Humana Festival 2003 

City and state officials have better sense, waiting till May for the running of the Kentucky Derby at nearby Churchill Downs and till August for the State Fair. March and April are better months for following the college hoops fortunes of the Tubby Smith's Wildcats and the Rick Pitino's Cardinals. Or if your tastes for indoor fare are more highbrow, there's opera, ballet, and theatre.

Louisville has long been proud of its thoroughbreds, its bourbon, and its eponymous baseball bats. Theatre is a relatively recent source of pride and renown, dating back to the first Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1976.

Launched in a converted bank building, the Festival broke quickly out of the gate. In the first three years of the event, two of the plays showcased in Louisville -- D.L. Coburn's I>The Gin GameP> and Beth Henley's I>Crimes of the HeartP> -- went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. By the fourth year of the festival, an impressive lineup of contemporary play-writing heavyweights had already been celebrated in the birthplace of Muhammad Ali, including Athol Fugard, Marsha Norman, Wole Soyinka, Brian Friel, John Guare, Israel Horovitz, Lanford Wilson, and Oliver Hailey.

Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the PR-savvy health benefits company, began sponsoring the city's signature cultural event in 1979. Renamed the B>Humana Festival of New American PlaysP> in honor of the Louisville-based company in 1981, the event now spans six weeks at a performing complex that has mushroomed into three nifty theatre spaces -- and a funky restaurant.

Critics flock from across the country to Humana to assess the new work. On April 5, the American Theatre Critics Association announced its annual award winner for Best New American Play at the festival. With a heavy production slate that weekend in Charlotte, I elected to attend a week earlier -- during a three-day play-going bacchanal designated as Theatre Professionals Weekend. It's a great way for theatre companies to scout up-and-coming work and climb aboard with agents and publishers to secure performing rights before any boffo bandwagon gathers steam.

With shows beginning as early as 10:30I>amP>, I was able to attend seven full-length shows in less than 48 hours -- I>plusP> an 11:00I>pmP> suite of 16 short plays performed by the talented Actors Theatre apprentice troupe. I missed a trio of 10-minute plays that premiered a week later, but that's showbiz.

By my count, we've seen 22 full-length shows in Charlotte during the Loaf Era that first took wing at the Humana Festival. That roster includes two of I>CL'sP> Shows of the Year, I>The IlluminatiP> and I>Anton in Show BusinessP>. At least one more Louisville alum is on the near horizon, I>Polaroid StoriesP>, scheduled for a June opening at the Hart-Witzen Gallery.

There were more Charlotte I>actorsP> at this year's Humana than local artistic directors. But that doesn't mean we won't be seeing one or more of the class of Humana 2003 soon in Charlotte. There were multiple worthy candidates on my scorecard.

B>Omnium-GatherumP> by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros and Theresa Rebeck -- Prime cut trivialities of the new capitalist millennium intersect with a terrifying, militarized future in this brilliantly concocted dinner party fiasco. Our hostess, Suzie, quickly emerges as a thinly disguised Martha Stewart caricature. Hilariously preoccupied with her exquisitely orchestrated dinner menu, perpetually gracious and solicitous toward her guests, no matter how quarrelsome and obnoxious they become, Suzie has crafted her post-9/11 soiree with a couple of startling surprises on her guest list.

But first the collaborating playwrights stir the pot with numerous ripostes and imbroglios between a reactionary best-selling author and a vegan feminist. Both these combatants prove repellent to an African-American preacher, a cynical British intellectual, and a distinguished Arab scholar.

Suzie provides the comic relief when tempers begin to boil, with innocuous attempts at peacemaking. We also get the dark, dictatorial side of Suzie when the Brit requests extra salad dressing and when the vegan -- who'll eat "nothing with a face" -- complains that she's starving.

Then, as the flyovers by ominous aircraft increase in frequency and loudness, Suzie unveils her surprise guests: an Al-Qaida terrorist and a ghost! Life has turned into a stagey talkshow entertainment. Most powerful is the passionate argument between the terrorist and the dignified Arab scholar, who becomes the unexpected conscience of the piece.

Kristine Nielsen was delightfully vacuous as Suzie, with aptly flavored sprinkles of intimidating ferocity. As Khalid, the I>raissoneurP> of the feast, Edward A. Hajj was the perfect blend of idealism and pedantry.

