Artwork by Sarah Kaufman.

Slasher (Urban Samurai, performing at the Sabes Jewish Community Center, through Feb 18) would make a better movie.

Playwright Allison Moore‘s premise is terrific: director Marc Hunter has cast Sheena as “the last girl” – the lead, in other words – in Bloodbath and this gore-splattered film represents, Sheena fervently believes, her ticket to a better life.  This despite increasing evidence that Bloodbath is descending, bobsled-like, toward utter disaster.  Utilyzing a cinematic, back-and-forth structure, the play also portrays Sheena’s wacko home life.  This features her blue pill gobbling, mobile wheelchair bound, stay-at-home femi-fascist mother – a wickedly delightful character.  All the elements are present; Slasher could be the basis of an effective film.

But cinematic plays often, I believe, work better on paper.  Short “pool of light” scenes, popping up in various spots on the stage seem to create terrific narrative momentum, but when staged these scenes inevitably involve deadening lights up/lights down, set pieces dragged in/off.  Just as the play regains momentum, a new scene change intervenes.  Slasher suffers from this.

Moreover, the structure (and the need to keep the cast size and playing requirements manageable) forces Moore to short-shrift the portrait of Bloodbath: we only hear about departing actors, the ever-shrinking budget.  And she expends too much time on Frances (Mom).  Deliciously nasty as this character is, she doesn’t sustain the time spent with her.

Still, Slasher offers great pleasures.  Moore’s portrait of Marc the director delights: calm focused hysteria as his movie deteriorates.  Cops coming to shut us down?  I think we still have time to shoot the climactic scene.  Jody, the ambitious young DP turned leading player, is a hoot.  And of course there’s Sheena, the smiling hero.  Her calm and sweet determination carries the play.  Moore’s writing is focused and taut (she is the author of the well-received My Ántonia).

The last scene: earned?  Maybe not, but it worked for me.  It bumps the characters up onto a new and unexpected level.  See Slasher and discover if it works for you.

Director Brian Balcom has wisely staged the piece in the Sabes JCC’s backstage area, rather than on the high school auditorium mainstage.  This provides a niftily funky atmosphere.  The acting is uneven, but the leads – Michael Lee as Marc, Tamara Titsworth as Sheena, Muriel J. Bonertz as Frances, Matthew Cerar as Jody – deliver solid and entertaining performances.  Balcom keeps the proceedings moving briskly along

Slasher is genuinely funny and Urban Samurai is a shoestring theater well worth supporting.  Ticket prices are approachable ($14 advance/$16 at the door; students and seniors $10/12; pay-what-you-can Mondays and Thursdays).

For more info about John Olive, check out his website.

Cheryl Willis as Margot Wendice. Photo: Michal Daniel

Welcome back to the days of civilized murder and mayhem, done with style by people who wear dinner jackets and sip brandy in an elegant gold-toned living room. This is the world recreated at the Jungle Theater for Frederick Knott’s 1952 Broadway hit, Dial M for Murder, a classy production and wonderfully satisfying evening of theater.

Tennis star, Tony Wendice (Michael Booth) married his wife Margot (Cheryl Willis) strictly for her money. He arranges to have her murdered (for the same reason), but his perfectly planned crime and alibi goes awry. There’s no mystery, in this case, about the murder itself; the question is whether or not the murderer will get caught. In an age when action at a blinding pace is the rule, and gratuitous violence is all but required to satisfy in a film, it is all the more arresting that a play with characters conversing in polite airs can make the heart beat a little faster with creeping dread.

Director Bain Boehlke has the class to not mess with this virtually flawless script for the genre. Yes, there were a few soft chuckles from the audience over period dialogue, but there’s nothing dated about a well-crafted piece, produced with finesse and polish. Boehlke just refused to hurry things along, even into the third act (Yes, there are three acts) where the restrained tempo of it was everything.

