Tag: theater

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Arts Culture

Live Arts stages compelling he-said, she-said plays

Live Arts kicks off its season with two thought-provoking shows, "What the Constitution Means to Me" and "An Iliad," in repertory through October 28. Details at livearts.org. Supplied photo.

We humans are social animals, which is one reason why theater endures as a way for people to share space and feel something together. In a time when our nation feels quite divided (ahem: understatement), any opportunity to learn from history and engage with challenging subjects in thought-provoking ways is a good opportunity. The current Live Arts shows have us covered on that front with back-to-back chances to dig in to the depth of the human experience from two distinct yet resonant perspectives.

As Live Arts’ 2024/2025 Voyages season picks up steam, What the Constitution Means to Me and An Iliad share the Founders Theater and alternate performances. The choice of presenting the plays in repertory makes sense, because they are very much in conversation. Both shows feature powerful performances enhanced by the black box theater’s intimate staging conditions. Audience members feel essential to the storytelling.

In What the Constitution Means to Me, we find ourselves in an American Legion hall represented by a minimalist patriotic set. Enter Heidi, a character based on playwright/original lead Heidi Schreck, who takes us to a scholarship speech contest about the U.S. Constitution that she competed in as a teen. Heidi, portrayed by Tovah Close the night I attended, invites the audience to play the cigar-smoking men who filled the American Legion halls of her youth. We were a predominantly female audience, and the first thing many did when invited to embody men was to take up more space, which resonates with the play’s central theme.  

Through Heidi’s personal stories, and those of her grandmothers and mother, we come to understand how preposterous it is for Heidi to be speechifying about the personal relevance of a document that first explicitly mentions women in the 19th amendment, passed in 1919, that granted women the right to vote. As a woman, I found the play to be validating and emotionally challenging. Heidi’s statistics about rape and domestic partner violence against women landed pointedly. Just as the weight of the traumas became overwhelming, there was an intermission. Let me tell you: We hit the bar hard.

Fortunately, the play’s second act offers a respite from heartstring plucking (mostly) by featuring a debate between Heidi and an actual debater (Aafreen Aamir). The topic is whether we should keep or abolish the U.S. Constitution. Honestly, it never occurred to me that we could abolish our Constitution and institute a new one—one that protects the rights of Native Americans, people of color, queer folks, women, and other minorities with the same vehemence as in protecting the rights of white men like our founding fathers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proud American, which is probably why the idea of abolishing the Constitution never occurred to me. I’m also a disheartened American, an American who sees that some things need to change as our country continues to evolve, just as the founding fathers envisioned it would.

The following night, I saw An Iliad, which blends sections of Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer’s epic poem with moments of modern contextualization. Two nameless, timeless poets—an elder and a younger—arrive and investigate the sparse set. For several minutes, the audience watches as the elder, portrayed by David Minton (also the director), and the younger by Jesse Timmons, set the stage before beginning the tale. I love that live theater has the power to get me to care about watching a man adjust the placement of a milk crate—and I did care!

The Iliad is a familiar tale to many, with ancient heroes Achilles and Hector leading armies during the Trojan War. The added context breathes life into this show. The Younger Poet likens (spoilers) ill-fated Patroclus’ bloodlust in battle to our modern experience of road rage. He begins by expressing a degree of anger relatable to anyone who’s been cut off in traffic. However, Timmons then takes his performance to an extreme that fills the room with discomfort, graphically describing physical violence, inappropriate as a reaction for a roadway mishap. The Elder Poet touches the younger, to snap him out of his fiery passion, and the younger apologizes, saying something like, “That’s not me. It’s not me.” Reckless uncontrollable rage does not define the man, or at least The Younger Poet doesn’t want it to. One of the play’s most affecting aspects is the tension created by the tenderness between the two characters juxtaposed against the horrors of the Trojan War and all the wars after, including those that are raging even now.  

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Arts Culture

“Putting It Together”

Promotional photo.

Through nearly 30 songs composed by Stephen Sondheim, Putting It Together details an overnight party in a swanky upper-Manhattan penthouse. With dynamic orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick, a longtime Sondheim collaborator, and the creative direction of Robert Chapel, the production features five characters, including a wealthy retired married couple, a younger man and woman, and a vivacious commentator. No one is let off the hook at the party, where relationship dynamics are put to the test in this mature viewing experience.

