Take Heart

Review of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Yale School of Drama

A play where the most sympathetic figures—Giovanni (Edmund Donovan) and Annabella (Brontë England-Nelson), a brother and sister—are incestuous lovers is taking risks against strong identifications. John Ford’s 17th century drama ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, a Yale School of Drama thesis show for director Jesse Rasmussen, presents a world of battling wills where betrayal and bullying are the order of the day. There are also acts of sensational violence for which the Jacobean period is well known. There are poisonings, duels, eyes put out and throats slit, and a heart impaled on a sword. At the end of the evening the point of it all may have escaped you but the sheer power of it will stay with you for a while.

The set by Ao Li comes by way of unusual decisions, such as the audience seated on the stage in the University Theater arranged at a height that makes the majority of the seats balcony level. Down on the stage is an open playing space where most of the action takes place. But the unadorned stage is augmented by a bridge-like structure above the playing space. And stretched the length of that level is a large screen behind a clear curtain on which show projections of what happens below stage—in the intimacy of Annabella’s bed chamber. The different levels suggest a private, privileged space below the area of public skirmish and struggle on the main stage, and, above, a level where, often, characters look down on the encounters below. It all makes for a very lively staging. Indeed, the swiftness of the first part little prepares us for how much things will go awfully awry in the second part.

The main mood of the first part is of misgivings surrounding a taboo love affair between lyrical and like-minded siblings. Donovan and England-Nelson look enough alike to lend some actuality to their kinship and both play well the seriousness of the incestuous passion. Their scenes together are strong in shared feeling, particularly the scene of avowed love. And Putana (Patricia Fa’asua), Annabella’s servant, seems to take the news of the love affair in stride, suggesting that a lady may avail herself of any gentleman—father, brother, whomsoever—whenever a hot mood strikes. Her rather lusty presence adds a lightheartedness to the early going. Even the Friar (Patrick Foley) in whom Giovanni confides could be called tempered in his displeasure at the youth’s chosen object of desire. There are also somewhat comically hopeless suitors for Annabella’s hand, such as Grimaldi (Ben Anderson), though Soranzo (George Hampe), the one favored by Annabella’s father Florio (Sean Boyce Johnson), has a preening, wheedling quality that could prove troublesome.

Soranzo has troubles of his own though. Hippolita (Lauren E. Banks), whom he has jilted, vows revenge and enlists Vasques (Setareki Wainiqolo), Soranzo’s serving-man, to help her achieve her goal, in return for sexual favors. The character of Vasques is key to both plots as he foils Hippolita’s plan, causing her death instead of Soranzo’s, and also learns, by cozening Putana, of the affair between Giovanni and Annabella and the latter’s pregnancy. Played with steely, scene-stealing charm by Setareki Wainiqolo, Vasques is almost an Iago-figure; though not nearly so malevolent—for malevolence’s sake—he is the most aware of how to gain advantage from the weaknesses of others.

The other malevolent character, Hippolita, is given convincing vicious authority by Lauren E. Banks and her death scene is the most dramatically rendered. Patricia Fa’asua’s Putana, a simple pawn ultimately, gets a memorable scene of degradation that is almost the final judgment of the play: Putana’s complicity could be said to be innocent of any selfishness and her penalty a final outrage. Which is then surpassed by a grandly telling final tableau of Annabella.

As our hero, Giovanni, Edmund Donovan can work up his passions well, and the love scene between him and Annabella, like her death scene, is made almost cinematic by the means that relay these scenes to us. George Hampe’s Soranzo is a mass of nervous energy, a privileged dastard who, as in some ways the main figure linking both fatal plots, is deplorable and fun. Sean Boyce Johnson, Patrick Foley, and Ben Anderson—as a grandly pompous Cardinal—all fill their roles with aplomb. As Annabella, Brontë England-Nelson shines the brighter for how brief is her joy and how inevitable her death—“Love me or kill me, brother,” she tells Giovanni, so of course he does both. Her most poignant moment is a song of heartfelt misery that describes the pathos of any true love in this wickedly cruel society. There are also beautiful songs of high-minded clerical detachment, rendered by the Cardinal’s Man (Christian Probst) in angelic tones.

The music and sound design from Frederick Kennedy are key to the emotional tone here, which, like Sarah Woodham’s costumes, is somewhat subdued, even solemn. Erin Earle Fleming’s lighting design gives all an even tone, but glare on the sheet covering the screen showing John Michael Moreno’s projections creates a distancing effect to frustrate our voyeurism in viewing Annabella’s chamber, which contains as well a pet bird. When not fronting projections, the sheet seems a gore-spattered curtain suitable to Ford’s theatrical world.

