Jordan Wright
Special to The Alexandria Times
May 10, 2011
 Nancy Anderson, Sherri L. Edelen and Matthew Scott star in Signature Theatre's production of the 1976 musical revue Side by Side by Sondheim. Playing through June 12, 2011. Photo credit Scott Suchman. Where were you when you first heard “Send in the Clowns”? What about “Something’s Coming” or “I Have a Love” from West Side Story? We all have powerful first-time memories of hearing the music of Stephen Sondheim. What are yours?
I was in The National Hotel in Frenchtown, NJ, just across the Delaware from Bucks County, PA, when owner Claiborne Cary, sister of Cloris Leachman and show biz star in her own right, brought her guests to tears with “Send in the Clowns”, one of Sondheim’s classics from A Little Night Music. That was in the early ‘70’s when the show was hot and before every two-bit lounge singer had crucified it.
On Broadway in 1957 I saw Chita Rivera as Anita and Carol Lawrence as Maria tear up the house with “I Have a Love” and “Something’s Coming” in West Side Story. I was sitting with my family on the left side of the house a few rows back. We bought the cast album that night and I remember gazing at its bright red cover with a black and white overlay of Maria leading Tony triumphantly through the streets of New York. I went home with a burning desire to be Puerto Rican as I danced and sang my way around the house to its soaring melodies. Most people attributed the show solely to Leonard Bernstein who wrote the music. But it was Sondheim who penned the lyrics that altered history and brought new awareness to the nation’s Latino immigrants.
On Broadway in 1959 Ethel Merman debuted in Gypsy. I wondered how a singer could get away with singing so brashly. I vowed to project more. In the original production the offer by producer David Merrick to write the lyrics was rejected by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, when Sondheim got the call. Apparently, as the evening’s narrator tells it, Merman said, “The young man can stick around to write the lyrics.” The rest is history….
Signature Theatre’s current revival of Side by Side by Sondheim, the revue that features the composer/lyricist’s timeless hits in the period between 1957 through 1976 (before Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd) affords the theatre-lover the opportunity to luxuriate in some of the greatest show tunes ever written. It is a time capsule of the period some say was one of the most triumphant eras on Broadway.
Three singers and two piano accompanists, Resident Music Director, Jon Kalbfleisch, and Gabriel Mangiante, relate in words and music the early career of Stephen Sondheim. From his clumsy efforts at age 32 when he submitted his first musical to Bucks County neighbor, Oscar Hammerstein – who told him in no uncertain terms that it stunk, but, oh by the way, he did have talent, and then went on to give him a master class in writing musicals – to his ultimate collaborations with Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Richard and Mary Rodgers and Jule Styne, the British-born composer with whom he co-wrote Gypsy.
Imagine A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum without “A Comedy Tonight” as its opening song. See you can’t! But another tune was written for the show and later tossed out. Who knew? It was called “Love Is In the Air” and here it is woven into the first act.
All in all the brilliantly talented singers, Nancy Anderson, Sherri L. Edelen and Matthew Scott do a bang-up job of hoofing, styling and singing their faces off for a total of 30 Sondheim masterpieces. Look for Edelen’s vampy rendition of “I Never Do Anything Twice”, from The Seven Percent Solution, Anderson’s double-time rendition of “The Boy From…” from The Mad Show, and the trio’s pastiche form of the Andrews Sisters in “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company to fire up the audience.
At Signature Theatre through June 12th. For tickets and information call Ticketmaster at 703 573-SEAT or go to www.signature-theatre.org.
Jordan Wright
March 29th, 2011
Special to The Washington Examiner
 Nick Dalton as Wheatley. Photo Courtesy of Show Producer Why Signature Theatre changed the name of this production only a few months before its opening is a question I continued to ask myself throughout this lively musical. Originally entitled, Wheatley’s Folly, referring to the central character’s blustering determination to mount his playwright friend’s dreadful drama about a simple Midwestern family after the Civil War, the meaning for the change-of-heart title is not revealed until the end of the play. Well, no matter, it is still Wheatley’s folly, notwithstanding, and in spite of it the audience is taken on an uproarious, frequently slapstick, somewhat quirky and occasionally romantic adventure about theatre life and the whimsical twists and haphazard turns that emerge from the writing, re-writing and mounting of a new production called, “Return to Black Creek”. Based loosely on real events when the first American musical was born in the period following the Civil War.