Through 9/8. $16–20, Showtimes vary. Four County Players,  5256 Governor Barbour St., Barboursville. fourcp.org

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Culture Living

PICK: Miracle on 34th Street

Miracle on Main Street: During a time when everyone’s faith is being tested, some might wonder if the holiday spirit will prevail. In the holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street, Kris Kringle is put on trial after playing a convincing Santa Claus. His authenticity and mental health are challenged in the courtroom, and it all comes down to one question: Do you believe in Santa Claus?

Saturday 11/28, $8, 3pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Hello, Dolly!

Kate Lambert Cadaret plays the iconic lead role in Hello Dolly! at Four County Players. Photo by Linda Hogan Photography

Before Match.com and the like, we had matchmakers such as Dolly Gallagher-Levi, the exuberant leading lady in Hello, Dolly!. Arriving in New York City to assist Yonkers half-a-millionaire Horace Vandergelder in finding a new wife, Dolly works her way through one tricky escapade after another before discovering she is the perfect mate for him. Memorable songs “Before
the Parade Passes By,” “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” and “Hello, Dolly!” make the musical one of the most popular in theater history.

Through April 14. $10-18, times vary. Four County Players, 5256 Governor Barbour St., Barboursville. (540) 832-5355.

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Arts

Cups up, blades out: Self-governed actors make their own rules in ASC’s Henry IV, Part 1

American Shakespeare Center’s Henry IV, Part 1 follows King Henry Bolingbroke’s (David Anthony Lewis) mounting tensions with a rebel alliance and an estranged heir. Lindsey Walters

To a lay audience member who hasn’t been involved in a theater production since fifth grade, directors seem as essential to any play’s success as a script. They’re the boss of the show. If the director goes into a coma at the start of the first rehearsal or has a crisis and runs off with the box office manager, what sharp-eyed, astute-eared taskmaster keeps everyone and everything in line?

During the annual Actors’ Renaissance winter season at Staunton’s American Shakespeare Center, it’s completely up to the players to get their proverbial acts together.

It’s no small challenge. Roughly 13 actors are responsible for 79 roles through the course of four plays: darkly hilarious Early Modern true crime bonanza Arden of Faversham; Amy E. Witting’s new piece Anne Page Hates Fun; Shakespeare’s domestic sitcom The Merry Wives of Windsor; and the revered second installment of his historical tetralogy, Henry IV, Part 1.

On the well-lit stage of the enchanting Blackfriars Playhouse last month, the acting company previewed their work on Henry IV, Part 1. The January 24 debut performance revealed completely actor-made choices on staging—down to the costume design, music, props, and the minutiae that would otherwise fall under a director’s purview. And on top of that, the actors had learned their lines in under 10 days.

Why suffer so? According to the ASC, the yearly test aims to empower the players by giving them the “unique blend of scholarship and practice” necessary for undertaking the “deepest dive into the Elizabethan era.” And despite the potential for chaos, it syncs perfectly with the ASC’s respectful and historically guided approach.

The result of leaving the direction of Henry IV, Part 1 to those performing in it is not unlike the best kind of self-released punk rock record: rolling on a steady current of gross humor, powered by blasts of lusty rage, true to the intent of those involved, and peppered with thrilling, unexpected turns. Performances hit the pinnacle of emotive perfection or, in some cases, sail just beyond the well-intentioned grasp of those outsized by their desire to execute.

The script follows King Henry Bolingbroke’s mounting tensions with a rebel alliance fueled by hotheaded Hotspur, and tackles the monarch’s estranged relationship with his heir, Hal the Prince of Wales. After Hal grows out of his frivolous London tavern lifestyle—and tomfoolery with his scene-stealing, boozehound buddy Sir John Falstaff—the young noble assumes his rightful place at his father’s side. Together, Hal and King Henry lead an army that puts down the upstarts seeking to overthrow the crown.

While the play is named after the highest rung on the hierarchy, it could easily bear the name of any of the aforementioned key roles, as each has more to say than the titular character. Yet in reenacting this embattled royal, David Anthony Lewis commands the performance with resonant authority and manly poise. Instinctive, unstudied, and wholly convincing, he seems more comfortable with Shakespeare’s words than anyone else in the play. If some of the production’s choices skirt the border of questionable interpretation, there is zero doubt in Lewis’ Henry.

