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Dan O'Brien's brilliant play The Cherry Sisters Revisited tells the important story of how a group of talentless showbiz spinsters from Iowa gave birth to the twentieth century.
First, a quick tutorial: yes, the Cherry Sisters really existed. (I overheard some audience members after the play speculating on whether the Cherry Sisters had been real or fictional - read the program, people!) They were a five-member vaudeville sister act whose enthusiasm far exceeded their abilities. They were possibly the first major instance of a "so bad, they're almost good" musical act in modern pop culture, like Linda McCartney, Trio, the Shaggs, and William Hung decades later.
As a longtime fan of the real-life Cherry Sisters, and given my own predilection for primitive naive "outsider music", Victoriana and the paranormal, The Cherry Sisters Revisited sounded almost too good to be true, and I went into it expecting to be nitpicking it mercilessly, and needling it for historical inaccuracies.
I couldn't have been more wrong. This play was right on point, and moved me on every level.
Renata Friedman is compelling as Effie, the driving force and philosophical brains behind the group. The story is largely told through her, and that's where the paranormal part comes in - although Effie breaks the "fourth wall" and addresses the audience, it's quickly made evident that this isn't the usual kind that requires suspension of disbelief. It's quickly revealed that Effie is actually going in and out of The Aether, a Victorian-era concept that combines elements of the afterlife, purgatory, and a pre-quantum-physics model for all-pervading interconnectedness of the Universe. She speaks to her dead father, who only she can see in the Aether, and sees how elements of deceased people turn up literally embodied in subsequent living people.
Effie's sister Ella is an "idiot savant" clairvoyant, who has visions of the future that no one heeds. She's charmimgly portrayed by Cassie Beck, who is superb at conveying subtle touches with her facial expressions, even when most audience eyes are on another character and not her. I found myself keeping my eyes glued to her even when others were speaking and in the spotlight.
Donna Lynne Champlain plays the haughty, frumpy and schoolmarmish Jessie, and I mean it as a compliment when I say she invokes the entirety of the "Aunt Bee" archetype. She's extremely animated and a joy to watch, providing the perfect conservative foil to the wackier sensibilities of the rest of the cast.
Kate Gersten is Lizzie, dubbed "the pretty one" by their sleazy manager (John Hickok). Lizzie vivaciously provides much of the cheerfully deranged musical content of the Sisters' live performances, including a surreal ditty called "Corn Juice".
Katie Kreisler is Addie, the comedienne-wannabe among the sisters. She finds an old book of coarse, vulgar and often racially-charged vaudeville/burlesque routines, and mimics them in a faux-Brooklyn accent without understanding their meaning or their ribaldry. As standup comedy requires even greater bravery than song-and-dance routines, Kreisler's crestfallen expressions are especially touching as she winces each time a joke fails. Through the hurt feelings and barrage of rotten vegetables, poor Addie tries to keep up a weak simian grin as her earnest efforts to tell "big-city jokes" keep digging a deeper pit for herself.
The entire ensemble works flawlessly together as one, with crackerjack timing and Monty Python-esque rapid-fire precision.
The question for some audience members might be whether a semi-musical play about a group that puts on intolerable musicals would be, in itself, intolerable. If you have a fundamental aversion to vaudeville in the first place - and if so, that's your own shortcoming and your own cross to bear - you may find the 1890s atonal warbling of the Cherry Sisters to be wearisome. But it would be a shame to let chrono-cultural provincialism keep you from the greater message of the show.
I rarely go back and see a play for a second time, but this one I will watch again. And probably will again and again and again, from my own vantage point in the Aether.
J.S. Holland
http://www.jshla.com/
for Theatre Louisville
http://theatrelouisville.org/
The Cherry Sisters Revisited
Written by Dan O'Brien
Music by Michael Friedman
Directed by Andrew Leynse
Actors Theatre of Louisville
326 W. Main Street
Louisville, KY 40202
Box Office: 502.584.1205
actorstheatre.org
Featuring: Renata Friedman, Katie Kreisler, Kate Gersten, Cassie Beck, Donna Lynne Champlin, John Hickok
Runs through April 11, 2010
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Kate Gersten as Lizzie Cherry
Renata Friedman as Effie Cherry
Katie Kreisler and Donna Lynne Champlin as Addie and Jessie Cherry
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“Watch out!” Those were the last words acting guru Stella Burden said to her troupe before running off to South America in the mid-70's.
