No dinner problems plagued my sojourn at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre last week. With opening night at the opera fixed on Thursday and press night for Catholic scourging slotted for Wednesday, we had to yield – not unwillingly, I’ll confess – to CAST’s unique way with Fridays. Combined with the customary Transylvanian ghoulery of Dracula, Fridays are ordained as Fuel Pizza Night.
So we had a mouth-watering opportunity to devour mushrooms, peppers, olives, ground beef and melted mozzarella just minutes before witnessing the Count’s bevy of she-vampires as they swarmed the stage, vamping and noshing on the hapless Jonathan Harker. Quite an animal sensation when your digestive juices are in motion.
Director/lighting designer Michael R. Simmons is certainly biting off a huge bloody chunk here, also starring in the title role. With son Robert having appeared in a Moving Poets incarnation of the Bram Stoker classic, the elder Simmons is certainly aware of the macabre story’s sensuous possibilities.
These we see even in the bedchamber of Harker’s fiancée, the chaste Mina Murray, as her close confidant, Lucy Westenra evinces some biblically abominated behavior long before the Count gets his teeth into her. We might see the little twists that Simmons injects along the way — and in the dénouement — as an insidiously feminist reading of the legend.
His head completely shaven, Simmons glides predatorily across the stage, baring his teeth with a tossing back of his head, holding those fangs visible for a couple of extra beats, then plunging into his prey. I’ve never seen even a remote resemblance between Simmons and Frank Langella, but it’s there now in a signature role, albeit without Langella’s massive size.
There are other fine performances, Hank West’s foremost as the sniveling lunatic Renfield, a somnambulist West could play in his sleep. But there’s no denying that the power of the vampire race is subtly magnified by the various hues of subjugation from Christy Edney as Lucy, Erin Fogle as Mina and Ryan Hice as Harker. Simmons also gets the most intensely controlled performance I’ve ever seen from Ted Delorme as the zealous Dr. Van Helsing.
Technically, there’s much to admire from the whole design/sponsorship team. What often trips up stage adaptations is the difficulty of spanning the continents and the panorama of elegant, decrepit and subterranean settings in Stoker’s vivid novel. All the fiendish obstacles aren’t overcome, but Simmons audaciously tackles the problem. He uses both of CAST’s stages, splitting the evening into three, and shuttling the audience back and forth during the intermissions.
Sundays offer a magic performance if you can’t catch a slice on Fridays. Either way, it’s worth the trip to 1118 Clement Avenue. Plenty of garlic hanging in the air no matter when you arrive.
For over 20 years, Garrison Keillor and his radio cronies have injected humor, wit, cracker barrel wisdom, music, and life into what otherwise would have been dead time between dinner and my weekly theater rendezvous. So there was an eerie off-balance sense of time-shifting as I found myself on I-77 yet again last Saturday evening.
Sue and I weren’t listening to A Prairie Home Companion for once. More than two hours ahead of our usual timetable, we were on our way to Ovens Auditorium to witness a live broadcast. After hovering in the airwaves for decades — like invisible companions — Keillor & Co. were physically in Charlotte for the first time. We’d be seeing what we had only heard before, and the show would end at 8 p.m. — exactly when my customary stage fare is scheduled to begin.
Dinner? Doesn’t exactly work when you need to touch base at Will Call at 5:30.
Nor does my usual reviewing posture — experiencing each show I critique with as few preconceptions as possible.
There would be moments in A Prairie Home Companion that I’ve literally experienced hundreds of times before. Keillor’s song at the top of the first hour. The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band jamming on the “Powdermilk Biscuit Theme” at the bottom of the hour. Fred Newman’s screwy sound effects workout. The spoken intros and outros to the “News from Lake Wobegon” and “The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye.”
All these are as exempt from criticism as I-77, and for the same reason. They’re part of the landscape.
What intrigued me — and perhaps also intrigued the horde of NPR faithful who snapped up all available seats at Ovens within minutes on the morning they went on sale — was what lay behind the cloak of radio invisibility. What happens in the warm-up before Companion goes on the air — and after Keillor signs off?
Yes, I wanted to know what Sue Scott, Tim Russell, and the Shoe Band looked like, what their chemistry was with their leader. To preserve such surprises, I resisted breaking the seal on my Prairie Home Companion DVD until after we returned home. But I was most curious to see how extensively, how pointedly, and how accurately Keillor and his writing team would train their liberal Minnesota perspective on the ripe target of Charlotte.
Keillor certainly didn’t betray any trepidation in the warm-up, leading us in the National Anthem for starters. There was no stooge getting us in a laughing mood, drawing our attention to an “APPLAUSE” sign, or counting us down to the moment we went on air.
What surprised me initially, not having watched the Altman film, was the scenery onstage: a quaint clapboard housefront with a light on the porch and occasional lamplight though the living room window. In the corner, appropriately, a lamppost bearing the name of Chestnut Street (very standard Midwest), and a discreet “On the Air” sign, so inconspicuous that I missed it lighting up. The only other signage was Lake Wobegon-driven — logos for Guy’s Shoes and those tasty/expeditious Powdermilk Biscuits.
If Keillor & Co. weren’t nervous or intimidated, they weren’t bold, either. After the anthem, Gar and guest singer Suzy Bogguss harmonized on “Dixie,” calculated to confound his “liberal friends up North.” Not us.
