17th Annual CL Charlotte Theatre Awards 

As often happened in the Bush Era, style trumped substance. We were dazzled by the grace of Andre De Shields, the flying feet of Randy Skinner, and the bumptious bounce of Gretha Boston. Message schmessage, the talent outshone any touring Broadway musical we'd ever seen downstairs at Belk Theater.

Then came the notorious Hilary Swank Affair, garnering more newspaper ink for local theater than we'd seen since Angels in America. Even Charlotte's clueless commercial broadcast media were nearly awake to the existence of culture in our midst! But Hilary was more interested in promoting her new action flick and getting airtime at the Oscars than attending silly ole rehearsals. So Rep's flirtation with Broadway producers Barry and Fran Weissler ended disastrously as the revival of The Miracle Worker went down in flames before reaching its intended destination at Manhattan's Music Box Theatre.

Simmering resentments surfaced. The daily newspaper's intrepid critic, who had breathlessly stalked Hilary on safari to Wal-Mart, now openly questioned Rep's commitment to Charlotte. Under Bush, Rep management seemed to revel in controversy. Taking up his pen again, Bush joined with Rep's ousted founder Steve Umberger in a three-week colloquy on the company's mission that brought a new, unfamiliar vigor to the Sunday arts section.

Having gotten the city's attention, Rep thought that their 20th anniversary revival of Pump Boys and Dinettes would silence their critics and retire their burgeoning deficit. When it didn't, Rep's volatile board of trustees freaked, canceling shows right and left while shortening the runs of the survivors. When the smoke cleared, Bush had resigned and Rep was rudderless.

If the biggest headlines often made it seem like catastrophe was following catastrophe in Charlotte's theater scene, the reality -- even at Rep -- was far more encouraging. Let Me Sing and Pump Boys were actually superb musical confections, though admittedly not revolutionary. And Bush's valedictory before announcing his departure, Jar the Floor, was a richly textured artistic triumph despite the trustees' idiocy in shutting it down.

Averting our eyes from Rep's implosion, theater lovers can take huge solace from the breathtaking progress occurring elsewhere. While the demigoddess Hilary imperiously shortened her stint in Charlotte, Children's Theatre of Charlotte was breaking ground on March 11 at the construction site of their exciting new ImaginOn complex.

The pioneering collaboration with the main branch of the Mecklenburg County Public Library is on track for completion in 2005. Don't look now, but not far from the Rep's ruins, Children's Theatre is now the best bet in town to win a future Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre.

Latest word at Central Piedmont Community College puts completion of their new theater in late 2005, giving us our first rejuvenated CP Summer season in 2006. Meanwhile, renovated facilities are sprouting up everywhere, emulating the distinguished model of Off-Tryon Theatre in NoDa and, in some cases, refining it.

BareBones Theatre Group was the first of the new wave, opening their new SouthEnd location in January with Little Murders and then conspiring with Actor's Gym and the new Epic Arts Repertory to keep a steady stream of provocative fringe fare flowing at SPAC. innerVoices temporarily got its act together, opening a new location off Central Avenue and offering an outre Rocky Horror Show and a high-impact Speed-the-Plow.

Victory Pictures co-tenanted the Central Avenue Playhouse for awhile, offering Kiss of the Spider Woman as prelude to the most gloriously offensive production of the year, a devilishly polished Finer Noble Gases. After Rocky Horror, Vic Pix engineered a palace coup, evicting innerVoices and taking sole possession of the newly rechristened Carolina Actors Studio Theatre, or C.A.S.T.

With less fanfare than the orgy of Hilary worship, Rep opened up a new headquarters in NoDa, consolidating their scattered administrative, production, storage, and rehearsal facilities into one pace-setting complex. Raising the roofline at their leased property, they were able to fully assemble the awesome three-story set for Miracle Worker that won our Best Set Designer award for Lez Brotherston. Amid the rubble of Rep's Tony Award aspirations, the new NoDa headquarters are a solid foundation for the future.

Capping the building binge, Actor's Theatre of Charlotte nearly finished their renovations on Stonewall Street in time for their season opener, sensibly postponed until December. It was a move that catapulted ATC to the enviable position of having the most easily accessible theater in Charlotte, right off the I-277 innerbelt.

