Stephen Yoakam (The Poet) in the Guthrie Theater’s production of An Iliad. Photo by Aaron Fenster.

How can one actor play the size, the scope, the meaning of the Trojan War – or any war? He plays it as one man against another. He gives these men names and families. He puts them in a place in time: Ancient Troy or modern-day Ohio; a champion named Hector or a kid named Bobby.

An Iliad, which just opened in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio, is a potent reworking of Homer’s epic poem that connects the horrors of its war – the Trojans holding off the Greeks for nine years – with our own wars, or any wars. They all come down to men — sometimes just kids, really — from towns all over the world, sent to kill each other for someone else’s transgressions. Written by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, the play maintains its centering in the ancient story, but the anti-war message it carries crosses the centuries.

In the tradition of storytelling, one person – in this case, The Poet, played by Stephen Yoakam – shares information, interprets what he has seen and heard, and provides commentary. Yoakam is all we need on that stage to recreate Hector’s tender moments with his wife and baby, Achilles’ hubris-infused spat with Agamemnon, Priam’s pleading for the body of his son and all the unspeakable horrors of hand-to-hand combat, one warrior against another.

The challenge for any adaptation is to make it as good at what it does as the original was good at what it did. It should illuminate something new that we may not have seen before in that same way. At this, the play succeeds, making a strong case for its writers’ pacifist views. The senselessness of war, and the capacity for men to kill one another, the play says, transcends culture, ethnicity, geography or history.

But it should also move us as the original must have moved its audience. That I doubt, in this case. In trying to connect the dots for us, the script just couldn’t let the poetry soar, instead knocking us back into our own mundane and petty grievances just as Homer’s depiction of war’s tragedies were beginning to sink in. Pieces of Homer’s poetry, recited like music, grab us and transport us– majestic as performed by one so skilled as Yoakam. It isn’t just what the words are saying, it’s the rhythm and its cadence that touches our senses in a way that straight prose can’t.

But not for long. With a flip remark, we’re reminded that this is someone else’s play, another “take” on the one ancient war everyone has at least heard of. It’s their idea and their politics and their metaphors. (Can road rage ever be comparable to battlefield slaughter? The cheap laugh just wasn’t worth it.)

The effect was to make the play hop around, then limp, then race. This was accentuated Benjamin McGovern’s directing that appeared to meddle a little too much. Yoakum is magnificent when the script and the production of it give him space; he is more than capable of filling it.

The set is intriguing, but almost too much so in the Dowling’s intimate space: bare light bulbs in our eyes, scaffolding that we could speculate (as the Poet paces around a small pool’s pathways) would be used for the ramparts at the play’s end. And the water, running from somewhere offstage into that pool – nice trick, but did it enrich the story? The Poet as Priam, removing his shoes and socks and wading in that pool seemed more an effort to convince us that, yes, there is water in it, rather than to support Priam’s achingly beautiful plea. He turns his back to us and steps out, the hems of his pants dripping. I smell an esoteric metaphor.

Still, it’s an interesting piece and honorable premise, and watching Yoakam wrangle it makes it very much worthwhile. An Iliad runs  through May 26.

Rachel York and Ensemble in Anything Goes. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Anything Goes (currently docked at the Ordway for a week, though May 12) hails from the early tradition of American musical theater, when musical plays mostly consisted of comic sketches interspersed with (often brilliant) songs.  There are a few notable exceptions – Showboat – but this is the basic m.o.; little effort was made to integrate songs and story.  (Then along came Oklahoma! in 1943 and musical theater has never been the same.)

Anything Goes maintains this convention, lurching from character to character, from bit to bit.  Set on an England-bound ocean liner, the play utilizes stock characters: the Beloveds (Reno is beloved of Billy who is beloved of Hope who is beloved of Billy but engaged to malaprop-spouting Lord Oakleigh), on-the-lam (but toothless) criminals, lecherous near-sighted drunks, gun molls, pompous ships captains, feckless stowaways, etc.  The book writers – P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay & Russell Crouse, not to mention the “new book” by Timothy Crouse & John Weidman – have all done yeoperson work, and the play does amuse and divert but, inevitably, one begins to resent the dorky story lines because they keep us from the astonishingly brilliant

Songs.  Wow.  Anything Goes features brilliant music, every number a masterpiece: “I Get A Kick Out Of You,” “De-Lovely,” “You’re The Top,” “All Though The Night,” the eponymous “Anything Goes.”  To say that composer Cole Porter was an American master is a pathetic understatement.  This production, from New York’s venerable Roundabout Theatre, delivers solid, energized readings of the music, with little of the moody “interpretation” laid on by many contemporary singers.  This cast takes an indecent delight in Porter’s brilliance and herein lies your reason to lay out the large dollars for a ticket: Porter’s songs, no matter how often you hear them, always amaze.

