Bloglander

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Here are some outtakes from an e-mail interview with Marianne McLaughlin on Sunday, the director of The Spitfire Grill (at the Civic’s Studio Theatre, March 19-April 11). A fuller preview of the show appears in tomorrow's Inlander, pp. 19-20.

Synopsis at the musical's official site is here.

INLANDER: If you had to choose, would you say that this musical is more about Percy’s or Hannah’s redemption? The ex-con or the crusty matriarch?
McLAUGHLIN: The bond that Percy and Hannah form as the show progresses, even if they are not aware of it, roots itself in a need for redemption, but also the realization that they must face their demons and then finally forgive themselves.

What particular song has been most complicated to stage, both vocally and in terms of choreography and blocking?    
“Shoot the Moon,” while not vocally the most difficult, had the cumbersome detail of large mailbags and a wheelbarrow to deal with in the small space representing the seating area of the grill in the Studio Theatre. Troy Nickerson [the Civic’s resident director] did assist on some of the large-group numbers, but this particular one had to be my own work in progress, as I was never satisfied with it and constantly making changes, finally coming to the decision that less is more.---

Which tunes will the audience be humming on the way out?
“Colors of Paradise” always seems to stay with me after it’s been sung.

When Percy moves into her new, Spartan room at Hannah’s, it’s like her old prison cell. Any special lighting effects at this point?   
The bedroom at the end of the dark hall is indicated as we see it through Percy’s imagination. Because this is the Studio Theatre and because the only time her room is indicated is in her first song, “A Ring Around the Moon,” the choice was made not to include it in the set design. In this case, it is the job of the actor [Manuela Peters] — with the aid of some dark, shadowy lighting — to suspend the audience’s belief and take them there.

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When the townspeople gather at the grill, how are you staging the overlapping songs?
I wanted to communicate to the audience that this was another morning at the grill — everyone’s regular meeting place, seeing the people who they have known all their lives — the caveat being, on this particular morning, the arrival of Percy Talbot. So while the staging is stylized in many ways, I wanted it to be relaxed and natural. The overlapping and difficulty of this number [reflects] the growing agitation and curiosity over Percy’s arrival. 

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A stage adaptation by Michael Nelson of Hans Christian Andersen's 1843 tale about an emperor who's enchanted by the song of a nightingale — until he's presented with an even more fascinating (to him) mechanical bird.

Well, when the emperor later lays dying, which bird do you think has more compassion for him — the one made out of feathers or the one made out of metal? 

Spokane Children’s Theater presents The Nightingale • Saturday, March 20, at 1 pm; Sunday, March 21, at 1 pm and 4 pm; Friday, March 26, at 7 pm; Saturday, March 27, at 10 am and 1 pm; and Sunday, March 28, at 1 pm and 4 pm • Tickets: $10; $8, children • SFCC, Spartan Theater, Bldg. 5 • 3410 W. Fort George Wright Dr. • Visit: spokanechildrenstheatre.org • Call: 328-4886 or (800) 325-SEAT

This just announced last week. The Civic's Studio Theater production of Lips Together, Teeth Apart (directed by Wes Deitrick, running April 30-May 23) will star Amy Nathan and Ron Ford as Sally and Sam Truman, and Tami Rotchford and Dave Rideout as Chloe and John Haddock

Two married couples spend the Fourth of July weekend at the home of one of the women's brothers, who recently died of AIDS.  The 1991 play was written by Terrence McNally (b. 1939); the original Manhattan Theater Club production starred Christine Baranski as Chloe, Anthony Heald as John, Swoosie Kurtz as Sally and Nathan Lane as Sam. McNally uses interior monologues, ghost characters (the gay men next door), and a symbolically upscale house and swimming pool to examine the couples' loneliness and insecurities.

Frank Rich's 6/26/91 review in the New York Times is here. 

[ image: from a Sept. '09 production in Upper Montclair, New Jersey ]

Effective in late March, George Green will resign as director of development at Spokane Civic Theatre. He characterizes the parting as amicable and is exploring other opportunities in the Spokane area.

Changes in the leadership at other local theaters have or will soon take place, and I'll report on them once I get confirmation. 

Added March 16:

Executive Artistic Director Yvonne A.K. Johnson responds: "We wish George our very best in his future endeavors and during this transitional period. It is our hope that he will continue to be involved at Spokane Civic Theatre as an active performing artist and volunteer.

"Spokane Civic Theatre is in the process of restructuring a few positions as we continue to grow and work towards our long-range strategic plan for our capital campaign for the future three-story addition (new studio theatre, rehearsal space/dance studio, practice rooms, conference/meeting room, additional dressing room, restrooms, offices and hopefully, an intimate cafe/bar. The Main Stage full fly system will also be restored to the original building plan."