Though Rasmussen and dramaturg Davina Moss have arrived at a very playable text, cutting characters and subplots to keep our focus on the sibling lovers, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore still comes across as more sensational than satisfying. Its provocations lack a sense of the savagery of our era, so that it seems a deliberate jolt for the jaded tastes of another day. “All are punished!” the Prince exclaims at the close of Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare play to which Ford’s play is most akin, and here that is certainly true as well, though with something more of the scorecard of blood-letting one finds in slasher films.

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore
By John Ford
Directed by Jesse Rasmussen

Choreographer: Emily Lutin; Scenic Designer: Ao Li; Costume Designer: Sarah Woodham; Lighting Designer: Erin Earle Fleming; Sound Designer: Frederick Kennedy; Projection and Video Designer: John Michael Moreno; Production Dramaturg: Davina Moss; Technical Director: Tannis Boyajian; Stage Manager: Sarah Thompson

Cast: Ben Anderson; Lauren E. Banks; Edmund Donovan; Brontë England-Nelson; Patricia Fa’asua; Patrick Foley; Isabella Giovanni; George Hampe; Sean Boyce Johnson; Christian Probst; Setareki Wainiqolo

Yale School of Drama
January 31-February 4, 2017

There Was an Old Woman Who...

Review of Mrs. Galveston, Yale Cabaret

The final play of the first half of Yale Cabaret’s 49th season is an entertaining look at the at- times fraught world of elder care. Mrs. Galveston, by third-year Yale School of Drama playwright Sarah B. Mantell, enjoys some easy laughs at misunderstandings between an old woman and the young people assigned to impose some kind of regimen on her stubborn existence, then develops more interesting narrative devices. These include a big white pop-up book that Mrs. Galveston treats like a precious heirloom and an array of Post-It Notes that a young man’s grandmother berates him with.

An interesting conflict in the play comes from a somewhat surprising correspondence. Jim (George Hampe) visits the elderly Mrs. Galveston (Sydney Lemmon) because a Mr. Sanford has requested she be looked after (though she doesn’t welcome the intrusion), while, at home, Jim is not doing such a good job of taking care of his grandmother, though also refusing any care-givers from the organization both he and his cousin Liz (Aneesha Kudtarkar) work for. The highest-rated caregiver is Mark (Edmund Donovan), but neither Mrs. Galveston nor Jim have any interest in accepting his services. The frustrations Mark faces are expressed comically, and that helps to keep things light. And the irony of Jim’s situation—he’s failing with his own grandmother but succeeding with Mrs. Galveston—opens up the implied theme that, sometimes, families do need professionals, that the familiarity of blood ties can cause more tensions than they ease. While Mrs. Galveston is never quite comfortable with having a stranger in the house, she eventually is pacified by Jim’s ability to concoct a story that goes with the pop-up images in her big white book.

Mrs. Galveston (Sydney Lemmon), Jim (George Hampe) (photo: Elizabeth Green)

The book, and the scenic design by Claire Marie DeLiso, add elements of charm and visual cohesion to the story. The living room Mrs. Galveston resides in is situated in a charming little house that echoes the paper house in her book. A step down and across a connecting space of paneled floor sits the table festooned with Post-Its where Jim attempts to meet his grandmother’s demands. Both spaces are united with framing posts that situate the action within a homey interior that expands to join both houses.

Mrs. Galveston (Sydney Lemmon), Mark (Edmund Donovan)

The play, directed by dramaturg Rachel Carpman, is particularly nimble in its transitions and in dialogues that find characters mostly having to feel their way. Mantell’s script registers the caregiver’s ups and downs and confusions, the good intentions that go awry, and, in its sweetly realized conclusion, the comfort of the familiar. Along the way, there are the tensions of dealing with elders as though they were children, of trying to anticipate concerns, of trying to make time in one’s prime of life for a life past its prime, and, in a speech Liz directs at Jim, the fact that, in most families, the care of parents is left to female family members. Mrs. Galveston provides a touching corrective to that perception when we finally meet the mysterious Mr. Sanford (Edmund Donovan).

The neat doubling of the situations means there’s potential for confusion about who Jim really cares for. Playing the role with a kind of nervous distraction, Hampe’s Jim wants all to go well but seems to wish he could be doing something else. Donovan’s Mark is a bit unctuous and we don’t really fault Mrs. Galveston for preferring Jim. Kudtarkar’s Liz seems mostly at a loss—her scene with Mrs. Galveston is the funniest of the attempts to fathom the big white book because the least patient. And, as the chair-hugging Mrs. Galveston, Lemmon plays the title role as a mistress of her detachment, a woman defiantly herself and with a child’s sense of entitlement in deciding what works and what doesn’t.

As a family dramedy, Mrs. Galveston seems well positioned in the season as a reminder of the bonds of home and the allegiance owed the elderly as the holiday visits begin.