The troupe clung not only to her words, but also to her possessions (a tiger-shaped bar of soap, a sealed note locked in a box, a gun in a birdcage). They prayed to her altar hung on their rehearsal space wall whenever they needed guidance. These rudderless actors soldiered on, endlessly rehearsing (for nine years) a daring version of A Streetcar Named Desire , using Burden's unconventional method called simply, “The Approach.”
As the performance begins, members of the Rude Mechs give us this backstory and a roadmap. And they do everything they say they're going to do, including a full performance of Streetcar using only the supporting characters, i.e., no Stanley, Stella, Blanche or Mitch.
Sounds impossible? Absurd? That's what I thought. The Rude Mechs dip in and out of the “now” effortlessly. At one moment, they are playing themselves, telling us why they decided to explore this mythical guru and her strange troupe. Suddenly, they become that troupe. Even more abruptly, they become the troupe rehearsing the minor characters in Streetcar.
Rehearsing for years isn't as outrageous as it sounds. Eastern European theatre often involves lengthy rehearsal periods. The methods of theatre "gurus" Jerzy Grotowski and Wlodzimierz Staniewski spring to mind. The Method Gun pokes fun at these traditions (which also include synchronized movement and precision, as lampooned here). Or, is the play a mockery of American theatre, which so often comes up short? Just imagine the performances we'd see if American actors could rehearse for years (instead of a few weeks) before the director deemed a show ready for performance.
As audience members, we aren't sure whether Stella Burden is real or a figment of someone's overactive imagination. Her techniques seem ludicrous. “Crying practice” involves just that. The actors stand in a semi-circle and make themselves cry. This is even more difficult in front of a cackling audience. “Kissing practice” is even sillier.
“The Approach” is a parody of Eastern European traditions of method acting, ramped up a notch to add the threat of real physical danger to an actor's minefield of avoiding ridicule and shame while trying to give something real to an audience who knows it's not real. Here, one of the dangers is represented by a person wearing a cute tiger suit. Is the danger real, or pretend? Of course, we know it's just an actor in a tiger costume. But to the members of Burden's troupe, the tiger could be real. There are other, scarier dangers present.
This show packs an amazing amount of material into a ninety minute rollercoaster, swinging wildly from comedy to pathos, much like the lights do at the end of the performance. At some point, King Harvest's “Dancing in the Moonlight” starts playing. That silly 1970's song embodied the whole world's sadness for just a moment, even as the women cavorted in synchronized laughter onstage. But soon I was laughing too, as the men appeared as nature intended, with helium-filled balloons tied to their penises, dancing goofily in the stage lights.
The costumes (by Katey Gilligan) are straight out of the 1970's, yet eye-catching and flattering. Leilah Stewart's set is a crazy hodge-podge of chairs, fluorescent masking tape, a cooler (with real beer!) and a piano. The walls are lined with firearm targets. Into the mix, we have the set for the fictional performance of Streetcar.
Shawn Sides, who also appears in the show, directs the actors with clockwork precision. This is no small feat, considering the obstacles they must avoid.
The Method Gun is among my favorites in this year's Humana festival, even though it doesn't quite hit its target. The show lures us with talk of Burden's “dangerous” theatre method. But in the end, the company never confronts that danger, or does so only in a superficial manner. Still, the show is challenging and fun if you like nontraditional theatre. Fans of Louisville's Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble will especially enjoy this show, as it combines physical theatre with sharp wit à la Le Petomane.
Caveat to the audience: The Method Gun is not a “new American play.” It has been performed in Austin, Texas since 2008. Perhaps I'm naïve or misguided, but one expects “new American plays” at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, especially when the submission guidelines state that scripts must be “previously unproduced full-length plays.”