And he is well-served.  The wonderful Rachel York plays the lead, Reno Sweeney, like a lithe and lissome Mae West, but when she sings and lets loose her powerful voice: boffo-ness.  Starting with “I Get A Kick Out Of You” and moving into “You’re The Top” and “Anything Goes” York serves up a kick fanny performance, easily dominating the Ordway stage.  As Billy Crocker, who gets bamboozled into stowing away, Josh Franklin more than holds his own, doing bang-up renditions of “You’re The Top,” “De-Lovely,” “All Through The Night.”  Everyone is good, but I need to cite in particular Alex Finke as Hope, Jeff Brooks as the not-very-scary Moonfaced Martin and Edward Staudenmayer as Lord Oakleigh.  This is a first rate production.

Direction and energetic choreography in Anything Goes is provided by Kathleen Marshall.  The dancing works well, though it often seems right out of a 60s TV special.  In “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” Marshall does her best work; the number has genuine jazz-hot, Fosse-esque flavor.  It’s terrific.

So: go for the marvelous music.  The dancing is good, if somewhat familiar.  Don’t expect a lot from the book.  You’ll be happy.

Next at the Ordway: Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story – playing in June.

For more information about John Olive please visit his (updated) website.

Brandon Brooks as the White Rabbit

The Children’s Theatre Company returns to an old favorite with Sharon Holland’s script of Lewis Carroll’s classic fantasy, Alice in Wonderland. About ten years after Dominic Serrand directed for CTC, artistic director Peter Brosius takes a more traditional path down that famous rabbit hole, but it’s still brimming with the splendid technical virtuosity and visual gags that CTC does so well.

I especially appreciated the way that children of all ages were incorporated into the action —not as children, necessarily, but in size- and age-appropriate ways, without a trace of “small actor, small role.” The kids were charming, carrying off a dazzling assortment of roles and responsibilities that required finesse and timing.

With all these carefully orchestrated and choreographed bits, there were a few glitches: I presume the baby was not supposed to hit the floor, for example, and there were sound effects off kilter from the schtick. Generally, for an opening night, some bits were on the loose side. But there were many that did hit and delighted this audience. The clowning with the tea party chairs was circus-worthy. The smoothly choreographed ladder sequence was set up nicely by the door slapstick in a previous scene. And what child wouldn’t want to be in Dot McDonald’s and Adam Qualls’ costumes, transformed into the personal bouncy castles known as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

The Dormouse puppet, in particular, was great fun, and the large puppetry for the Cheshire Cat (Jason Ballweber) and the Jabberwok was spectacular. But I got just as much of a kick out of the string of actors – wearing Crocs on their feet and hands – playing the rest of Reed Sigmund’s Caterpiller. It was one of those simple but smoothly executed theater “tricks” that the audience gets to enjoy from the inside out.  Brian Sostek as movement director deserves a solo bow.

This script is more faithful to the book than is necessary. In particular, the final scene in the Queen of Hearts’ garden seems to go on longer than is needed for a denouement (the ending device doesn’t require anything more than another of the Queen’s tirades anyway), and it seemed to me that the croquet with live hedgehogs and flamingos works better on the page. Throw in live wickets and it can get a little messy.

I would so like to see a CTC production that backs away a bit from the over-blown acting. I admit that I have an issue with this. I just don’t agree that children need to be “hit over the head” to be entertained. All the over-the-top silliness can work for some over-the-top characters, such as the Duchess, played chillingly by Mo Perry, and the Mad Hatter and Humpty Dumpty, both played masterfully by Dean Holt. But the Cheshire Cat, for example, was an opportunity to give it a rest, and why oh why direct Alice (Anna Evans)—the only character who isn’t mad—to almost shriek her lines? Evans is absolutely adorable; there’s no need to have her compete with the madness.

