A Match Made in Xanadu 

Chad Calvert has that look -- and his rich voice only reinforces your first impression: Here is an actor who was born to portray Orson Welles onstage. The physical resemblance is anything but subtle, and there are definite similarities in their broad range of talents.

Besides acting and directing for BareBones Theatre Group, Calvert has dabbled in costume and set design, and he has directed the prima dons and prima donnas who hold forth at Belk Theater for Opera Carolina. Still, Calvert found it funny to be associated with the brilliant actor/director who created the legendary Citizen Kane and, decades later, resurfaced as the avuncular spokesman for Paul Masson Vineyards.

It became more serious last fall when BareBones producers Anne Lambert and James Yost urged Calvert to read Orson's Shadow.

"I'd heard of the show before," Calvert says, "and when I read it, I thought this was wonderful, we should really do this. So ever since then, I've been serving sort of as the dramaturge as well as being in it. In my spare time, I've been immersing myself in all sorts of Welles research. I've watched as many of his movies or other things that he was in that I could, read a bunch of books, even tracked down old Dick Cavett interviews and appearances, like on The Dean Martin Show."

Although Welles is the central character in Austin Pendleton's comedy, at a crossroads in his often-catastrophic career, he's far from being the whole show. Where the really dishy stuff is concerned, Orson stands on the periphery.

Pendleton takes us backstage during rehearsals for a London production of Ionesco's The Rhinoceros, starring Laurence Olivier and directed by Welles. While their two artistic visions are abrading against each other, Olivier is struggling to make a break with his famed wife, Vivien Leigh, as his affair with his paramour and Rhino co-star comes to a boil. With Leigh weakened by mental illness and tuberculosis, she's not the easiest egotist to abandon.

"The production of The Rhinoceros in 1960 actually did happen," Calvert confirms. "Welles did direct Olivier and Joan Plowright, who Olivier was in fact having an affair with, and who Olivier would shortly divorce Vivien Leigh to marry. It is known that, by the time the production opened, although Welles' name still remained in the program and received all the credit for directing, designing and whatnot, that he had pretty much been forced out of the production by Olivier, because they had clashed so much. And that's all anybody really knows for sure. The rest of it is sort of fancifully imagined."

Anachronistically, Pendleton also tosses influential theater critic, belletrist and literary manager Kenneth Tynan into the stew. Tynan and Olivier were instrumental in founding the National Theatre of Great Britain, a gravy train Welles was eager to jump aboard.

Yost will direct the BareBones production, which plays at the Duke Power Theatre in Spirit Square on July 5-22. Aside from landing Calvert in the title role, Yost has campaigned successfully in recruiting blue-chip performers for the other plumy parts. David Blamy will attempt to scale the full charm and conceit of Sir Laurence, the ever-weasley Robert Haulbrook drops in as Tynan, Courtney Johnson cajoles as Plowright, and Elise Williams will ratchet up the tension as Vivien Leigh (another slam-dunk casting choice).

"All of these people have these massive egos and their own neuroses, and their own insecurities that all sort of clash together," Calvert says. "They're also deeply talented and deeply sensitive and have a lot of greatness as well, which makes the clash very funny and very witty and biting and sarcastic."

Earlier this month, the American Film Institute reaffirmed its choice of Citizen Kane as the #1 film in Hollywood history. So the time could hardly be more propitious for remembering the lordly Xanadu genius whose fall from filmmaking glory was as spectacular as his rise to the summit.

Calvert lightheartedly disagrees: "I wish we weren't doing the show in the summer, because it's awfully hot to have a beard then!"

Thoroughly Enjoyable Millie

Yes, it might be a slight overstatement to declare that every empty seat at CPCC Summer Theatre's current production of Thoroughly Modern Millie is a crime against nature. But each gaping unsold seat at stately Halton Theater is an indictment of Charlotte's vaunted word-of-mouth salesmanship -- and an impediment to making the city's best homegrown musical theater factory even better.

Of course, Millie was an unknown quantity on opening night when Sue and I saw the show, and nearly all the principal roles were handled by young talents who hadn't made their mark here before. But word should have spread after South Pacific earlier this month. Or when longtime CP watchers realized that choreographer Eddie Mabry, instigator of last summer's 42nd Street tap dance orgy, was back with a fresh barrage of stage-filling, toe-tapping, take-no-prisoners glitz.