Mrs. Galveston
By Sarah B. Mantell
Directed by Rachel Carpman

Co-Dramaturg: Davina Moss; Co-Dramaturg: Molly Fitzmaurice; Set Designer: Claire Marie DeLiso; Costume Designer: An-Lin Dauber; Lighting Designer: Samuel Chan Kwan Chi; Sound Designer: Ian Scot; Technical Director: Harry Beauregard; Production Manager: Scott Keith; Stage Manager: Rebekah Heusel; Calling Stage Manager: Paula Clarkson; Co-Producer: Jaime Totti; Co-Producer: Adam J. Frank

Cast: Edmund Donovan; George Hampe; Aneesha Kudtarkar; Sydney Lemmon

Yale Cabaret
December 8-10, 2016

The Bounds of Brotherhood

Review of Dutch Masters at Yale Cabaret

Two teens on a New York subway riding up through Harlem in the 1990s. One an aggressively outgoing black kid, Eric (Leland Fowler), the other a timid and anxious white kid, Steve (Edmund Donovan). In the course of the play both will expose a lot about themselves, and they also expose a lot about the nexus of class, race, privilege that defines social boundaries in our times. How close to friendship can these two really be, even though (we learn) that Steve is an enthusiast of black popular culture, such as rap and Richard Pryor and famous black athletes? The divide between them, which is obvious enough from the start, as Steve tries to stay on Eric’s good side, allowing himself to be intimidated into leaving the train to smoke a blunt with his new pal, becomes more marked when we learn of a connection between them in the past.

At that point, with Steve now Eric’s guest, of sorts, new anxieties surface because of the many ways in which Steve might offend his host, who is exposing anxieties of his own. It’s then that this gripping play, full of wonderful back and forth dialogue and resounding portrayals of the young protagonists by Fowler and Donovan, begins to push things a bit for the sake of dramatic effect. It gets manipulative, but retains—in Luke Harlan’s clear directorial grasp—a focus on the possibilities these characters suggest. Though I’d prefer a denouement in which they who could get down to cases without waving weapons around, Keller’s sense of how “the street” makes its presence felt in any meeting between characters like these keeps the shocks plausible. There are inconsistencies, but nothing too damning. Unlike LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman, which it echoes initially, Keller’s play stays within the bounds of naturalism in a situation where one stranger can play a head-trip on another, particularly when one of the two knows a lot more than he tells at first.

Leland Fowler (Eric), Edmund Donovan (Steve); photo by Christopher Thompson

The actors in the show are nothing short of amazing. As the mercurial Eric, Fowler has to run through a vast range of attitudes, putting the audience and Steve on guard and then disarming both. He’s amusing and looking to be amused, but he’s also shrewd, knowing, forthright, and occasionally menacing, if only in fun. He could be a con man or he could be someone trying to establish his credibility. He’s sort of the worst nightmare of any insecure white kid trying to maintain some sense of street cred on black turf, and Donovan has Eric down all the way: slack-mouthed, eager to be (and used to being) liked, curious, seemingly open but really closed-off in ways that his evening with Eric will bring to the fore. His stoned call to his mother’s voice-mail is both comic and sad, and that’s the way much of the interaction plays out here. Until it gets very emotional.

A good case in point about the tone of Keller’s dialogue—that I can cite without giving too much away—is the conversation about Dutch Masters that the boys get into while smoking the powerful blunt Eric rolls using the familiar cigar brand as his rolling papers. He points out, rightly, that the Dutch were “masters” through the slave trade. Steve thinks the name is a reference to Dutch masters of painting, such as Rembrandt, whose painting of the masters of the drapers’ guild graces the packaging. Both concede they might be wrong, but Eric sees the irony in rappers referencing “dutches” as part of their lingo, sort of turning the tables on “the masters.” Inspired by their shared laughter, Steve tells a story of how some black kids struck him when his high school basketball team came to their school. It’s an effort to ingratiate himself—a black kid on his team helps him keep his cool—but falls flat because who is “master” of a situation, such as the conversation itself, is at stake.

Much in the dialogue works that way with signals misread or misdirected and even seemingly genuine emotion “staged” to make the other character react. If either actor were less likable, we might be willing to side with the other, but each keeps us hoping that there will be some way they might find an “us against them” ground of shared fellowship. Occasionally such possibilities flit across their faces, but there’s always some other claim to be made against it. Is it a claim made by pride, by social injustice, by racism, by duty towards their moms or their peers, or by distaste with having to make allowances, or with false feeling? Keller’s script contains a wide range of reasons these two could and should be uncomfortable with each other and plays on hopes that they’ll work it out somehow, and even hopes some might have for a more shattering comeuppance for one character or the other.

The set by Choul Lee, consisting of three main playing spaces—subway, park, and “livingroom”—are spread out in the Cab’s small space and help to underline that these are three distinct areas to be explored. The boys are strangers on the subway, together in the park, and either friends or enemies by the end of their time in the room.  Dutch Masters is a lively play, masterfully staged, and is likely to get people talking.

