TheTheatreSource

Elaine Stritch Isn’t Leaving New York Quietly… And We Wouldn’t Want it Any Other Way!

Derrick Jones — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:48:06 +0000

Elaine Stritch Isn’t Leaving New York Quietly
And we wouldn’t want it any other way

If April hasn’t already been declared “Elaine Stritch Month” in New York, it should be.

After seven decades in New York, Elaine Stritch, one of the last Grand Dames of the Great White Way, announced earlier this year that she was leaving New York and moving closer to her family in her hometown of Birmingham, Michigan. But, it seems Stritch was determined not to leave quietly.

Earlier this month, in one more cabaret act at the Café Carlyle, Elaine Stritch: At the Carlyle… Movin’ Over and Out, the 88-year-old proved she’s still got it. For five nights, Stritch, clad in her signature look – a man’s white shirt and black tights (proving you can have great looking legs at any age) – bounded to the stage.

With her mother’s cane in hand for added support, Stritch was ready to once again wow standing-room only audiences in the tiny venue located in the famed Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side.

For the uninitiated, let’s pause for a moment and review just who Elaine Stritch is and her contribution to the American theatre:

Stritch arrived in New York at age 18 and at 22 made her Broadway debut in the musical review Angel in the Wings. From there she went on to success on stage, screen and television.

Her powerful and gravely voice made its way into classic productions of Pal Joey, On Your Toes, and Noël Coward’s Sail Away. She conquered plays like Bus Stop and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She played a wealthy widow and became the object of desire in the Walter Matthau / Jack Lemmon comedy, Out to Sea. And Stritch made her mark as Colleen Donaghy, the harden, yet hilarious mother to Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy in NBC’s 30 Rock.

But it was her part as Joanne in Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 production of Company that elevated Stritch to iconic status with her performance of The Ladies Who Lunch (let’s propose a toast!) Most recently, she starred alongside Bernadette Peters in the 2009 revival of Sondheim’s epic, A Little Night Music. (Stritch and Peters replaced Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones, respectively.)

And now back to our regular program…

In a reminiscing nod to her one-woman show, Elaine Stritch At Liberty, which landed her a Tony Award, the legend told stories of her encounters with other entertainment legends (“Judy Garland is the funniest white woman I’ve ever met”). She shared bawdy jokes (“St. Peter looks at Jesus and says, ‘Are ya gonna fuck around or are we gonna play golf?’”). And, with the help of her longtime musical director, Rob Bowman, Stritch showed she can still sing even if her voice lacks some of the power it once had.

There were no ladies who lunch, or any other interpretations of Stephen Sondheim, which turned her into a theatrical icon. Just a powerhouse of the American theatre sitting down to have a conversation with the people who matter most to her: her audience.

But if you thought that the cabaret was the final word before Stritch’s move back to Michigan, you’d be wrong. If you’ll pardon the pun, Stritch has one parting shot.

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, a documentary directed by Isotope Films founder Chiemi Karasawa, makes its long-anticipated debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York tonight.

The “hilarious and achingly poignant” film gives us Stritch’s “take on aging, her struggle with alcohol and diabetes, and the fear of leaving the follow spot behind.”

———-
From the summary on Isotope’s website:

In stolen moments from her corner room at the Carlyle, and on breaks from her tour and work, candid reflections about her life are punctuated with rare archival footage, words from friends (Hal Prince, George C. Wolfe, Nathan Lane, Cherry Jones and John Turturro) and photographs from her personal collection. By turns bold, hilarious and achingly poignant, the journey connects Stritch’s present to her past, and an inspiring portrait of a one-of-a-kind survivor emerges.
———-

In interviews, Karasawa shared that the idea for the intimate portrait of Stritch came from Vartali Salon stylist Piet Sinthuchai. Sinthuchai counts both Stritch and Karasawa as regular clients. After being introduced to Stritch, Karasawa, a long-time producer now turned director began a crazy two year period following Elaine Stritch as she kept up a dizzying schedule that would make men half her age weep.

On Monday, the Tony and Emmy Award winning subject will once again take to the stage, along with Karasawa, and Charles Isherwood of the New York Times for a discussion about the film, her life in the theatre, and industry dish (maybe more Judy Garland stories?). The discussion is part of the Tribeca Talks®: Beyond the Screens: The Artist’s Angle series.

With all of the recent attention on Stritch, you have to think that this isn’t the swan song of an actress past her prime; it’s the next phase in the long and celebrated career of a woman who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “quit.”

I’ll drink to that.

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Tickets for the three Tribeca screenings of “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” went fast, but as with all films at Tribeca, there’s no such thing as a sold out house. Those wishing for a chance to see Stritch one more time before she heads off to Michigan, can arrive early and stand by for rush tickets.

More about Elaine Stritch:

Playbill Vault archive of Stritch’s Broadway career
Elaine Stritch on IMDB

Full disclosure: The author is a self-described, unabashed Elaine Stritch fanboy. He also contributed to the Indiegogo campaign for Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me.

The Grand Irrationality

Michael Donatich — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:17:52 +0000

The first thing you notice when watching The Grand Irrationality, despite the Los Angeles location of The Lost Studio, is the very British setting of the play. That would be due to the fact that this world premiere comes from British Playwright and novelist Jemma Kennedy, and it doesn’t initially seem necessary to have half a cast don their very convincing accents to convey something as site-unspecific as a family dramedy. But, upon further inspection, the actors’ accent work adds a dimension to the three-way love story with a commentary on female empowerment – which, oh yeah, The Grand Irrationality is also a play about. Multi-layered, but somewhat segregated, Kennedy’s themes don’t interact enough to feel interwoven, and the result is a single play that really feels like two – but what a wonderful problem to have.

Gregory Marcel leads as an English Ad-man named Guy, who lands the account, and beds the American brand manager, for a soft drink looking to target women. The asinine marketing campaign claims to represent female empowerment, which juxtaposes well against a mysterious French woman Guy meets who runs a program to educate women in Africa on their reproductive rights. Simultaneously, Guy is burdened by having to care for his father after a bad fall, as well as his single-mum sister suffering from severe post-partum depression. You might as well call the two storylines “Play A” and “Play B”.

While Guy’s sister Liz – played brilliantly by Mina Badie – bridges the two themes with her desire to be a good mother, both plays seem to be self-contained. At times I didn’t know if I was getting a two-for-one special, or if I was more interested in watching one storyline over the other. Is there a third option, where I get to see a play revolving around Kennedy’s three ladies? Because that’s a show I would see again and again. Mina Badie, Kirsten Kollender, and Bess Meyer are a force as Guy’s sister, American co-worker, and French crush. When all three are onstage together, which only happens once, they are a tidal wave – bringing together three very different (and deliciously conflicting) views on how women define themselves as successful, independent, and empowered.

