Previews and Quick Reviews: CWRU/CPH, Groundworks, KIBBUTZ CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY, THE NUTCRACKER: Joffrey Ballet/Cleveland Orchestra

“Three Sisters” @ CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Program

Eight students are accepted each year to be part of the Case Western Reserve/Cleveland Play House MFA Acting Program.   The purpose of the program is to combine educational and professional theater experiences to prepare students for theatre careers.

Their latest production, staged in the Helen Theatre in the Allen Complex in PlayhouseSquare, was Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters.” 

Chekhov was a Russian realist writer who is often referred to as the literary predictor of the twentieth century Russian Revolution.

“The Three Sisters” centers on the Prozorov sisters who relocated from their beloved Moscow to a provincial Russian town with their late father.  They wish to return to the refined life in Moscow, but fail to do so and their dreams recede further and further.
The production, under the direction of Ron Wilson, is slowly paced and thoughtful.  The acting is generally proficient.  Standouts in the cast are Nick Barbato as Andrei, the frustrated brother of the three sisters who was moving swiftly toward being a professor before he was wrenched from Moscow to live in the provinces,  Kathryn Metzger as Olga, is the matriarchal and spinster sister, Megan King as Masha, who is involved in a disappointing marriage, and Katie O. Solomon as Irina, the youngest sister, who believes her love is in Moscow and she must go there to find happiness. 
The images are nicely showcased in a fragmented set, enhanced by traditional Russian music, and era correct costumes.
The production runs through November 18, 2014.  For tickets call 216-241-6000 or www.clevelandplayhouse.com

The next performance by the CWRU/CPH MFA program will be Phillip Barry’s “The Philadelphia Story” from February 25th through March 7th, 2015 in the Helen.

GroundWorks Dance Theater, Fall Concert @ the Allen Theatre

Bannered as “imagination you can see,” GroundWorks dance has been critically celebrated as an “artistically significant” ensemble.  The company, which was founded in 1998, spreads its creative wings by performing in challenging settings including an ice house, cathedrals, libraries, outdoor venues, often with live musicians on stage.  In its 16 years it has commissioned 23 premiers from national and international choreographers, as well as 30 new works by its Artistic Director, David Shimotakahara, and 10 by Artistic Associate, Amy Miller.

Earlier this fall the company presented its third annual concert series at the Allen Theatre in partnership with Cleveland State University as its professional dance company in residence.

The nicely balanced program introduced GroundWorks newest company member, Troy Macklin, a welcome addition.  His youth and dynamisms fit well with the precision, athleticism and discipline demanded by Shimotakahara.

The program included “Always” choreographed by Gina Gibney to the music of Patsy Cline, centering on story telling, often about relationships.  The pulse and rhythms of the music were well integrated into the movements.  The second offering was the world premiere of “wait. now. go now.” by choreographer Johannes Wieland, which combined theatre and dance centering on how others see us and we see ourselves.   The concluding piece, “CoDa,” choreographed by Ronen Koresh, was a display of high level emotions, which featured the concept of focus as illustrated by strong physical and static movements.

GroundWorks next public presentations, The Winter/Spring Concert will be March 5 & 6 at EJThomas Hall in Akron and March 20 & 21 at The Breen Center,
2008 West 30th Street, Cleveland.

KIBBUTZ CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY

A joint production of the Cleveland-Israel Arts Connection, The Jewish Federation of Cleveland and Dance Cleveland, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, presented “If At All,” choreographed by Rami Be’er, at the Ohio Theatre.

The 65-minute piece, presented without intermission, was a dance/theatrical piece which centered on interpersonal relationships by using literal and abstract movements, mainly the forming and breaking of circles.  The constant motion, and the expanding and contracting physical space, created a feeling of the altering dynamic of individuals and groups sometimes interacting, sometimes being static, other times being alone.

Though the choreography was often repetitive, the overall effect was positive. The well trained and disciplined dancers, especially, the males, were dynamic in their explosive movements. 