The mighty Mabry ensemble surrounded -- and appeared poised to upstage -- Catherine Bowers, arriving in New York as Millie Dillimount. Cuteness isn't what draws us to Bowers, even after Millie's signature hair bob. Nor did my heart bleed for the Kansas hayseed when she lost all her stake before she'd even ventured into the dreaded den of her first job interview.

Gradually, we begin to see an admirable determination emerge -- building on the brash impulse that sees her tearing up her train ticket back home. Bowers also texturizes the materialism that Millie needs to outgrow, delivering the climactic "Gimme Gimme" with a chilling animalistic force.

The guy who first blows Millie off contemptuously, Jimmy Smith, also grows on us gradually as he begins to see more in Millie than we do. JR Jacobs traces this arc with pinpoint accuracy, just a tad too young perhaps when he glides through the Jazz Age graces of "What Do I Need With Love?" He and Bowers hit their stride in every respect in the charming window ledge scene, sparking at exactly the right moments in their "I Turned the Corner" duet.

Directing this youth brigade, Tom Hollis deserves credit for a dramatic precision that nearly equals the astonishing synchronicity that Mabry drills into his dance routines. The double-barreled comedy also detonates reliably with Susan Roberts Knowlson as Mrs. Meers, the dragon lady who preys upon actress orphans at the Hotel Priscilla, and the tag team of Alex Aguilar and Nicolas Bryan, who serve as her reluctant Chinese accomplices.

With costumes by Robert Croghan and lighting design by Gary Sivak, CP's Millie sports a visual snap that rivals the national tour's. Music director Drina Keen and her 11-piece ensemble have a score to work with that stays more securely in their comfort zone than South Pacific, with refreshing infusions of Tchaikovsky, Victor Herbert, and Gilbert & Sullivan.

That G&S number, "The Speed Test," shows Bowers off in her best comedy light, abetted by Jeffrey Ostermueller as the starchy Trevor Graydon. His knees finally buckle in the Victor Herbert knock-off, "I'm Falling in Love With Someone," another comedy showstopper featuring Leslie Flesner as the pathologically proper Miss Dorothy.

One more thing: you'll love the supertitles.

John G. Hartness is not destined to become one of America's great actors. But as his performance as Petruchio in the current Shakespeare Carolina production of The Taming of the Shrew clearly demonstrates, Hartness has evolved into a very good actor on the strength of his own self-confidence.

Until he appears onstage at Theatre Charlotte to claim his Kate, this saucy comedy is a rather bland porridge -- competently done without much distinctive flavor. Facing off against Karen Surprise in the classic Padua wooing, transported to 1962 "Las Padua" by director Chris O'Neill, Hartness brings us lift-off in a curious way.

There's continuity to the physical warfare and precise timing, without the brave ferocity of the hunter or the frenzied frustration of the prey. This choreographed deconstruct of Petruchio's courtship and Kate's resistance somehow releases the beautifully timed reversals that Shakespeare imbeds in his dialogue.

Hartness is the antithesis of charisma, strutting the stage with a conceit you'd expect from Rick Flair in his heyday (plus goatee and black Nehru suit). And isn't that exactly what the Bard insinuates -- that Petruchio's way of dominion isn't inborn but the product of cunning study?

Surprise isn't any more Liz Taylor than Hartness is Richard Burton, but her initial frustration and her two stages of understanding are nicely rendered. First, when she gets Petruchio's game, and lastly when she recognizes him as a kindred spirit. A solid Charlotte debut for the Rock Hill-based troupe.

America's annual community theater Olympics were staged last week at the humongous Belk Theater, where even Charlotte Rep never tread without the accompaniment of our Symphony Orchestra. So AACTFest 2007, or at least the four plays that I witnessed, was a strange, wonderful, exhilarating competition sprinkled with a carnival conventioneer atmosphere.

The most fascinating deformity I saw was Arthur Kopit's Wings. Playing Kopit's protagonist, stroke victim Emily Stilson, Charlotte Richford never really bridged the gap between performing the role at Shape Players' usual 125-seat theater at a Belgian NATO base and booming it out at the Belk. At the other end of the spectrum, Assassins by the Spokane Civic Theatre was a textbook demo of what community theater can be -- and what the conventioneers' excitement was all about.