Henry’s problematic princely son is played with a cautious focus by Brandon Carter, who became more at ease as his character grew fully self-aware in the play’s latter half. It’s possible that Carter’s smooth-voiced delivery is marked by tentative restraint since he’s sharing many scenes with the comedic bulldozer and big-bellied bravado of John Harrell’s Falstaff. The latter’s costume choices paint Sir John as a ’90s grunge wash-up, complete with bandana, Nirvana tee, combat boots, and requisite plaid shirt—tucked over a fat-suit paunch. Despite being a bit young and thin in the limbs for the lovable drunk liar, Harrell is appropriately slurry, sloppy, cowardly, and as hysterical as anyone could hope.

Another of the King’s major headaches, rebel leader Hotspur, is set afire with an irrepressible rage by KP Powell. Cocksure and indignant, the charismatic Powell only relents from boiling over when he’s in the lap of coquettish Lady Percy; as played by Abbi Hawk, she charmingly presents Hotspur’s wife as sultry and impossibly headstrong. Powell and Hawk display authentic chemistry during the play’s few romantic moments.

But as Henry IV, Part 1 is built on barroom banter and war, zingers and vengeful aggression frame Prince Hal’s journey from loaf to promising successor; ultimately, the Actors’ Renaissance finds its best staging choices in the slapstick of the tavern and botched vaudevillian thieveries. Putting the full Blackfriar’s space to excellent use, the actors hurdle the seats, scramble up the aisles to escape the stage, and Hal even chugs from a beer bong hanging off of the second-floor balcony. And though the too- careful, slo-mo choreography of the final act’s sword fighting could use tightening up, the group prevailed thanks to its nimble humor, righteous ire, and genuinely poignant performances.

____________________________________________________________________________

Henry IV, Part 1

American Shakespeare Center

Through April 13

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Arts

Just you wait: Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. on not throwing away his shot at success

Leslie Odom, Jr. speaks at John Paul Jones Arena on January 19 as part of UVA's President's Speaker for the Arts series. Odom, who almost gave up before making it big, advises young people to “walk toward the thing that you love.” Publicity photo

In 2016, Leslie Odom, Jr. found himself at the center of a cultural moment as Aaron Burr in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop-meets-history musical had broken box office records, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and saw Odom, Jr. beat out Miranda for best actor in a musical at the Tony Awards that year. It was a dramatic turn for an actor who had just about given up. Odom, Jr. writes about his career and self-realization in his book, Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning. He returns to Charlottesville (he was here in 2017 to celebrate UVA’s Bicentennial), to check in on community healing and discuss his approach to success as the 2019 UVA President’s Speaker for the Arts on Saturday.

C-VILLE: What brings you back to Charlottesville?

Leslie Odom, Jr.: I am super interested in how this community continues to heal and define itself. I’m interested in the check-in, to be honest. I know I’m coming for a talk-back, speaker series but I’m way more interested in listening than I am in talking.

Like the rest of the country I watched how racism and hate descended on [Charlottesville] as it was broadcast around the world. Then I watched the city really stand up and say, “You don’t get to define us. That’s not who we are and we beat that back. We beat that hatred back.” I was really so impressed at the bicentennial. I jumped at the chance to come back and see how this community is healing and how it continues to define itself.

Was that your first time in Charlottesville?

It really was. My association with [Hamilton] makes the university of interest because of the Jefferson connection. I had said yes almost a year prior…I was booked long before A12.

How do you feel about Hamilton’s historical figures now?

I was asked a really interesting question by this kid who was writing a paper. And she said that she and her friends have surmised that Hamilton the show is not revolutionary in any way. It’s actually a bunch of people of color not telling their own stories. They are actually playing white people and cleaning up the images of these guys, awful men, and there’s nothing revolutionary about it. And what did I think about that.

I said, well, it’s a fair assessment. There would be people who would disagree with you, probably millions of people. The show is very popular, very successful.

But, you know…that point is…what are you gonna write? I’m certain there is some kid in this generation right now…who is going to make Hamilton look antiquated. There’s gonna be some kid that has an answer to what Lin made, what we all tried to make.

What we all tried to do, for better or worse, is an exercise in empathy. It was a chance for us to bring some men and women close to us. Closer than they’ve ever been before. That’s an exercise that’s always helpful, and always brings about healing. I hope one day the exercise goes the other way.

Going into the role did you have any reservations about being involved in the project?

No. God, no. I had heard the music. And it’s very, very rare that you get the opportunity to be a part of a masterpiece at its inception. I had no questions about how I felt about it.

Was there a feeling that Hamilton was going to be a masterpiece?

All you have is a gut feeling about it. None of us could know that people would receive it in the way that they have. But I knew how I felt about it, if that makes sense. I knew I was looking at a piece of work that comes along maybe once in a lifetime. I hoped that people would like it as much as I did, but couldn’t be sure if they would.