Dance Cleveland’s next offering is the creative Pilobolus (http://www.pilobolus.com/) on Saturday, January 31 @ 8 PM in the State Theatre.  For tickets, which run $20-55, call 216-241-6000 or go on line to www.playhousesquare.org

THE NUTCRACKER:  JOFFREY BALLET AND CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

The holiday season is upon us and nothing seems to signal it more clearly than a performance of “The Nutcracker.”  And what could be more exciting than hearing Tchaikovsky’s distinctive score, being performed by The Cleveland Orchestra, one of the world’s great musical assemblages, and danced by the famous Joffrey Ballet?   Great music, choreographic excellent, brilliant costumes, larger than life scenery, all showcased in a tale for all times.

When?  November 26-30, 2014.  Tickets:  $20-99.  Where:  State Theatre in PlayhouseSquare. 

Please note:  Children under two years of age are not permitted.  Everyone, no matter their age, must have a ticket and be seated with an adult.

For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to www.playhousesquare.org

CWRU/CPH MFA production of TWELFTH NIGHT goes somewhat awry

TWELFTH NIGHT, now on stage in the Helen Theatre in the Allen Theatre complex of PlayhouseSquare, is the last ensemble presentation of the Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Play House MFA Acting Program’s class of 2014.  The program intends to give the students a chance to work with America’s leading theatre artists, appear on a professional stage, and, during their last year, journey to New York to showcase their talents.

The CWRU/CPH program has produced the likes of Rich Sommer (MFA ’04) who was in last year’s Broadway production of HARVEY and is a co-star on TV’s MAD MEN.  Another grad is 2012 Tony nominee, Elizabeth Davis (MFA ’06), for her starring role in the musical ONCE.

TWELFTH NIGHT, otherwise known as WHAT YOU WILL, is a comedy with farcical overtones that was originally developed to celebrate the Christmas season, though it contains no holiday references. The play, which was written in about 1601, uses devices such as musical interludes and farcical disorder, as well as traditional text to accomplish Shakespeare’s purpose.

It is one of the Bard’s three “mature comedies.”  The others are MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and AS YOU LIKE IT.  It contains traditional elements of Elizabethan romantic comedy including mistaken identity, separated twins, gender-crossing disguises, and obstacles that must be overcome in order to discover “true” love.  It goes beyond the norm by adding references to insanity as well as the madness of love.

The plot centers on Viola, a wealthy young lady who is shipwrecked, disguises herself as a boy to gain employment, and gets in the service of Orsino, a bachelor Duke of Illyria.  Orsino is in love with Olivia, a wealthy countess who is in self-imposed long-term mourning due to the death of her brother.  Unbeknownst to Viola, her twin brother, Sebastian, who was also on the ship, has been saved and is in Illyria.  Olivia falls in love with Viola, thinking she is a male.  Viola falls in love with Orsino.  A court jester, Olivia’s drunken uncle and his henchmen, a pompous rich gentleman who courts Olivia, and an assortment of other locals, add to the merriment and the march toward a happy ending.

This is Shakespearean merriment at its best.  Well, that’s the intent, but, unfortunately, under the direction of Guy Stroman, all does not necessarily go well.

The director has cut some of the play’s initial dialogue and actions, making the initial entrance of Viola and her actions, unclear.  Anyone not already familiar with the story might well be confused as to what is going on.

Stroman has also changed the setting from Illyria, on the Dalmatian coast in Europe, to the Mississippi Delta area of America’s Deep South.  As he explains, “My desire [was] to make the work accessible, passionate, truly funny, and well, human.”  He continues,  “The setting needed to be near water because of the shipwreck that separates twins Sebastian and Viola.”  He further states, “I felt that Shakespeare’s words would work great with the sound of the Delta blues.”  

There is nothing wrong with changing the setting if there is a clear purpose, but that change requires some obligations.  The deep south of the US has a distinctive vocal sound…accenting of words, use of a drawl, and language variations that are unique to the area.  Stroman made the setting changes that obligate him, as the director, to insure the performers and technical designers understood and bought into the concept.  He also needed to guide them to develop the concept.  It is here that Stroman seems to have stumbled.

The cast varied greatly in their “southern sounds,” from much to none.  Of course Sebastian and Viola are not of the area, so their pronunciations needed to be parallel, not like those who are residents of the newly created “South” Illyria.   While Olivia’s suitor, Malvolio, did the old South proud, Olivia spoke like a Midwesterner.  Sir Toby Belch twanged away, while Orsino drawled not.  Feste, the fool, sang and played the music of the Delta with verve and authenticity, but many in the cast didn’t follow suit.  After a while the southern setting’s vocal requirements became a detriment.  This was definitely not the actors’ fault, but the lack of consistent directorial decisions.