Conceivably, some rabid Confederate Flag-waving fundamentalist might take Keillor’s outrageous footwear to be sacrilege in conjunction with “Dixie.” Those bright, clunky red sneakers, gouged with white stripes, seemed to be swiped from The Cat in the Hat, Disney’s Goofy, or some other cartoon critter. They aren’t intended as endorsements of Guy’s Shoes; that’s for sure.
My guess is that amid the avalanche of smiley data fed to Prairie Home Productions by our obliging Chamber of Commerce, Keillor never caught wind of the fact that Mecklenburg was a blue county in the most recent general election, not a red. So if it seemed that Keillor was gingerly invading terra incognita in his warm-up — referencing our ill-timed naming after a British queen, our slowness to recognize Reid’s gold as having any more value than a doorstop — his first on-air references were extravagantly self-effacing.
The skit was humorously designed to show us that, despite transparent claims to the contrary, Keillor knew absolutely zero about Charlotte — aside from it being the name of a pesky playmate in Minnesota and, possibly, a wrong turn when he sought eye surgery at Johns Hopkins. A stint at Barber’s Bible College (with bimbos) figured in the later stages of that preposterous yarn.
Keillor finally grew more barbed in his Guy Noir guise, flying — where else? — to Charlotte when a bogus $18 charge for wontons appeared on his credit card bill. Still callow in Queen City lore, Keillor/Noir missed a golden opportunity while aloft to skewer the ever-floundering, perennially tardy USAir. He did, however, meet the CEO of Bank of North America (BoNA) in tourist class, apparently chastened by a high volume of sub-prime loans.
Humility runs deep to the bone at Prairie Home. Musical polymorph Rich Dworsky, leader of All-Star band, turns out to be a gnomish Jew, and Sue Scott, the femme fatale of innumerable Guy Noir heartbreaks, isn’t Hooters material. But they weren’t whisked into the dustbin when Keillor got around to filming his brainchild.
Yes, the same gnomish, long-haired guy with the nerdy headset over his bald pate appeared onscreen after I pierced the shrink-wrap on my PHC DVD. So did Scott, and so did the shambling set, right down to that humble lamppost.
Perhaps more telling, numerous nuggets from the movie playlist had made their way onto last Saturday night’s program — “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” “Swanee River” and “Gold Watch and Chain.” Maybe Keillor believed that the éclat of the movie had galvanized the latter-day gold rush at the box office.
Maybe he’ll know better next time. Then my journey from Lake Wylie to the shore of Lake Wobegon might not be quite so quiet and safe.
Conventionality can be a good thing. After the gangster-riddled version staged by Spoleto Festival USA last year, Opera Carolina’s traditional staging of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette struck me as a welcome dose of sanity. Claude Girard’s design concept brought elegance and nobility back to the strife twixt Montagues and Capulets, and Jay Lesenger, one of the best stage directors ever to contend with the vast Belk Theater, again secured a fine gallery of dramatic portraits.
Artistic director/conductor James Meena had more formidable difficulties to surmount. None of them originated in the pit with the Charlotte Symphony, who were pliant, precise and impressive from the first notes of the overture. It was onstage that all the musical carnage occurred.
First, there was the tentative, underpowered Opera Carolina Chorus, in total disarray at first, improving afterwards to barely adequate. Bring back Larry Toppman! Or a group willing to pounce on an entrance rather than circling it warily. Next there were Donald Hartmann as Juliet’s father and Michael Dane as Paris, Capulet’s choice for his daughter’s hand. Less sung, the better.
Biggest disappointment was Sari Gruber, a luminous actress in her Charlotte debut as Juliet, but vocally shaky as she ascended to the stratosphere of the stave. On the other hand, Gaston Rivero swathed Roméo’s vocals with the purest honey. Unfortunately, his wooden acting must have given Lesenger heartburn. In spite of the fact that there were nicely placed monitors at both ends of the stage, Rivero wouldn’t sing without locking his eyes on the 3-D version of Meena’s baton. Yeah, that rigidity does make a fervent duet just a tad tepid.
There were some truly great finds among the comprimarios making their debuts. Richard Novak brought a saturnine strength to Tybalt that almost made me sad to see him go. Double loss when the sprightly, mischievous Phillip Addis perished in the same scene as Mercutio. John Fortson as The Duke and Philip Cokorinos as Friar Lawrence salved my mourning.
If the prospect of righteous comedic flagellation appeals to you — and you’d rather not go to the trouble of inflicting it on yourself — make a holy pilgrimage to Booth Playhouse and Late Nite Catechism. Kim Richards dons the nun’s habit with such power that my wife Sue was already terrified by the time I trailed in after parking our car.
Luckily, I made it to my seat on time because a la-de-da trio of slack matrons learned the perils of tardiness the hard way. All had to slink into front seats, lashed by Sister’s sharp tongue, and fish into their purses for dollar bills to expiate their sins. Woe unto ye who haven’t broken a $20 bill before catching Sister’s eagle eye. Better not be chewing any gum, either, missy.
Amid Richards’ introduction to the wonders of Catholicism, others fell prey to rebuke and/or discipline simply by talking to a neighbor, wrapping an arm around a spouse, or sporting a neckline that plunged beneath a clavicle. Sue was in constant fear that I would scribble notes in my playbill as I normally do. No paperwork allowed.
So I experienced my own delicious regression when I took a chance and made my jottings while Sister’s back was turned! Does this constitute a public confession? It’s definitely a warning.
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2007.
