Pulitzer Prize-Winning Play at Theatrical Outfit
‘The Young Man From Atlanta’
Tom Key and Marianne Hammock
Finally, Atlanta debut’s the dramatic play “The Young Man From Atlanta,” for which Horton Foote won a Pulitzer in 1995.
Reminiscent of Willy Loughman, salesman Will Kidder and his family have a bundle of troubles. He says he is “the best,” but trouble is brewing for this has-been salesman. It’s the 1950s and at age 64, Will is having a house built for him and his wife, Lily Dale, that is way to big for just the two of them. He has put a down payment on a new car for his wife, and he’s just about to loose his job to the man he hired nearly 20 years his junior.
Will can only fool himself so much. He may surmise why his 37-year-old son who drowned would have kept walking far into the ocean when he didn’t know how to swim, but Lily Dale won’t even consider why or who her son really was.
Reminiscent of “Death of a Salesman,” “All My Sons,” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “The Young Man From Atlanta” is just as dramatic and haunting. Like O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone, Lily Dale is lost in life without her husband and lives a life of dreams rather than looking at the truth.
While the similarities between the aforementioned works are clear, the script holds its own and is one of the best dramas I’ve seen in Atlanta.
Theatrical Outfit puts on a good production of a great play that is worth seeing. Tom Key and Marianne Hammock are notable and believable as Will and Lily Dale.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of downers. Tim Batten, who plays Carson, tends to overact and indicate. For example, when he enters after just having breakfast, he picks at his teeth as if pulling out a stuck piece of meat. Frank Roberts, who plays Lily Dale’s step-father, seems miscast. He looks to be the same age as Lily and Will, and he does nothing to make us believe he is any older. Whereas Donna Biscoe, who plays Etta, an elderly former maid of the Kidder’s, looks to be no more than 40. Yet, she hunches over, shakes when she walks and quivers her voice to make her seem as if she is nearing 90.
“The Young Man From Atlanta”at Theatrical Outfit runs through Feb. 20.
Jessica Phelps West directs a cast that includes Andrew Benator (Tom), Robin Bloodworth (Ted), and Tonia Jackson (Clara).
This is a World -1 from gloATL on Vimeo.
Lauri Stallings’ dance company gloATL premieres its newest creation “This is a World” for two nights this weekend.
After dancing with the Cleveland San Jose Ballet and Canada’s Ballet British Columbia, she danced for five years with the famed Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
Stallings later held a three-year residency as a choreographer at the Atlanta Ballet where she received accolades for her mashup featuring the Atlanta Ballet with Grammy Award winner Big Boi and Grammy nominee Janelle Monáe.
Her company gloATL is a collaborative platform of part choreography and part interactive art installation, bridging the gap between performers and audiences.
The performance location, Goodson Yard, is a vast enclosed structure found on the Goat Farm, a 100-year-old cotton mill recently designated for artists’ live and work space. Located just off of Howell Mill Road, between 14th and 17th Street, the Goat Farm symbolizes the efforts of Atlanta’s Real estate development community to support not-for-profit artists with space.
The formal world premiere of this new creation will take place May 2011 at the Duo Theatre in New York.
“This is a World” runs in Atlanta this weekend only, Feb. 4-5. For ticket information, visit gloATL.
Threesixty’s version of “Peter Pan” is nothing like the version that has hit Broadway five times.
This production is more true to the book, and that’s not always such a good thing. In this case, it doesn’t work as a play. It’s more a showpiece of marvelous puppets and lifelike scenery than a coherent story.
The script is disjointed. Characters, like the ostrich, seem to come and go for no reason without moving the play forward. Many of the actors act as if they are performing for six year olds, but the story, originally written for adults, is difficult to follow in this version.
This production is more likely to thrill for its special effects than for its storyline or acting.
Held in a circus-style round tent, a 360-degree aerial footage of London is shown on its dome making it appear as if Peter, the three Darling children and the audience are flying over the city. Via 360-degree aerial views, we see the children fly over the Thames River, through tunnels, and soar into the clouds.
When they land in Neverland, they meet up with the Lost Boys and go undersea, where they and the audience will be enveloped among reefs, seamounts and fish. Aerialists, as Mermaids, twirl and climb through reefs up silk ropes performing acrobatic feats.
Later, the Lost Boys and Peter will fight Captain Hook and his pirates.