Dutch Masters
By Greg Keller
Directed by Luke Harlan

Dramaturg: Taylor Barfield; Scenic Designer: Choul Lee; Costume Designer: Edmund Donovan; Lighting Designer: Krista Smith; Co-Sound Designer: Matthew Fischer; Co-Sound Designer: Ian Scot; Stage Manager: Sarah Thompson; Producer: Libby Peterson

Yale Cabaret
February 25-27, 2016

Cab 47 Recap

Season 47 of the Yale Cabaret has ended its run as of April 25th, which must mean it's time for a re-cap of the season. A re-cap wherein I try to recall and celebrate my favorite contributions to the magical basement that is the Yale Cabaret. Ready? Here are a baker's dozen of categories with my five exemplars in each (in chronological order, but for my fave pick), for a total of 65 citations: New Play: This year’s top five never-before-seen, new plays were: Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, in which Alice in Wonderland—or rather Liddy in Wonderland—meets “Little Miss” beauty pageants, written with verve for a cast of crazies by Emily Zemba; The Zero Scenario, in which every Cleveland in these United States is threatened by the Ticks of Death but for a special plucky band of heroes, written by Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, in which a collective of black male YSD’ers create self-portraits in the context of racial profiling, conceived and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood and created by the ensemble; Sister Sandman Please, in which three sisters put it out there for a cowboy, with varying degrees of passion, irony and intention, written by Jessica Rizzo; and ... 50:13, in which an incarcerated black man about to be freed tries to tell it like it is, with candor, wit and a variety of character sketches, to a young prison-mate, written by Jiréh Breon Holder.

Adapted Play: Impressive pre-existing plays adapted for Cab 47 included four translations and an English-language opera: Don’t Be Too Surprised, written by Geun-Hyung Park, translated and directed by Kee-Yoon Nahm, lets us know in no uncertain terms that familial dysfunction can still take surprising forms on stage; MuZeum, translated and directed by Ankur Sharma, tells stories from ancient sources and contemporary headlines, to dramatize powerfully the victimization of women; Quartet by Heinrich Müller, translated by Doug Langworthy, directed by David Bruin, revisits Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons as a wickedly entertaining pas de deux and psychologically fraught cat-and-mouse; The Medium, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, directed by Ahn Lê, creates a world of mystery, loss, and deep feeling and gives further credence to the notion that opera is not just for opera houses; and ... Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, translated by Gavin Whitehead, directed by Gavin Whitehead and Elizabeth Dinkova, presents a play of aristocratic ennui that torches the well-made play, and this time with puppets!

Set Design: After all, the Cab is a basement with a kitchen, and convincing us we’re in a new space each week takes some doing. Here are some set designs that went beyond all expectation in their achieved artistry: Kurtis Boetcher’s set for Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time made a door where there’s a window and had the coloring and style of a child’s playhouse; Joey Moro’s versatile set for Hotel Nepenthe breathed a seedy charm, like we imagine Hotel Duncan does, or should; Chika Shimuzi and Izmir Ickbal’s stunning set for MuZeum lent aura aplenty and eye-catching beauty to its revue-style presentation; Christopher Thompson’s set for The Zero Scenario seemed to defy space itself in cramming so much busy-ness into the Cab, including a motelroom and a hidden headquarters, and ... Adrian Martinez Frausto’s moody set for The Medium was so fully achieved in its seedy gentility it might be a film set inviting a camera’s scrutiny.

Costumes: Dressing actors for their parts often goes beyond the norm, creating inspired additions to the visual flair of a show. Some of the tops in costumes were: Grier Coleman’s range of captivating dress for ancient characters of India and contemporary folks in MuZeum; Fabian Aguilar and Alexae Visel’s super cool get-ups for the agents protecting us from Tick Apocalypse in The Zero Scenario; Alexae Visel’s authentic mock-ups of the cartoonish costumes of the old Batman series “fit just like my glove” in Episode 21: Catfight; Haydee Zelideth had a field day with modernist Enlightenment-era costuming in Leonce and Lena; and ... Soule Golden and Montana Blanco rendered camp versions of the White Rabbit, Hatter, White Queen, and Tweedledum/dee we won’t soon forget in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time.

Lighting: It doesn’t just help us see, it also selects and shows and evokes, sometimes making for quite magical effects. Illuminating dancers with lights that added to both movement and music in Solo Bach: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; creating a wealth of visual effects that kept us entranced in MuZeum: Joey Moro; putting on a show and putting-on the trappings of a storybook world in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Joey Moro; using light to complement stories and to add drama in 50:13: Elizabeth Mak; and ... creating an Old World atmosphere both spooky and authentic in The Medium: Andrew Griffin.