Complaint/suggestion to Actors Theatre: The Humana Festival programs are not user-friendly. Instead of dumping all the actors' bios into one group, why not separate them by the plays in which they appear? It would be so much easier on the reader.
Suggestion to the audience: You may want to read this article, which explains in detail the acting techniques the Rude Mechs are exploring, and why they're doing it.
- Reviewed by Sherry R. Deatrick
The Method Gun
By Kirk Lynn
Directed by Shawn Sides
Created and Performed by Rude Mechs
Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival of New American Plays)
316 W. Main Street
Louisville, KY 40202
actorstheatre.org
501.584.1205
Runs through March 28, 2010
Featuring Thomas Graves, Hannah Kenah, Lana Lesley, E. Jason Liebrecht, Shawn Sides
Photos by Alan Simons
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Hannah Kenah, Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht and Thomas Grave
Jason Liebrecht, Lana Lesley, Shawn Sides and Hannah Kenah
Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht and Thomas Grave
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This will no doubt be a shorter and vaguer review than usual, because it will be hard to talk about Douglas Carter Beane's As Bees in Honey Drown, now being giving a satisfying and vibrant production at Pandora Productions, without giving away crucial secrets of this sneakiest of plots. I shall proceed with caution.
I can tell you that its two principal characters are Evan Wyler (Jeremy Sapp) and Beane's most iconic creation, Alexa Vere de Vere (Lauren Argo), and that those are neither of their real names. They are the brand names that they have chosen for themselves. Evan is a gay, Jewish, almost-famous novelist. Alexa is . . . it's never made entirely clear, which is by design of the author. Suffice it to say that upon publication of Evan's first novel, he is approached by Alexa to write the screenplay for the movie based on her extraordinary and so-unbelievable-that-it-couldn't-be-anything-but-true (right?) life.
Evan, of course, like any other rising star seeking fame and fortune would, jumps at the chance and soon he is following her around New York taking notes and engaging in the most unlikely romance since Christopher Isherwood and Sally Bowles. Or for that matter, Holly Golightly and Truman Capote. Note that these metaphors are not my own; they are Alexa's, and there is more truth in the metaphors than we realize at first. Indeed neither Evan nor we in the audience know what is about to happen.
What does happen is played out on a number of locations in Manhattan and Pennsylvania (courtesy of Karl Anderson's flexible and spare set, with no small debt of gratitude to Karissa Singleton's props and John Newman's economic lighting design) and involves dozens of characters played by a quartet of nimble supporting actors switching personalities almost as quickly as they change from one Donna Lawrence-Downs costume to the next.
Sapp and Argo turn in mostly good work as the leads. I would have liked it if Sapp – a heterosexual actor, but one of the best leading men in town – had toned down the swishy mannerisms just a bit (he actually played gay before, quite believably, in last season's BOOM!), but there's no way to tell whether this was his idea or that of director Michael J. Drury. What is more important is that he communicates the buried insecurities of the up-and-coming writer, particularly the gnawing suspicion that he may not have a second book in him.
Argo comes on strong – very strong – at first, as she should, but most everyone in the audience was completely taken in by her, as evidenced by the audible gasp when crucial information about Alexa is revealed. I've seen As Bees in Honey Drown before, in a wonderful production several years ago at University of Louisville, so I of course knew the secret all along, and the degree to which my fellow audience members were in the dark would be a perfectly respectable gauge of how the actress is doing, but there are plenty of other fine acting moments here.
Alexa actually undergoes several changes during the play; particularly in Act Two, we begin to realize that there is much more subtlety in the broad and eccentric performance than we could fully appreciate in Act One. There is a protracted flashback explaining the origins of Alexa Vere de Vere, and an especially chilling couple of minutes when we get to see Argo gradually transforming into her before our eyes.
It's chilling not only because of how good the performance is, but because it is a mirror, albeit an extreme one, of how today's celebrities have carefully cultivated their own public images. Is anyone really who they say they are today?