Alice in Wonderland runs through June 15 and is recommended for kindergarten age and older. Use discretion if you’re thinking of bringing younger children.

Kyle Fabel and Suzy Kohane in The Primrose Path. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Playwright Crispin Whittell and the determined Guthrie cast endeavor to turn Ivan Turgenev‘s melancholic, poignant, dreamy, and oh-so-Russian novel Home Of The Gentry into a brisk, bracing and breezy drawing room comedy — and they, for the most part, succeed.

The story of The Primrose Path (at the Guthrie, through June 15) will be familiar to devotees of 19th century Russiana: wealthy nobleman Lavretsky returns to his gone-to-seed estate in deepest darkest rural Russia to lick his wounds after a turbulent 8 years in Paris.  There  he meets Elizaveta, daughter of his not-as-silly-as-she-seems cousin Maria.  The hyper-religious Elizaveta is drifting into a loveless match with the breath-takingly self-centered Panshin.  Lavretsky hesitates (like so many Russian heroes, Lavretsky suffers from paralyzing ambivalence) then decides to save her.

I’ll stop here, not so much because I don’t want to ruin the play for you, but because the story doesn’t really provide the heat in The Primrose Path; this comes from the louche, over-the-top acting.  The best work is turned in by Guthrie stalwarts Nathaniel Fuller and Sally Wingert.  Fuller is hootingly funny as Lavretsky’s insubordinate, crusty, scratching-under-his-lice-ridden-wig servant.  As Maria, Wingert does her patented big-skirted comic fussbudget to brilliant effect.  Familiar?  Maybe, but does any performer on either side of the pond do it better?  No, and as always with Wingert, an undercurrent of raw ambition and cheerful nastiness gives her performance substance.

And then there is Hugh Kennedy as Panshin.  Perhaps not quite a stalwart (he’s getting there) Kennedy delights as the slicked down, mud-puddle shallow, charming Panshin, with his brilliant (not) singing, his narcissistic determination to destroy Elizaveta’s life with cloying affection.  Director Roger Rees knows what a treasure he has and gives Kennedy enchantingly long zig-zaggy entrances.  I was happy whenever Kennedy appeared.

As the wanna-be lovers Levretsky and Elizaveta, newcomers Kyle Fabel (in from Gotham) and Suzy Kohane do fine work — their scene in the boat thrills.  But I confess I wasn’t convinced that they were in love.  I didn’t truly buy into Elizaveta’s religiosity.  Too often, Lavretsky’s paralysis seemed bland and static (though his sudden outburts really made me laugh).

But this isn’t entirely Fabel’s and Kohane’s (or Rees’s) fault.  When The Primrose Path evokes Turgenev it sometimes falls flat.  His meditations on love (“The path to happiness runs through love”) or religion (“I want to give my life to God”) feel forced, unconvincing.  The production is frothy, super-energized; often Turgenev gets lost.  Is this really such a loss, though, with so much superb acting?

Resourceful helmster Rees pulls focused performances out of the cast and his designers (led by set designer Neil Patel) have niftily created a world both bleak and funny.  The play flows wonderfully and the (almost) ever-present piano (along with the terrific work of sound designer C. Andrew Mayer and composer Wayne Barker) gives The Primrose Path musical resonance.

Note: An Iliad opens this week in the Dowling, featuring the ever-excellent Stephen Yoakum.

For more info about John Olive please visit his (recently updated) website.

Austene Van in A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo  by Peter Vitale.

“I don’t want realism,” Blanche DuBois cries in A Streetcar Named Desire (Ten Thousand Things Theater, various venues, through May 26), “I want magic!”

The great Tennessee Williams serves up juicy dollops of both in this play.  Streetcar celebrates eroticism, passion, marriage, the transformative power of raw storytelling.  And heat: has New Orleans in the summertime ever been so vividly evoked?  Alcohol: “Maybe I’ll have just one more,” Blanche says, having worked her way through most of a bottle.  “Two is my limit.”

