I had never felt more powerless than when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My body, this husk that had held me, had betrayed me. While I was blithely going about my business, it was churning out malignant cells. Cancer consumes so much of your energy; the treatment, yes, but also keeping the scary thoughts at bay. You walk around hoping that you’re one of the Lucky Ones. Even though you’re already an Unlucky One because It got you in the first place. Continue Reading
It’s tough being Jocasta (Laura Leffler-McCabe). Sure, you’re the queen of Thebes, but when your husband Laius (Daniel Ian Joeck) goes to the Oracle at Delphi (Hannah K. Holman) and gets a prophecy, it can seriously muck up your family planning. The Oracle tells Laius that his as yet unborn son will grow up to kill his father (Laius) and marry his mother (Jocasta). What is Laius supposed to do? When a boy is born, you take him from his mother’s arms, hand him off to a shepherd (Foster Johns) and order the man to leave the baby on some far off hillside to die.“Nothing good can come from knowing the future.”The baby instead is left in care of a childless couple who raise him to be a young man named Oedpius (Nick Wolf). But when Oedipus, not knowing he’s adopted, receives the same prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, he runs away from the people he thinks are his parents – and instead runs right into the people who really are his parents, and the whole thing plays out anyway. Oops. That’s Greek tragedy for ya.“It’s as though I’ve been here before. It’s as if I’ve always been here.”Savage Umbrella has turned the whole Oedipus legend on its head with their latest ensemble created production These Are The Men. It might just as aptly be called This Is The Woman because this retelling is focused on the story through Jocasta’s eyes. And a very non-linear sort of retelling it is. Jocasta has become unstuck in time. Her past, present and future are all jumbled up together. One moment she’s dealing with her less than ideal, less than gentle first husband Laius, the next moment she’s tangled up with her more affectionate second husband Oedipus. Nothing wrong with a husband young enough to be your son, unless of course he is your son. Careful there, cougar. One minute she’s having her new baby boy taken from her to be sacrificed to avoid the fallout of an unfortunate prophecy, the next minute she’s navigating the challenges of being a mother of four children – two girls, Antigone (Alana Horton) and Ismene (Heidi Jedlicka Halvarson), and twin boys Polynices (Mason Mahoney) and Iteocles (Russ Dugger). She’s being harangued on one side by the the blind prophet Tiresias (Lisa Brimmer), who also knows her unfortunate future, and outmaneuvered on the other side by her own brother Creon (Michael Ooms), a most adept political animal who still can’t bring himself to like his sister’s second husband Oedipus because, hmmm, something’s not quite right there. Throw in Siddeeqah Shabazz as Oedipus’ adoptive mother Merope, as well as a couple of gossipy servants, Irene and Agatha, and you’ve got quite a broad canvas on which to unfold your crazy, mixed up, disjointed story. No wonder Jocasta drinks a little too much in act one.“No choice. Just is.”By scrambling the narrative aggressively in act one, Savage Umbrella co-writers Blake E. Bolan (also the project’s director) and Laura Leffler-McCabe (the doomed leading lady of the story) get to introduce all the characters at once, providing each of them with an equal chance to capture the audience’s imagination and make an impact. They are all important to Jocasta, for better or worse, so it’s good the audience doesn’t need to feel rushed in getting to know them by a late introduction. Having introduced all the players in the first half, it gives the second half an opportunity to breathe with longer scenes and more meaningful interactions between characters. The broad strokes of the first half get filled in with the finer details in the second. The other nice thing about this strategy is that it gives the Oedipus novices in the audience plenty of opportunity to learn the contours of the story landscape, and the Greek mythology junkies plenty of inside “jokes” tucked inside the nooks and crannies of the tale. Watching the twin brothers slowly grow apart, for instance, has broader implications beyond These Are The Men’s story. Things that seem like throwaway lines such as “Antigone, go dig the grave” or “Is Antigone going to die?” can cast a long shadow depending on the angle from which you see them. This is where the ensemble created theater approach pays off – each character, no matter how “small” or incidental, gets a significant history, past, present and future built for them, because it isn’t just one or two people carrying the whole intellectual load of fleshing out the production. It takes a village (maybe two) to build a tapestry this intricate. Bolan and Leffler-McCabe worked with the current ensemble cast as well as dramaturg Megan Clark, and a whole crew of additional performers who took part in a summer workshop process last year (Neal Beckman, Lisa Marie Brimmer, Megan Clark, Tanner Curl, Joy Dolo Anfinson, Emily Dussault, Eric Elefson, Kathryn Fumie, Joe Halvarson, Theo Langason, Derek Lee Miller, Paul Rutledge, and Gwethalyn Williams) (dang).