The characters, remember the actors are actors (are you still with me here?), are so appalled by the badly-written and novicely-directed play that they plead with both Wheatley, the play’s manager and backer (played by Nick Dalton), and his friend Charles Barras, its playwright (Sean Thompson), to change it. “It’s foul! It stinks! Disgustingly cloying!” they revolt, in the song “Someone Must Be Told” after Barras insists, “Everyone must stand still while delivering lines!” They implore the reluctant impresario and his know-nothing playwright to save the play by making full-scale changes.
After disappearing for days on a mission of rewrites Barras returns with a single solution…to add a cough to the dialogue. The jaunty song “Cough” with the line, “If mucus be the food of love” is the cast’s retort.
The intransigent Barras, challenged by Wheatley in a Money versus Art argument, deserts the production, and the showbiz neophyte adopts every hare-brained suggestion the cast and crew throw at him. Whole scenes are discarded, characters re-invented, even tree silhouettes replace stalks of Kansan corn, cabins become
mansions, and more performers (after a fire next door an entire French ballet company is taken in and pressed into service) are added in this topsy-turvy play-within-a-play. Cue the swordfights, dry ice and small dog!
 Leading lady, Millicent Cavendish, played affectingly by Rebecca Watson Leading lady, Millicent Cavendish, played affectingly by Rebecca Watson, is an over-the-hill ingénue. She is in her 30’s. She has played Juliet 30 times. “One bad role and down it goes,” she sagely remarks as she reflects on the imminent demise of her career should the show fail in the song “House of Cards”. When Wheatley urges her not to desert him in one of the show’s most heartfelt numbers, “Stay”, Dalton has the audience in his thrall. Her reply, “Enter Love”, is a ballad whose sheet music will no doubt be in short supply when it is discovered by hordes of cabaret performers.
Other cast notables are Brian Sutherland as Roman Korda the Hungarian concert master, Kevin Carolan as mild-mannered aging funnyman C. H. Morton, Erick Devine as Jeremiah Burnett who evolves into the lyricist Hertzog, a Dr. Faustus type, Anna Kate Bocknek as Marie Bonfant the coquettish ballerina, and Alma Cuervo as Madame Grimaud, the Ballet Mistress, who convinces Wheatley in order to succeed he needs, “a little more glamour, a little more magic” in the engaging tune, “A Little More Pretend”.
The acting is top-notch all around and the music (by Mark Campbell and Joseph Thalken) is luscious. Dozens of sets pivot seamlessly (designed by Beowulf Boritt) and a 17-piece live orchestra framed by lush red velvet drapes, anchors center stage to great dramatic effect. Director Kristin Hanggi, who has worked with the Pussycat Dolls, Gwen Stephani and Christina Aguilera, puts an over-the-top play-it-for-everything-its-worth dynamic into this crazy wild burlesque and the audience is the better for it.
With nineteen songs, chorines performing everything from ballet to high-kicking can-can, and more insider theatre jokes than a cat has lives, “What’s next? Locusts?” carps Rose Morton delightfully played by Jennifer Smith, And The Curtain Rises is a riotous send up of theatre – warts and all.
Now through April 10th at Signature Theatre, Arlington, VA. For tickets and information visit www.signature-theatre.org or call 703 573-SEAT (7328).
Jordan Wright
December 20, 2010
Special to Alexandria Times
 Florence Lacey (as Norma Desmond) discusses her opus screenplay of Salomé with D.B. Bonds (Joe Gillis) in Sunset Boulevard. At Virginia’s Signature Theatre through February 13, 2011. Photo: Scott Suchman Ah, the glory days of Hollywood and the all-powerful studio star system where actors and actresses (yes, they used the feminine designation then) were promoted, protected and molly-coddled. Lavish cars were at their disposal, restaurants catered to their every whim and movie magazines were full of 8×10 retouched photos of their glamorous and scandal-free lives. The one-foot-on-the-floor Hays rules were firmly in place and “commies” were found in Russia.
Set in that most golden of eras for the film industry, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical interpretation of the 1950 film, “Sunset Boulevard”, mirrors how the lives of its greatest stars could descend into an unrelenting maelstrom when the studios dropped them.
The plot centers around Norma Desmond an aging, washed-up actress cloistered in her decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard with only her devoted butler Max to attend to her needs. Ed Dixon, who turns in a riveting version of Max as the grisly self-appointed “keeper of the flame”, embodies the spectral watchdog whose adoration of Norma and his dominion over her faded career, haunt her every move.