While I’d hate to play favorites, Kirsten Kollender as Guy’s uptight American collegue-turned-lover Nina, was… well, my favorite. Characters like Liz and Vivienne are a dream for actresses, hilarious while heartbreaking with personalities that grab you immediately. Though much credit should go to Bess Meyer for keeping Vivienne enchanting – as she is written in a way that could easily be portrayed as a French version of the generic manic pixie dream girl, a character like Nina can truly be a death sentence. She’s written more two-dimensionally by comparison to the other ladies, starting off well composed to the point of boring and ending up a stereotypically frantic jilted lover – which works in theory, as the type of women Nina is, one who equates materialism with empowerment, tend to lack dimension. But what could have easily been the weakest-link of the night in the hands of a lesser-actress is truly a breakout performance in the hands of Kollender, who gives Nina a proper arc from uptight to unraveling, injecting life into the character which culminates in a performance both hilarious and heartbreaking where neither could have resulted.

Almost all of the show’s performances are spot on; in fact, I would even argue that the opening of the show is hindered by it. Kennedy has her play begin with a drawn out business lunch between Guy and Nina, and because Marcel plays Guy so flawlessly as a man with a glass wall between himself and others, him and the yet-to-crack Nina alone on stage creates a lackluster opening. Kennedy attempts to rectify this by ending the scene with Liz’s cartoonish introduction, which overcompensates. This is followed by Guy’s first scene with his boss, Alex, who’s dialogue reads as a contender for Glen Gary Glen Ross, but isn’t given quite enough energy by actor James Donovan to close the deal. But while Play A has a slow start, the following scene with Peter Elbling’s earnest portrayal of Guy’s father, Murry, finally gains the audience’s interest, and from there on I found myself hooked.

It is not uncommon for a playwright to choose a subject to tackle, and beat the audience over the head with said topic for two hours. It is also not uncommon for a playwrite to choose several issues to discuss, and in doing so confuses the audience with several muddled ideas that are all unrealized. It is for these reasons that I see Kennedy’s writing, and The Lost Studio’s production, to be a success; taking what could have been two separate stories with two separate themes and combining them. The themes feel segregated. But are therefore not muddled. The subjects are touchy, but the floor is shared as to not be overbearingly one-topic.

It’s a play with two storylines and two separate themes: an irrational structure with a grand delivery.

Smash: The Complete 1st Season on DVD

Dan Deevy — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:08:05 +0000

*please note the actual release date for this set is Jan 8, 2013

A lot of new television shows come and go without so much as a single wave in pop culture being made; Smash, on the other hand was a whirlpool of excitement, speculation and buzz for months before it even hit the airwaves.

Whatever your opinion was of the Ryan Murphy created musically based series Glee back in 2009, its continued success (now in its 4th season and about to spawn its first spin off series) has proven that the musical is NOT dead.

You don’t have to be a massive theatre queen to be moved by stories that are told through song and dance. And the fact that each week you want to tune in to see what new amazing productions have been created or where the drama is leading your favorite emotionally charged character whose love of hyperbole is unmatched, doesn’t mean you are out of touch. In fact, it means you’re ahead of the curve.

NBC premiered its tougher, grittier musical series Smash in February of 2012 to generally good reactions. The early buzz surrounding the show was so intense because it was going to mark a lot of firsts for a great many reasons.

For the theatre crowd it was going to be the first time that a truly accurate representation of their lives was reflected in a weekly TV show since Fame back in the 80’s. It also saw the return of Emmy Award winning Actress Debra Messing (Will & Grace) to network television as well as the first time that Oscar winner Anjelica Huston would appear as a series regular on a show.

The production of Smash was also a huge boon for the entertainment industry in New York. Still reeling from the loss of all of the various Law & Order series, save SVU, Smash was going to employ a ton of people from background extras and craft service providers all the way up to some of the lead cast members who were formerly only known to the world of Broadway.

The show filmed on the streets of New York adding to the authenticity and the talent behind it was unquestionably top shelf. But, I have to be honest, I initially only made it through the first 2 episodes before losing interest.

A lot of shows take a while to find their footing and this one just wasn’t grabbing me.

Fortunately, when I had the entire season staring back at me on DVD and was able to get those pesky first 3 or 4 episodes out of the way quickly, it was a very different experience. I began choosing sides, clapping to myself after musical numbers, rooting for specific storylines to either be expanded or left to die by the way side; in short, I was finally invested in this show and these characters.

Former American Idol contestant, but don’t hold that against her because she is astounding, Katharine McPhee plays the naive young girl from small town Iowa who comes to New York with big dreams and an even bigger voice! She’s living the New York dream of waiting tables to barely pay the bills while spending all of her spare time being rejected at auditions where often times they don’t even let her finish before shouting the dreaded, “Thank You!”

The real drama begins when she auditions for a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe and finds herself up against the intimidating Broadway veteran Ivy Lynn (played by Broadway star Megan Hilty). The battle between experience and raw talent wages not only between the two actors, but ultimately spills out into the entire production.

Debra Messing and Christian Borle are the scribes behind this would-be sensation, legendary producer Eileen Rand (Anjelica Huston, who is delicious in this part by the way) while battling through a difficult divorce from her former husband and business partner, is struggling to prove that she can produce a hit on her own without good old ‘Jerry’ and the universally disliked, but highly respected, Derek Wills (Jack Davenport) is at the helm of this uncertain venture.

The competition between Ivy and Karen plays out exactly as one would expect and the reason for that is because it’s truthful. I’ve actually known people who’ve been in this situation and trust me when I tell you, the unattractive Diva stripes that Ivy is willing to dawn in the pursuit of this part and the ‘I don’t understand why you all hate me,’ reaction that Karen has, is all spot on. As far as Ivy is concerned this is a battle to the death but for Karen it’s not something worth losing her soul over; even though getting the part would be an unbelievably validating dream come true for her.

We also have the secondary character of Ellis Boyd, played by uber-newcomer Jaime Cepero, who is learning what it takes to make it in the business from a different angle. He begins as Tom’s (Christian Borle) assistant but quickly learns that the true power rests in the hands of the producers not the writers, so he defects and becomes Eileen’s assistant.

Ellis is the necessary evil on this series. It is unquestionably essential that he be there, because people like him are an absolute mainstay in this business, but man do I wish that wasn’t the case. I can’t even use the clichéd expression that ‘I love to hate him,’ because I don’t… I just hate him.

Unlike the other characters, who are emotionally torn when they have to do something less than honorable to achieve their goals or to protect their families, Ellis revels in it. He craves the power and that feeling of superiority and control over other peoples’ lives. He’s duplicitous, conniving and only a few steps away from being a complete felon. But damned if he doesn’t always get what he wants; which honestly in life is often the case with people like him.

Again, I think the authenticity of the story is one of the shows strangest attributes but one aspect that had me scratching my head was the speed with which Tom and Julia are able to compose these magical numbers. It’s entirely possible that that is in fact how it’s done, but it’s presented more like they are working on getting some spreadsheets finished rather than creating something artistic.