“Isn’t everything more complicated than history remembers?”How much does a person control their own fate? And if you find yourself in the middle of a horrible situation, is it better to torture yourself about it and wail and moan, or to try to make the best of it? If you don’t know you’re making a mistake, does it still count as a mistake? Is all love a good thing, or is some love wrong? Jocasta transforms into a remarkably good sport about the sick joke the universe is playing on her heart. The audience may find itself in the strange position of rooting for an incestuous couple to find a way to make things work. The reason for Jocasta’s final fateful decision and her instructions to Oedipus make what follows seem almost noble. It also fits neatly into the pre-existing narrative of the legend, allowing them to give all players in the story more depth and humanity without twisting the mythology into something beyond recognition. It’s a neat trick, and not easily done, so my hat’s off to all the collaborators on that score.“Let me take you somewhere. It is not a place you will like, but you will find it useful.”Jumping around in time also gives the play an opportunity to present a happy ending. Because, spoiler alert for beyond the play, this entire family is screwed. But Jocasta allows herself to revisit what was perhaps the happiest day in her life – her wedding day to Oedipus. From a storytelling standpoint, is that cheating? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’ve been arguing that one both ways in my head ever since the lights came up after the show was over. In the moment, if you’re happy, that still counts, right? No matter what comes after? If you have a loving husband, if you create a family of smart capable children, that’s always a net positive. Right? These Are The Men has no easy answers. It almost demands you continue to juggle both sides of every question. It’s an intriguing way to reinvigorate a centuries old story.4-1/2 stars – Very Highly Recommended Continue Reading
It isn’t often that a piece of theater makes me want to crawl out of my own skin and yell at the characters on stage. And I mean that as a compliment. Theatre Pro Rata’s production of Steven Fechter’s play The Woodsman is that kind of theater. Normally, even when I’m totally engrossed in a play, I’m still scribbling my notes to come back to later, noting telling bits of dialogue and key elements of the design. Not giving anything away, there’s a key scene late in the action of The Woodsman where a former child molester named Walter (Adam Whisner), who has previously struck up a conversation with a pre-teen girl named Robin (Lillie Horton) in the park, crosses paths with her again. In my notes, I started writing the word I couldn’t say out loud, “Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave.” And I was directing that word just as much (or more) at Walter as I was to Robin. That’s the strange alchemy of The Woodsman. With a stellar cast under the sure directing hand of Erik Hoover, this Pro Rata production actually had me concerned for the well-being of a person who I understandably have very mixed feelings about. Just as much as a feared for Robin, I feared for Walter. Because The Woodsman had allowed me to see Walter as human. Not an uncomplicated human. Not a perfect human. But a human nonetheless.“He’s working on it. Maybe he’s fighting it. Same thing.”I struggled with how to define Walter just now when writing about him. Is he, is anyone, ever a former child molester? Can you say, as with addiction, a recovering child molester? Or is it, once a child molester, always a child molester? That last iteration is of course the thinking that I, and I’d wager most audience members, bring into a production like The Woodsman. Fechter’s script has a daunting task to perform, not just to help us to understand the inner workings of the mind and heart of a person like Walter, but to get us to somehow not dismiss him out of hand as irredeemable. Because that’s the question burning in the center of the play – can a person who’s done something horrible ever overcome that, in their own eyes as well as the eyes of others? Does society ever really forgive someone? Can someone who molests a child ever be punished enough? Do some people not deserve a second chance? And what do the answers to those questions say about not just them but the rest of us as a society?