Angst-inducing CAT’S-PAW effectively performed and staged at Beck

 

William Mastrosimone, the author of CAT’S-PAW, now on stage in the Studio Theatre at Beck Center, states, “In the early 80s I was shocked by the questionable methods of some activists who called themselves environmentalists. At a protest in the Northwest, so-called environmentalists drove 12-inch nails in trees scheduled to be felled so that a logger’s chainsaw would be snagged and the logger injured. That nasty tactic cost a man his arm. A good cause was vitiated. When a car bomb exploded by mistake under misguided activists in California, I saw a clear demarcation between passionate activism and criminality. That was the inspiration for the play.  The ends never justify the means— or do they?”   Director Bill Roudebush in his program notes relates, “CAT’S-PAW, written in 1984, is a play conceived forty years ahead of its time. We weren’t listening back then. Today, even with the most recent events in Flint, Michigan, and East Palestine, Ohio, surrounding our consciousness, so many are still denying the reality of pumping poisons into our environment.”   He adds, “This play, unnoticed in its own time, predicts . . . our present dilemma, as well as the toxic politics, threats and media that engulf and amplify our continued lack of action to address the problems we still continue to ignore…Of course I want to direct one of the most impactful plays I have ever read!!”   The play focuses on Victor, the head of a group called Earth Now!, responsible for a bomb attack at the EPA in which 27 people have been killed. He, along with a confederate, has kidnapped an EPA official and is holding him hostage in a DC warehouse. He has a television news reporter led to his lair so she can tell the world why he has done what he has done.   “Victor's obsession is the destruction of the world's water supply and, with it, the final destruction of the human race by pollution.  When the reporter asks if he feels any guilt about the death of the 27 innocent people, he replies that hundreds of innocent people die every hour because of what mankind is doing to its water supply and do the people responsible feel guilt for this?” The Beck casts includes local talents.   Christ Richards plays Victor Lara Mielcarek, as the reporter, Jessica, Michael Dempsey is Darling, who is being held hostage, and Grace Favarro who portrays Cathy, Victor's naive loyalist. Each is excellent in developing a realistic character.  Richards, especially. He is spooky.  His eyes glint, he is maniac in his obsession to his convictions.  His nervous twitches and intense body language are downright scary, as is his explosive temper.  I would not like to meet him in a dark alley or have a disagreement with him!   Director William Roudebush displays laser-focus instincts.  The pace is fast, the stress-inducing action is intense.  He creates a drama with high angst.   (Note the theatre recommended CAT’S-PAW for ages 16 and older due to subject matter, onstage violence, and substantial adult language.   Capsule judgment:  CAT’S PAW is a powerful script, filled with tension and angst.  It gets a very well-conceived and developed production at Beck.  It’s definitely a “go see!”   Dates:  September 22 to October 22, 2023.  For tickets call 216-521-2540 or go to beckcenter.org

CLYDE'S @ KARAMU

 

Lynn Nottage, the author of CLYDE’S, now in production at Karamu, is the first woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for works of drama.  

She tends to write about people trapped in abusive type relationships. 

As the director’s program notes state, “[Nottage] gives voice to the voiceless and overlooked. . . creating relatable humans to draw you in while offering a mirror for reflection.”  

In her play RUINED, the women were the target of terrorists in the Congolese civil war. 

In SWEAT, steelworkers resisting their union-busting management inexorably wind up busting one another.

CLYDE’S finds former incarnated kitchen staff members working at a truck-stop sandwich shop in Reading, Pennsylvania, attempting to rebuild their lives but, but their tough-as-nails boss Clyde enjoys pointing out, she’s the only employer in the area who will hire “morons” like them. She does so not because she too was once incarcerated. (Of the crime that landed her in prison the only thing she says is that the last man who tried to hurt her “isn’t around to try again, I made damn sure of that.”)  She is a woman who appears to have an unsatisfying life and finds great pleasure in making life miserable for others.

In order to make life bearable, each staff member is encouraged by the chef to indulge in imagining, then creating their perfect sandwich, thus, he believes, that they can transcend their mistakes and reconnect with the world.
 
Each has tale, which gradually unfolds. 
 
Letitia “got greedy” and stole “some oxy and addy to sell on the side” after breaking into a pharmacy to obtain “seizure medication” for her daughter. 
 
Rafael held up a bank but with a BB gun, because he wanted to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. 
 
We don’t at first get the story of how Montrellous wound up behind bars, but he is so saintly that Letitia believes it must have been elective.
 
CLYDE’S is about dark things, including prison, drugs, homelessness and poverty, yet it has many comic moments.
 
The 90-minute play without an intermission, under the direction of Treva Offutt, is satisfying in some aspects, frustrating in others.
 
For the play to work, because of the realism of the writing, the people on stage must be real, not acting.  Jaren Hodgson (Jason), Maxx (Letitia), Prophet Seay (Montrellous) and Jonathan Rodriguez (Raphael) are all spot on.  Unfortunately, whether directed to do so, or having created the role herself, Dayshawnda Ash (Clyde), though she has some fine moments, generally acts, poses and creates a caricature rather than the necessary authentic person.
 
Richard H. Morris, Jr.’s realistic set design works well and Dred Gelb must have cleaned out a local restaurant for all the authentic utensils and other props which add to the authenticity of the prep room.  Too bad same cannot be said as to the preparation of the food served.  A pita with a couple of pieces of vegetables in it does not a sandwich make.  Where were the sides in serving baskets?  Where is the realistic prepping and serving of food?  If we don’t see real, we cannot believe in real.
 
Capsule judgment: Though very talky, with little to no action, CLYDE’S, with its many laughs, makes for an interesting evening of theatre. Fortunately, it ends with a positive, though some might think, unrealistic message.
 