The black box performance space was set up as a very elongated thrust stage, with the audience seated on three sides.  It is often difficult for some in the audience to clearly hear lines in thrust staging due to the actors having their backs or profiles to some part of the audience at all times.  To alleviate the problem requires having the actors constantly change positions so they face the various sides of the audience on a rotating basis.  But the director did little to adjust to the thrust and added to the problems by having actors often speak directly to the back wall, making it difficult for all the audience to hear the lines and see their facial expressions.

The set design, which included constant moving of settings on and off the stage slowed down the action.  This script needs fast pacing, especially during the farcical segments.   The play does not need realistic settings.  A chair or a bench would have sufficed, rather than having constant interruptions as stair units, semi-walls and porches were brought on and off the stage.  Scenic Designer Tiffany Scribner’s back wall, consisting of Southern greenery interspersed with photo frames, and windows which are cleverly used for farcical interludes, works well.

Some of the performances were outstanding.  Stephen Michael Spencer has been excellent in all of his CWRU/CPH outings.  His guitar playing, singing of meanings rather than just words, his comic timing, facial dexterity and consistency of character development, was impressive in his creation of Feste, the jester/fool.

In spite of her lack of a southern accent, Christa Meyer developed a clear character as Olivia.  This is another of the company who has consistently been excellent in her performances.

Therese Anderberg was charming as Viola, though she could have “butched-up” her Cesario, to create a more realistic “boy” image.

Bernard Bygott has a nice touch with farce.  He is at his best when he is playing the exaggerated joker or drunk.  His Sir Toby Belch was the performance’s comic highlight.  TJ Ganley was excellent as the foppish Malvolio, nicely balancing affectation with comic style.

Sarah Kinsey did a nice turn as Maria, the mischievous maid, but why was she also cast in the role of Antonio, a male, with an obvious fake beard, is a mystery.  The role is not one of false identity.

Maureen Patterson’s lighting design works well, especially in creating the storm at the start of the play.

CAPSULE JUDGMENT:  The Case Western Reserve/Cleveland Play House MFA Acting Program’s class of 2014 has some excellent actors who should do well in their professional pursuits.  Their production of TWELFTH NIGHT has some performance highlights, but the students appear to have been done a disservice by what could be declared a misdirected version of TWELFTH NIGHT.  Maybe they can use the experience to learn the necessity of consistency of intent and directing execution.

TWELFTH NIGHT runs through October 26, 2013 at the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre (The Helen) on the lower level of CPH’s Allen Theatre.  For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to www.clevelandplayhouse.com.

CWRU/CPH MFA students excel in IDentity THEFT, devised theatre
Roy Berko
(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

It is the purpose of the Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Play House MFA Acting Program to give the students a chance to work with America’s leading theatre artists, appear on a professional stage, and, during their last year, journey to New York to showcase their talents.  The class of 2014 is about halfway through their experience.  Again, in IDentity THEFT, SEVEN LIVES FILTERED THROUGH THE IDEAS OF AUGUST STRINDBERG, the members of this class provide quality performances. 

The group’s previous productions, THE MISANTHROPE and IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE KINGS, were both outstanding.  Individual members have also proven themselves to be excellent as they appeared in Cleveland Play House main stage productions.

IDentity THEFT is a perfect vehicle to highlight each performer and his/her unique talents.  The play is not an authored script, but is devised theater which encourages collaborative creation, using spoken dialogue, poetry, mime, music, and dance as conceived by the director, writers and performers.  The process involves selecting a theme and then extracting ideas from that central axis. 

As the vignettes unfold, each of the seven members of the unit blend their own real and fictional experiences to relate a mini-tale in the tradition of August Strindberg.  Strindberg, the father of Swedish realistic writing, was a writer who drew on his personal experiences to create natural melodramas and naturalistic tragedies.  Like fellow Scandinavian, Henrik Ibsen, and French writer, Emile Zola, he stressed the real.  He was less interested in the format of the play, not often following the unwritten format rule of a beginning, middle and conclusion, but rather a depiction that often did not include exposition, and often just suddenly ended with no resolution or moral.  He dramatized the workings of the unconscious.