This brings us to the most important element of this entire series… the music. It’s one thing to present us with characters who are supposed to be enormously talented writers and composers of original material, it’s entirely another to then create that spellbinding material for the audience to experience and then judge for themselves. I’m happy to say that Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman and Joshua Bergasse, the actual people behind the musical compositions and the choreography, produce numbers that could easily be up on Broadway tomorrow receiving nightly standing ovations.

The season has the perfect blend of emotionally moving ballads, exciting and fun up beat dance numbers and even a couple of slightly risqué and provocative pieces. The plot of course centers on the rehearsal for this one show so we have to see certain numbers several times, but thanks to careful editing and excellent creative choices, we never get tired of any of them.

Thanks no doubt to the initial positive buzz and the innate love of Broadway in the acting community, Smash is able to bring us some great big name guests stars in its inaugural year.

Nick Jonas appears as a wealthy super star whom Tom and Derek actually discovered and that Eileen ultimately turns to for help, Dylan Baker is Karen’s concerned but supportive father, Bernadette Peters plays Ivy’s mother, a legendary Broadway sensation who doesn’t want her daughter to follow in her footsteps, and finally Uma Thurman who plays the not-nearly-as-talented ‘Hollywood’ Actress who may or may not steal the part of Marilyn away from both Ivy and Karen.

For a first year the team behind Smash really did a fantastic job of creating a show that not only appealed to a mass audience, but also remained respectful of, and true to, the source material and those involved in its creation.

In addition to all 15 original episodes of Smash, this 5 disc DVD set also contains a bunch of special features; most of which are actually worth watching.

Virtually every episode has deleted or extended scenes that you can tell were only cut because of time. If the show could run longer these scenes would have been in there. These aren’t throw away, useless deleted scenes, they actually add to the story and to the character arcs so they are definitely worth watching after each episode.

Sadly you can skip the ultra-short, unfunny Gag Reel but be sure to watch the Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes, Dream Come True and Song and Dance. They both give you some great background on the creation of the show and interviews with the cast and crew. My only complaint is that they too were all too brief.

Now, after having seen the entire first season and all of the special features, I think the reason that I didn’t immediately respond to this show was because those first few episodes just had to get all of the obvious plot points out of the way before they could move on to newer things. After all, you can’t accurately portray the journey that a musical theatre actor goes on if you ignore the parts of it that are already commonly known.

But once those circumstances have been established and the actors have been cemented in their roles, the flexibility in the story telling begins to take shape and when we leave these people following the incredible season finale, that’s where we are.

The season finale, by the way, comes together brilliantly as we watch this seemingly doomed production finally shine. The last number was so emotional and so powerfully delivered that it literally made me tear up.

And of course this is a television series that wants to be back for a second year, so there are more than a few cliffhanger type situations that audiences will be craving resolutions to as they wait for the February 2nd 2013 premiere of Smash Season 2.

And unlike the first season, this time around I’ll be one of those people who sets his DVR and rushes to Facebook to post my reactions each week as the drama unfolds.

Gates McFadden Interview for The Fisherman’s Wife

Dan Deevy — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:26:02 +0000

Written By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

25 years ago, Gates McFadden scored an opportunity to be a part of one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises with the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Beverly Crusher. Despite a brief departure from the series in its second season, Gates remained a series regular for the rest of the shows run and then went on to star in 4 major motion pictures as the story continued from Star Trek: Generations in 1994 all the way through 2002 with the final appearance of the TNG cast in Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002.

In the years since the end of The Next Generation, McFadden has taught in several universities, including AADA, Brandeis, Harvard, Purdue, Temple, The Stella Academy in Hamburg, Germany, and the University of Pittsburgh. She currently teaches as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Theater at the University of Southern California.

Her most ambitious project to date has been as Artistic Director of Ensemble Studio Theatre of Los Angeles since 2009. During her tenure, she spearheaded the building of the Atwater Village Theatre Collective in Los Angeles.

McFadden’s current play with the theatre is The Fisherman’s Wife, which she also directs. It tells of a married couple named Vanessa and Cooper whose sex life has grown stale. While her husband is out at sea, Vanessa is visited by a mysterious traveling salesmen and sea creatures with some very intense desires. We asked Gates describe the play for people who haven’t seen it.

“Well, the writer Steve Yockey really did come up with a great subtitle, which is ‘A sex farce. With sea creatures’,” McFadden recalls, “I mean, how many of those do you see? And it really is that. It’s a wonderfully wacky, weird, funny show. It’s slightly dirty, but you don’t really see anything, so there’s nothing really that happens, but I think of it as a very hilarious fable with some very unexpected things and it’s silly and wonderful.”

“When I read it, I thought it was hilarious. I went, ‘Wow! This guy’s mind!’” she adds, “But we had so much fun working on it. It was very challenging because farce, I think, is just about the hardest thing to do. If you go too much in one way, it becomes too camp or kind of off-putting or too much the other way it can be kind of naturalistic and mean; because honestly, there’s a lot of meanness in farce. But if you can find that line, it’s very clownesque and we had a blast. I had a great cast.”

We asked McFadden what came first, meeting the writer or reading the script.

“I think I read the script first,” she remembers, “He had come to see another show I directed, which was with Greg Moss called The House Of Gold. It was a really edgy production that dealt with all of the pageant children and sort of the way our society treats children, be it putting them on YouTube when they are just a child and they have no choice in the matter. It’s all that, how parents exploit their children basically, that’s what it was about. But it also had, I had an amazing animator that I worked with for six months and we tried to storyboard things together and he’s a brilliant animator named Drew Christy. So we had animation, we had live video, and film video and the space, we really used the space in a really cool way where it was unexpected things kept happening, which made the audience very present. And he saw that and he likes that. There’s some of that in this play. He likes that. It’s theatrical. It’s different. When you’re there, you actually get involved in a very visceral way, so he sent me the script and I think I had met him on the way out. He really liked it. He said, ‘Hi, I’m Steve Yockey.’”

“I knew that his shows had been done all over town and he has about six productions happening right now in the United States,” Gates continues, “He’s a wonderful writer, but I had never read this comedy before and he wanted me to do a reading of it. I think he was sort of like well, ‘does she like it, and let’s try it out.’ So I think the week before I was leaving for Europe, I did one rehearsal with them and we really hit it off, and he liked my notes and did the reading. And that was done at The Actors Gang. And then, I made the decision to try to do this. If it’s a world premiere and I can try to do a rolling world premiere with Impact Theatre up in San Francisco, which I love to do, which is the supporting playwrights and you’re both doing a world premiere and so, you’re both getting to be connected with a production, that’s great. So that’s how it happened.”

We noted to her that The Fisherman’s Wife wasn’t just another simple “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” kind of story, that there’s clearly something a little strange going on in writer Steve Yockey’s head.

