New York City, Part One

My wife, Kathy, and I are partway through a five-show visit to Broadway, along with a few other chores and undertakings.

We started Wednesday night by visiting the TKTS booth and, after dropping a couple of possibles as they only had "partial view" seats for them, we picked up two decent seats for Neil LaBute's "reasons to be pretty." I had heard his name many times before, but never saw one of his shows, which apparently chiefly run off-Broadway until this one. We found the show to be quite interesting, and it included a neat set, good lighting and sound, and some good acting, too, particularly the lead actor. It certainly held our interest, no matter how off-putting some of the characters were, or how challenging it was to believe some of the aspects of the relationship between the four characters visible in the show.

As for me, trying hard not to be a throwback of any kind, I still found it difficult to believe that the use of words not really acceptable in mid-range society to the extreme that they appeared in the script was necessary, or didn't even detract from the storyline after a while. I for one do NOT object to the use of selected curse words from time to time, used for emphasis and/or charactor development. But this show, I believe, could have used 10-20% as many selected words, and still have gotten the intended point across just fine. Though it would have shortened the show measurably ....

Last night, we saw "Jersey Boys," another one of those top-hits review shows but with a difference, in that it delved into the interesting and sometimes challenging real lives of the group's members, and wove the songs into the real stories being told about them. For me, that worked so much better than "Mamma Mia" or "Back to the Eighties" or others of this ilk. And the musicianship, stage technology, etc. were top notch.

Now, I'm waiting to see what Kathy finds for us at TKTS for tonight. We already have our "Exit the King" (Ionesco) and "The 39 Steps" tickets for tomorrow (Saturday.)

Serious and silly

Two more plays were recently viewed, at a pretty wide divergence in terms of message and seriousness. We first saw "Our Country's Good," by playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, chiefly performed by seniors of the UNCSA drama department, on the Performance Place Thrust Theatre stage.

We had earlier seen "After Darwin" by this same playwright, up in D.C., so thought this one might be good, too. And it was -- primarily about the "transportation" by the British of people dubbed criminals, in the late 1700s, to the Australia colony. A great deal of conflict between some of the soldiers, who were unhappy with their assignment and treated the convicts as somewhat less than human, and the governor and one soldier who saw opportunities for raising some of these people up through the power of art and theater. After a fair amount of agony, an ultimately uplifting message and moment of theatrical joy.

It seemed a little bit long to me, but I don't think that's a fault of the production, actors, directors or anything else than the fact that nearly everything I have seen lately has been a 90-to-95 minute, no intermission show. Thus, when an intermission show that runs about 2.5 hours comes along, it SEEMS long but of course, it is not. It's just normal.

The next night, we took in "Back to the 80's," a musical, so to speak, at Theatre Alliance. It bore something of a resemblance to "Mamma Mia" in that it took existing and chiefly well-known songs and tried to tie a story of high school romance around them. Which was partly successful, for me, anyway. Unfortunately, with a couple of outstanding exceptions, TA didn't manage to locate the kinds of voices that could carry that sort of music off. It was fun and upbeat, but a little hard to listen to.

From the D.C. market

Kathy and I have been spending a few days in Washington, D.C. It's Easter weekend, so there were not a whole lot of theatrical offerings floating around a normally very busy theater town, but we managed to catch two shows while waiting for tonight's heavily-theatrical event, the annual Helen Hayes Awards. Son Andy is nominated for one of his lighting designs (the Catalyst Theater Company's production of "1984" last year), so we are attending. That should be quite an experience.

Meanwhile, along with Kathy's college roommate and friend Lissa, we took in Arena Stage's production of "Crowns" at the Lincoln Theatre on Saturday night -- a very entertaining evening of music, performance and costume (especially, of course, hats). Michael Cunningham, the photographer who, with a writer, created the book on which the play is based, at that time anyway was Winston-Salem based. I'm sure many of the interviews that provided text for the show were done in our area back in N.C., so a few of the references probably meant more to Kathy and me than to many others in the audience.

Then last night, we saw our first show at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. It was also quite a good production and fine acting, though there were a few moments that I would have picked a bone, critically speaking, with the playwright or the director, depending on who was responsible. "Antebellum," however, was chiefly thought-provoking and intriguing, and it certainly held our attention, which you cannot always say.

We continue to enjoy the heavy playgoing spring!