That, sadly, is as interesting as the show gets. No interesting acting, but a lot of over-acting.
It’s a spectacle that may work for children who are eight or older, but it was too scary for a six year old who attended a matinee and cried when the crocodile appeared.
The script is disjointed and hard to follow as an adult, especially when actors can sometimes barely be heard.
Christopher Keller, lead puppeteer created a life-size big shaggy dog that acted as lifelike as any dog. Andrew Gruen, as Mr. Darling, gave a notable and believable performance as a frustrated, hard-working father.
“Peter Pan,” directed by Ben Harrison and designed by William Dudley, is adapted by Tanya Ronder from the J.M. Barrie story, with music composed by Benjamin Wallfisch.
Cast:
Christopher Keller, Andrew Gruen, Elijah Trichon, Samantha Hopkins, Shannon Warrick, Darrell Brockis, Emily Yetter, Ciaran Joyce, Lee Turnbull, Joshua Kuehl, Ben Adams, Ian Street, Jef Canter, Josh Swales, James Nieb, Justin Torres, Mauricio Villalobos, Chuck Bradley, Heidi Buehler, Rain Anya, Sarah Bebe Holmes, Beth Triffon.
“Peter Pan” runs through March 20 in Atlanta at Pemberton Place. Tickets are available at peterpantheshow.com.
Photo: Greg Mooney
Three cheers for “Bring it On: The Musical.” Better yet, make it 300 cheers!
“Bring It On” brings a great script, fantastic choreography and dancing, fine singing, acting and tumbling, and witty lyrics to the Alliance Theatre. This show’s energy could boil a pot of water.
A Tony Award-winning crew has put together a spectacular story, with funny lines, true-to-life characters, fantastic choreography and music that runs the gamut from hip-hop, to rock (with a nod to Bohemian Rhapsody), to mainstream Broadway-style show tunes.
Finally, at the end of her junior year in high school, Campbell fulfills her life-long dream of being named cheerleading captain. She holds cheerleading tryouts, and against the wishes of the other cheerleaders, she allows a freshman, Eva, to join the Varsity cheerleading squad. Campbell also makes Eva a third alternate to take over the title of captain, should anything happen to her.
Just a couple of weeks before her senior year at Truman high school is to begin, the school board votes on redistricting. A new district line is drawn between her house and that of her next door neighbor, Eva.
Campbell is forced to attend Jackson High, where there is no cheerleading squad and the popular kids are hip-hop dancers who work in burger shops, unlike her friends at Truman who are given cars and don’t work.
While jokes about cheerleaders and high school life are bandied about, the characters are so true-to-life. They aren’t imitations of the Goth, hippies, Barbie-doll girls and hip-hop crowds. They’re all there, but they’re tough, funny and vulnerable. They are people you’ve seen and known, not silly parodies.
These characters are fun to watch, especially Campbell, who dresses in a leprechaun outfit on a dare just to fit in with the Jackson cool crowd. The perky, pretty blonde learns how to jive with the hip-hop dance crew, which includes a black transsexual sporting a large ‘70s-style afro.
Costumes normally pass me by, but these costumes are so real and so hip, from the Goth combat black leather boots to the Velvet Underground T-shirts to the large, gold oversized earrings. The street clothes are colorful yet stand out in an understated way.
Making its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre, “Bring it On: The Musical” is the musical version of the hit cheerleading movie “Bring It On.” Although I’ve never seen the movie, I understand the musical differs in the story line.
With an original book by Tony Award-winner Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q), music and lyrics by Tony Award-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights), music by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning composer Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) and lyrics by Broadway lyricist Amanda Green (High Fidelity), “Bring It On: The Musical” is most likely Broadway bound. The production is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Andy Blankenbuehler (In the Heights).
The lead actors include Amanda Lea LaVergne (Campbell), who recently performed in “Grease” and “All Shook Up” on Broadway; Adrienne Warren (Danielle), fresh from the recent national tour of “Dreamgirls;” and Nick Blaemire (Randall), who appeared in the original Broadway production of “Cry-Baby.”
The cast includes some of the nation’s most skilled cheerleaders, whose combined achievements include more than 25 national titles and 50 team titles in gymnastics and choreography.
There are very few productions I would like to see twice. But this one? Bring it on!