“Strange and wonderful,” McFadden notes, “And I do think that he’s hit something. I do think relationships go stagnant and I think he deals with it in a completely unexpected and unique way and if you don’t see it as a literal thing, if you see it as a fable and see it as funny, it really works. It starts out with a couple and they’re blaming each other and then because they’ve changed in some way themselves, they’re able to see and appreciate the other person, which is a very standard sort of thing, except that how this happens is not standard.”

One of the wonderful things about this production is that it’s stage in a blackbox theatre, and while the uninitiated may not think that a room with 4 black walls and minimal furniture can be interesting, their opinions quickly change after seeing this production. There are so many unexpected and very interactive things that occur during the play like tentacles coming out of doorways, a puppet show within a wall and a cast that seems to be entering and exiting from ten different vantage points.

We asked Gates to talk about the challenges of staging a play like that and how rewarding it is when it all comes together.

“Well, I’m a choreographer as well as a director,” Gates says, “And I love the audience being surprised about how the space is used, so they don’t go in and go, ‘oh, I’m comfortable here and this is my seat and everything’s going to happen here.’ That it’s going to happen right next to you and it can happen around you and not in a way that you’re going to have to get a pie thrown in your face, but in a way of just not knowing what’s going to happen next. I think that’s the key.”

“I like [films and] theater where I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and so, that’s kind of cool to me. And one of the things I try to do when I direct is to use the space or to put the audience so that they are almost involved in the play as well, they’re right there, and I like it that they almost have to participate in a certain way, not in a way of coming up and people are playing tricks on them. There’s a lot of comedy that does that sort of thing, not that way at all, you’re an audience member, but everything is not expected.”

As audience members ourselves a few nights earlier, we knew exactly what Gates was talking about. On opening night at one point our seats were in the spotlight for certain segments of the show. We almost felt as if we might have lines to say that we had forgotten.

“It’s just sort of a reminder that we’re all in it together and I think this is definitely an intimate space,” McFadden replies, “The other two theatres [at the Atwater Village Theatre] are larger, but you still feel intimate and there’s something very cool about Blackbox because of that. You can put the chairs any way, you can have the audience in the middle and everything happening around them, and I like the fact that we can change it up. For example, in theatre one, we have never done the same seating ever in anything that we’ve done. It’s sometimes, everything is on one side of the thing, and sometimes we make it into a thrust.”

“We change where the booth is, even,” she continues, “We do things where it’s not necessarily what you think it’s going to be. So what’s good is the audience can get disoriented in a positive way. You don’t go in there with your head in the program and just go, OK, this is what it’s going to be and that’s it. You just don’t know. That’s why in this show, the intermission is kind of entertainment. You can go to the bathroom if you have to, but you are going to miss something, so it’s your choice.”

Another thing we noted to McFadden that was great about the play was that even during intermission, the show was delightful and entertaining. Going on was singing and an unexpected playing of the clarinet and ukulele that made us feel that we were missing out on something wonderful even then.

“There’s a Lady Gaga song on it and there’s a Sonny & Cher song on it in Chinese and Russian,” she notes, “Well, see, that’s a good place to be, I’m not sure. It’s the idea of engaging.”

McFadden’s past with L.A. theatre includes a Los Angeles Theatre Company production of Viva Detroit and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of The Shore. She talks about how her long history with theatre stretches further beyond that during her time in France.

“I studied theatre with a man named Jacques le Coq when I got out of college,” Gates remembers, “And he really was my mentor and he influenced me a lot as an actress, as a director, and in my view of the world. So I always had a desire to go back and develop theatre in France. There was something that I felt, being over there, speaking another language; it was a very freeing thing for me as an actress. I suddenly found when I was speaking this other language; I didn’t have the same connections. I could say words that I might not say as quickly. It was easier for me to curse in French, for example, than it was to curse in English at that time, because I had come from Ohio.”

“And so, this is something that was strong in my life and I wanted to go back,’ she adds, “I loved the region near Moglie, a lot of university students there. So I found this stone barn and I also have this house where I redid both of the places and in the barn I put in theatrical lighting. So I was going to develop something for there, but what happened was I became artistic director here, so that’s sort of been put on hold. But I would like to go back. I have actually something that I would like very much to do that is sort of a reworking of Everyman, but it’s very different.”

Gates talks about how she chooses smaller theatres and areas one would create and establish a theatre in which they know people would come, they’d be able to get there, and effectively get the word out about the shows being put on there.

“Well, one of my USC students, while I was teaching there, was going out with the son of the man who’s developed this section of the street where I am,” she recalls, “And it was very dark about 3 ½ years ago and he’s built all of these townhouses across the street. I really dug the area. It was by the railroad tracks. There was something that reminded me of early SoHo in New York. No, it doesn’t look like early SoHo in New York, but just the feeling when you walked around this street. It was kind of quiet, unexpected things, and I had seen what my students had done. They went in and they took one of the warehouse spaces and they had done this theater presentation, which they kind of threw together, and it was the coolest place. And so, I just thought it was a great place to do theater and at that time, I hadn’t quite signed on as artistic director yet. It wasn’t something I sought out.”

“I was asked to take over here as artistic director,” she continues, “and we didn’t have a home, we were nomadic. So we would rent a theatre and we would do a show or you’d get a grant and do it jointly, like at the Ford. And what interested me was that I saw the possibility of getting a space. Because for me, I really love developing spaces, I really love architecture, and that’s what I actually did to the barn in France and I love how you can use it and make it something that’s theatrical and interesting. And so I came in here and everybody thought I was insane, because nothing was really happening much on this street. I picked another theatre company [to share the space with]. I had interviewed a bunch of small companies and picked Circle X, who agreed to come in on it as partners of the space, and it was really hard. We had to put the grid in and we did a tremendous amount of work and figured out the layout and how it would happen.

“When I was young, I went to the Public Theater when it really hadn’t been open that long. You would see three shows would let out at the same time and there was this feeling of, ‘wow, there’s stuff happening here.’”

“You’d see all these actors and all these audience members and people who had just been down at the museum and seen some modern art there or someone hearing some great music and that kind of community I feel is so important, and I love Los Angeles now,” McFadden adds, “I really didn’t like it 25 years ago. I love it now. I really, really do. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I like getting away from it sometimes, but there’s so much happening here now and we’re struggling, all of the theatre companies, because it’s such a spread-out city, it makes it much tougher, but I really feel if we can get film and theatre more connected in terms of the people who are really doing it, like I’m really game to do a series of shorts here and have people be able to come here and use the space and shoot some parts of their movies and stuff like that. I think it’s really, really terrific, so that’s sort of how we got here and it’s a cool area.”