And magic.  From the moment visiting sister Blanche sets foot in Stanley and Stella’s flat, she spins twining tendrils of fantasy.  At first her make-believe seems harmless, an attempt to glamorize the sweaty claustrophobia of the Kowalski apartment, the reeking neighborhood.  But soon her fantasies are edged with desperation, loneliness, poison, insanity, death and herein lies the true achievement of Streetcar: Blanche pulls us in and at the same time frightens the bejabbers out of us.  A thrilling play.

Ten Thousand Things, as you likely know, performs in neighborhood centers, prisons, as well as in rehearsal halls (I saw Streetcar at Wayside House, a chemical dependency treatment center).  Performing spaces are tiny and the plays are done without lights, with minimal sets.  The effect is exhilaratingly cinematic; the audience’s camera is often just a few feet away from the action.  I don’t wish to seem coarse, but with TTT you feel like you can reach out and touch, feel, even smell the characters.  It’s a grand effect.

A Streetcar Named Desire works beautifully in this way.  As Blanche DuBois Austene Van foregoes the bland breathiness that so often diminishes the character.  She gives Blanche an edge from the very start, a slow-burn anger that makes the character passionately real.  Tall and regal, she immediately stakes out the entire flat as her territory, intimidating even Stanley.  When she blurts, “I lived in the Tarantula Arms!” we know precisely what she’s talking about, even as chills run down our spine.  Ms. Van recently performed to excellent effect at Penumbra and at Latté Da.  She has emerged as one of the area’s premier performers.  Don’t miss her here.

“Tall and regal” also describes Elizabeth Grullon who plays Stella with an understated spunkiness that allows her to effectively stand up to her sister.  She loves Blanche, with real power, but at the same time the combative “I’m not in anything I want to get out of” exchange is rendered perfectly.  (Grullon and Van are very believable as sisters, a tribute to their physical qualities as well as to Randy Reyes‘s expert direction.)  Grullon also plays, gorgeously, Stella’s physical passion for Stanley and thus provides a much needed balance to Blanche’s arch disapproval.

Kris Nelson gives us a sweet, slightly rumpled, soft-spoken, not terribly bright but certainly not a Neanderthal (as he is often played) Stanley.  Thus when Stanley explodes into violence it truly takes us aback.  Lovely work.  Rounding out the cast is Kurt Kwan as Mitch, giving the play a much-needed stolidity and dignity.  We see New Orleans work its heat-driven magic on him and we feel his pain when his vision of Blanche turns out to be a fantasy.

Now I quibble: the famous “Stella!” reunion between Stanley and his (pregnant) wife wasn’t staged as powerfully as it might be (even in the minimal TTT style).  I saw an early performance; maybe (one hopes) Reyes and the actors plan to work further on this.

Also, and although I realize this is a stripped down production, there was much material I sorely missed.  For example, I understand that the Newsboy had to go (he said, wiping away a tear) but I miss the moment when Blanche makes Mitch bow.  And I really missed, and truly mourned, the absence of the, “poor lady, why, that unwashed grape has transported her soul…” and “…I’ll be buried at sea in an ocean as blue as my first lover’s eyes.”  The material gives Blanche substance and power in her final moments onstage.

But these are, as I say, quibbles, and with A Streetcar Named Desire TTT offers a chance to see a great play in a unique new way.  Recommended.

Note: Ten Thousand Things performs in a variety of venues.  Check the theater website and make your rezzies early, as they nearly always sell out.

Note also that TTT has just announced their next season: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Music Man, and a new play by the terrific Kira Obolensky.

For more information about John Olive please visit his (recently updated) website.

A collaboration between writer, director and actor Mark Rylance and Duluth poet Louis Jenkins, Nice Fish delighted its opening night audience, but this regionally-flavored little jewel is likely to have a long life beyond Minnesota’s borders. Fanciful, imaginative and thoughtful, it’s also just plain entertaining.

Rylance as “Ron” and Jim Lichtscheidl as his fishing buddy, “Eric,” illuminate the larger world in which Jenkins’ prose poems live—Lichtscheidl skillfully playing the straight man to Rylance’s comedy. Rylance who played Per Gynt in the Guthrie’s production of that play in 2008, has found a much better match with Jenkins’ work. The poems bring a smile when you read them; they’re laugh-out-loud funny with Rylance’s perfectly timed delivery.