A few playgoing reports

We've been able to get out and catch a few plays recently, and have quite a few on our upcoming list as well. So here's a report on the most recent ones.

One of our favorite weekend run-aways is to head to the charming southwestern Virginia town of Abingdon, and the two stages of Barter Theatre. We selected the one weekend on which we could catch the three shows we wanted to see - only to discover that it was also the weekend of the Bristol NASCAR races. Ouch. The hotel we normally use was about three times the usual nightly rate, but being stubborn, we went anyway. It was a lot of fun. We saw "Four Places" in Barter Two on Friday night and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" on Saturday afternoon on the main stage -- both excellent productions, for completely different reasons. Finally, we saw "Adjoining Trances" at Barter Two Saturday night, which (chiefly because of the play) was the weak link of the trip.

We followed that with a shortened adaptation of "Ghosts" by Henrik Ibsen at Triad Stage. As usual, good acting, good set, good lights, good sound ... but just not destined to be one of my favorite plays.

But the interesting continuing trend noted in these four plays -- every one of them except "Joseph" was a 90-minute (or nearly so) no-intermission show. There's been enough of that lately to really believe it IS a trend.

"Dearly Beloved" - just a whole lot of fun!

I've been a little slack in getting on the blog and writing up Kernersville Little Theatre's production of "Dearly Beloved," most decidedly a "Southern comedy" that may not play well in certain parts of the country but sure enough played well last Friday and Saturday nights in Kernersville. We found it a fine production, with a strong cast that had no weak links in our opinion (and believe me, that is not always the case). The set was a good one, and I had no problem hearing anyone (also not always the case with shows, not just KLT's). It was fun to see Myla O'Brien back on stage after a long gap -- and I thought she was having fun with her role, which seemed a good way to get her "stage legs" back.

The leads were fun to watch, too, and good character work by several folks I had not seen on the KLT stage before. Several folks who had had smaller roles here or elsewhere in the past, too, handled a step up quite well. Kudos, KLT and cast and crew and all!!

Now we have a little time off from plays -- but before long, a three-play weekend at Barter Theatre, "Ghosts" at Triad Stage, plays and the Helen Hayes Awards event in D.C. and an April long weekend in the Big Apple. Whee!!

On the Play-Going Trail

'Tis the season for going to see more plays. OK, it's true, it's nearly always that season for us, but speed is picking up again, it seems.

Last night, we took in GTCC's production of "Under Milk Wood," Dylan Thomas' poetry-driven view of life in a small Welsh town. We enjoyed the myriad characters, sound effects and vision of the multiple characters making up the town. Kathy had performed in it back in high school days, and it also happened that Lori Koenig, who will direct KLT's "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," starting in April, directed this performance. Good job, we thought!

And in the category of confessions to be made, as I always do when there are young people ages 18-30 in something, I sat there with my program making notes on the performances I like. Since the day I finished writing "Conversations in a Cafe," I have watched particularly for the part I figure might be the hardest to fill in the play -- a young woman 20-25 to play "Meredith." My file folder is filling up with programs that have notes on them such as "She could be Meredith!" or "He could be Brad or Josh!" I saw two potential Merediths and one potential Brad in this show. Distracting? Yes, a little bit, but I enjoy it.

Tonight we'll see "Dearly Beloved" at KLT, then we have tickets for "Ghosts" at Triad Stage, shows at Barter Theatre, and just found out yesterday that we'll manage a NYC trip in April and perhaps cram in five Bwy. shows while we're there. Wonderful!!!

New stuff, old stuff

I'm nearing the end of my annual writer's retreat to the Outer Banks of N.C., which is really just using a timeshare we bought years back and have been unable to unload on today's incredibly wonderful and active real estate market. But it does allow me a little time to unload, upload and clear the brain, which usually results in at least a little bit of meaningful writing.

I started the week off by deciding to take some thoughts that had been kicking around in my head and, rather than putting them into a new script I had just started, I went back and fit them into "All About Faith," which of course I had thought was finished. I think the new page of dialogue towards the end of scene three, however, improves the set-up for scene four and some "explanation" of my thinking in general, and helping the audience even a little bit is in my opinion a good idea.

And then because of one three-second panning shot in something I was watching, I started writing something altogether new as a potential new play script, and have added to it since. Why? who knows? Creativity is funny. We'll just have to see if it continues to go somewhere.

And as for the other scripts already finished? The waiting, dad blast it, continues.