“Everyone comes out and it’s a very similar feeling. You have all these shows letting out, there are three shows that let out at the same time. You have this nice kind of bar area and outdoor patio thing and I just love Atwater Village. It’s this sweet little strip and the two best bakeries in L.A. as far as I’m concerned. They are unbelievable. They are definitely top. There’s one called Proof and one called Sweets For The Soul and they are killer good. It’s just a nice community. It’s more like The Village. It’s got this feeling similar to New York. You have a lot of Armenians, Europeans, Chinese, Korean, Latino, and African American community all together and that’s very cool.”

“So it’s now developing an audience and that’s why it’s wonderful that people are coming out and talking about shows that are done.”

Gates talk about the joy she gets artistically creating something that isn’t film or TV where it will live on forever, where it exists for a short time and then something new is created in that same space.

“It’s great because it’s really like you sort of are having another little family. You’re trying something together and it’s a real challenge and an experiment. It’s very much like a team. You’re really trying something and seeing if it works. I think of people who try and send up the space shuttle or something. That’s got to be pretty cool when something like that happens. It’s pretty cool on any small scale when you work together on something and the way it takes off. It’s the way a film is. Everybody has to do their part. It’s not just one person.”

“It’s collaboration and a collaboration is what makes it fun and I love the fact that there’s so many great artists in this city,” she adds, “There’s a lot of talent in this city, so it’s just a lot of fun. And working with people like Sarah McCarron, who also had studied some le Coq techniques. She had done a little clown things with me, other things. Also, she’s one of our literary managers. She’s very smart. She’s written herself different TV series, she’s written some plays herself, and so much talent where people are multi-talent, they don’t do just one thing, just like Gary Patent, who plays the clarinet.”

We brought up to McFadden about, having come from Manhattan, we have been very impressed with every bit of the mere handful of theatre productions we have seen in Los Angeles, which is usually famous merely for film and TV, and how each one has something and interesting and different and how much of the talent is the same as you would find in New York.

“Circle X, Son of Semele, Rogue Machine Theatre, Rogue Artists, there’s a lot of amazing companies,” she says, “Not all of them do brand new work, but a lot of them do things in very unique and wonderful ways. Ghost Road Company, The Rogue Theatre Company, there’s an amazing theater community here.”

“I didn’t know about it 25 years ago,” Gates adds, “It’s really here and it’s like all the things that happened at REDCAT, which is connected to the L.A. Phil, some fantastic stuff. Come on, we’ve got to get the people out in seeing these things.”

We also commented to Gates that the cast members of The Fisherman’s Wife delivered incredible, memorable lines, such as Sarah McCarron who says dialogue like ‘I’m in a bad mood… forever,’ with such great delivery.

“She’s such a great comedian, really,” McFadden says of her, “She’s really very talented. Just an incredibly talented cast actually, all of them really. There’s no favorite. I just love them. I love my two puppeteers, they were former students of mine, I adore them. I think they’re people who make films. They’re actors. They’re in our affiliates program here.”

We brought up to McFadden that having been on something established like a movie or a TV series like Star Trek is a great way to introduce the uninitiated to theatre.

“Well, that would be great,” she says, “Patrick [Stewart] directed Brent [Spiner], myself, Jonathan [Frakes], and Colm Meaney in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour by Tom Stoppard and we took it on the road, this was while we were filming. Because of Star Trek, we did it in 5,000 to 6,000 seat houses with an eighty-piece orchestra and we did the acting in-between.”

“And I cannot tell you how many people loved it and said they had never ever gone to any kind of theater or symphony thing in their lives, but they actually loved it, and that is the power of being on a TV series that is popular,” Gates continues, “So hey, if you want to support me, please do come out and take a look at the theater out here. We have shows of all different kinds, but they’re new works and if people have scripts that are interesting, then people can volunteer and get involved.”

Gates talks about how accessible the non-profit theatre scene is in getting up and coming actors and playwrights’ works to be heard.

“They absolutely can get involved,” McFadden says, “They can volunteer. That’s what it is. It’s not a large infrastructure company, so people go to our website, they send their information, and people have meetings with them and it happens.”

“I would say most of the people here are people who came from that sort of way,” she adds, “And then, they start doing something and then, pretty soon, they’re involved in a reading and then, pretty soon, they’re involved in something more.”

We mentioned to McFadden that the friend we brought to the show has already bought tickets for a second show and said he was coming back because he just loved the show so much that he wanted to see it again and that two friends he knew would be so into this that he had to bring them.

“Oh, see, that’s great,” she says, “That’s how it happens, because I mean I want the person to like the work obviously, that’s the idea. If they like it, then they’ll get involved. And really, again, The Year Of The Rabbit is a beautiful, haunting play and it goes from Vietnam to Afghanistan and really it talks about how you think you have no personal connection to something and then, actually, it happens and it turns out you do.”

“It’s a very beautiful play about children and the cost of war,” Gates continues, “And how it’s just passed on from generation to generation that we actually really need to stop damaging our whole country and world and take responsibility for learning how to do things in a different way, which is a very Star Trek thing, tolerance and the prime directive.”

Also brought up to McFadden was the fact that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the first airing of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We asked the actress whether she would be doing any appearances with her fellow cast members for that.

“Well, there’s a lot of things,” Gates says, “I’ve chosen them. I support the theatre with my appearances and the money goes really to that… I was just in Austin with the full cast and it’s a lot of fun, we all get along. But it really supports my hobby of doing a non-profit theater company, because nobody makes money here, most of the people are volunteers, but you do have to earn money to pay for the rent.”

Gates also brought up that this year marks the beginning of the release of the Star Trek: The Next Generation season sets on Blu-Ray, with the first season having come out in June and the second season, which she didn’t appear on, set for a release in December.

“They’re really nice, aren’t they?” McFadden says, “The detail is phenomenal. It is better. They did a really great job, I think. It’s really cool.”

So if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area you should definitely pass by the theatre and see some of the amazing shows that they have running there!

You can visit their website at The Ensemble Studio Theatre for more details and info.

The Fisherman’s Wife

Dan Deevy — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:13:05 +0000

At a time when we can create almost anything we can imagine through the wonder of CGI, it’s nice every now and then to get back to the basics of storytelling. And what could be more basic than a Black Box Theatre production of a fantastically bizarre new story by a young up-and-coming playwright?

Since relocating TCS headquarters out here to Los Angeles, I’ve seen several staged productions and surprisingly I’ve really enjoyed them all. For my money though The Fisherman’s Wife was hands down the most creative and unexpected of the lot.

The Ensemble Studio Theatre located at the Atwater Village Theatre in Glendale California is home to several new productions this fall including this one penned by scribe Steve Yockey and directed by Star Trek: The Next Generation alum Gates McFadden. While Yockey may still be a new name for most, anyone familiar with McFadden’s work will expect her to bring her rich theatre background to the fore with this production and they will not be disappointed.

The tag line for this show is, “A sex farce. With sea creatures,” and I honestly can’t find a better way to describe the show.