Casting was beautifully balanced: Cheryl Willis as Margot might have let on too much, or “played the victim,” but there was none of that. In spite of the sinister truth we knew and she didn’t, her in-the-moment performance always returned us to her innocent reality, helplessly watching her fall into her husband’s trap.

Terry Hempleman was just awkward enough as Max, Margot’s illicit love interest, to be believably strung along for the duration of the play before he finally figures it out – even given his profession as a mystery writer. There’s a touch of the comic in Hempleman’s performance as the genuine nice guy—just the right foil for Michael Booth’s casual  detachment as Margot’s husband, Tony, The difference between a murder in a script and a real murder is that the real murder rarely goes according to plan, Max tells him. Even Tony, a master manipulator, proves this theory—just one of the tasty scenes coated with irony. As handsome and charming a villain as you’ll see on a stage, Tony is so clever and attractive that you may find yourself admiring him.

What British murder mystery would be complete without a visit from Scotland Yard’s chief inspector? If ever there was a preconceived idea about this iconic character, it would have to be Gary Briggle as Inspector Hubbard. Making an appearance later in the story, Hubbard methodically dismantles the collection of details-turned-clues assembled over the first half of the play, without giving up the game until the final coup.

Aha. Now, for a glass of wine in the lobby and the fun of kicking around just who knew what, and when. The show, which opens the Jungle Theaters 22^nd season, runs through March 18.

Tracie Bennett in End Of The Rainbow. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

To his credit, in End Of The Rainbow (at the Guthrie, through March 11) playwright Peter Quilter refuses to give us the “pretty” Judy Garland, the achingly luminous singer who wowed us in The Wizard Of Oz (age 17), A Star Is Born (32), at the famous Carnegie Hall concert (age 41 – “The greatest night in show business history”).

Instead, Quilter zooms in on a pill-popping, vodka-slugging Garland three months before her death.  This Judy was skeletally skinny, 47 (but looking 70).  Her life had devolved into an hysterical search for drugs.  She sweet-talked starstruck doctors, pursued sympathetic pharmacists.  Ritalin to counteract the Seconal, Seconal to counteract the Ritalin, and on and on, in a horrific cycle ending with the great artist’s death via an “incautious overdose” (her body contained the equivalent of 10 Seconals).  Deeply in debt, unable even to pay her hotel tab, everything was focused on the night’s performance: Garland had to make it onstage.  End Of The Rainbow deals with this forthrightly.  It frightens and disturbs.

As Garland, U.K. based Tracie Bennett rants and paces, poses and postures, coos and charms.  She suddenly turns on the people who love her – her enabling fiancé, Mickey Deans, receives much of this abuse.  Then, just as suddenly, Garland leaps into his arms, grinding into him.

And she sings.  Periodically the rear wall of the hotel suite flies up to reveal The Talk Of The Town Nightclub and a solid six piece band.  Bennett takes the stage with Garland-like assurance, singing standards like “Just In Time” and “Come Rain Or Come Shine,” all in a husky, low belt baritone.  Bennett, nicely directed by Terry Johnson, delivers a calculated – and yet still quite mesmerizing performance.

Many of the songs are fragmented, Ritalin fueled, incomplete.  This makes the performance section of End Of The Rainbow rather short.  This is disappointing, for I found many of the hotel suite scenes repetitive and short on narrative momentum.  Garland and Dean scream at each other endlessly.  Deans goes from drug/booze teetotaler to enabler (“Take a few of these.  They’ll fix you up.”) with no believable explanation.  As Deans, Tom Pelphrey does solid, but thankless work.

Still, there are pleasures.  There is a lovely scene between Judy and her gay pianist (Michael Cumpsty) in which the latter invites her to live with him in Brighton, watching the rain, eating shepherd’s pie, glorying in boredom.  Sex?  “I’m afraid there won’t be many fireworks in that department.”  Cumpsty gives a gorgeously under-stated and compelling performance.

