It would be hasty and rash to name the current edition of The Tarradiddle Players, the traveling troubadour arm of Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, the very best Tarradiddle ever. Our local theatre scene is bestrewn with distinguished Tarradiddle alums. Even troupers who recently jumped off the Diddle caravan, Chaz Pofahl and Greta Marie Zandstra, have made an imprint, launching their Actor’s Gallery Theatre Company with a fine production of The Credeaux Canvas last September.
But the current crop is certainly the most productive and enterprising ever. For as they continue to perform by day at ImaginOn in the current production of If You Take a Mouse to School, they are moonlighting at Petra’s Piano Bar, presenting The House of Yes through Feb. 20.
Big difference. By day, Leslie Ann Giles is Mouse, the secret pet whose superabundance of energy and curiosity threatens to get Boy into mountains of trouble at home and at school. At night, Giles is Jackie Pascal in her saner moments, transforming into a seductive, murderous Jackie O when her raging JFK mania and her incestuous passions for her twin brother Marty get the better of her. Salvador Garcia, the young master of brinksmanship by day as Boy, is the stage director and set/lighting/props/costume designer of Wendy Macleod’s comedy-drama.
The night-and-day transformation affects the entire 2010-11 troupe. Stephen Seay formed the eponymous production company presenting this disturbingly kinky romp, having launched Stephen Seay Productions back in November with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). In Mouse, he splits his time among three supporting roles, Boy’s timorous teacher, his soccer coach, and the schoolbus driver. At Petra’s, he’s Anthony, the jealous sib excluded from the Pascal twins’ incest who consoles himself by seducing brother Marty’s fiancée, Lesly, abetted by the Thanksgiving hurricane of 1988 in Washington, DC.
Jackie O and Anthony are certainly the most toxic personalities we encounter at the Pascal household as the storms rage around them and within them, but their enablers are also a fascinating study. Mrs. Pascal, the mother of the three sibs, is by far the most disagreeable of the enablers, given a far icier reading than Carolyn Dempsey’s in the Off-Tryon Theatre Company’s production back in 2003.
Not that Dempsey was the epitome of elegance and cordiality, either. In fact, all the characters were sufficiently irritating in that NoDa presentation that I labeled it the “House of No” for anyone whose comfort zone only encompasses comedies where you can admire or empathize with at least one person onstage. The sour aftertaste lingered long enough for me to pass on the opportunity to change my mind when Davidson College exhumed Macloed’s script in 2005.
Garcia and his cast get the tone — and the delicate balances — sufficiently right to sway me. There are more shadings this time around in both Marty and Lesly, rather than mere victimhood: in Wes Raitt’s portrayal, he isn’t as spineless as I remember; and Kimberly Butler’s reading of the fiancÈe remains dÈclassÈ, but weak and vulnerable rather than stupid.
Now a little more thunder and lightning during the hurricane blackout would certainly have been helpful when Lesly yields to Anthony, but this is guerrilla theatre, after all. The iconic pink suit, designed by Garcia and Darlene Parker, strikes the appropriate Dallas chord when Jackie O puts it on to enact the twins’ JFK fantasy. Overall, Seay and Garcia have produced handsomely.
Parker is the fourth Tarradiddler involved in Yes, daylighting as both Boy’s and Mouse’s mother at ImaginOn. There is only one irritant in the otherwise perfect Mouse to School, as directed by Nicia Carla. All too often, Seay as Boy — occasionally with Giles as Mouse — is going over a juvenile catechism of consequences when you substitute school for cheese in a mouse’s daily routine. It gets the anklebiters involved, but eventually set my teeth on edge.
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2011.