“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”Walter has served 12 years in prison for molesting multiple girls between the ages of 10 and 12. Released from prison to try and build a new life for himself, the only apartment that will rent to him that he can afford is, inconveniently, not all that far away from a school. Some of the only people who will talk to Walter are his court appointed therapist Rosen (Ben Tallen), and his brother-in-law Carlos (James Rodriguez). Even Walter’s own sister won’t come to visit him, and doesn’t want him anywhere near her children. Someone itching to talk to Walter who he’d rather see less of is an unforgiving cop named Lucas (William Goblirsch), who is just waiting for Walter to screw up so they have an excuse to throw him back in jail. Despite the odds, Walter somehow manages to stumble upon a woman who is willing to tackle the obstacles of building a relationship with him in his co-worker Nikki (Katherine Kupiecki). One of the unexpected complications of living so close to the school is that Walter spies a young man much like he used to be, loitering around the schoolyard, this one engaging schoolboys in conversation, and trying to lure them to take a ride in his car. And then there’s Walter’s chance meeting with young Robin in the park.“Uncommon beauty is commonly overlooked. Most people only notice the birds with the brightest colors.”Everyone involved here is doing top notch work, particularly Hoover and his cast. Adam Whisner seems to enjoy creeping me out. He started the year unsettling me in Loudmouth Collective’s production of A Bright New Boise, and now here he is again, inhabiting a character I’m not sure I want to spend time with, and yet can’t help feeling compelled to keep watching. It’s a great performance. Also to be lauded is Lillie Horton as Robin. The girl’s scenes with Walter are incredibly complex and layered, and Horton gives a performance to match the quality of the writing and the skill of the acting partner she has in Whisner, moment by moment. Goblirsch, Kupiecki, Rodriguez, and Tallen all contribute their own strange surprises and awkward revelations to the mix, making it plain that no one’s perfect, and maybe all of us aren’t as immune to mistakes as we’d like to think we are.“You know what the worst kind of trouble is? It’s trouble you bring on the people you love most.”Director Hoover has also gathered a design team that reinforces the complicated nature of the story. Matthew Vichlach’s sound design in particular is incredibly evocative and adds a lot to the exploration of the troubled psyche of the central character, backed up by Julia Carlis’ lighting design and Derek Lee Miller’s starkly black and white backdrops that also serve as a forum for some unnerving shadow play throughout the tale. The smooth way this design enables Hoover and his cast to transition straight from one scene into the next without pause, sometimes even overlapping the end of one scene with the beginning of another, keeps the momentum of the story moving as it needs to, not allowing the audience a chance to disengage. One last shout-out to Vichlach, the pre-show music is damn near perfect. If you want to make me a little nervous, put on Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper” or The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” (“And if I swallow anything evil, put your fingers down my throat” is pretty much the theme song for this show in two lines.)“Why did I take that chance? What did I want to happen?”But here’s where I start to part company, both with the script and the production. I’d like to unequivocally endorse Theatre Pro Rata’s presentation of The Woodsman because in many ways I think it’s an amazing piece of writing and it’s delivered with the appropriate level of intensity and sensitivity. The subject matter could easily be sensationalized and tip over into melodrama, but The Woodsman does the more difficult and interesting job of putting the audience in the position of having to make up its own mind about how they feel about the complicated questions it presents. With one notable exception, the play never stacks the deck or tips its hand.“[The Woodsman] cuts open the wolf’s stomach and one girl steps out alive.”That exception is one of the tactics used to help humanize Walter and put his crimes in some kind of perspective. Fechter’s play seems to be saying at numerous points along the way, “Sure, what Walter did was horrible, but there are worse things.” What worse things, you ask? Why, incest and gay pedophilia, of course. I’m assuming this has to be unintentional, both on the part of the play and the production. At least I hope it is. But the play keeps stepping in it, so I feel like I can’t let it go unremarked. In trying to explain his past crimes to Niiki, Walter says “I never hurt them.” Well, yeah, Walter, you did. You molested them. Do you mean you were gentle, that you never violently raped them? Well, what kind of rape is acceptable? None. Is an underage girl capable of giving consent, or, God forgive me for typing this, “wanting it?” We hold adults to a higher standard. That’s why you went to prison. Yes, the play could just be showing us that Walter is lying to himself as well as others, but since no one calls Walter on his bullsh*t, the play leaves his assertions unchallenged and lets everyone, onstage and in the audience, off the hook just a little.