The environment is a frozen lake in northern Minnesota—in this case, one without a large community of fish houses, which gives the fishermen the isolation they prefer. Almost. There is a pesky, know-it-all DNR officer, played with swagger by Bob Davis.

Eric and Ron are not much alike. Eric sticks with fishing, sitting on his upturned bucket, jigging his little pole; Ron wanders like a puppy, his fishing and his attention lacking the focus that Eric brings to their activity. The imbalance sets up a way for a plot to be fashioned from the more random observations of Jenkins’ poems.

The vastness of the horizon, the sameness of it (and the absence of any actual fish) all but require that something must appear to alter the scene. And indeed it does. “Flo” (Emily Swallow) shows up, looking for a party. Little do they know that she is an enchantress, serving cocktails and dancing around the ice in a bright green cocktail dress, the aurora borealis personified. There is danger in her invitations, of course. A boyfriend, “Wayne” (Chris Carlson), appears on a snowmobile mounted with horns. He is a burly sort. Jealous, too. And he has dynamite. Carlson is convincing as the bearer of another kind of danger.

The activities that follow loosely represent archetypal themes, which is stretching the premise a bit; the hockey game seems a fitting idea, but as played didn’t quite work. But the “boy meets girl; boy loses girl” plot is an excuse to talk about more interesting things. This isn’t really about what people do—the men are on the ice all day, after all, without catching any fish—so what is it about?

In Jenkins’ poem, The Ice Fisherman, he writes: ”He’s after something big, something down there that is pure need, something that, had it the wherewithal, would swallow him whole.”

That’s an open invitation for someone with Rylance’s exquisite sense of the comic (and apparent interest in psychology and mythology) to see what else could happen when “nothing is happening.” Maybe they can make the invisible visible—like your breath when it’s cold enough.

Nice Fish runs through May 18. Recommended.

Mark Rylance started the association with Jenkins by reciting Jenkins’ “Back Country” as his 2008 Tony Award acceptance speech. Eventually, Rylance and Jenkins worked together on a play and ultimately were invited by the Guthrie to complete the work there. Rylance’s wife, Claire Van Kampen, composed the music and co-directs with Rylance.

Pictured: Mark Rylance and Jim Lichtscheidl. Photo: Richard Termine. 

Craig Johnson and Grant Sorenson in Gross Indecency. Photo provided by Walking Shadow.

Actor Craig Johnson‘s layered, knowing, subtle and intelligent portrayal of Oscar Wilde is by far the best reason to see Gross Indecency: The Three Trials Of Oscar Wilde (Walking Shadow performing at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage, through May 4).  Gross Indecency dramatizes the (successful; I don’t think I’m revealing too much here) efforts of the Puritanical powers-that-were in Victorian England to persecute Wilde for his “vile” homosexuality.

Johnson avoids the familiar traps: he refuses to rely on Wilde the fey master of the aphorism, to make Wilde the very model of a modern homosexual, to give us Wilde the ineffable wit.  Johnson plays these, yes, but they don’t dominate (if they did the performance would grow quickly tiresome).

Rather, Johnson’s Wilde faces his homophobic tormentors calmly, emphasizing his passionate reverence for Art, for Beauty.  His presence is beautifully understated.  Rarely does he “act out.”  For this Wilde, “the love that dare not speak its name” is the platonic affection of an older man for a younger – and Johnson/Wilde’s impassioned defense of this love, taken directly from the trial, thrills.

But was Wilde’s love for the swaggeringly self-centered Lord Douglas (aka “Bosie”, a lovely turn by actor Casey Hoekstra) really so sexless?  Moisés Kaufman‘s play is at its best when it questions Wilde’s motives.  Was he really such an apostle of Art?  Was he lying when he claimed that he committed no acts of “gross indecency” with sexy and irascible young men testifying against him?  Did he allow Bosie to manipulate him into the self-destructive lawsuit?  If so, why?  Why didn’t he escape to France when it became clear he would lose?  Was Wilde homosexual?  Did he identify as “gay?”  We cannot, at this distance, definitively answer these questions, but in Gross Indecency Kaufman asks them forcefully.