Besides professional success, how did Hamilton change you?

It made me a better friend, a better husband, a better man. I wish it for everyone. We stood inside a moment and were as good as we’ve ever been and maybe as great as we’ll ever be. When you experience that, it changes you in untold ways.

Your book is called Failing Up. How have you failed?

What I really talk about in the book and hope people take away is the willingness to fail. Whenever I’ve been willing to fail—a handful of times, not a bunch—but whenever I’ve been willing to fail and fall on my face spectacularly, it actually never did lead to failure. That’s what the fear was. It was, I’m gonna look like a fool, I’m gonna fail and everyone is gonna see it and laugh at me.

That was Hamilton! That show—a hip-hop musical about the founding fathers—there’s a lot of ways that show could have failed, and didn’t. It’s really about that. I’m trying to encourage people to be bold, be risky, and take chances.

What advice did you get that gives you confidence to take risks?

Meeting with a mentor when I was wanting to quit and do something else with my life. He looked at me and said, that’s fine…but I’d love to see you try first…And this is after a decade of pretty steady work, you know, I was doing okay.

He said I think you are sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring. And when the phone rings, you do great. But the phone didn’t ring today, so what did you do in the absence of a ringing phone. Did you call anybody? Did you email anybody? Did you write anything? Did you ready anything? Did you record anything? Did you practice?

That was before Hamilton, before “Smash,” before a lot of the biggest things that I’ve done. So, I almost quit before it got good.

Many young people love the play Hamilton, and are now aspiring to the stage. What advice do you have for them?

I think it’s very simple. I was preparing for my whole life without knowing it…I give them what really worked for me, and it’s really—just love it. Love it with your whole heart. Love as a verb. If there’s something you want to do…if it’s law, if it’s psychology, if it’s medicine, sports…whatever that thing is, you can’t go wrong with reading about it talking about it, thinking about it, dreaming about it, planning, studying. You love a thing with your whole heart, and eventually, eventually it will love you back. It has no choice. It’s as simple as that. When you are young, just walk toward the thing that you love.

Leslie Odom, Jr. speaks at John Paul Jones Arena on January 19 as part of UVA’s President’s Speaker for the Arts series.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Fall Dance Concert

Through a collaboration between faculty and students, the UVA Department of Drama’s annual Fall Dance Concert offers a variety of works that explore sound, space, and movement, from November 15 through 18. Photo by Tom Daly

Through a collaboration between faculty and students, the UVA Department of Drama’s annual Fall Dance Concert offers a variety of works that explore sound, space, and movement.
In Benevolence, guest choreographer Chien-Ying Wang examines communal bonding by “investigating the effects of a dysfunctional family, community, congress, and so forth,” she says. Other pieces look at shifting environments, the dancing body, and the connections between sound and movement.

Thursday, November 15 through Sunday, November 18. $5-7, 8pm. Culbreth Theatre, 109 Culbreth Rd. 924-3376.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England

In Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Dean Cindy Wreen is fed up with a lot of things: her tiny college’s financial difficulties, plans to close an obscure natural history museum, and monogamy, to name a few. See it at Live Arts through December 15.

In Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Dean Cindy Wreen is fed up with a lot of things: her tiny college’s financial difficulties, plans to close an obscure natural history museum, and monogamy, to name a few. While her New England town battles to save a historically inaccurate woolly mammoth exhibition from a dark fate, Wreen’s cancer-stricken ex-girlfriend is living in her home—which is not exactly cool with her current, much younger lover Andromeda.

Through December 15. $22-26, times vary. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. 977-4177.

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Arts

Gorilla Theater amends Dennis Lehane’s Coronado 

Johnny Butcher and Jake Rakes plot scams in the gender-swapped version of Dennis Lehane’s Coronado, opening at Gorilla Theater Productions on June 13. Photo by Anna Lien

Nearly every Christmas, as the Stewart family unwraps its gifts, someone asks, “Who got the new Dennis Lehane book?”

The answer is usually “everyone,” says Kendall Stewart, exaggerating only slightly about her family’s Lehane“obsession,” which began more than a decade ago when Stewart’s mother photographed the Boston-born crime and mystery writer. They’ve read most everything he’s written—Mystic River, Gone, Baby, Gone, The Drop, to name a few—and seen the film adaptations and followed Lehane’s writing on HBO’s “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire.”