Sound: It can be used in striking or surprising ways, or to create an aural texture to accompany the action. Creating a wintery world with bursts of music and broadcasts in Rose and the Rime: Jon Roberts, Joel Abbott; maintaining a sustained eerieness and B-movie aura in Hotel Nepenthe: Sinan Zafar; incorporating music and a range of emotional tones in MuZeum: Tyler Kieffer; bringing together recorded voice, spoken voice, and background music into a collage in The Untitled Project: Tyler Kieffer; and ... merging voices, sound effects, loops and his own music to create a shifting aural space in Sister Sandman Please: Chris Ross-Ewart.

Music and Movement: We don’t always get both, but it can make for entrancing theater when we do: MuZeum featured essential music by Anita Shastri, played on stage by a crew of musicians/actors and interacted with by the actors; The Untitled Project used recorded music tellingly and featured a show-stopping dance sequence by Ato Blankson-Wood; The Medium presented a stirring reduction of Menotti’s score into a solo piano tour de force by Jill Brunelle, expressive miming from José Ramón Sabín Lestayo, and impressive vocals from the cast; Sister Sandman Please benefited from Chris Ross-Ewart’s compositions amidst the aural textures, and delighted with a raucous “O Holy Night” from Ashley Chang; and ... Solo Bach showcased Zou Yu’s amazing solo violin performances, combined with the inventive, cryptic and dramatic choreography by Shayna Keller and her actor/dancers: Paul Cooper, Chalia La Tour, Julian Elijah Martinez, Leora Morris.

Special Effects: An ad hoc category that includes whatever doesn’t fit into other categories, such as: the combination of lights and star chart backdrop to create a sense of wonder in Touch: Joey Moro; the evocative projections-as-scenery in Solo Bach: Rasean Davonte Johnson; the B-movie monster ticks and blood and projections and other effects in The Zero Scenario: Rasean Davonte Johnson, Mike Paddock; the varied creepy puppets, hand-held and string-operated, in Leonce and Lena: Emily Baldasarra; and ... the use of projections and clips to tell stories and create context with images in The Untitled Project: Rasean Davonte Johnson.

Acting (ensemble): Ideally, the acting in a play is a group affair, in which everyone plays a part, of course. Still, it’s worth remarking on when a cast is more than the sum of its parts, as in these shows: Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, the big kick-off extravaganza of the season featured a gallery of colorful characters by Sarah Williams, Celeste Arias, Aubie Merrylees, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Melanie Field, Andrej Visky, Libby Peterson; The Zero Scenario, the crowd-pleasing first semester closer, pulled out all the stops with Ariana Venturi, Tom Pecinka, Sara Holdren, Ankur Sharma, Aaron Profumo, Emily Zemba, Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, an ensemble-derived show that focused on the subtle distinctions and broad stereotypes of race, was created and enacted by Taylor Barfield, Ato Blankson-Wood, Cornelius Davidson, Leland Fowler, Jiréh Breon Holder, Phillip Howze, Galen Kane; Leonce and Lena, in which actors and puppet-handler/actors interacted to create a zany theatrical world of kingdoms and encounters, with Sebastian Arboleda, Juliana Canfield, David Clauson, Anna Crivelli, Ricardo Dávila, Edmund Donovan, Josh Goulding, Steven C. Koernig, Lynda A.H. Paul, Nahuel Telleria; and ... Hotel Nepenthe, a comic tour de force of changing roles, repeating characters, and linked situations that ran from the creepy to the farcical, all created with manic intensity by Bradley James Tejeda, Annelise Lawson, Emily Reeder, Galen Kane.

Acting (individual): For individual performances, I’m going with some standouts, whether in accomplished ensemble work, or showcased in two-handers, or in the unrelenting spotlight of the solo show. Ladies first: Celeste Arias, hilarious as an unhinged mommie dearest in Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time; Sydney Lemmon, riveting as Mme Merteuil but even more so as Mme Merteuil/Valmont in Quartet; Maura Hooper, chameleonic as a series of characters, including a disaffected nun and a happy hooker, in Shiny Objects; Zenzi Williams, demonstrating a range of attitudes in four characters, from spiritual to demur to quietly confident in Shiny Objects, and ... Tiffany Mack, unforgettable as a heart-wrenching victim of an acid attack in MuZeum.

Acting (individual): And from the men: Jonathan Majors, finding himself in an unbearable situation and quietly going to pieces in Touch; Tom Pecinka as a highly verbal passenger monologuing his anxiety in The Zero Scenario; Edmund Donovan, riveting as Valmont but even more so as Valmont/Mme de Tourvel in Quartet; Ricardo Dávila as the slippery, caustic and fascinating Valerio in Leonce and Lena; and ... Leland Fowler as a stand-up guy feeling the longings of the jailed and acting out a quick lesson in family history and racism in 50:13.