For tickets call Karamu, 216-795-7077 or go to karamuhouse.org

Next up:  12/1-16/2023—Langston Hughes’ BLACK NATIVITY (presented at Cleveland Play House)—The soulful, heartwarming story, gospel celebration.

Dramatic, humorous and wonderfully performed, CPH’s THURGOOD, is a marvelous theatrical experience

 

Thurgood Marshall, the subject of THURGOOD, now on stage at Cleveland Play House’s Allen Theatre, was the grandson of slaves.  He was born in segregated Baltimore and attended all-Black schools.  
 
After high school he enrolled at Lincoln University, the oldest college for African Americans in the United States. Marshall desired to go to law school but was not allowed into the all-white University of Maryland. Instead, he attended Howard University Law School.
 
When asked about why he wanted to go to law school, he said that his father, who was an important influence in his life, "he never told me to become a lawyer, but he turned me into one ... He taught me how to argue, challenged my logic on every point, by making me prove every statement I made, even if we were discussing the weather."
 
And what a lawyer he was.  Often referred to as “Mr. Civil Rights,” he devoted his life to championing justice and equality for all people.
 
Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP’S Legal and Education Fund.   He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional.  
 
Though many think only of Martin Luther King, Jr. as the central lynch point of the civil rights movement, the role of Marshall cannot be overlooked.  King fought outside the system to make his strides, Marshall worked within the system to change laws and legally make change.  
 
Marshall’s motivation was often credited to his education at Howard, where he was taught to be a "social engineer," willing to use the law to fight for civil rights.
 
He was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to be the Supreme Court's first African-American justice.  Marshall served as an associate justice from 1967 until 1991.  A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became an increasingly conservative court.
 
THURGOOD, his biographical play, as written by George Stevens, Jr., spans his remarkable 58-year career while highlighting his warmth and sharp wit.  
 
THE CPH production stars film, TV, and regional theatre veteran Lester Purry.  He has performed this script at Geva Theatre center, Portland Playhouse and Penumbra Theatre.
 
Purry doesn’t act the role, he emerges himself so into the character, that there is no doubt we are sharing the two-hour, two-act play with Marshal, himself.  His asides to the audience are Marshall’s asides.  His sorrows become our real sorrows.  His joys, our joys.  What a pleasure to see this marvelous actor on stage.
 
Purry’s lines were often interrupted by applause.  This was not only a tribute to the actor’s performance, but to the knowledge and power of Marshal’s ideas and stances.
 
Award winning Clevelander Greg White understudies Purry and may perform at some stagings.
 
The action takes place on one-set, but is visually enhanced by Rasean Davonte Johnson’s compelling projections.
 
Capsule judgement:  THURGOOD is not only is a fine historical epic, but is wonderful entertainment.  Dramatic, humorous, well performed and clever….it makes for a marvelous must-see theatrical experience.
 
THURGOOD runs through October 1, 2023. For tickets call Cleveland Play House @ 216-400-7000 or go to https://www.clevelandplayhouse.com/
 
Next up at CPH---10/21-11/12—MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN—A gritty yet highly theatrical tale that brings what’s buried back to life.
 

LUNGS

As a counselor, I have often shared with clients the need to talk-out issues in their relationships.  It’s one of the central techniques of mental health practitions.   Duncan Macmillan, in his two-person play LUNGS, which is now in production at Ensemble Theater, illustrates this talking-out process.     Unfortunately, in his oft-praised script, he seems to give us a model of when talking out becomes an issue, when people excessively talk and analyze their relationships.  In fact, he seems to illustrate how to talk a relationship to its death.   A review of LUNGS, which debuted in 2011 at the Studio Theatre in Washington DC, praised the play as "original and striking", but slighted the characters as "cliche".  Another review stated, "Duncan Macmillan's distinctive, off-kilter love story is brutally honest, funny, edgy and current. It gives voice to a generation for whom uncertainty is a way of life through two flawed, but deeply human, people who you don't always like but start to feel you might love. It's bravely written, startlingly structured.”     The nameless characters, the script identifies them as M and W, find themselves examining the scope of their lives together, and the world around them, when they begin considering starting a family.   “In a time of global anxiety, terrorism, erratic weather and political unrest, a young couple want a child but are running out of time. If they over think it, they'll never do it. But if they rush, it could be a disaster.  They want to have a child for the right reasons. Except, what exactly are the right reasons? And what will be the first to destruct – the planet or the relationship?”   And so it goes, on and on, when every possible issue about the world, their lives, whether they are “good people,” are dissected, trisected, examined and reexamined again.     After a while it seems like the duo needs to just shut up!  Finally, as can be expected, they do and go their separate ways, childless, until they accidentally run into each other.     He is now engaged.   And, she has a secret that she carries into their conversation.  Where will this talkfest go next???   Ensemble’s production, under the focused direction of Becca Moseley, stars Katie Simón Atkinson and Robert Grant III.     Stars is the perfect word to describe this excellent cast.  They are totally natural.  Being, not acting.  There is not a moment of pretense during the production.     The production, with no intermission, even with all the talk, talk, talk, flows right along.   Capsule judgment:  The script, with its strong language and themes, is a thinking person’s play.  This is not a production for those who go to theatre to escape, to be “entertained.”  Many people will not “like” this play.  “To be liked” is not its purpose.  The author wants you to think about the role of communication in a relationship.  To think about the world in which we live.  To think about what “good” people are.  To think, about…maybe even overthink!  The production succeeds in developing the intent and purpose of the author!   LUNGS runs at Ensemble, which performs on the Notre Dame College campus on Green Road in South Euclid, from September 8 through the 24th.  For tickets call 216-321-2930 or go to tickets@ensembletheatrecle.org