Stewart, an actress and on-air radio host for 106.1 The Corner, was 16 when Coronado: Stories, a book of five short stories and a play, made the family rounds in 2006. She loved the play and thought, “This is so messed up. This is so dark. I want to do it.” But the content seemed out of reach for a high school production.

“I forgot about it,” says Stewart, a company member of Charlottesville’s Gorilla Theater Productions, until last year, when a family friend mentioned Lehane’s Shutter Island in a social media post.

Stewart immediately proposed Coronado to GTP. Seven yeses, a year of planning and months of rehearsals later, the play opens Wednesday, prior to the company taking it to the Capital Fringe festival in July.

Stewart describes Coronado as “suspenseful, a thriller, a mystery,” its first act a series of scenes focused on three conversations. There’s Gina and her lover, Will, plotting to kill Gina’s husband; a psychiatrist and his female patient conspicuously meeting outside the office; and there’s Bobby and his dad, a career criminal who’s raised his son to swindle and run scams before running out of town—the two are looking for a missing diamond and Bobby’s missing girlfriend, Gwen (played by Stewart). 

The storylines intersect, and, as New York Times theater critic Neil Genzlinger pointed out in his review of the Invisible City Theater Company’s December 2005 production of “Coronado” at Manhattan Theater Source (in which Gerry Lehane originated the role of Bobby’s dad), “The playwright doles it all out at an admirable speed, so that you’re figuring the secrets out just about the time he’s revealing them—not an easy trick.”

And while the play text itself is “a roadmap, and it tells you what’s important,” says Jack Rakes, (Gorilla Theater’s tech director who plays Bobby), it’s the company’s job to look at the text and highlight the relationships and themes, while remaining true to the writer’s intention.

There’s something special about staging a play so focused on intimate relationships between characters in a black box theater, says Anna Lien, Gorilla Theater founder and artistic and managing director, who plays Gina. It keeps the focus on the actors and their characters instead of physical production elements. Rakes says it’s “always the hardest thing, to have private moments in public, and to forget that you’re on stage.”

In this production, the close-talking that happens in the stage bar mimics what happens in a real-life bar. A server, played by Charlie Gilliam, adds another level of reality—his character interrupts the conversations, walking in at inopportune moments, as often happens in restaurants and bars.

Gilliam’s waiter sets Gorilla Theater’s production of Coronado apart from the rest in a major way, one that Lehane himself had to approve before Gorilla Theater could proceed. Lehane wrote the part as a woman having an affair with one of the married men in the play, but because Gorilla Theater is committed to inclusivity and to LGBTQ+ positivity, Stewart wanted the waiter to be a man. Lehane approved Stewart’s proposed amendment to the script and wrote it into the contract that he and Stewart signed.

Though a seemingly small adjustment, “that gender swap amplified a lot of the tension and dynamic betwixt the characters in the love triangle with the waiter,” says Lien, particularly because a gay relationship is “so far outside societal norms from when/where the play is set” in small-town America.  

Most of the characters in Coronado are thrill-seekers trying to get away from the monotony of small-town life—they run cons, have tumultuous affairs and blur ethical lines. But, Bobby, tired of excitement, craves the mundane. 

This paradox is something Gorilla Theater knows fairly well itself, as it aims to stage the classics with a twist alongside “edgy contemporaries,” says Lien. In fact, many Gorilla Theater actors have found themselves a outside of their usual routines as Coronado’s content requires them to “go darker” than they’ve ever gone before.

The production reminds the cast and crew to return “to truth and essentials,” says Lien, to trust a script, revel in apparent simplicity and allow great complexity to reveal itself in moments of absolute truth. 

Place setting

The play is called Coronado, but it’s not set in the California resort city. Or in Kansas, Canada, Uruguay, Panama, Mexico or any other town, village or municipality called Coronado. Instead it’s a plot point in the play. Something happens in Coronado that creates a conversation that leads to—well, let’s just say, other things.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Spamalot brings British humor of the highest (Ex)caliber

Actors in the Albemarle High School Players' production of Spamalot participated in last weekend's Dogwood Festival Parade. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

Billed as a “musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Spamalot parodies the tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table using British humor of the highest (Ex)caliber. The original Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, debuted in 2005 and collected three Tonys, including Best Musical. Monty Python member John Cleese describes the staging as “the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.” And in the hands of Fay E. Cunningham directing the Albemarle High School Players, it’s sure to be outrageous fun.

Through Sunday, April 29. $10-35, times vary. Albemarle High School, 2775 Hydraulic Rd. ahsplayers.weebly.com