So while Rep bumbled and stumbled in the spotlight, leaving Charlotte in jeopardy of becoming the largest city in America without a resident Actors Equity company, there were plenty of encouraging developments in the wings. The Queen City not only survived the onslaught of Broadway and Hollywood talent, it produced a bumper crop of homegrown theater while building prudently for tomorrow.

Swank never satisfied the cognescenti, and Rep never made it to Broadway. But The Miracle Worker drew priceless PR and hordes of new theatergoers who had never plumped their butts at Booth Playhouse before. They liked what they saw, and we daresay they'll be back if the product and the marketing are right. The plug has been pulled -- temporarily -- on the Broadway/Hollywood glitz, but there's plenty more of that same honest-to-god quality in humbler homegrown form. It's scattered around Charlotte like we've never seen before.

OK, enough analysis -- here are CL's 17th Annual Charlotte Theater Awards:

THEATERPERSONS OF THE YEAR
Yes, it has come to this. With the crowning of Stan Peal as CL's top award winner, Charlotte's theater world is ruled by a gnome. It can hardly be otherwise, since the actor/director/playwright/producer was everywhere throughout 2003, providing prime entertainment every step of the way.

For starters, he and wife Laura Depta (Best Supporting Comedy Actress of 2003) founded Epic Arts Repertory Theatre, choosing the new SouthEnd Performing Arts Center as their base of operations. The company's first year has been fueled with fresh innovative material, all of it written or adapted for the stage by Peal.

Most notable among the playwright's new opuses was The Friar & The Nurse, an engaging footnote to Romeo and Juliet starring Peal and Depta -- a runaway winner in our Best Original Play race. His new one-act play, "The Businessman and the Cheerleader," helped to crown The Hotel Project as Theatre Event of the Year. Commissioned for that event by Rep refugees Matt Olin and Anne Lambert, the site-specific comedy staged at the Uptown Marriott Presidential Suite also clinched the election of our new Actress of the Year.

That would have been plenty to earmark Peal as a prime Theaterperson contender. But he also provided fine new material for Halloween and Solstice celebrations at SPAC, adapting Poe's "Hop-Frog" and going Monty-Python pagan in A Mad Mad Madrigal. Peal even ventured briefly into the mainstream as a pint-sized Sancho Panza, helping to make Man of La Mancha the best musical we saw at Theatre Charlotte.

Eleven years after the quixotic Charlotte Shakespeare Company died of financial asphyxiation, CSC founder Lon Bumgarner rekindled memories of how he had bestrode the local scene before his Achilles-like withdrawal. He was joyously back in the midst of things -- without a vengeance.

Directing for Theatre Charlotte, Epic Arts, and BareBones Theatre Group, Bumgarner reclaimed Director of the Year honors for the first time since we gave him the title in 1990 -- when we inaugurated the award. He was at the peak of his game at Theatre Charlotte, radically reimagining Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit without a single misstep. It was like the good old days, when Bumgarner was winning our Best Comedy Director accolades at the Queens Road barn for The House of Blue Leaves (1987) and The Boys Next Door (1990).

Bumgarner was also at the cutting edge, piloting a tight, swift, and madly farcical production of Don't Dress for Dinner with BareBones Theatre Group, cementing his comedy credentials. There was just one summit meeting between Bumgarner and co-titleist Peal last year when the CSC founder brought his Shakespearean expertise to The Friar & the Nurse. Not only did Bumgarner direct the Peal-Depta duo to perfection, he designed the best set ever at SPAC. Lonny, we hardly knew ye!

Even in failure, Bumgarner impressed. At his half of the award-winning Hotel Project, he had his actors believing so deeply in a script pretentiously subtitled "The Secret Life of an Albatross" that both of them were sobbing and emitting a pool of gooey fluid from their facial orifices. Imagine if the script hadn't been a dreary mediocrity!

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
While he doesn't have a company of his own anymore, Lon Bumgarner still knows how to build one. He began his ascent back to the director's throne at Actor's Theatre late in 2002 when he piloted CL's Best Drama winner, The Laramie Project. Moving along to do a radically different piece for BareBones, Bumgarner brought a cluster of actors and actresses with him from Laramie to leap the chasm between grim docudrama and the frenetic frivolities of Don't Dress for Dinner.