Directing: For the vision behind the whole shebang that makes it all hang together, we celebrate directors: for the all-out campy and creepy charm of Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Ato Blankson-Wood; for keeping the hopscotch logic and many shifts in tone of Hotel Nepenthe on point: Rachel Carpman; for creating the interplay of stories, including humor, confrontation, and violence in MuZeum: Ankur Sharma; for showing a dramatic and thoughtful grasp of the resilience of a human spirit trapped in a cage in 50:13: Jonathan Majors; and ... for providing the comic highpoint of the season with wild charm, horror surprises and relentless verve in The Zero Scenario: Sara Holdren.

Production: From the above, it’s obvious which shows seemed tops to me, but to bring them all together for a final nod: Hotel Nepenthe, Sarah Williams, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Avery Trunko, stage manager, the kind of shifting and surprising show that keeps me coming back to theater; MuZeum, Anita Shastri, producer, Maria Ines Marques, dramaturg, Emily DeNardo, stage manager, a strong and cathartic import to our shores; The Zero Scenario, Ahn Lê, producer, Helen Jaksch and Nahuel Telleria, dramaturgs, Anita Shastri, stage manager, a crazy sci-fi ride that screams “sequel!”; 50:13, Jason Najjoum, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Lauren E. Banks, stage manager, an important and meaningful addition to the one-person play and the "black lives matter" movement; and ... Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, Kelly Kerwin, producer, Nahuel Telleria, dramaturg, Avery Trunko stage manager, “the gang’s all here” type of theater, presenting a lively riff on the rigors of growing up female in our media-ized Wonderland.

Thanks again to our hosts for 18 weekends—plus a Drag Show: Molly Hennighausen, Will Rucker, Tyler Kieffer, and Hugh Farrell. And ... see you next season, at the Cab!

The Yale Cabaret Season 47 September 18, 2014-April 25, 2015

Puppets of Popo and Pipi

Review of Leonce and Lena at Yale Cabaret

Georg Büchner was a genius and also something of an enfant terrible. He died in 1813 at the age of 23, having written a few plays and a novella, works that more or less tore up the terrain. Like Rimbaud in French poetry, Büchner is a figure that, once he became recognized, can lay claim to having originated so much. Steeped in Shakespeare in the age of Goethe, a revolutionary, a Romantic as only the highly ironic German Romantics can be, Büchner, in Leonce and Lena, the latest show at the Yale Cabaret, lampoons aristocracy, court life, melancholy princes, the relation of master to man, and the course of true love. It’s a wild ride made wilder by Emily Baldasarra’s creepy puppets and Haydee Zelideth’s colorful costumes and greasepaint. Written in 1836, Leonce and Lena gives a comeuppance to every notion of comic drama that precedes it and to most that succeed it.

Directed by Elizabeth Dinkova and Gavin Whitehead, who also translated Büchner’s heady text, full of verbal sallies and philosophical silliness, Leonce and Lena is the kind of play that cries out for staging in the Cabaret. This is a show that wants us to see the strings, so to speak, not simply because theater is illusion and all that, but because characters and actors are “puppets” even when they’re flesh and blood. Büchner is the sort of writer who keeps up his sleeve the fact that nothing’s up his sleeve. The play’s pay-off is the happily ever-after of unmasked automatons. When it comes to “holding as ‘twere the mirror up to nature,” Büchner early on sussed that “there’s no there there” and we’re all clad in borrowed robes.

It’s a big cast, with some notable Cab debuts: first of all there’s dramaturg Josh Goulding as Leonce when at court in the kingdom of Popo. Goulding’s natural Brit accent lends a welcome diction to Leonce’s ennui. Addressing himself in the third person, Leonce calls upon himself to deliver—and does—a suitably self-involved soliloquy, a high-point of comic inflation. As Leonce’s man Valerio, Ricardo Dávila shines as an exacting servant, a Pierrot full of asides and commentary, trying to keep his master to some kind of recognizable code of conduct. And Anna Crivelli's Lena, princess of Pipi, kicks against the role of love interest with some imaginative flights of her own, attended by Lynda A. H. Paul as her doting governess.

There are also many Cab encores: to Edmund Donovan falls the less abrasive Leonce of the Italian sojourn, which is to say the Leonce who falls in love with Lena once he hears her voice. Some much appreciated comic bits are served up by cast members with a puppet on each hand—Juliana Canfield provides slow-witted servants and Nahuel Telleria, in a wonderfully energetic segment, two flatfoots trying to decide how to proceed. The stringed puppets are ably manned by Steven C. Koernig (Schoolmaster), Telleria (President and General), and David Clauson (Master of Ceremonies). Last but not least is the dull-minded babble and erratic mutterings of King Peter, another bright comic turn from Sebastian Arboleda, last seen at the Cab as one of Catwoman’s doltish, dancing henchman in Catfight.

In performance, Leonce and Lena loses some of its sparkle during Leonce’s Italian adventures, which may be attributable to the fact that both Goulding and Arboleda are offstage for too long, since they early on give the play its antic tone. Clambering about on boxes to simulate a trek over rough terrain, and coming to terms with the more lyrical side of life are somewhat diverting, but not nearly as rich for satiric send-up as life at court.