Humana's production in the new Bingham Theatre was absolutely definitive, successfully masking the drama's only problem. By putting Suzie's roundtable and all the dinner party on a slowly revolving turntable, director Will Frears enabled the arena stage audience to see all the characters without resorting to overly busy blocking. Culinary delicacies rose from the floor in elegant glass cases, and staircases leading downward appeared and disappeared luxuriously in Paul Owen's superb scenic solution. In a larger, more conventional venue, I>OmniumP> might appear static.

Certainly the climactic fight scene livens things up. That's where Charlotte's Robert Lee Simmons distinguished himself. Known hereabouts for his leading roles in I>SubUrbia, TracersP>, and I>SteambathP>, Simmons was at the right place at the right time in the festival's Acting Apprentice Program. When a back injury sidelined the original terrorist during rehearsals, Simmons took over as Mohammed and opened in the role. Not only did he deliver a compelling portrait of the volatile zealot, he sprang on top of the table and pounced upon his adversary without turning any of the glassware into dangerous projectiles.

As the lights at Suzie's chalet flickered and died for the last time, I>OmniumP> left us with much to ponder about the destiny of our wealthy, arrogant republic. An exciting, entertaining, and deeply rewarding 93 minutes. GRADE: A

B>The Faculty RoomP> by Bridget Carpenter -- If you've kept pace with the sensational assaults and sieges that have gobbled up headlines in recent years, you know that today's schools bear little resemblance to the fabled "little old schoolhouses" of yesteryear. Apparently, that's true way out in America's heartland at Madison-Feury High School, where gay teacher Carver Duran seeks to resurrect his teaching career after his stint at an inner city school in New York went up in flames -- literally.

He's bunkered at a campus where so many weapons appear daily that teachers casually toss them in a disposal designed for that purpose. And he finds himself in the middle of the hot chemistry between Zoe Bartholemhew and Adam Younger. She's a red-headed chain-smoking theatre teacher, he's a vain long-haired lit guru, and the two of them have a love-hate history as twisted and diseased as any weed that's grown in academe since I>Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?P> Amicably divorced, they delight in goading each other to paroxysms of jealousy, recruiting students each year to be their paramours in a vile and lecherous competition.

Action and dialogue are refreshing and quirky. To heighten her appeal to her students, Zoe alters herself physically in ways that progress from amusing and ridiculous to desperate and neurotic. Adam embraces the yearning for the apocalyptic Rapture merchandised by a series of best-selling novels that his unlettered students adore. Meanwhile, Carver tries to rouse the warring couple's enthusiasm for pep projects like Spirit Day and his new arrangement of the school anthem. He even challenges Zoe and Adam to recover their zeal for teaching, something they stopped believing in years ago.

To deliver the atmosphere of a depressing public school lounge, Carpenter gives us the disembodied voice of Principal Dennis over the intercom -- and the oddly timed visits of Bill the ethics teacher, who says absolutely nothing until the actual onset of bloodshed and Rapture.

That's not nearly enough to convincingly populate a faculty lounge for an entire school year. While I believed Zoe's schizoid tendencies, Adam's seemed driven by the exigencies of Carpenter's visionary plot. But the games they play -- and the revelation of how the games began -- are hot stuff. Rebecca Wisocky and Michael Lawrence delivered the right blends of jadedness, conceit, vulnerability, and infantile malice as the self-immolating lovers. Greg McFadden registered all the right newcomer reactions as Carver.

Perhaps America hasn't reached the physical, spiritual, and intellectual ruin that strikes Madison-Feury at the end of I>The Faculty RoomP>. But it feels disturbingly close. GRADE: A-

B>Orange Lemon Egg CanaryP> by Rinne Groff -- At an arena stage, the audience surrounds the actors on all four sides. You don't expect a proscenium or a curtain. Scenic designer Paul Owen surprised us from the moment we entered Bingham Theatre. He suspended a thick four-sided curtain from the ceiling, shielding the entire stage in the same way a magician casts a kerchief over an apparatus out of which rabbits and other wonders will appear.

