Winning his fifth Director title, Alan Poindexter took the best talent in Charlotte and, ho hum, brought out their best — in two different categories. Elements of mime and vaudeville elevated the juvenile comedy of If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, brilliantly pairing Nicia Carla and Mark Sutton in the leads. Then he swept away some of the slickness and fairy dust from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, making the kids’ show darker and scarier at ImaginOn than it had been in previous homegrown — and touring — productions, with sparkling work from Caroline Bower and Sean Watkins in the leads. Both of these were richly satisfying from a tech standpoint, but with the abysmal Alice in Concert on his ledger, Poindexter had to go up I-77 to eke out his victory, injecting realism into Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park with the Davidson Community Players — and banishing the Lucille Ball shtick.
Related Stories
This article appears in May 25-31, 2010.