Michael Hanson and Sarah McCarron play the married Minnow’s, Cooper and Vanessa. Notice I didn’t say the ‘happily’ married Minnow’s because they are anything but. One of Sarah’s first lines is, “I’m in a terrible mood… forever.” Which does a great job of setting up the audience for what they are about to see which is the struggle of a married couple who have not only lost that magical spark that they once had between them, but also the desire to even care enough to look for it again.

Well, that and also the magical, sexually aggressive sea creatures who firmly believe that ‘No’ actually means ‘Hell Yes!’

Thanks to an ‘alternatively attractive’ travelling salesman, played by Patrick Flanagan and the actions of the ridiculously randy sea creatures Kim Chueh and Gary Patent, Cooper and Vanessa do eventually rekindle their love for each other but the road to how they get there is what makes this play such a joy to watch.

With a writing style that harkens back to classic David Mamet, Yockey has written some incredibly sharp and witty dialogue that the actors do a stupendous job bringing to life. The fast paced back and forth is riveting and engaging and always keeps the audience up-right in their seats and leaning slightly forward so as to be sure to not miss a single word of it.

McFadden’s staging of this twisted love story was equally unique and successful. I hesitate to give too much of it away in a review because the surprises along this journey were incredibly satisfying but there are a few inspired choices that I have to mention.

As anyone who is familiar with Black Box productions will tell you, you have to be incredibly clever with how you use the limited amount of space that you have. Also visually, you have to be certain that your choices for what the audience will actually see and what will happen off stage are carefully considered. As you can imagine most of the sea creatures antics when in their multi-tendriled forms happens off stage but when we do see glimpses of them it’s always to great effect.

The moment that stands out most to me occurs mid-way through the first act during a speech that our traveling salesman is giving to a distraught and remarkably sexually frustrated Vanessa. As he recounts to her the origin story of one of his many tattoos, he removes a painting from one of the walls to reveal a large opening within that wall containing a puppet show that reenacts the story as he tells it. This reveal brought the house down and added yet another wonderful little touch to the telling of this story.

As soon as I saw this I knew this was basically the directors’ signature staring right at us. Gates of course has a long history working with puppetry, so not only was this addition totally appropriate for the subject matter but it was also perfectly integrated and executed.

I also have to mention the caliber of acting talent here. Most people assume that in L.A. all of the really talented folks must be on TV or in movies, but that’s just not true. Just as it is in New York, (admittedly to a lesser degree of course) there are tons of hard working, incredibly talented performers in L.A. who eagerly await stepping out onto the boards every night to perform and to hone their craft; and we found 5 of them right here.

Patrick Flanagan basically oozes sex appeal from the moment he ‘traveling-salesmen’s’ his way onto the stage. You will absolutely believe that all he needs to do is stare into your eyes and tell you how much you want to sleep with him… and you will. Sexual orientation aside, if this man wants to bed you… he will.

Sarah McCarron plays Vanessa’s many different levels of crazy in a way that would have made Sybil herself proud. Her ability to go from raving, sex deprived lunatic to short moments of genuine sadness and then back again is fantastic. And of course all along throwing in clever one liners to break up the audience like, ‘I might give suicide a real go today,’ made for a wonderful presentation of this character.

Michael Hanson plays the unintentionally charming, self-deprecating good guy of Cooper in a way that makes him completely relatable to everyone in the audience. The combination of his boy-next-door good looks and charming delivery puts us immediately on the characters side. His reaction to the ‘no win’ situation he was in with his wife was as real and honest as I‘ve seen. It was the perfect combination of frustration, anger and just that hint of amusement at the absurdity of it all. All of that, and frankly the many mentions of his extra-large endowment, created a guy that the entire audience wanted to hug. (For one reason or another.)

And finally Kim Chueh and Gary Patent portraying the most ‘out there’ characters, the brother and sister man-eating team of Octopus and Squid. These guys were just fantastic. They work in unison both verbally and physically to create a type of character that we haven’t seen before. I’ve tried to think of something to liken them to with little success. They are creepy, unnerving and yet endearing and hysterically funny all at the same time.

In case you haven’t guessed it by now, I really enjoyed The Fisherman’s Wife from pretty much every angle possible. So if you’re in the L.A. area, I highly recommend that you skip the movies one night and instead go to The Ensemble Studio Theatre and pay basically the same amount of money to see something wonderfully fresh and unique that will have you laughing and talking for days to come.

Visit The Ensemble Studio Theatre website for schedule, tickets and more info.

The Little Dog Laughed

Nick Becker — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:32:52 +0000

The Little Dog Laughed premiered back in 2007, as written by Douglas Carter Beane who is perhaps best known for penning To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, and has been nominated for a Tony and GLAAD Media Award. Douglas Carter Beane knows his audience, primarily a queer or queer-friendly crowd that’s come to see a kind of modern day spin on Breakfast at Tiffany’s. What they’ll find instead is a sharp take on careerism and sexual identity, that challenges presumptions most audience members will have already put to rest or filed away.

The approach is shameless, and doesn’t bother keeping pace with those that haven’t already been initiated into gay identity issues. Instead it treads new territory for a crowd used to the common slings and arrows of gay romance, but now re-imagining them in a world that is increasingly demanding and sophisticated. A closeted actor Mitchell (Owen Martin) has a one-night stand during his trip to New York that threatens his career and the career of his best friend and agent Diane, a lesbian (Bernadette Birket) who’s chosen work over a love life. His lover Alex (Trip Langley) sorts through the collateral damage with his girlfriend Ellen (Laine Jennings) but expectations be damned. This is not about love conquering all. This about love suffering from jealousy, lies and greed.

Laine Jennings phones in the part of a socialite-for-rent and I’m not sure why she didn’t do more with the part. She was likely cast for her square, rodeo-drive features and her costumes are superb but she doesn’t quite communicate the supreme boredom and self-pity of the character that is written into the script. In her final confrontation with Alex, for example, she sells Ellen’s cunning and wit but it feels unmotivated because she fails to communicate the dependence and desperation written in the part. Opposite her is Alex played by Trip Langely, who is arguably the strongest actor on stage. His character is also the most dynamic, struggling to understand how much his actions determine his identity as opposed to his desires. Alex never resolves this dilemma, and he does a wonderful job portraying a lost soul with charm and a quiet, enthusiasm for life.

Trip’s subtlety is countered by a weird, paranoid performance by Owen Martin that is marked more by the actors self-awareness, than any by internal conflict with the character. Martin is new to theatre on the West Coast, and it shows. Bernadette Birkett does a wonderful job getting across a personal performance, then following it up by charming if sometimes imperfect delivery of the more comedic bits. As such, the other actors on-stage demonstrate some degree of control having also worked television and film, but Martin gestures loudly and his cries of help are more like cries for direction from the other actors. His character is prime real estate for every range of emotion, but Martin doesn’t take it beyond extreme excitability. By the end, his performance was causing more than just this reviewer to blush in the audience.