 Ed Dixon plays servant, Max in Sunset Boulevard. At Virginia’s Signature Theatre through February 13, 2011. Photo: Chris Mueller. Desmond believes that a script she has written for herself will revive her career and return her to her adoring fans. “With one look I’ll be me, ” she asserts. Enter Joe Gillis, played by D. B. Bonds who brings a more relaxed yet sanguine approach to the role than did actor William Holden in the film version. Gillis is an out of work film hack with a repo’ed car and nothing to show for a few successful screenplays. He’s been around the block and knows when he gets the brush off. “I only wish I could help. This town is dead!” the studio tells him.
With his last script rebuffed he crumbles. “Get off your high horse!” Betty, the studio head’s secretary, played winningly by Susan Derry, tells him, “Writers with pride don’t live in LA.” She vows to help him rewrite the rejected script in order to get noticed.
Big productions deserve live music and the first thing that grabs you around the throat is the huge sound of the scrim-secluded 20-member orchestra who prepare the scene for an electrifying choreography of soundmen, lighting crew and exotic dancers “on set” for the all-powerful Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille. It is powerful, it is flashy, and it dramatizes the third-tier men and women who labor behind the scenes to bring cinematic magic to the screen.
Webber’s version clings close to the original with a dialogue-heavy musical that revisits the film’s oft-quoted lines from Desmond. “All you wonderful people out there in the dark.” “And now Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” and “It’s a return, not a comeback.”
Musically the biggest numbers are from Norma with, “With Just one Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” covered long ago by Barbra Streisand and Kiri TeKanawa. But there are some oddly placed and irritatingly sing-songy exchanges between the smitten Betty and her love-target, Joe, who seems clueless to her amorous overtures until Act Two. Is he a poor sap or a gigolo in thrall to two clingy tearful women? …one an over-the-hill cougar…the other an opportunist. In a duet Betty sings, “I think he’s confused.” to Joe’s, “I thought I had everything in place.” There are plenty of clichés to go around in this melodrama and each cast member has their fair share.
The film version has always been a camp classic, a forerunner of the horror genre typified by “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” that starred Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. In the same vein the role of Norma Desmond is a delicate balance of pathos and kitschy parody that must soften the two elements in order to be believable and sympathetic. The role calls for a great deal of subtlety and gravitas to pull it off.
I longed to tell you I found it here, yet saw it only in glimpses in Florence Lacey’s feathery light portrayal. And though she threads the needle of Norma’s psychotic delusions, I felt she fell short of the bravura necessary to own the role and dominate the dynamic.
Musically this is not one of Webber’s catchiest and most tuneful. Perhaps that is why actress Glenn Close’s New York/LA Norma could come off so well. Yet this “Sunset Boulevard” is a brave rendition handily aided by Set Designer Daniel Conway’s big stage sensibility and elegant style.
www.signature-theatre.org
Special to the Alexandria Times
Jordan Wright
November 14, 2010
 Nancy Robinette and Sherri L. Edelen in Walter Cronkite is Dead.Photo credit Scott Suchman. Maggy and Patty don’t like each other very much. They are cut from different cloth. Maggy, played by two-time Helen Hayes award-winner Nancy Robinette, is a tight-lipped, broad-hipped disdainful pedant, whose society roots provide fodder for Patty’s rural Christian-based Tennessee-bred political notions. The setting is the stained glass windows and soft yellow color of the Cesar Pelli-designed National Airport in Washington DC, where our disparate travelers meet when their respective flights have been weather delayed. They share a table and gut-spilling conversation. Patty is hostile to Maggy’s elitism and Maggy to Patty’s boorishness, until they let down their hair after some mutual tippling. Patty bashes the actress, Maggie Smith as being too high-falutin’. Maggy could be Maggie Smith herself.
The wine-swilling Maggy mourns the end of pre-Walter Cronkite days when people dressed properly for dinner and the theatre in gloves and gowns, while the feisty motormouth Patty, played with rat-a-tat timing by Sherri Edelen, bemoans her daughter’s alienation. Country wise Patty is an over-explainer…too much information for the staid Maggy…until they swap the anxieties, failures and neuroses that construct their personal lives and discover that they are not all that dissimilar. Scratch beneath the surface of a middle-aged woman, playwright Joe Calarco seems to say, and you’ll find a lonely, frightened, frustrated widow… in this case two of them.
