It took Children’s Theatre over two years to realize that their most respected director, Alan Poindexter, was the right man to pick up the reins and become the company’s new artistic director. But don’t blame CT’s board — or executive director Bruce LaRowe — for searching so long before reaching this obvious conclusion.
Ask Poindexter. He freely admits that it took him nearly as long to reach the same realization.
“I’m very thankful for the time that the Theatre has taken for this search,” he confides. “When this search began, I certainly thought it was a role that I shouldn’t step into. But as we began to look at the field — and we had over 150 candidates — it became clearer that, actually, it was a job that I could do. It’s the job that I’ve sort of done in miniature form every time I direct a show.”
Same job managing staff, anticipating what it will take to make CT productions click. With a bigger budget. And bigger responsibilities.
The very last thing some theater folk ever imagined Poindexter wearing was a necktie. It’s going to happen. Poindexter cites two key turning points last fall that convinced him to become a candidate for the AD position at the Morehead Street fantasy palace.
First, Poindexter overcame his misgivings about spearheading CT’s development — putting on a tie and representing the company in the community and in the national arena. All of this was particularly daunting when you consider the historic collaboration between CT and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library, which will share the new $42.5 million Children’s Learning Center on Brevard and 7th Streets, scheduled to open in time for the 2004-2005 season. The whole country will be focused on this audacious joint venture.
“For the past nine months, I’ve been serving in what you would call an interim capacity to sort of lead issues that we need to be looking at with the Public Library,” Poindexter explains. “And that’s probably where the true gift that they gave me came. I did start to get more involved with the board and get involved in the grant writing aspect of the company, and these things became not-so-scary to me, they didn’t seem like things I couldn’t accomplish. The turning point for me came late in the fall once I had been involved in every aspect of the company that I was worried about. I feel confident that what I don’t know I can learn and what I do know is valuable enough to that development team that I have something to offer.”
The other breakthrough Poindexter experienced was in his work as a director. Always a favorite with young teen performers, the one-time wunderkind now reaching mid-life had been perceived as too demanding — and temperamental — to work successfully with kids. Now he realizes that making the experience good is as important as making the show good. The transformation was sealed in last fall’s production of Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse, featuring some of the finest children’s ensemble acting ever seen in Charlotte.
“That’s the first time I can truly say that a group of kids had a really good time working with me,” Poindexter candidly admits. “They weren’t intimidated by me; they felt like a part of a group that I was including them in. So that was a really important step. There was a time in my life when I just wanted to do my work, and I ignored my community, so to speak. And I think that’s what Children’s Theatre has allowed me to find — opening me to people.”
But a necktie? What consolation can Poindexter offer to those of us who remember his cutting-edge guerrilla theater productions at the old Pterodactyl Club?
“It’s just another costume — and none of the fire is going to go away.”
Reviews
The Michelle Kwan
of Polar Explorers
In competitive, capitalist societies, where populations explode while attention spans shrink, we tend to give credence to the spoutings of hard-nosed sports gladiators who maintain that “nice guys finish last” and “winning is the only thing.” Cuts through so much clutter in apportioning our respect — and upholds basic Darwinian pieties.
The oddest victims of this winning-at-all-cost doctrine are runners-up, who oftentimes get more ridicule than also-rans. Captain William Falcon Scott has fared much better than most. Scott led the British expedition that was second to reach the South Pole, arriving on January 18, 1912, exactly five weeks after Roald Amundsen planted the Norwegian flag on the same spot. To make matters worse, Scott and his party all perished on their way back from the Pole, just 11 miles short of connecting with his supply depot.
Yet the US outpost established in 1956 on the spot where Scott was defeated is called the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Furthermore, the glacial drama that memorializes the race to the Pole — Ted Talley’s Terra Nova — is named after Scott’s ship and casts Scott as the tragic hero.
An opening night expedition last Thursday to the Victory Pictures production, continuing through April 7 at Matthews Community Center, made it clear that Talley sees Scott in the Shakespearean mold. Gentility emerges as a prime reason why Scott loses to the more bloody-minded Amundsen, who’s willing to eat his sled dogs to economize on supplies. And Scott’s indecisiveness is a prime reason why the party perishes. When Petty Officer Edgar Evans suffers a fatal injury, Scott isn’t cold enough to leave him behind.