“Bring It On: The Musical” runs through Feb. 20 at the Alliance Theatre.
Cast:
Antwan Bethea, Nick Blaemire, Courtney Corbelle, Ariana DeBose, Brandon Espinoza, Kelly Felthous, Shawn Alynda Fisher, Brooklyn A. Frietag, Gregory Haney, Rod Harrelson, Dominique Johnson, Stephanie C. Klemons, Janet Krupin, Amanda Lea LaVergne, Melody Mills, Michael Mindlin, Griffin Myers, Michael Naone-Carter, David Ranck, Ryann Redmond, Elena Ricardo, Kate Rockwell, Billie Sue Roe, Jon Rua, LaQuet Sharnell, Ephraim M. Sykes, Sheldon Tucker, Adrienne Warren, Lauren Whitt
The “West Side Story” National Tour opened tonight at the Fox Theatre. Revived on Broadway in 2009, the updated production was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play.
The original production back in 1957 was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical and won a Tony for Best Choreography.
This production is a “tougher” version of “West Side Story,” the version playwright Arthur Laurents, now 92, says he always wanted to do, according to notes in the playbill.
It is tougher and a lot more sexual and raw, especially the Officer Krupke number.
Raw is good, but nothing beats gut wrenching passion. If there were more of that, it could catapult this production from being good to being great.
“West Side Story” runs Jan. 25-30 at the Fox Theatre.
Arthur Laurents (Book)
Leonard Bernstein (Music)
Stephen Sondheim (Lyrics)
Jerome Robbins (Choreography)
David Saint (Director)
The cast:
Ali Ewoldt
Michelle Aravena
Joseph J. Simone
German Santiago
Mike Boland
Ryan Christopher Chotto
Stephen DeRosa
Drew Foster
Alexandra Frohlinger
Jay Garcia
Nathan Keen
Christopher Patrick Mullen
John O’Creagh
Kyle Robinson
Cary Tedder
Lauren Boyd
Alicia Charles
Beth Crandall
Grant Gustin
Dean Andre de Luna
Ted Ely
Lori Ann Ferreri
Ryan Ghysels
Grant Gustin
Tim Hausmann
Déa Julien
Daniel Kermidas
Kristen Paulicelli
Christie Portera
Alexandra Blake Redelico
Erika Santillana
Kevin Santos
Michael Scirrotto
Jeffrey C. Sousa
Jessica Swesey
Kathryn Lin Terza
Kirstin Tucker
Chicago 2nd City
“The Second City Miracle on 1280 Peachtree Street” is cute and good for a few laughs. But if you’re looking for side-splitting laughter from Chicago’s famous improvisational theater company The Second City, you probably won’t find it here.
It is better than last year’s Second City Holiday show. But if you’re nostalgic and looking for “something wonderful right away,” (the title of a history book on The Second City), you’ll have to sit tight through the opening musical number. The improv scenes are better than the songs.
Some of the scripted scenes and scripted improve scenes are good and quite funny, such as the father and son scene, and the party scene.
The cast is a mélange of six performers Ric Walker, Micah Sherman, and Claudia Michelle Wallace, all of The Second City; and locals Amy Roeder of JackPie Theatre, and Tara Ochs and Randy Havens of Dad’s Garage Theare.
The play was written and created by T.J. Shanoff and Seth Weitberg with additional material by the cast of Second City.
“The Second City” plays through Dec. 12 at the Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Theatre.
Photo by Stephen Poff: Alpha Campell Jackson (Tonia Jackson) and her daughter Lillie (Karan Kendrick)
I wonder why people all around me are laughing when I’m not. Are these lines really funny?
I’m at the Alliance Theatre watching “The Nacirema Society” by renowned playwright and New York Times best-selling novelist Pearl Cleage.
Apparently, a lot of people think this show is funny. Maybe I don’t because there are two couples behind me editorializing after every couple of lines and won’t shut up.
Maybe that’s why I’m not laughing so much. I wonder if it’s because I’m not black. Except the white couple next to me is laughing as much as the black couple next to me.
Either way, I don’t find this show funny or believable.
It is 1964 in Montgomery, Alabama, and we’re watching an elite society of black families prepare for the annual cotillion. Would these Noel Coward-type snobbish elderly black women really talk in that British style, forcing their words straight from the middle part of the mouths rather than from their throats or their diaphragms like most Americans? Other than Madonna, who else in this country talks like that? In the South? And would these wealthy families speak no colloquialisms and have no Southern dialects? I don’t buy it.