“You once did some bad things but inside you’re a good man.”When Walter finds out someone is being molested by their father, it is repulsive to him. Granted, this also helps Walter wake up to the severity of what he’s done and is tempted to do again. But there’s just this slight veneer over the scene that seems to be saying, “Incest, how horrible. I would never do such a thing to my own child or a child to whom I was related.” No, Walter, you just do it to other people’s children. That’s SO much better. “No parole, no nothing. Just steel bars and death.”The cherry on top of this moral relativist ice cream sundae is Walter’s obsession with watching the guy watching the boys in the schoolyard across the street. This (implied) gay man gives the the boys candy to help initiate contact, so Walter nicknames him Candy. Not Candy-Man, mind you. That gives the guy too much credit for masculinity. Just Candy. A nickname with feminine connotations, because why not throw misogyny on the pile while you’re at it. Candy is a fit good-looking young man (you know the gays, they work out and take care of themselves and their appearance). As Walter narrates Candy’s stalking of his victims, a shadow play of life-size puppets plays out behind screens. I don’t know if this is a suggestion of the script or an added choice of the production, so it’s hard to know who to blame here, but c’mon. Candy is a dark, two-dimensional, slightly less than human silhouette. So is his young target, but the audience is naturally drawn to sympathize with the boy and look upon Candy as the monster in this scenario. In the play’s final moments we also find out that Candy is wanted for raping a boy in another jurisdiction. Because, you know, anal sex is the worst thing ever.“Will I ever be normal?”I’m not saying that child molesters of all stripes aren’t monsters. I’m just saying that the way to make Walter look not so bad is not to try and make other people look worse. The play also, by having one straight child molester, one incestuous child molester, and one gay child molester is creating a false equivalency. Gays have all been painted as child molesters as a public relations tactic in this country’s culture wars for years. Statistics don’t bear this out. The vast majority of child molesters, just like the vast majority of the population, are straight. And the bulk of them aren’t also incestuous. The inadvertent one to one to one correlation set up by the play, however accidental it might be, still isn’t doing anyone any favors. It’s a sloppy, ham-handed move by a script that is otherwise quite deft in handling very tricky subject matter. But the longer this scenario played out in the production, the more I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking, “Oh man, a bunch of straight people picked this play, didn’t they? I bet it never occurred to them, or if it did, they felt it probably wasn’t so bad.” Uh, it’s bad, guys. It’s bad.“So, how are you adjusting?”That said, Theatre Pro Rata’s production of The Woodsman is a smart, skilled piece of theater. I’m still recommending it highly. Just like Walter, if you can forgive the play for its faults, you’ll come away understanding something a little better that you thought was beyond understanding. That’s a pretty fair trade off for an evening of your time, and a lot more than many theaters will deliver.4-1/2 stars – Very Highly Recommended Continue Reading
The last few weeks have been filled with great news for American opera lovers. On the national front, San Diego Opera announced its new General Manager on Wednesday, marking an important milestone in the turnaround of a storied company with a surprising near-closure last spring. David Bennett, currently the executive director of NYC’s Gotham Chamber Opera, will move across the country to take the reins. Notably, Bennett will draw a base salary of $200,000, 40% of his predecessor who led the drive to shut down the financially healthy San Diego Opera. This salary, according to the latest Form 990-C filings available, is roughly the same as earned by the President of Minnesota Opera; Minnesota Opera and San Diego Opera are predicted to have comparable budgets, if not sunshine, for 2015.Closer to home, the summer opera is shaping up with a slew of different announcements. Continue Reading