Director Amy Rummenie grasps the need to keep Wilde contained and dignified and so creates a production in which characters swirl, and grab our attention, stepping forward to perform newspaper articles, selections from diaries, reviews, etc.  She builds an energized, entrancing production.  She also draws uniformly excellent performances from her cast; too many to mention in this short review.  Still, I must praise Grant Sorenson‘s by turns sulky, sour and surly portrayals; and Jim Pounds‘s calm yet forceful work as Clarke; James Tucker as the spittingly angry Queensberry.

Gross Indecency is not a perfect play.  It is long for one thing, and I felt frustration flow through the audience when it became clear that there would be a third trial.  The play is predictable and often repetitive, the story oft-told.  Moreover, it frequently depends on moral smugness, asking us to look down our 21st century noses at the misguided characters, a manipulation I resented.  Still, Kaufman often – but not always – avoids these pitfalls via the intelligence and energy of his playwriting.

And the terrific-ness of the production and, especially, Craig Johnson’s rich performance easily moots these reservations and makes Gross Indecency an eminently seeable play.

Next up at Walking Shadow: Cabal, summer 2013, venue TBA.

For more information about John Olive, please visit his (updated) website.

Matt Rein, Ricardo Vázquez and Virginia Robinson in Lorca In A Green Dress. Photo by Linda Wong.

The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca died a nasty and sordid death: murdered by homophobic fascists, alongside a road, at night, his bullet-riddled body flung into an anonymous mass grave.  It is the achievement – and it is a major one – of Nilo Cruz‘s Lorca In A Green Dress to give García Lorca’s death a size and power commensurate with his 21st century prominence.  Lorca In A Green Dress (presented in a co-production by Pangea World Theater and Teatro del Pueblo, at the terrific Ritz Theater) offers homage to the man’s enormous world-wide presence.

Lorca is dense, imagistic, fraught yet powerful: García Lorca has died, been shot, and has been sent to the “Lorca Room” (analogous, the play tells us, to the Goya Room at the Prado), a dream-filled netherworld.  Here García Lorca encounters versions of himself: “Will the real Federico García Lorca step forward!” and 5 actors heed the call.  They play out scenes from García Lorca’s life, dramatizing his childhood, his relationship with his lover Rafael, with the painter Dalí.  García Lorca keeps trying to decide whether he will “break quarantine” and return to the living.  He tries, but finds himself frustrated by his disembodied ghostly presence.  He returns to the dreamland, content now, accepting his presence as a Great Poet.  “For España.”

Actor Ricardo Vázquez plays the difficult role of García Lorca (the program calls him “Lorca with Blood”) with power and charisma.  Cruz provides Vázquez with precious little realistic detail.  Rather, Vázquez is asked to speak a highly lyrical, charged theatrical language; indeed, the play depends on this.  Happily the actor handles this with aplomb.  He watches – and grows – as the other actors enact scenes from García Lorca’s (tragically short) life.  Vázquez makes us feel García Lorca’s death-terror as well as his resigned acceptance.

Vázquez receives good guidance from director Alberto Justiniano, who adamantly refuses to “fancy up” the play, understanding that poetic language is best presented simply; to do otherwise is to do a disservice both to the play and to the acting.  He uses music and dance when it’s appropriate, but he always stays focused on García Lorca’s exploration.

Justiniano elicits excellent performances from Matt Rein (has anyone else noticed how good this man is?), from the contained yet powerful Andrea San Miguel, from the goofily frightening Rolando Martinez, from David Schlosser as the artful and forceful wearer of the green dress.  Kudos also to guitarist Scott Mateo Davies and Flamenco dancer Virginia Robinson (every time they came onstage I was in heaven).  Excellent work all around.

It is my duty as theater reviewer to report that Lorca In A Green Dress, while beautifully done, is dense, lyrical, filled with heightened poetry, with jagged scenes which defy easy summary.  Like Frank’s current Misterman, Lorca doesn’t have a definable plot, even a consistent theme.  Opening night audience was quiet, attentive, appreciative, but also a touch bewildered.  So: if clarity is something you must have in a play, well, Lorca In A Green Dress may not be for you.

But if you miss this one, you’ll miss some outstanding acting and powerful playwriting.  Don’t.

For more info about John Olive, visit his (recently updated) website.