I can’t imagine a family of any race or religion from Alabama that would speak in that manner. We all have roots, and these two women – Grace Dunbar and Catherine Green – seem to have been plucked from Britain in the 1930s .
“The Nacirema Society” revolves around a couple of charades: a false claim of love, a false claim of wealth and a plot to deceive a New York Times reporter. It’s very Noel Coward-like but not as believable.
Although I found the acting good, I found the play boring. There were a couple of characters I enjoyed: Alpha Campbell Jackson (Tonia Jackson), a spitfire who schemes to collect money from her deceased mother’s former employer, Grace Dunbar (Trezana Beverley); and Janet Logan (Jasmine Guy), a reporter who has come from New York to spill the beans on what it’s like to be black and living in high society in the South.
Cleage is an award-winning playwright. After last week’s opening night’s performance, a jazz band played in the lobby while crowds surrounded her, raving about the show.
“The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years” runs through Nov. 14 at the Alliance Theatre.
Cast
Trezana Beverley
Kevin Alan Daniels
Andrea Frye
Jasmine Guy
Chinai J. Hardy
Tonia Jackson
Karan Kendrick
Naima Carter Russell
Neda Spears
Freddy Cole will be celebrating his Birthday Bash this Tuesday at Café 290 in Sandy Springs.
Just back from touring in Switzerland, Cole and his band will be playing standard jazz tunes and numbers from his newest release, a tribute to Billy Eckstine titled “Freddy Cole Sings Mr B.”
Jazz Times critic Christopher Loudon writes that Cole’s delivery on the CD “is not just impeccable but rather profound.”
Cole, who turned 79 last week, grew up in Chicago with three older brothers, all musicians. Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton all visited the brothers.
Brother Nat “King” Cole, 12 years older than Freddy, was the first of the four to make a name in the music business. But his baby brother stands on his own. He has been inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and his CD “Merry Go Round” was nominated for a Grammy.
Cole studied at the Juilliard School of Music and received a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. His musical influences include John Lewis, Oscar Peterson and Teddy Wilson.
On Monday, Cole will share the stage for a couple of numbers with Joe Gransden’s 16-piece Big Band. Tuesday, Cole will play two sets with his own quartet, which features guitarist Randy Napoleon, bassist Elias Bailey, and drummer Curtis Boyd.
In a production called “Sammy & Me,” it would be normal to think you’d see the likeness of Sammy Davis Jr. But in the Alliance Theatre’s production, co-written and performed by Eric Jordan Young, you won’t.
Young tries to reincarnate Sammy Davis Jr., but he does not come close. Forget that he’s way larger than the petite singer and dancer was. In the theater, size does not matter. But acting does.
Young can act, he really can, and he’s a very good actor in this performance. The problem is you don’t think for a moment that this guy is Sammy. In the 35 characters Young plays in his one-man show, I believe he is a little boy, I believe he is a young man, I believe he is a grandfather. And I believe he can sing. But as I overheard a woman tell someone else as they were walking out of the theater, “You never believe he is Sammy.”
When I think of Sammy, I think of playfulness, jokes and slapstick. You won’t find many laughs here.
“Sammy & Me” opens with a young performer reading a newspaper critique of his new Sammy Davis Jr review. The news is not good.
Next, we see the performer as a toddler, charming his daddy to let him stay up just a little bit longer to watch Sammy on TV. We meet the boy’s father and grandfather, and we see the performer shake and shudder as the ghost of Sammy Davis Jr. enters his body.
Young can act and sing just fine. He’s like the toddler longing to be like Sammy. The sad thing is: he can’t.
“Sammy & Me” plays at the Hertz Theatre at Woodruff Arts Center through Oct. 24.
The Atlanta performance features a three-piece band. The above video is from the show’s world premiere in 2006. Click here to see a more recent video and to go to the “Sammy & Me” website.
“Sammy & Me” was written by Wendy Dann and Eric Jordan Young.
George Grier, bass; Tommy James, piano; Scott von Ravensberg, drums.
Photo by Greg Mooney
In its third incarnation, a musical from a book can work. Just recently Aurora Theatre produced “Shrew: the Musical.” And if you went there thinking nothing could possibly be as good as Cole Porter’s musical version of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” you were in for a wonderful surprise.