As New Country music continues to grow in popularity, many of the more traditional sounding artists are enjoying a renewed interest in their established catalogs of music as well. A perfect example is Clint Black who had a good amount of success in the ’90s with a George Strait style sound and major influences from legendary artists such as Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Some younger fans joined a mostly seasoned crowd of appreciators at the Ames Center in Burnsville on March 11th for a 90-minute set that covered a variety of material.The show, titled “An Intimate Evening with Clint Black,” started out in just that fashion with a solo acoustic performance of “Live and Learn.” The scaled down format allowed Black to quickly demonstrate his skill on a six-string and the ability to pair it nicely with his twangy vocal, which sounded great. After a couple more acoustic selections including a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Time of a Preacher,” the four-piece band joined in adding full sound and tight harmonies on “Like the Rain.” Continue Reading
There is much that is not well in the opera world at large, but The Manchurian Candidate is not part of the problem. This new opera by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell is thrilling, fast-paced, varied, and moving, with a story that excites and music that pulls the audience into a shifting world of paranoia, subterfuge, and love. In an industry where “saving” opera has too often meant protracted labor disputes and aesthetically confusing attempts to shock audiences, Minnesota Opera’s production of The Manchurian Candidate offers a third way forward. It presents a story that resonates with contemporary themes and concerns, populated with interesting and nuanced characters, told through fast-moving music in a presentation enhanced (rather than distracted) by technology. The formula works tremendously well.The story of this opera is adapted from the 1959 novel of the same name by Richard Condon. Continue Reading
Sunday, March 15, 2015 marks the five-year anniversary of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres’ current ownership. Half a decade ago, a consortium of investors led by Michael Brindisi, Tamara Kangas Erickson, and Steve Peters teamed up to buy one of the nation’s largest and most prominent Equity dinner theatres. Area residents and patrons were not exactly disinterested observers: not only was CDT a storied local and national theatre icon, but also a cornerstone of the local economy with almost three hundred people on staff. The new ownership also faced steep financial pressures from the beginning, taking the reins at an institution that had financially stumbled in recent years as theatre attendance in general and dinner theatre attendance in particular tumbled during the economic recession. Brindisi and Kangas-Erickson’s artistic credentials went without question, but did their team bring the business acumen necessary to revive the storied theater?Five years later, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Continue Reading
The crowd that filled the seats on Tuesday, Mar. 10 for the opening night of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast consisted heavily of children, but that doesn’t mean their parents weren’t humming along during intermission (and in the bathroom). The age range indicates throwback Disney movies aren’t going anywhere (as if there was any question), and reincarnated forms like the musical production of Beauty and the Beast only prolong Disney’s success. Among being a master at creating ear worms, Disney productions strike a chord with generations across the board, even despite the criticism the movies have received on social issues like gender and racial stereotypes.Beauty and the Beast is set in a 19th-century French village where Belle (Jillian Butterfield) finds herself wanting more than what “this poor provincial town” has to offer. Because she is a voracious reader and her father is an eccentric inventor (Thomas Mothershed), the people of her small town treat her as an outcast (“Look there she goes that girl is so peculiar / I wonder if she’s feeling well / With a dreamy, far-off look / And her nose stuck in a book / What a puzzle to the rest of us is Belle”). What really makes people—especially the women—question Belle is her rejection of the egotistical town hunk, Gaston (Cameron Bond), who’s drawn to her beauty and sets out to marry her. Continue Reading
I was thinking about how to describe Mary Bue and her music on my walk today. She’s cute and the music is light. Some songs are introspective and she seems to have a sense of humor. Then I visited her website and there were the words I needed: Pop Rock Candy. It’s perfect for someone with a sweet voice and rainbow Clydesdale-like boots.I had not seen Bue before March 10 at the Turf Club but I got a big introduction to her music from the guy standing next to me. Continue Reading
Just go. There is no reason not to go. Honestly, nothing I’m about to write regarding Theater Latte Da’s production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods is going to be aimed at anything other than encouraging you to go. It’s fun. It’s amusing. Continue Reading