IDentity THEFT examines identities and how life often steals or hides who we are.  Sometimes a person is unaware of her/his motivations, as heredity and environment meld to make an indescribable “me.”  As with Strindberg, who often was known to levitate between reality and psychotic, each of the vignettes opened the characters to unknown push and pull forces and logical and illogical actions.

Therese Anderberg, Bernard Bygott, Drew Derek, TJ Gainley, Christa Hinckley, Sarah Kinsey and Stephen Spencer exposed the real, the unreal, the imagined and the unimaginable as they told about their selves and themselves.

CAPSULE JUDGMENT: IDentity THEFT, SEVEN LIVES FILTERED THROUGH THE IDEAS OF AUGUST STRINDBERG, is fascinating theatre and gave additional proof of the quality of the CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Programs’ class of 2014.

IDentity THEFT runs through March 9, 2013 at the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre (The Helen) on the lower level of CPH’s Allen Theatre.  For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to www.clevelandplayhouse.com.

THE MISANTHROPE is delightfully performed by the CWRU/CPH MFA students

Jean Baptiste Poquein, better known to the theatre world as Moliére, was the seventeenth master writer of dark comedy and satire.  He, like such other noted scribes as George Bernard Shaw, skewered that which they thought was ridiculous.

Moliére’s subjects include hits on religion, the Catholic church in particular, and upper class society, especially the two-faced way in which they told one tale when a person was present, but another story behind the person’s back. 

An  attack on the two-faced nature of friendships and conversations is the topic of THE MISANTHROPE, which is now being produced by the Case Western Reserve/Cleveland Play House Master of Fine Arts students.

THE MISANTHROPE centers on Alceste, a so-called idealist who believes people are inherently dishonest hypocrites.  Alceste says what he believes, no matter the consequences, which include lawsuits for slander, conflicts with his lady love, and his decision to retire into seclusion.

Moliére is the master of satire.  This comes through clearly in Richard Wilbur’s English verse translation of THE MISANTHROPE.  The lines are filled with clever bon mots, sly comic innuendoes, and delightful verbal attacks.  One of the major challenges of the script is to stay true to the writing style while being sure to stress meaning within the poetic style.

Though written centuries ago, the ideas are still relevant. Moliére challenges each viewer to ask, “What is truth?”  “What is your truth?” 

He preaches that we each have to negotiate through lives filled with potential verbal land mines.  The question is how do we negotiate around them, or do we wage war by hurling blunt truths in the form of verbal hand grenades.   Do we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?  Or, tell little white lies?  Or, speak “diplomatically?”  Or, ignore confrontations with the hope that they will go unnoticed and have little effect?  Whatever the choice, what are the consequences?

Case Western Reserve professor Donald Carrier’s direction of THE MISANTHROPE is generally on course.  He finely walks the tightrope between satirical farce and slapstick, except in one instance.  Why he decided to add a shtick of a man carrying too many suitcase, who stumbles and trips and throws them hither and yon, is beyond comprehension.  Did it get a laugh?  Sure, prat falls usually do, but what was the purpose regarding the story line and the expertly controlled farce elements of the rest of the production?

The cast is universally strong.  Stephen Spencer is correctly outrageously hyper as the moralistic Alceste.  He never goes over the line.  We laugh with him, not at him. 

Bernard Bygott is character correct as Alceste’s friend, Philinte.  TJ Gainley is fey-correct as the sonnet writing Oronte.  Though she sometimes stresses the rhythm and rhyme pattern of the writing, thus putting form before substance, lovely Therese Anderberg is acceptable as Célimène, Alceste’s love interest. 

Sarah Kinsey is wonderful as Eliante, Célimène's cousin.  The scene at the end of the play where she rejects Alceste’s advances was a show highlight and garnered just applause.  Christa Hinkley is bitch-perfect as the aloof Arsinoé.

Cameron Caley Michalak’s set design and Michael Boll’s lighting add to the visual elements of the production.

CAPSULE JUDGMENT: CWRU/CPH MFA Acting Programs’,  THE MISANTHROPE, is a delightful production of a historic classic.

THE MISANTHROPE runs through November 3 at the Helen Rosenfeld Lewis Bialosky Lab Theatre (The Helen) on the lower level of CPH’s Allen Theatre.  For tickets call 216-241-6000 or go to www.clevelandplayhouse.com.