Does she still have it?  I would have said no.  This Judy is too far gone into addiction and insanity, too shrill, too hoarse, too boozed up.  But then Bennett, at the very end, sings a breath-taking, astonishingly beautiful “Over The Rainbow.”  Wow.

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

Brittany Bradford and Harry Waters, Jr., in Ragtime, The Musical.

E. L. Doctorow was the author of two respected but not widely read novels when in 1975 he thundered onto the literary scene with Ragtime.  Set 1902-17, the novel blends history and fantasy, private characters with oversized historical figures (J.P. Morgan, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford, et al), all rendered in sharp but refined prose.  Out of the historical swirl, slowly but effectively, stories emerge: of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (a brilliant character), his touching love for Sarah and his outrage at the defiling of his precious Model T.  Of immigrant Tateh and the beginnings of the film industry.  Ragtime made Doctorow, deservedly, a literary star.

There’s no way the creators of Ragtime, The Musical (at Park Square Theatre, through Feb 19) can reproduce the narrative elegance of Doctorow’s masterpiece.  Instead, Terrence McNally (book), Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) opt for size.  In numbers like “Ragtime” (the breath-taking opening, in which the waspish New Rochellians, the African Americans, and the immigrants come together, then break apart, repeatedly), “Henry Ford” (about assembly lines), “What A Game” (baseball), one can vividly feel the Broadway provenance of this show.  There are some lovely private songs as well: Mother’s lovely, “Good-Bye, My Love”, Walker’s eloquent “Wheels Of A Dream” and, especially, Sarah’s astonishing “Your Daddy’s Son.”

It all works – mostly.  Flaherty and Ahrens have created some terrific tuneage.  Ragtime contains inspired theatricality, as when Father returns from his polar explorations to find Walker playing ragtime piano for his beloved, Sarah, and her baby upstairs – and no one finds the situation surprising.  Walker’s fury is intelligently handled.  The trap, which the show-makers don’t fall into, would be to make him a one-note (and boring) victim.

Still, once this vital plot thread begins, big tunes like “Atlantic City” feel off-the-mark.  Also, book-writer McNally (of necessity, as he attempts to replicate the sweep of the book) too often falls back on stodgy narration and simplistic characterizations that go nowhere.

But any misgivings about the material are mooted by the loveliness of the production.  Great praise is due director Gary Gisselman who, working with a limited budget, has assembled a boffo cast, first rate musicians, excellent designers and a terrific choreographer.  He stages the show with aplomb.

Ragtime is a big play; ergo, I lack space to adequately praise all the artists who have made it work.  Still, I must applaud music director/pianist Denise Prosek.  I was constantly (and pleasantly) aware of her guiding presence behind the scrim.  As Mother and Father, Christina Baldwin and Lee Mark Nelson, with solid technical prowess, anchor the proceedings.  I was delighted every time they appeared.  Harry Waters excels as Walker.  As Sarah, Brittany Bradford gives a nuanced and powerful performance.  This young woman has some chops – and she sings beautifully.  Dieter Bierbauer is a marvel as Tateh; ditto Aleks Knezevich as Younger Brother.  I have to stop.

Ragtime, The Musical is as big a show as has ever been seen at Park Square.  It’s long (3-ish hours), but the seats are butt-friendly and the ticket prices are approachable.  Definitely recommended.

For more information about John Olive please visit his website.

Khanh Doan and Don Darryl Rivera in Harold And The Purple Crayon. Photo by Dan Norman.

In Harold And The Purple Crayon (at Children’s Theatre Co, through Feb 26) a company of first rate artists and performers collaborate on a deceptively simple, sweetly accessible and yet highly sophisticated…

Well, what would you call Harold?  A play?  I suppose, but it’s really more a celebration of elegant design, tuneful music, astute lyrics, catchy choreography and nifty text, all brought together under the firm and loving direction of the estimable Rita Giomi.