The “mistaken identity” ploy of many a romance is served-up here with Leonce and Lena both in flight from their arranged marriage, only to find themselves inevitably drawn to one another, if only because that’s what the plot, or the gods (and that’s the same thing in theater), demand. Büchner’s final flourish is having two automatons wed in the couple’s stead, if only so that Peter’s edict not go unfulfilled. All are pleased when the box-headed creatures turn out to be the lovers who have found themselves amenable to what they had resisted. All’s well that ends well, and our puppets please us best by seeming happy with what we make them do.

Amidst the shenanigans is Büchner worrying the inevitable clash of free will with law in an absolutist state while seeking what might be called full artistic license. Whitehead’s text exults in the verbal flights and his and Dinkova’s puppet show plays up the theme of the arbitrary necessity of dramatic plots. One wonders if, had he lived, Büchner would have stuck with theater. He never managed to finish his best-known work, Woyzeck, which may be a way of saying that sending up, as with Leonce and Lena, “the well-made play” doesn’t help one construct a play according to a different aesthetic. There’s no happy ending for those born before their time.

Leonce and Lena
Written by Georg Büchner
Translated by Gavin Whitehead
Directed by Elizabeth Dinkova and Gavin Whitehead

Scenic Design: William Hartley, Elizabeth Dinkova; Costume Design: Haydee Zelideth; Sound Design: Tom Larkey; Lighting Design: Elizabeth Mak; Puppet Design: Emily Baldasarra; Technical Director: William Hartley; Dramaturg: David Clauson; Production Manager: Lee O’Reilly; Associate Production Manager: Rae Powell; Stage Manager: Avery Trunko; Producer: Adam Frank; Photos: Joey Moro

Yale Cabaret, March 5-8, 2014

Les intentions cruelles

Review of Quartet at the Yale Cabaret

Heiner Müller’s Quartet, an adaptation of Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses, as staged at the Yale Cabaret, directed by David E. Bruin using Doug Langworthy’s translation, makes fancy-dress role play of the nefarious seductions indulged in by the Marquise de Merteuil and her favorite play-fellow the Vicomte de Valmont. Famously paired libertines who engage in sexual relations with others as a sort of blood sport—comparing conquests and challenging one another with tests of their mettle—Merteuil and Valmont pride themselves on being able to inspire and command passion without ever really surrendering their emotions. Cold-blooded sex machines, they are sophisticated epitomes of the “player” ethic.

Sydney Lemmon as Merteuil

With a hanging chandelier, low-wattage lights, and dark walls, the Cab has been transformed into a suitable “den of iniquity” as we gather around a handsome dining table of dark wood, a single chair on each side, to witness the elegant pas de deux of this entrancing duo. As the mercurial Merteuil, Sydney Lemmon enters first, delivering the lines of a missive to Valmont (Laclos’ original is an epistolary novel), chiding him, enflaming him, belittling him, all from behind a forbidding hauteur. At last Edmund Donovan enters and at once the terms of the relation change. Valmont’s characteristic attitude is an almost unreadable sang-froid, though full of fulsome sallies that keep both Merteuil and the audience guessing about his true nature.

Edmund Donovan as Valmont

Bandied about in their exchanges are possible apt conquests to come. Merteuil would have Valmont seduce her virginal niece; Valmont prefers the game of inspiring passion in a staid married woman, Mme de Tourvel. There’s quite a flurry of wits in describing which sample of “the flesh” should be more appetizing to Valmont’s tastes.

The height of the play occurs in a scene in which Merteuil, in male drag as Valmont, attempts to seduce Valmont, in drag as Mme de Tourvel. In a sense, we’re simply watching actors trade roles as Lemmon plays Valmont—with remarkable flourishes—and Donovan plays Mme de Tourvel, with even more hauteur than Lemmon’s Merteuil commands. But in a more telling sense we’re watching Merteuil as Valmont and Valmont as Tourvel. The exchanges are fraught with a delicious double-vision: Merteuil’s contempt for Valmont—or, indeed, of the easy lust of men—adds to Lemmon’s seductiveness as Valmont. Meanwhile, Donovan’s rendering of Valmont’s interpretation of femininity exposes, to some degree, what leads the rake on the chase: a feminine sense of completeness quite indifferent to male desire. Arch and verbally acrobatic, the scene also plays as a true seduction, albeit with self-conscious staginess, such as Valmont’s tearful gushing and Tourval’s defiant surrender.

Songs—on the soundtrack, as it were—often add considerably to the stakes. The use of the Velvet Underground’s haunting “Candy Says” after this scene helps to underline the more tragic aspects of such erotic wrangling (“Candy says I’ve come to hate my body and all that it requires in this life”). In the pause after the seduction of Tourvel, we’re left to reflect on how denial of the body adds a deeper meaning when a seduction succeeds. The victory is on the side of the flesh itself, not simply the cunning of a seducer. Inevitably, there must come a reminder that even the most dedicated debaucher must surrender his body, and all lovers of the flesh will be at some point thwarted. At the hour of death.