Talley makes it clear that Evans would have been dead meat much sooner if he’d been on Amundsen’s expedition. So do the fine costumes by Liz Jarrett. The loose, light outfits on the Brits have a monkish purity to them — and plenty of authenticity, judging from photos I’ve seen. By contrast, the furry outfit worn by Amundsen is positively wolfish. The Norwegian haunts our hero throughout the long frozen march in visions that escalate to delirium, chiding and taunting his rival.
You don’t need to strain to find parallels with Prince Hamlet and the detestable King Claudius. Whether those parallels are fair to Amundsen doesn’t seem to be a question that deters Chris Hicks, who delves into the darker Darwinian aspects of the explorer with a fiendish gusto. You’ll be pleased whenever he appears — even if his growl has migrated due south from Oslo to Berlin.
Alan McClintock is more tentative — and intermittent — with Scott’s accent. That’s a significant problem when a man’s character flaws rest upon his Marquis of Queensbury fastidiousness. Fortunately, McClintock preserves one key contrast superbly: His strength comes from within, not from physical heartiness or innate savagery. There’s a brooding suffering as he endures his ordeal that is almost Lincolnesque.
Scott’s subordinates also operate on an earthier, more physical plane. I particularly liked Mike Harris’s gruff work as Captain Oates, constantly prodding Scott toward pragmatism while stoically accepting his authority. Perennially upbeat Lieutenant Bowers was slowly exalted to near-angelic goodness by Chris Kuechenmeister, thanks in part to the evolving makeup caked on his face.
Ryan Fischer gets consultant credit for an overall makeup design that ranks with the very best I’ve seen in Charlotte. Beyond the gradually worsening frostbite on the faces, we get sudden glimpses of infected, gangrened limbs that etch themselves in memory. You’ll like how Tim Gockel brandishes his maimed paw as Petty Officer Evan, though he and Scott Reynolds (as Doc Wilson) sometimes seem to forget they’re in Antarctica.
More intense effects would help. Julie Landman’s scenic design is evocative enough, if somewhat static. And Dean Kluesner’s sound design is superb, as far as it goes. Trouble is, that’s little further than the fringes of the two acts. Likewise, the black & white slides projected upstage disappear when we reach the interior of the action, where Ryan McCurdy’s lighting design is drab and uninspired.
Of course, some Polar events need description alone to be vivid. “Three toes came off in the boot!” Oates informs us at one point. Now that’s cold!
Earlier in the week, Carolinas Concert Association brought in a star of the future, pianist Stanislav Ioudenitch. For awhile, however, the Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist was mired in the past. Nothing shabby about Ioudenitch’s opener, Mozart’s Sonata in A Minor (1778), written the same year as the composer’s “Paris” Symphony (#31). Nor could I deny that Ioudenitch immersed himself convincingly in Schubert’s Six Moments Musicaux, bringing back rewarding depths of feeling lyrically spoken. But nothing I heard prior to intermission caused me to sit bolt upright in my seat with either admiration or astonishment.
Turns out that Ioudenitch may have been playing a cat-and-mouse. After intermission, Stanislav grew feisty, crossing boldly into the wild frontier of 20th Century music — as if to declare: “Now I’ve got you where I want you. Listen to what I want to play!”
Each of his three modern explorations riveted my attention. Ioudenitch’s sense of liberation was apparent from the instant that he launched into Prokofiev’s cycle of Sarcasms, written while still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. What a kaleidoscope of moods!
The next morsel, 30-year-old Thomas Ades’ Darknesse Visible, picked up the more contemplative strands of all that had unraveled itself before, only more evocative and exquisite.
Musicmaking climbed to an even more phenomenal level as Ioudenitch closed out with Stravinsky’s Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka. Legs, arms and shoulders all moved to different tempos as performer turned into polyrhythmic machine for the “Danse Russe.” Rarely will you see the sudden melodic shifts and jagged tempos of Stravinsky’s “Chez Petrouchka” flow so naturally. By the time Ioudenitch reached full throttle in the closing “Semaine Grasse” — an epic build at breakneck speed — it was as if the stillborn organ pipes at Belk Theater had sprung to life.
It turned out to be a great night for Carolinas Concert to announce their 2002-2003 slate, headlined by Joshua Bell at Ovens. Next month won’t too lame, either, as Grigorovich Ballet climaxes the current season with Spartacus.
Correction
Two weeks ago, we reported that the Charlotte Observer had not published a review of the recent performance by the Charlotte Oratorio Singers. We were mistaken, as the Observer did publish a review the day after the show. We regret the error.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2002.