The Little Dog Laughed is a three-act comedy seen at the Zephyr Theatre on September 1st as produced by Blazeco and starring Bernadette Birkett, Trip Langley, Owen Martin and Laine Jennings, directed by Jon Cortez. The show runs now through September 16th.

Donna / Madonna by John Paul Karliak

Nick Becker — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:56:21 +0000

Donna/Madonna is a 70 minute one-act from Writer/Performer John Paul Karliak, as seen at the Lyric Theatre on July 24th without intermission. In his opening, Karliak explains how he entertained his blue-collar family with “living room theatre” growing up in the humdrum town of Scranton, PA. Likewise, the sparsely designed set, a black box with two chairs, was the backdrop against which Karliak splashed colorful scene after scene in his semi auto-biographical coming of age story. With the help of well-coordinated lighting and sound cues, the space transformed into a busy coffee shop, a solemn, anonymous New York street, Karliak’s own bathroom.

Karliak’s story involves issues of identity; struggling to explain his own sexuality and a desire to be reunited with his birth mother, he risks hurting the one he loves most, his closest friend, and the only mother he’s ever known. Karliak admits he’s a sucker for the approval of others. But it’s a sensitive story, with carefully placed emotional beats and he never begs for sympathy, just quiet understanding. These moments are broken up by Karliak’s terrific sense of humor.

There is a hint of pop culture in every bite. Karliak or JP as he is known to everyone except his mother, tells his own experiences, which must have been damning at the time, with a joke liking the pressure of being an adopted son to that of wearing a new pair of Prada shoes. The occasional sacchrine aside and familiar dance numbers, however, never injure the sentiment. These bits reflects a deeper, sometimes troubling image of a young man who has learned again and again, how to cope with desperation through humor.

JP’s genuine nature is as sweet as apple-pie, often blush-inducing, if not entirely robust. Often, he flubbed lines and called out to his Stage Manager for a line. He was also responsive to the audience, acknowledging a ringing cell phone, hoots from the crowd, and at one point, tailoring the script for an ex-boyfriend in the audience which cut the climax short. That being said, Karliak’s sometimes imperfect touch only added to universal themes that resonate at a personal level, carefully handled with grace and wit.

Karliak’s next performance will be held at Chance Theatre in Anaheim. For the latest performances, news and motherly advice, visit www.donnamadonnashow.com. AND don’t be surprised if this burgeoning young talent shows up somewhere other than small black box theater venues, TCS Officially predicts a jump to either the small or even the big screen for this guy soon.

Brent Spiner to Dream the Impossible Dream?

Cheryl Hufnagle — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:25:32 +0000

Brent Spiner, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, wants to bring the classic musical Man of La Mancha back to the New York or London stage, he said in an interview with The Cinema Source’s Dan Deevy. There is, however, a slight problem:

“Mitch Leigh (composer of Man of La Mancha) owns the rights, and he won’t give them to me because he doesn’t know who I am,” Spiner said with a laugh. “I keep trying to convince him there are other people who do, but he, so far, doesn’t believe me.” Spiner portrayed the iconic role of Miguel Cervantes/Don Quixote in a 2009 Reprise production of Man of La Mancha in Los Angeles, which ignited his desire to bring the show to a larger audience.

Though most famous for his Star Trek role, Spiner is an accomplished thespian with six Broadway credits to his name. Most recently, he appeared on the Great White Way in Circle in the Square’s 2003 production of Life (x) 3, also starring Helen Hunt, Linda Emond, and John Turturro. He was also nominated for a 1998 Drama Desk Award for his role of John Adams in the 1998 revival of 1776. Other Broadway credits include the musicals Big River and Sunday in the Park With George.

Spiner has high praise for incoming British hit musical Matilda, slated to arrive on Broadway this season. Directed by his Life (x) 3 director Matthew Warchus, Spiner says that Matilda is a “fantastic show, the whole family’s gonna go and it’s going to run for years, I promise.”

Here’s hoping someone slips Mitch Leigh a copy of the entire 178 episode run of TNG and its four subsequent major motion pictures so he can discover that Mr. Spiner is in fact famous enough to trust with his material on Broadway.

Anna Haas Talks “Crazy Is,” Birth Control and Broadway Roles

Carey Purcell — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:59:45 +0000

Former lovers of Anna Haas, beware. You may turn on the radio soon and hear a song that sounds a little too familiar. The 27 year old singer-songwriter from Nasvhille, Tennessee, whose album, Crazy Is, will be released later this month, admits readily many songs are inspired by old relationships.

The creation of Crazy Is was instigated by a period of time in which Haas experienced a great deal of loss and turned to music as an outlet. While she now identifies Crazy Is as an album of self-empowerment, she did not intend to write it with a specific theme in mind. Instead, she said, she found the common theme after completing the songs. The album features songs written during the past five or six years, when several close relatives passed away and some meaningful relationships came to an end.

“That was the catalyst of this record,” Haas said. “I was grieving so much and so confused and the only thing I could do was make art. Making this album wasn’t such a decision or a choice, but something that naturally had to happen, coming out of me. I had all of these songs I wanted to document in the most perfect way that they can be. There’s this thread of loss and pain and loneliness, but really the message of the record is finding ways to overcome that pain and loss and finding yourself whole, coming out of it all.

“A lot of inspiration behind recording those songs and writing them is that I can’t wait for the person who broke my heart to hear this,” Haas continued. “As I was recording it and trying to make it sound awesome, All I could think was ‘I can’t wait I want to put this in the mail. I want them to listen to this song, because this is all I have to say. It’s my way, years after the fact, of saying what I couldn’t say in the moment.

One song Haas described as an “angsty breakup song,” is “Maypole,” which was inspired by an unfaithful lover. Haas, utilizing her experience in directing theater and dance, framed the video around the concept of a man playing with life-size female dolls. (Click here for a free download of “Maypole” from iTunes.)

“There’s a real parallel between this man playing with these women and a child playing with these dolls,” she said. “He’s strewing them about when he gets bored and picking the up when he wants them again.”

Many have commented on the music video on YouTube, calling it creepy or inspired by Tim Burton; Haas loves hearing these comments. Others – mostly men – have said the song is “cool,” “happy” and “sexy.”

“I had someone say that and I said, ‘Did you listen to the lyrics?’” Haas said. “I said, ‘I’m calling you out but you haven’t broken me.’”

Crazy Is is not intended solely as Haas’ way of getting the last word in with her exes. She also honors the memory of her relatives in the songs, particularly “Find Your Home,” which she believes is what her grandmother would have wanted to say to her.

Along with its personal message, Haas also hopes Crazy Is will serve as a voice of support and inspiration for young women today. She said it encourages young women to embrace their identities and, if they are artists, use them as means for creation.

Honing in on her own experience, Haas said she thinks young women need to hear affirmation for not being involved in romantic relationships.

