romance and only seems to fuel her excitement about his plan to re-issue her novel as an e-book – – under an assumed name.
Tantalized by the prospects of finally giving her book its proper due, he meets her at her Chicago apartment with an IPad pre-loaded with some of her favorite books. “It smells like the future!” she exclaims. Later, snubbing his e-book suggestion when an opportunity to sign with prestigious New York publishers comes up, she grouses, “I want a real book!”
Three-time Helen Hayes Award-winning Director Aaron Posner keeps the action, and comedic timing, swirling as fast and furiously as the snow outside the set’s window panes which, thanks to Andrew Cissna’s clever lighting design, reflect the increasing wildness of the storm outside – – and inside too. Enhancing the ambiance, Set Designer JD Madsen captures the writer’s world with the room’s sidewalls created from the textblocks of hundreds of books, and designing a parquet floor suggestive of different book shapes.
Highly recommended.
Through December 7th 2014 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.
The cast of Sunday in the Park with George. Photo by Christopher Mueller.
It’s been 16 years since Signature Theatre under the direction of Eric Schaeffer, mounted Sunday in the Park with George – Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning musical.Back then it starred my niece Liz Larsen as Dot (Family plug: She is currently on Broadway in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), and her husband Sal Viviano as George. Though they were both nominated for Helen Hayes Awards, it was Liz that came away with the honors for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical” and we all celebrated at a glittering evening at the Kennedy Center.
Fast forward to the latest production under the superb direction of Matthew Gardiner who has cast heavyweight Broadway stars Brynn O’Malley in the role of Dot, and Claybourne Elder as George, to bring to the stage this living, breathing, kaleidoscopic vision of Artist and Pointillist George Seurat’s life.
Based on an imaginative interpretation of the characters in this iconic painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, the show opens onto the Paris artist’s atelier where a simple chiaroscuro backdrop echoes the 28 sketches Seurat made before completing his enormous masterpiece. Seurat was exploring the new science of color dynamics and attempting to create a new art form, at a time when his peers were deeply immersed in Impressionism. Set in the latter part of the 19th century when women wore corsets and bustles and men never went out without a proper topper, the painting emerges as the vehicle and backdrop for a tableau vivant of fifteen subjects who step out of the painting and come to life, revealing their very human characteristics. Frank Labovitz’s period costumes of soft colors and subdued prints blend seamlessly with the muted colors of the painting.
Brynn O’Malley (Dot) and Claybourne Elder (George) in Sunday in the Park with George. Photo by Christopher Mueller.
As George taps dots onto the canvas, model and paramour, Dot, poses with her parasol held aloft, echoing her prominent role in the painting. She is frustrated by the heat, her constricting attire and his lack of interest. “If I were a Follies girl,” she wistfully sighs. In the song, “Color and Light” we become aware that his obsession, trumps all romance. And in “We Do Not Belong Together” they early on become resigned to abandon their love. “You are complete, I am unfinished,” Dot intuits. He proves she is right in “Finishing the Hat”, in which he sacrifices their time together for his art. Elder must give a tightly wound, highly controlled portrayal of the emotionally disconnected artist, and he does that quite convincingly, while O’Malley counterbalances it with a lithely lyrical Dot.
Daniel Conway’s set design reflects the artist’s struggle to achieve “order, design, composition, tone, form, symmetry and balance”. He enforces that passion by eliminating and adding back silk-screened trees, dogs and a lone monkey according to George’s indecisiveness.
The Boatman, played marvelously by Paul Scanlan, comes to life as a smarmy low life who likes to terrify frolicking children when he is not insulting George. Mitchell Hebert is Jules, a fellow artist and staunch critic of George’s new art. Together with his wife, Yvonne (Valerie Leonard), Mr. (Dan Manning) and Mrs. (Maria Egler) they provide brisk and hilarious diversion.
By Act Two we have left the Victorian era and are transplanted into the present day. George’s great grandson is unveiling a light machine called a “Chromolume”, at a swank Paris gallery, and in “Putting It Together”- “link by link, drink by drink, mink by mink” – he schmoozes well-heeled patrons hoping they’ll underwrite his invention. This is where Lighting Designer Jennifer Schriever really displays her wizardry in a spectacular array of whirling pointillist beams of light and framed pixels of swirling primary colors. Accompanying her grandson is George’s wheelchair-bound mother, also played by O’Malley, who sings the poignant tune, “Children and Art”, a tenderly wrought and exquisitely sung number that will rip your heart out.
A wonderful, wonderful cast.
Highly recommended.
Through September 21st 2014 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.