Based on the 1950s book series by Crockett Johnson, Harold And The Purple Crayon dispenses with bothersome devices like story, character relationships and general coherence.  Mind you, this is in no way a complaint; the lack of story logic gives the play-makers leave to free-form, to dream, to stretch their creative muscles in unexpected ways.  Harold, wearing his ubiquitous fuzzy turquoise onesie, uses his crayon to create and explore a series of fantasy environments – a space ship, on the sea, under the sea where he does battle with a giant crab (what a great idea!).  Harold employs songs, projections, cool lighting, great singing, exuberant dancing to create a wonderful theatrical swirl.

The design thrills, but I have to give especial mention to L.B. Morse, whose lighting slash projections are truly unique.  I’ve never seen effects like this, anywhere.

Similarly good is the music, sweet and melodious 80s-style rock.  Music is by Auston James with lyrics by Rob Burgess.  James provides a useful drone, allowing the music to be seamlessly worked into the final product.  Indeed, seamlessness is one of the over-riding joys of this show.  Giomi and her designers make it look simple; it’s not.

The performers are terrific.  Led by the goofy and adorable Don Darryl Rivera (who also receives credit for the text) as Harold, the play features “storytellers” Khanh Doan and Caety Sagoian.  These women function as puppeteers, singers, dancers – figments of Harold’s imagination, who lovingly tuck him into bed at the end, then quietly withdraw.

Is Harold And The Purple Crayon for everyone?  Jaded grown-ups (like me) may find the lack of a story, the relentlessly cheerful mien of the performers, and the high ticket price off-putting.  But if have (or have access to) a young child, by all means, take them to CTC.  Harold is a perfect introduction to the joys of live theater, a worthwhile investment.

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

Emily Swallow as Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, may be finally showing its age, but it is still timeless enough to pack a wallop. The Guthrie’s production, directed by Lisa Peterson, has placed this piece among tall, peacock blue louvered doors and a matching carpet of swirls that seem to heighten the swirl of personal anxieties. A hot orange glow spreads across the back scrim, directing the eye to the mustard-colored bed that tells us, before the first word is spoken, what this play is really about. I didn’t really like the look of this set, which is why it fits the unsettling story of Big Daddy, Big Mama, Brick and Maggie.

It is part of the genius of Williams that characters so flawed, who try very little to be truly conciliatory, can still be so engaging – and funny. By the time we see for ourselves what Big Daddy, played brilliantly by David Anthony Brinkley, is allabout,  we are deftly primed to share his satisfaction in shutting everybody up, and stripping Brick’s aloofness bare. Peter Christian Hansen as Brick, had a slow start in defining the widening rift between his wife, Maggie (Emily Swallow) and him, grappling with Brick’s silence as much as the genteel Southern accent. But once cornered by Big Daddy, Brick’s pain is brought too close to the surface. Hansen and Brinkley’s scenes in the second half of the play are heart-wrenchingly real.

Swallow’s Maggie was as solitary as a cat, circling Brick now and then, seeking out a stroke of affection, then returning to the world of the big house they share with the rest of the family – until Maggie finds her way in, through the door opened by Big Daddy. By that time, though, it feels more like Maggie getting her way than a true reconciliation and healing of their relationship. Swallow carries the role with great strength and style, but little was simmering between the two.

Melissa Hart as Big Mama was simply wonderful – stridently irritating voice and all, her devotion to Big Daddy and Brick carrying the story along in comforting waves. Chris Carlson as the unfavored son, Gooper, and Michelle O’Neill as his wife, Mae, nicely captured their desperate and hopeless efforts to please Big Daddy by maintaining a steady work life and supplying him with several grandchildren. The grandchildren made intermittent appearances, carefully choreographed disruptions that sort of came out of nowhere and just as quickly stopped. There was very little about this behavior that seemed believable.

Peterson’s direction seemed to be more a collection of concepts, rather than a clear vision of the overall effect. Her use of Brick’s crutch, for example, was overdone, as was Maggie literally chasing him around the bedroom.