The final tableau of the play, with Merteuil clinging to the lifeless Valmont, lets the pendulum of froideur swing to the masculine side as Valmont, dead, is beyond vanity and desire. On the way to that dramatic conclusion, the far more straight-forward—and less satisfying on every score—seduction of the niece/Merteuil (Lemmon) by Valmont (Donovan) forces both Merteuil and Valmont to play against type. Though we’re free to imagine, if we like, that somewhere in the cat-and-mouse exchanges resides the heart of cruelty, I miss in Müller’s version the affront to Merteuil of Valmont’s actual love for Tourvel, which, in the original, spoils the bet by which Valmont might possess Merteuil.

Sydney Lemmon as Merteuil/Valmont

Still, the “drag scene” seduction adds layers of suggestion, lacking when everyone keeps to the predetermined gender roles. Bruin and his cast do a commendable job of minimizing camp, letting these two supreme sexual predators strut their stuff and flaunt their feathers—the costumes by Fabian Aguilar maintain a flair of minimal flamboyance: dark, period tailoring spiced with white wigs.

It’s been awhile since the Cab has offered a play with such a literate, dialogue-dense script. Kudos to Bruin for his grasp of the play and to Lemmon and Donovan, first-year actors in the Yale School of Drama, for their enactment of such riveting turns.

Quartet
Written by Heiner Müller
Translated by Doug Langworthy
Directed by David E. Bruin
Adapted from the novel Dangerous Liaisons

Set Designer: Mariana Sanchez; Costume Designer: Fabian Aguilar; Lighting Designer: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; Sound Designer: Kate Marvin; Technical Director: Kate Newman; Dramaturg: Paul Cooper; Stage Manager: Kelly Montgomery; Producer: Anh Le

Yale Cabaret, January 22-24, 2015

The Cabaret is dark next week before returning February 5th (see our preview here). The remaining six shows will be previewed soon. For my review of 50:13, last week's opener of the second half of the season, go here.

Yale Cab Redux

This week the Yale Cabaret returns. The first three shows of the second half of the season have been announced with the others soon to follow. Artistic Directors Hugh Farrell, Tyler Kieffer, Will Rucker, and Managing Director Molly Hennighausen continue in their estimable efforts to bring the unusual, the challenging, the amusing, the exciting to 217 Park Street in New Haven. The Cab’s slogan this year is “Make Happen the Make Believe,” and the variety in the next three shows should give some idea of how variable “the Make Believe” can be.

First up is 50:13, written by second-year playwright at Yale School of Drama Jiréh Breon Holder, directed by second-year actor Jonathan Majors and featuring Leland Fowler, a first-year actor. Taking its title from a ratio, the percentage of black men in the U.S. prison population compared to the percentage of black men in the U.S. population, 50:13 takes us to a prison cell where Dae Brown, with only three days left to serve, tries to pass along his wisdom and knowledge to his much younger cell-mate, who has only begun serving his sentence. Based on oral histories from prisoners, Holder’s play seeks to provide a human and dramatic look at the lived realities “inside.” Cab 10: January 15-17.

Cab 11 features a play by East German author Heiner Müller, a sort of Brecht meets Beckett figure best known in the U.S. for Hamletmachine. In Quartet, directed by second-year dramaturg David Bruin and featuring first-year actors Edmund Donovan and Sydney Lemmon, Müller adapts Laclos’s well-known (and oft adapted) 18th-century story of seduction and subterfuge, Les liaisons dangereuses. Müller’s adaptation foregrounds, we might say, the reality principle over the pleasure principle in depicting the erotic machinations of Valmont and Mertueil. Cab 11: January 22-24.

For Cab 12 we’re back to the kind of campy undertakings at which the Cab oft excels. Episode #121: Catfight, by husband and wife team Tori Keenan-Zelt and Steven Koernig, directed by Koernig, a second-year theater manager, takes its cue from the 1966-68 Batman series, beloved, in some quarters anyway, as the height of oddball Sixties TV. Needless to say, if you find Christian Bale to be your Caped Crusader for all time, you need to expand your horizons and check this out. If you remember (I do) or rediscovered the old TV show, then you’ll understand why I have to quote the Cab’s blurb for this one in its entirety: “As the graceful gals of our fair city prepare to compete in the hallowed Lady Gotham pageant scholarship competition, felonious feline fugitive Catwoman sinks her claws into a plan that could unravel the whole ball of string. Can Batman and Robin make this cat stray, or will mischief and mayhem purr-vail? Tune in to find out. Same Cab-time. Same Cab-channel.” Cab 12: February 5-7.

It’s a new year in New Haven. See you at the Cab!