By the time he triumphed at Theatre Charlotte, the Pied Piper motif was obvious. Former Bumgarner sidekick Carl McIntyre, the last managing director at Charlotte Shakespeare, was urbane British perfection as Charles Condomine in Blithe Spirit. Depta, so fine for Bumgarner in The Friar & the Nurse, now helped change Madame Arcati from eccentric spinster to flamboyant gypsy.

The vision draws the people.

ACTOR OF THE YEAR
After winning our Newcomer of the Year title last year, Joseph Baez still remained largely unappreciated outside Charlotte's fringe theatre scene. But he gave two prodigious performances that should put him on everybody's radar. First he won Best Dramatic Actor honors against a strong field as brainy psychopath Nathan Leopold in Never the Sinner. Baez was so slimy and chilling opposite Bradley Moore's portrait of Richard Loeb that Off-Tryon Theatre Company logged its first win ever in the Best Drama category.

Then despite all kinds of technical problems plaguing the production -- and headliners who couldn't sing on-key -- Baez was simply sensational in The Rocky Horror Show. In the last innerVoices production to date, Baez breathed fresh life into the hooded narrator, the servile Riff Raff, and the other-worldly Leader of the Transylvanians. When he sang, the wicked arrogance of Nathan Leopold was reborn. Nobody else in the cast came close to his melodious command.

ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
OK, I'll admit that it's hard for me to warm up to everything Beth Pierce does onstage. Her unflagging intensity sometimes leads to excess -- or to a lack of subtle shading and modulation. But anytime she's there, it's hard to look anywhere else. Pierce always seems to be imploding or exploding, and I don't want to miss the fireworks.

Whether or not you agreed with her take on Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or the latter-day Medea in Bash, you couldn't miss how deeply she was into these troubled, vulnerable women. Superficial acting isn't what Pierce is about.

More in tune with her temperament was Yitzhak, the cruelly rebuffed adulator of Hedwig in the scorching Actor's Theatre production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Yes, she glowed with seething resentment. And yes, she was way loud for the sound system at Duke Power Playhouse. But let's face it, rock & roll is home field for anger, excess, and ear-shattering decibels.

I still remember Pierce in her short skirt at the Hotel Project, bouncing up and down on the bed when "The Businessman and the Cheerleader" climaxed. A couple of times, she came perilously close to the ceiling of the Presidential Suite. That peril never affected the high spirits and jubilation of our pompom heroine. Pure Pierce.

SHOW OF THE YEAR
For rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud fun, Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage stands above anything seen on a Charlotte stage since Ruthless! invaded Pease Auditorium back in 1995 -- and that was a musical. You'd have to go back to Charlotte Rep's Breaking Legs of 1993 to find a comedy that scored as high on the laugh meter as this Actor's Theatre of Charlotte gem.

Outrageous characters blow in like a cyclone convention at Big 8's absurd Wyoming retreat for convalescing broncobusters. Shedevil, mighty fearsome in her own right, arrives on the lam from a gargantuan Ukrainian biker, 8's own Lucifer. By the time the smoke clears, we've seen ridiculous antics from all of the above, plus a merry lady meat-cutter, a virginal Cowboy of the Year, and a bumbling deputy.

This is the show whose crowning gross-out put me off my Cheerios while garnering a shovelful of award nominations. It was a catfight for Best Actress, but Pam Hunt-Spradley's Big 8 edged out Johanna Jowett's Shedevil. Jane Martin's frolicsome skewering of Americans' insatiable appetite for blood and guts came to Spirit Square at the same time our armies were steamrolling Iraq and bombing Baghdad -- without a clue about what we'd do next. Perfect comedy timing.

COMPANY OF THE YEAR
With two of last year's top three shows, there's no mystery why Actor's Theatre of Charlotte is our choice -- even in a transitional year when the company was repeatedly obliged to alter its schedule. Striking out on their own as they abandoned Spirit Square for a home of their own, ATC continued to overachieve on quality, relevance, and edgy audience appeal.

Keeping their eye on their artistic product, they successfully eased in Mark Scarboro to replace Billy Ensley in The Santaland Diaries when Ensley decided to concentrate his energies on Bat Boy. When it became evident that the company's new home wouldn't pass muster, they didn't rush the building to completion or alter their announced season.

Instead, they switched Santaland to Theatre Charlotte, avoided riling their subscribers, and walked off with another Loaf award for Best One-Person Show. I can think of at least one company that could learn from Actor's Theatre's example. After winning Company of the Year honors for the third time in the past five years -- and doing an admirable renovation at their new Stonewall Street location -- other Metrolina theater companies will certainly be following ATC's leadership.