”Walter Cronkite is Dead” made me nostalgic for the brilliant writing and acting in the old TV sitcom “The Golden Girls”, with its weekly life lessons in men, children, politics, and sex-after-50 as seen through the eyes of Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McLanahan and Estelle Getty. And though there are no more seasoned actors than Edelen and Robinette, the comedy here feels strained, as their characters in turn point out each other’s faults and pat each other on the back in dizzying fashion.
Calarco uses a quote from Walter Cronkite to explore the political landscape in his play, “In seeking truth you have to get both sides,” Cronkite sagely said. Yet Calarco pokes and probes our oversimplified media-defined profiles of Red and Blue States and comes up empty-handed. He seems to ask, “Are they really opposites or merely frustrated voters with a different message?” In this play the lines become blurred as the cold hard assumptions Patty and Maggy make about each other are merely glossed over through sympathy or pity.
There is self-examination, as when Maggy’s long-repressed spirit emerges, “I want some chaos in my life,” she pleads. “My borders need to change!” And Patty shows self-determination as she travels without her grown daughter for the first time. But the comedic relief comes with a bittersweet price in this existential exercise being promoted as a comedy.
You may note as I did that Calarco has managed to get his play written, produced, cast, directed, staged, slotted for an opening, and promoted in a major venue in a little over a year since Walter Cronkite passed away. Was he prescient or is it that easy to write and mount these days? Very encouraging for up and coming playwrights! In any case the production is a tribute to his ability and notoriety and that of the two cast members for whom he specifically wrote this piece.
Special for Alexandria Times
Jordan Wright
November 2010
 Andrew Long, Holly Twyford and Jeff McCarthy. Photo by Chris Mueller. If you’ve never hit a golf ball, picked up a club and have no plans to…this play’s for you. Whether your membership to a posh country club, where “A Fox on the Fairway” is set, has expired or you neglected to send in your application, you will love this crazy, frothy, throwback to early Hollywood comic cinema. In an everything-old-is-new-again vein, playwright Ken Ludwig has mined the funny bone in this screwball comedy reminiscent of the days of the Marx Brothers; Cary Grant and Claudette Colbert; and Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn all rolled into one.
When we meet Richard, the urbane manager of Quail Valley Country Club, the mood is dire. Quail Valley has never won the annual golf tournament against rival Crouching Squirrel Club. But the debonair Bingham, as expertly played by Jeff McCarthy, has plans for a reversal of fortune with the entry of a new member with an ace handicap. His counterpart and nemesis from Crouching Squirrel, Dickie, has a surprise of his own and the old archenemies bet the farm on the outcome.
 The Cast of Ken Ludwig's A Fox on the Fairway. Photo credit Scott Suchman. Andrew Long plays Dickie, a veritable Mr. Malaprop who sports appliquéd golf attire and mixes metaphors with aplomb. Holly Twyford as the champagne-swilling, “I would drink water but there’s so much fish in it.” much-married Pamela, slinks through her role so seamlessly and with such universal appeal that we feel we know her. She is sharp, witty and charmingly snide. In a swipe at her ex-husband, Dickie, she tells him, “Never use box tops to buy wearing apparel.”
Swirling around the breakneck action are our young romantics. The fragile, neurotic waitress Louise, played fetchingly by the adorable Meg Steedle, and her hapless (also neurotic) beau, Justin played with puppy dog pathos by Aubrey Deeker. Their on-again off-again engagement keeps them in a dither as their breakups mount and the club’s chances for the cup dwindle.
Enter Bingham’s wife Muriel, full of frustration and cool anger. Valerie Leonard has a firm grip on the character’s hot-and-cold personality. In fact the entire cast performs with such unanimity and slick precision it will take your breath away.
Signature Theatre is blessed to have the world premiere of “A Fox on the Fairway”. Here internationally-acclaimed playwright Ken Ludwig, in a production more in line with his long-running Broadway play “Lend Me a Tenor”, revives the art of the sophisticated farce full of high anxiety. It’s madcap mayhem replete with high jinks and snappy repartee.
Tony award-winning director John Rando, who worked with Ludwig on “Be My Baby”, carves up a dazzling choreography full of leaps and bounds and canoodling and cavorting worthy of a New Yorker cartoon.
Take this under advisement: Make sure your belt is buckled and your buttons are sewn on tight, this riotous romp will split your sides in two! And do not, I repeat, do not under any circumstances leave the theatre before the cast takes their bows. I will not play the spoiler, but believe me it is a delicious surprise full of theatrical brilliance.
For tickets and information visit www.signature-theatre.org or call 703 820-9771. The play runs until November 14th.
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