"Art" isn't about art at all. It's about friendship: how we try to domineer our friends and mold them according to our own values. It's a thoughtful play, but "Art" is also a comedy because the relationship decisions that playwright Yasmina Reza's three characters make are all so laughably bad.

Suppose, for example, that your best friend did something that you considered wrong-minded, wasteful, pretentious and embarrassing. Would you tell him?

Would you tell him kindly, and with an eye to preserving your friendship? Or would you tell him unkindly, getting all principled and cold with him?

In director Reed McColm's production of Yasmina Reza's play (through March 27), Interplayers has bounced back with one of the current season's best productions.---

As Marc, who scoffs at the purchase by his friend Serge of an all-white painting, Jack Bannon offers a subtle, disdainful performance. As Serge, Roger Welch lounges on a sofa, drink in hand, tossing off insults

Patrick Treadway's finest moment comes in a mid-play rant — a miniature soap opera of a monologue in which his character, Yvan, whines about preparations for his upcoming wedding.

Will our legacies involve how many people loved us, or how well we upheld our principles? "Art" is the kind of play that inspires post-performance discussion because you and your companions might have differing views about it.

At which point you may be compelled to choose: my friendships or my opinions?

"Art" sticks an all-white painting in our faces through March 27 on Wednesdays-Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays at 8 pm, and Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm at Interplayers, 174 S. Howard St. Tickets: $15-$21; $12-$19, seniors; $10, student rush. Visit interplayers.com or call 455-PLAY.

A fuller version of this review will appear on Thursday, March 18. Michael Bowen's theater blog also appears here.

The nice thing is the realization that somebody thinks and is actually working toward Interplayers having a next season.

Its 30th.

In memory of Bob Welch, and in tribute to Joan, the theater community and the playgoers of the Spokane area both avid and lukewarm ought to pull together to keep this concern going. Because without it, the dream of trying to continue to approximate resident professional theater in Spokane just goes by the wayside.

Enough editorializing. Just don't take your arts NPOs for granted.

In the following, months are approximate.---

Sept. 2010:

Together Again for the Next Time, by Reed McColm

Oct. 2010:
The 39 Steps, adapt. Patrick Barlow from John Buchan's novel

Nov.-Dec. 2010:
TBD

Jan. 2011:
Opus, by Michael Hollinger

March 2011:
TBD

April 2011:
Cotton Patch Gospel, by T. Key and R. Treyz, with music and lyrics by Harry Chapin

May 2011:
Privilege, by Paul Weitz

Six other plays are listed are listed on the subscription sheet handed out at tonight's preview performance of "Art," apparently as candidates for the two To Be Determined slots:

Honky Tonk Angels Holiday Spectacular, by Ted Swindley (I gotta admit, when Reed McColm alluded to this in his curtain speech, I thought he was joking. God help us.)

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (the one-woman show about grief, based on her experience in dealing with the deaths of her husband and daughter in a short space of time)

God of Carnage (another Yasmina Reza play, this one about to go into its third [and this time, all-black] cast on Broadway -- the premise has two wealthy married couples meeting after the 10-year-old son of Couple A has beaten up the son of Couple B)

Tuna Vegas, by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams (apparently, this is like the CSI franchise -- it can be set in any locality)

boom, by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb (apocalyptic three-hander for horny/philosophical youth and a strange woman who keeps banging on the timpani)

A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage; book and lyrics by Aaron Posner, music by J. Sugg

But back to the plays that are on the docket.

The first, of course, is McColm's sequel to his previous Christmas comedy.

Bobo just read The 39 Steps hilarious. Comic spy mystery. Dashing, stiff-upper-lip British hero finds himself embroiled in international intrigue. Plenty of hair's-breadth escapes. Three other actors: a woman to play the femme fatale and Scots farmer's wife; and two "clowns" to play all the other roles.

Opus, recently done at Seattle Rep, is set in the world of classical music. A world-famous and all-male string quartet, due to the unreliability of one of its members, has to cut ties with him and hire a young woman -- with revelations about the past, both psychological and musical, in the offing.

Cotton Patch updates the gospels to modern-day Georgia.

Privilege, I am not yet privileged to know.

[ For a photo from a production of Michael Hollinger's Opus, visit this same post at stagethrust.blogspot.com ]

... that is, unless chandeliers and soaring violins are involved.

The recent London premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies — the sequel to Phantom of the Opera in which the Phantom, Christine and Raoul find themselves at Coney Island in 1907 — has been tagged by some wags with the so-boring, such-a-travesty nickname of "Paint Never Dries."