A perfect scenic concept for an engrossing drama subtitled I>A Trick in Four ActsP>. Our roguish protagonist, Great, comes from a family that has long ago entered the esoteric world of magical arts, protected their secrets, and passed them along to succeeding generations. Great is our charming passport to the crossroads between illusion, belief, and authentic magic. With him come strong whiffs of hypnotic mystery and sensuality.

Three fascinating assistants surround the captivating wizard. Henrietta, invisible to all but us, at once beguiled and amazed audiences when she assisted Great's father. Trilby is a local waitress drawn toward Great -- the attraction is mutual -- aspiring to become his new assistant. Egypt is the dusky disgruntled I>formerP> assistant who schemes to discover the secret to Great's most awesome illusion, cunningly using Trilby as her bait.

Danger, deceit, vengeance, lust and ambition all take their turns accelerating the wicked whirlwind. Early on, it appears that Great has mesmerized Trilby. Later the tables seem to turn. The magic of love may conquer all -- but will that love be between Trilby and Great or between Trilby and Egypt?

Like a fine juggler, Groff keeps multiple rings suspended in mid-air throughout her elegantly framed story, surprise following surprise. But at the conclusion, we don't feel that satisfying click-click-click-click-click of everything falling beautifully and precisely together. The playwright's structure ultimately takes precedence over driving home any striking dramatic themes. Tidiness trumps showmanship.

Groff does create four charismatic roles. And with the aid of four magic experts behind the scenes, I>Orange'sP> sleight-of-hand and illusions generate solid excitement. Rene Millan, a latecomer to the production, meshed beautifully with his assistants as Great -- most of the time. Director Michael Sexton deftly selected his actresses. As our narrator Henrietta, Wendy Stetson was impudently trashy and detached. Roz Davis smoldered with feline viciousness as Egypt, and most mercurial of all, Nell Mooney's bisexual Trilby turned from worshipful to calculating in the blink of an eye. GRADE: B+

B>RhythmicityP> curated by Mildred Ruiz and Steven Sapp -- With food, souvenirs, and books outside the main auditorium -- plus a bohemian caf downstairs -- there's no shortage of diversions during Humana Festival intermissions. But the biggest crowds gathered around Rhythmicity, a septet of troubadours purveying a pleasing blend of poetry, hip-hop, and the occasional a cappella or doo-wop ditty. At one point, these streetwise scamps invited the crowd to follow them into an elevator.

The group didn't offer a formal, full-length show until the Sunday morning of Theatre Professionals Weekend. They proved that, without the scenery and deejay of Broadway's I>Def Poetry JamP>, Rhythmicity could deliver the same funky vernacular wallop.

No wonder. Members of this hastily assembled troupe were recruited from the same poetry slam circuit that sweetens Broadway's I>JamP>. My favorite was the flamboyantly gay Filipino poet/comedian Regie Cabico, in every way superior to his Asian counterpart on Broadway. Mildred Ruiz, another stalwart from the seminal Nuyorican Poets Caf, impressed with her rapping and Latina singing. GRADE: B

B>The Lively LadP> by Quincy Long (Music by Michael Silversher) -- There's a strange continental flavor to Long's oddball comedy, where ticker tape plutocrats coexist in the same metropolis as an enthroned Patriarch in military dress. It's hard to triangulate into Long's universe. Characters break into snippets of song like rascals in Irish short stories, spouting boozy pub doggerel. Amiable respectable folk are capable of the most outlandish pieties, akin to the weirdos of Voltaire's I>CandideP>. Radical ladies who speak out against the Patriarch may be ordered to burn at the stake.

At the center of all the silliness is Little Eva, a spoiled aristocrat who wants her daddy to bring her a eunuch for her birthday. All her teen friends seem to have one. Trouble is, Papa Van Huffle is dating a scrupulous and scrumptious tea shoppe waitress who happens to think that castration is barbaric. Eva and Pop's Miss McCracken just don't get along.

So when the tyrannical Eva prevails and her eunuch, Gideon, arrives at the Van Huffles', the panicked father attempts to keep the truth from his girlfriend. Deceiving his nutball manservant is not nearly as difficult. In fact, the dimwitted Jameson must be shown visual proof to be convinced. Gideon carries it with him in a little metal box.