Over fifty years have passed since this play premiered and a lot has changed; sexual identity questions are at least discussed openly, and doctors today would not dream of lying to a patient about his diagnosis. Assuming one can view the crises in this light, the universal truths about love, friendship, family bonds, sexuality, even life and death itself –  the larger questions that made this play great – have not lost their relevance. If you have even the slightest interest in Williams, this period and this style of theater, you really should make an effort to see this production. It runs through February 26.

John Mitchell (E.J. Subkoviak) and Richard Nixon (Paul de Cordova) strategize about how to make Nixon the Republican nominee for president. Photo: Scott Pakudaitis.

Produced by the History Theatre at the Minnesota History Center, in tandem with the exhibit that opened last fall, 1968 is also a collaborative project with the Playwrights Center. Seven scenes written by PWC members tell personal stories that are representative of significant events during that year.

The scenes were ingeniously connected by a timeline created by History Theatre artistic director, Ron Peluso, who also directed. Music snippets from familiar TV shows, primarily, arranged and directed by Gary Rue and delivered by a talented band of McNally-Smith students, cemented the segues.

The scenes:
Welcome Home by Reginald Edmund offered a highly personal look at one Viet Nam war veteran dealing with his combat experience after he came home. Eric Knutson as Jerry showed great sensitivity and range in his portrayal of the troubled soldier. The ending, however, needed some foreshadowing to better bring us along with him.

Go Up Together, written by Christina Ham, portrays the relationship of two friends struggling with the question of taking sides in the Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers strike. But the play, as well as the incident dramatized, has far more to do with the larger question of a Black man’s identity and place in society.

The experience of Rosemary Clooney depicted in Rosemary by Kevin Kautzman, seemed an odd choice, although it showed us the impact Bobby Kennedy’s death had on others, including those we might not have connected with the presidential contender. Karen Weber convincingly depicted Clooney’s mental collapse; however, you needed to know the back story, since it wasn’t clearly scripted, to fully appreciate its meaning.

John Mitchell’s Private Moment by Dominic Orlando is a wonderful piece of well-crafted satire. Paul de Cordova as Richard Nixon and E.J. Subkoviak as John Mitchell (plus compressed cameos of Henry Kissinger and others) take us inside the heads of these two controversial figures in a darkly comic imagining of the events and attitudes that ultimately led to their famous demise. Cordova picks on just a couple of Nixon’s verbal and visual ticks to fashion his impersonation, and it works beautifully. Subkoviak delivered an immensely satisfying and entertaining tour de force. He simply owned the evening.

Smith & Carlos by Kim Hines made room for what anyone who remembers 1968 may have been thinking: what do these young people know about it? That the show could ultimately laugh at itself a little, too, was refreshing.

The Corral by Rhianna Yazzie was inspired by the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minnesota, but dramatized via the brutal treatment by police of two Indian men leaving the Corral on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. This device, however, didn’t give those unfamiliar with AIM much to go on, but M. Cochise Anderson, in particular, as Moon evoked the conditions that gave birth to AIM and the passions driving the movement. Rob Thomas offered an interesting counterpoint as his companion.

Apollo 8 by Mat Smart, the final scene, was an anachronistic look at that day through one astronaut’s experience – but not one who was actually on the flight. As deftly as Randy Schmeling delivered on the engaging script as the main character, the story line didn’t quite anchor the weight of that historic event.

Peluso’s work as the cohesive element was critical to the success and entertainment value of this show. He not only deftly incorporated a style of theater completely in keeping with the period, (with the ensemble in multiple arrangements on metal scaffolding) but he bridged the gaps and provided necessary light-hearted relief from the heavy drama of some of the scenes. His timeline really polished off the rough edges and pulled the idea into one whole.

1968  runs through February 19.  Note that the performances are at the History Center of Minnesota on Kellogg, not the History Theatre in the McNally-Smith building.

Recommended. Baby Boomers,  bring your children and older grandchildren and you could set up a great conversation with them about your own experiences in this era.