If you care to see “Twist,” the second musical version of Dickens’s “Oliver Twist,” you probably won’t be saying, “Please, sir, I want some more.” Less than halfway through the second act, I was ready for it to be over.
Directed and choreographed by Debbie Allen, I expected so much more from this show. I would have even been glad to have settled for a good production, if not great. Allen apparently doesn’t hold the cast up to the same standards she holds for herself as a performer.
In the 1980s, Allen was nominated for two Tony Awards for her roles as Anita in “West Side Story” and Charity in “Sweet Charity.” She has also been a judge on my favorite TV show “So You Think You Can Dance” and has choreographed for the Academy Awards. She is even working to pass on her passion through her own dancing school in Los Angeles.
Allen was nominated for two Tony Awards for her roles in “West Side Story” and “Sweet Charity.” She has also been a judge on my favorite TV show “So You Think You Can Dance” and has choreographed for the Academy Awards. She is even working to pass on her passion of dance through her own dancing school in Los Angeles. So, I expected to be blown away by the dancing. But you wouldn’t want to put these dancers on next to those in last season’s production of Twyla Tharp’s “Come Fly With Me.”
Like “Oliver!,” “Twist” is a musical version of Dickens’s classic tale “Oliver Twist.” But instead of being set in England in the 1800s, it occurs in New Orleans between 1919 and 1928.
At an orphanage for boys, Twist (Alaman Diadhiou) is bullied by his peers and caretakers for being a “mulatto.” His black father was killed for having a romantic relationship with a white woman, and his mother died in childbirth. At around age 8, an undertaker buys the unwanted Twist from the orphanage for a couple of dollars. The undertaker makes him sleep alongside the deceased and returns him to the orphanage because he says the boy can’t dance.
I should feel sorry for this boy and the other orphans, but I don’t. Whether that is the fault of the script or the acting, I am not sure.
“Oliver!” is one of those musicals that envelop you inside the characters. You hate Bill Sikes, you love Oliver, Nancy and the Artful Dodger. But with “Twist,” the feeling I had for the characters was nil, even though Della (Olivia-Diane Joseph), is one heck of a singer.
It’s an admirable theme for a show: The color of one’s skin should not matter. It worked beautifully for me in the recent national touring company’s version of “South Pacific,” and it was just as fantastic when I saw the Lincoln Center version televised on PBS just weeks later.
Unfortunately, “Twist” comes off as preachy and boring.
Some of the dancers – many who hail from Allen’s Los Angeles dance school – are good, but some of them are just OK at best. Much of the acting feels pushed and unbelievable, especially that of the young boys who recite lines as if they were “acting” instead of living. However, one standout among the boys is Trey Best, who comes alive and lives truthfully under imaginary circumstances on stage no matter what he is doing.
The day I saw the show, Twist sang a wonderful, touching rendition of his opening number, “I Have A Soul,” but he faltered on other solo tunes with a shrieking, cracking voice that often trailed off key.
The most outstanding performer, Della, who plays the live-in girl friend of the abusive Boston (Matthew Johnson) – the take-off characters of Nancy and Bill Sikes from “Oliver!” – sings beautifully with emotion and is one of the most believable actors on the stage.
“Twist” would have been more enjoyable with another twist, just a musical review of the best cast members singing and dancing. Better yet, just give me Debbie Allen.
“Twist” runs at the Alliance Theatre through Oct. 3.
Book by William F. Brown; Music by Tena Clark and Gary Prim; Lyrics by Tena Clark.
Cast
Zaire Adams
Paul Aguirre
E. Wade Benson
Trey Best
Sabrina Cmelak
Alaman Diadhiou
Nickolas Eibler
Duane Asanté Ervin
John Fisher
Kyle Garvin
Michael George
Jared Grimes
Shawna M. Hamic
Beau Harmon
Chantel Heath
Matthew Johnson
Olivia-Diane Joseph
Jamie Katz
Tracy Kennedy
Chandler Kinney
Aijia Lise
Chase Maxwell
Rikki McKinney
Pat McRoberts
Madison Minniti
Chondra La-Teaste Profit
Malaiyka Reid
Brett Sturgis
Dougie Styles
Melissa Lola Youngblood