In its coherent mission and consistent artistry, Actor's Theatre now stands alone. With fresh artistic focus, sane administration, and lavish bankrolling, Rep could rise up and overtake everybody in a Broadway minute. Right now, ATC is king of the hill and top of the heap.

DRAMAS
Best Drama: Never the Sinner -- Off-Tryon Theatre Company

Best Actor: Joseph J. Baez -- Never the Sinner (Nathan Leopold Jr.)

Best Actress: Dana Childs -- Bash (Sue)

Best Director: Michael Simmons -- Finer Noble Gases

Best Supporting Actor: Michael Simmons -- Speed-the-Plow (Charlie Fox)

Best Supporting Actress: Mireille Enos -- The Miracle Worker (Kate Keller)

MUSICALS
Best Musical: Pump Boys and Dinettes -- Charlotte Rep

Best Actor: Patrick Ratchford -- Evita (Che Guevara)

Best Actress: Emily Skinner -- Pump Boys and Dinettes (Prudie Cupp)

Best Director: Michael Bush -- Pump Boys and Dinettes

Best Conductor/Music Director: Joel Silberman -- Let Me Sing, Pump Boys and Dinettes

Best Supporting Actor: Stephen Ware -- Footloose (Reverend Shaw Moore)

Best Supporting Actress: Beth Pierce -- Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Yitzak)

COMEDIES
Best Comedy: Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage -- Actor's Theatre

Best Actor: B. Carl McIntyre -- Blithe Spirit (Charles Condomine)

Best Actress: Pam Hunt-Spradley -- Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage (Big 8)

Best Director: Lon Bumgarner -- Don't Dress for Dinner, Blithe Spirit

Best Choreographer: Ron Chisholm -- A Midsummer Night's Dream

Best Supporting Actor: Kevin Campbell -- God's Favorite (Sidney Lipton)

Best Supporting Actress: Laura Depta -- Blithe Spirit (Madame Arcati)

Best Cameo Appearance: Peter Smeal -- Don't Dress for Dinner (George)

THEATERCRAFTS
Best Costume Designer: Sandra Gray -- African Tales of Earth and Sky

Best Lighting Designer: Eric Winkenwerder -- A Midsummer Night's Dream, African Tales of Earth and Sky, Bridge to Terabithia

Best Set Designer: Lez Brotherston -- The Miracle Worker

Best Sound Designer: Dean Kluesner -- The Illuminati

Best Special Effects: Dru Nolin -- The Illuminati (Skeletons/Puppets/Magic), Finer Noble Gases (SFX Makeup Design)

BEST ORIGINAL SHOW
The Friar & the Nurse by Stan Peal

BEST ONE-PERSON SHOW
Mark Scarboro in The Santaland Diaries -- Actor's Theatre

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR
Derek Gamba -- Finer Noble Gases (Chase), The Rocky Horror Show (Brad Major)

THEATER EVENT OF THE YEAR
The Hotel Project -- Matt Olin & Anne Lambert

SWEET 16 FOR 2003
1. Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage -- Actor's Theatre

2. Pump Boys and Dinettes -- Charlotte Rep

3. Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- Actor's Theatre

4. Never the Sinner -- Off-Tryon Theatre Company

5. Don't Dress for Dinner -- BareBones Theatre Group

6. Blithe Spirit -- Theatre Charlotte

7. Jar the Floor -- Charlotte Rep

8. Speed-the-Plow -- innerVoices

9. African Tales of Earth and Sky -- Children's Theatre

10. Open Season -- SummerStage/PlayWorks

11. Bash -- BareBones Theatre Group

12. Kiss of the Spider Woman -- Victory Pictures

13. Let Me Sing -- Charlotte Rep

14. A Chorus Line -- CP Summer Theatre

15. The Friar & the Nurse -- Epic Arts Repertory Theatre

16. The Underpants -- BareBones Theatre Group

DA BOMBS
1. Satchel Paige -- Afro-American Children's Theatre

2. Same Time, Next Year -- innerVoices

3. Heartworm -- Actors Loft Theatre Company

4. Songs We'll Never Sing -- Off-Tryon Theatre Company

5. Othello -- Actor's Gym