The reviews of Michael Billington in The Guardian and of Ben Brantley in the New York Times, though, follow a shared theme that suggests why Spokane will feel the Love in a touring version some years from now: a poor book featuring flat characters caught in unlikely situations, but — and here's the point — soaring melodies and lots of spectacle.---

If you can hum the tunes on the way out and retain memories of a spectacular coup de theatre or two — well, that justifies the top ticket prices. All that other stuff is just filler. Billington and Brantley both emphasize that while the songs and spectacle are frequently effective, the story lags far behind.

This is exactly the wrong path for theater to follow. Especially in the impending era of 3D, we cannot compete with the movies on spectacle or soundtracks. 

Do you want theater that's like an amusement park ride or like adult conversation? There's room for both, of course — but over-emphasis on the former will only drive up ticket prices, make "going out to the theater" a rare treat instead of a habit, and play into the hands of those who ratchet up the excitement factor until all entertainment relies on sensation instead of thought.

Trodding on plain boards, few special effects, appeals to the imagination, verbal exchanges, psychological insights, enough plot twists to keep it interesting ... if it was good enough at the Globe circa 1600 — and in Athens a couple of millennia before that — it should be good enough for us today.

But then Phantom first reached Spokane 11 years after its 1988 Broadway premiere; perhaps we have some time yet before the paint starts drying here.

A year from now (evidently in March 2011), William Marlowe plans to direct Shakespeare's Richard III at the Falls, with Damon Curtis Mentzer (most recently, A Tuna Christmas and Shakespeare in Hollywood at the Civic; but also The Importance of Being Earnest at Actors Rep; and Irma Vep, Othello and Woman in Black at Interplayers, along with many others) in the hunchback title role.

Mentzer's on a hot streak, since he's getting married on March 22 (a Monday, natch -- we are theater people, after all).

And all Bobo has to say is that if Damon proposed to Kari McClure in anything like the way that Richard of Gloucester woos Lady Anne in the play, then he's very lucky that Kari said yes.

We wish the soon-to-be-married couple much happiness and (if they so choose) many little thespians, clustered 'round the hearth for familial readers theater performances. (To be held, of course, on Monday nights.)

[Note: To view a photo of Antony Sher playing Richard III in 1984 for the Royal Shakespeare Company, included in a North Texas blog called "Art&Seek" along with a good commentary about a production of the play at the Kitchen Dog Theater -- at least for now -- you'll have to visit stagethrust.blogspot.com, where Michael Bowen's theater blog has resided since August 2005 and will remain at least for the foreseeable future.

The Comedy of Errors offers wacky misunderstandings and madcap hijiinks at Spokane Falls Community College's Spartan Theater, Bldg. 5, on March 4-7 and March 11-14 — Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm, and on Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets: $8, suggested donation; or bring two cans of food for the SFCC Food Bank. Call 533-3592.

[ photos for The Inlander by Tammy Marshall. (1) Michael Brannan as Sir Nicholas of Hillyard, Christopher Lamb as Yoyo of Hillyard, Jamie Smith as Fat-Ass Nell, Geoff Lang as Sir Nicholas of Kennewick and Tony Morales as Yoyo of Kennewick. (2) Rushelle Provoncha as Adriana of Hillyard and Merrin Field as Lucy-Anna Hillyard-Clark. ]

Portraying “laughter through tears” is a tough proposition: Highlight the one-liner comedy too much, and it’s vaudeville; over-emphasize the pathos, and it’s saccharine.

That’s the challenge taken on by an accomplished ensemble of half a dozen actresses working with Robert Harling’s time-tested camaraderie-plus-tragedy play, Steel Magnolias. Their efforts lead to a good but imperfect production at the Civic (through March 21).

Spoiled, perhaps, by the 1989 movie, viewers may forget how difficult it is to get the tone of Harling’s play just right. His dialogue teeters between being delightfully heightened for the stage and being too clever to be credible: “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.” “We went skinny-dipping and did things that frightened the fish.” “The nicest thing I can say about her is all her tattoos are spelled correctly.” “An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.”

Homophobes and zealous Christians come in for some spoofing in Steel Magnolias, but it’s gentle nudging, really. Conversational topics hop around, following their non sequitur paths only to dead-end in realistic ways. Director George Green keeps the six-way conversations going at a lively pace, even if he succumbs to some static blocking in the second act, when everyone stays rooted to the same spots for quite a spell. Green’s production steers a mostly humorous course. The cast members, in their various ways, are all willing to make themselves look and sound ridiculous. (And that takes some bravery.) The payoff is the solidarity among them, the sense that these six women, over and above all the joking and sniping at each another, really do care for one another.

... with half a dozen more paragraphs in Thursday's Inlander.

[ photo by Young Kwak for The Inlander; Kelsey Strom (left) as Annelle and Molly Parish as Truvy ]