This brings me at last to acknowledge the real main character of As Bees in Honey Drown, which is fame itself. The relationship that Evan and the other New York artists, producers, photographers, publishers, agents, and powerbrokers in Beane's vision have to Alexa is ultimately a symbol of the love-hate relationship with the desire for fame. Or power. Or prestige. Or whatever name you give it. This is one of the signature themes of the Beane canon, but in today's Instant Celebrity atmosphere, it is more potent than ever.
- Reviewed by Cory Vaughn
Entire contents are copyright © 2010 Cory Vaughn. All rights reserved.
AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN
by Douglas Carter Beane
Directed by Michael J. Drury
Pandora Productions
P.O. Box 4185
Louisville KY 40204
502-216-5502
pandoraprods.org
Playing at the Historic Henry Clay Building
604 S. 3rd Street, Third Floor
Louisville KY 40202
Remaining Performances: March 18-20, 7:30pm, and Sunday, March 21, 2pm
Starring:
Lauren Argo (Alexa Vere de Vere), Jeremy Sapp (Evan Wyler), Corey Macon Long (Kayden and others), Leah Roberts (Amber, Secretary, Jenny and others), Chris Bryant (Mike, Skunk and others), and Susan Shumate (Bethany and others)
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Lauren Argo as Alexa Vere de Vere
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On January 31, 2006, a strong woman who helped lead a revolution of equality and justice slipped quietly away from this world. Most know Coretta Scott King as the widow of the most notorious civil rights martyr, and as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement after her husband's death as well as the Women's Movement.
What is less known is that she held a degree in voice and violin from Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. While she never received as much attention as her husband, she touched the lives of many, whether they knew her personally or just heard stories of revolution and freedom from their elders and teachers. U of L's A Song for Coretta is not a theatrical biography of King, however. It is a tribute that explores how five women from different backgrounds and classes, who seem to have absolutely nothing in common on the surface, can share in the inspiration of King's life and legacy.
The play is set late on a cold February night just following King's death, outside of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, of which King was a member, where dozens are still waiting in line to pay their respects to her. Zora Evans (Frances Lewis), a college student and aspiring NPR reporter, is eagerly waiting outside to interview subjects for her story on King. She meets Helen Richards (Jaqueline Thompson), an elderly woman who met King when she was a child during the Montgomery Bus Boycott days, and who is as wise as she is stubborn, but with a warm heart and a fervent sense of pride. She has trouble seeing eye-to-eye with selfish and ignorant American youth, however, like Keisha Cameron (Treneice Walton) or Lil' Bit as she likes to call herself, but learns that despite her wisdom, she shouldn't be too quick to judge.
Mona Lisa Martin (Ebony Jordan), an artist and Hurricane Katrina survivor, has traveled all the way from still-soggy New Orleans, on a constant quest answer the question: what would Coretta do? Gwen Johnson (Tiffany Gist), an emotionally shell-shocked soldier on leave from the war in Iraq, learns she has more in common with Mona Lisa and the rest of the group that she could have ever imagined.
The Ensemble cast of Troy Bell, Sharron Sales and Angela Tellis sings beautiful and familiar church hymns, and the lighting design is the work of Shirley Prendergast, who was Broadway's first African American female lighting designer.
UofL's thrust theater can't be a more suitable venue for this performance. Being physically closer to the actors makes the experience of hearing the powerful stories more intimate, and all five of the actors are very relaxed and confident onstage, making the audience feel comfortable listening to them. The show has humorous, uplifting, and poignant elements gently woven together to create a lovely and fresh theatrical experience, celebrating King's legacy and demonstrating how it still lives on in the modern world, even in the most unexpected ways.
-Reviewed by Jane Mattingly
Entire contents copyright © 2010, Jane Mattingly
A SONG FOR CORETTA
by Pearl Cleage
Directed by Lundeana Thomas
University Department of Theatre Arts
2314 S. Floyd St
Louisville, Kentucky 40292
502-852-7682
mahenr04@louisville.edu
louisville.edu/theatrearts
March 3 - 7, 2010
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A Song for Coretta
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