“I think women need to hear it’s ok to be alone if you haven’t found the right person who emphasizes who you are and is proud of who you are and enhances who you are,” she said. “I think a lot of women are more concerned with the idea of being in a relationship, or the image, and letting their entire life go by settling. Being alone is a scary thing that people don’t like to hear.”

While Haas seeks to empower women with her music, she has observed the recent trend in culture to disempower women and affirm their traditional gender roles. She said she hopes to discourage that with her music.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t want to empower women to embrace their sexuality. That’s definitely an undertone of my music,” she said. “I’m not encouraging women to go out and sleep around, but I don’t think enough women embrace their sexuality, even if they have it and they’re dying to.”

Reflecting on the recent debate about birth control, Haas said, “There is often this underlying fear that men have of women gaining too much control of their lives…this is definitely an example of desperation in a changing world, to keep women held down.”

Recording an album without the association of a major label in the male-dominated music industry, Haas said she witnessed a great deal of surprise from people. She raised money through Kickstarter, because, she said, she didn’t want anyone to exercise control over her creativity.

Another aspect of Crazy Is that Haas said surprises people is that she plays and writes her own music and accompanies herself on the piano.

“I get the feeling that a lot of people don’t expect me to be the writer behind the music,” she said, elaborating on why many women in the industry do not play instruments at their concerts. “There’s this idea that women pop stars are just a voice and a face and dance and shake their asses,” she said. “I think it’s just as sexy to sit at a piano. We live in a world with so much lip synching and auto-tuning…where is the line between being an artist and a musician?”

Haas, who attended Emerson College, has a degree in theater with an emphasis in musical theater and a secondary emphasis in directing. She credits much of her current success to her education in performing, saying, “So many things I learned studying theater apply really powerfully to life and also to music and art as a whole…I love bringing the theatrical inspiration while still going down this pop rock path. I’m really just taking the pieces of who I am, and this is what my music has become.”

Haas mentioned a director who she worked with at Emerson who would ask her, “What do you want? What does the character want? Go towards what you want, and go away from what you don’t want.” She said her decision to make this album was inspired by asking herself that question and deciding to go in the direction that was pulling her the most.

But Haas hopes the theater is in her future, mentioning Reno Sweeney from Anything Goes as one of the roles she would like to play the most, and giving Sally Bowles from Cabaret the top honor.

“I don’t feel like I’ve left the theater behind me at all,” she said. “I feel like I’ve brought it with me in so many ways….If I ever got to play Sally Bowles, I would die,” she added. “She’s such a complex and fascinating character.”

“Complex and fascinating” could be used to describe Haas’ music as well, and the kind of image she hopes to promote.

“I hope to be the kind of woman and artist that women look up to and trust, so we can have that conversation they aren’t comfortable having with their parents,” she said. “I think this whole birth control thing is so f***ed up and it makes me angrier than I can express. One of the themes of my record is the idea of being natural and being real.

“It is interesting to me that there is this push to put women back into these very domestic roles,” she added. “I’ve never abided by that. I’m happy because of it and I’m free because of it, and I’m not ashamed of it.”

Anna Haas will celebrate the release of “Crazy Is” on Sunday, May 20 at 7 PM at Mercury Lounge (217 E Houston St). Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Click here to purchase them.

E-mail TheTheatreSource@gmail.com to win free admission and plus one to the release show, a signed copy of Crazy Is, and a show poster!

The Caretaker

Carey Purcell — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:44:56 +0000

“He wasn’t even listening,” a lonely man says when he realizes another has secretly slipped out the door while he was talking. This could be read as a matter-of-fact statement, but when it is spoken – rather, shouted – by Jonathan Pryce in The Caretaker, it is a cry of anguish and despairing loneliness.

Harold Pinter’s first international hit, The Caretaker was first performed in 1960. A story of a homeless tramp and the two unusual brothers who house him in their London flat, the play is an unusual one of internal and external conflict that blurs the lines between comedy and tragedy. Directed by Christopher Morahan and starring a fantastic Pryce as the tramp, this production for Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse is an extremely entertaining and effective story that explores the aching loneliness behind each man’s motivations.

The tramp, who says his name is Davies – or could it be Jenkins? – is found and brought home by the well-dressed and soft-spoken Aston (Alan Cox, excellent), who lives in a cluttered room that happens to have an extra bed. (The dismal, effectively chaotic set is designed by Eileen Diss.) Aston’s sheets are covered in dust, as are the randomly placed objects that fill his room, but Jenkins doesn’t care. (His clothes, designed by Dany Everett, are not exactly spotless, either.) Soft-spoken and kindly at first, Aston offers Jenkins a job as caretaker of the building. But Jenkins soon learns that Aston has a brother, Mick (Alex Hassell, intimidating and menacing), who also offers him the same job. Aston and Mick are startlingly different; Mick appears to be quite violent and varies between attacking and coddling Jenkins. They also inspire different reactions from Jenkins, who quickly proves himself to be a less than gracious guest. The conflict that ensues is more internal than external, and its impact can be credited to the stellar performances by all three actors. Without the proper chemistry between these men, this play would not succeed.

Pryce excels as Davies, portraying him as a somewhat addled and baffled jester but offering glimpses of the desperate loneliness that haunts his past. While his ingratitude is exasperating to witness (he frequently complains of rain blowing on his head and when Astor gifts him with a new pair of shoes, he refuses them, saying they do not fit properly), one can wager a guess as to why he possesses such bristling defenses. He is also a skilled comedian, and the careful attention he gives to removing and folding his splattered, stained, and wrinkled pants is extremely amusing to witness.

Cox gives a quiet dignity to Aston, who rarely speaks, except about the shed he hopes to build in the backyard. The loneliness of this man is palpable, and one can see why he fills his apartment with random objects that he does not use. Cox excels in his second-act monologue about the lobotomy that was forced on him as a teenager. Staring ahead and speaking in a quiet monotone, while Con Grenfell’s lighting effectively isolates and highlights him, the scene is devastating and beautiful. As Mick, Hassell depicts a compelling and mysterious man who alternately rages about the injustices his brother has forced him through as well as interior decorating. His energy is unpredictable and frightening and his scornful way of speaking is extremely amusing. (I had trouble stopping my laughter after he contemptuously invited Davies to his apartment to “listen to some Tchaikovsky.” )

While The Caretaker was first performed in 1960, its themes rang very true with current culture. Davies’ desire and need for a job is nothing new to the disenfranchised youth of Occupy Wall Street. Astor and Mick’s plans of what they could do with the apartment and the backyard are hopeful, but it is clear that neither of them will accomplish what they say they will. But even more than the economic impact of the show, the need for human connection and acknowledgement is timeless and true, evidenced by Davies’ anguished cry of, “He wasn’t even listening.” But when Jonathan Pryce is uttering that cry, he can rest assured that the audience is.