Comedy is as offbeat as the people in Long's universe. You expect Little Eva to learn some of the basics of true respectability, and Van Huffle should be taught something about the obligations of standing erect as a vertebrate. Nothing so formulaic or predictable occurs. We're left with the unsavory weirdness of Voltaire -- without the point.

Timothy Douglas' direction was a quirky delight with superb costuming from Suttirat Larlarb. The most attention-grabbing turns came from Holli Hamilton as Eva and Will McNulty as the besotted Jameson. GRADE: B-

B>Trepidation Nation: A Phobic AnthologyP> -- Sixteen playwrights responded to the challenges of articulating the phobias of post-9/11 America. Despite the valiant, sometimes strained efforts of the Acting Apprentice Company to breathe life into the scripts, most of the writing corps sounded tongue-tied.

We started off badly, with an obnoxious suicide vaudeville from Glen Berger, "The Gallows Monologue." Then we devolved to Hilary Bell's "The Message," a medieval flavored dialogue between fairy-tale parents who had promised their first-born to a witch. From there, it was hardly possible to wander further away from our times, our fears, or our hemisphere.

But we I>couldP> do worse, and we did when Erik Ehn's "Seal Skin" sent actress Eleni Papaleonardos climbing up an expanse of roped netting, crying out "You can't abstract the sea!!" at the peak of her anguished, unfocused rant. That was the nadir, though the sentimental slop of Kirsten Greenidge's "The Joys of Childhood" provided maudlin competition.

Closer to the target was Julie Marie Myatt's "Phobophobia," a husband's boastful monologue on his ongoing police training. Combined with his role as the spectral firefighter in I>Omnium-GatherumP>, stocky apprentice Richard Furlong scored an impressive sweep of Twin Towers icons. Additional contemporary flavorings were delivered in Michael Hollinger's "Naked Lunch," where a young lady's fear of meat serves as the impediment to her date's romantic dreams. And a pizza deliveryman in Richard Dresser's "I Am Not Alone" provides screwy solace when he's greeted at the wrong address by a stranger busily botching his suicide. No, he did I>notP> order that pizza!

There's nothing particularly fresh or urgent about Cusi Cram's "Normal," a classic dialogue between homebody and adventurer brothers, but the characterizations and natural flow of the confrontation show promise. More dramatic and disturbing was Victoria Stewart's "Down to Sleep." Two grownup sisters rendezvous in their childhood bedroom, and the elder sister discloses the cause of her insomnia: failure to protect her sister from violation by their father. Instead of expiating her past negligence, revealing the forgotten abuse to her previously blissful sister seems to compound the sin.

Director Wendy McClellan admirably bestowed an aura of troubled coherence to the often wayward anthology. She effectively employed the skeletal Chris Ashworth as a mute presence all evening long before shining the full spotlight on him for the fitting finale, Stephen Belber's "Yes." Standing before us with nothing to hold onto but his own trembling hands, Ashworth confessed with memorable candor -- and absolutely no explanation -- I>"I'm just scared." P>After many detours and missteps, we arrived at Trepidation Nation at last. GRADE: C+

B>The Second Death of PriscillaP> by Russell Davis -- You can tell who the players are with your handy little playbill at the Humana Festival. But to deal with diaphanous concoctions such as I>PriscillaP>, it's good to hunt down the in-house magazine called I>inside actorsP>, which provides lengthy profiles of the playwrights and very helpful essays on the plays.

It was there that I learned that I>PriscillaP> was built on the perceived similarity between the Christian parable of Matthew 7:24-29 and the fable of "The Three Little Pigs." While it became self-evident that Priscilla had been splintered into three selves, without the assistance of my trusty I>insideP> intro, I'd never suspected that Aramanda represented our invalid heroine's physical aspect, that Coquelicot was the intellectual, and the annoyingly mute Priscilla was the spiritual piece of the puzzle.

Such inside info helped me better appreciate how fully Davis had botched the communication of his intent. While I understood the repeated importunities of the Wolf, alias Jacqueline, at Priscilla's window, it was never clear whether the woman's life or her sanity was under siege. I'm guessing that the Wolf represented the bestial chaotic part of Priscilla that our heroine was fearfully repressing at a terrible cost. But I couldn't be sure. Or deeply interested.

Eventually, after chewing all the scenery in sight, the Wolf gobbles up our Priscilla and greets her devoted boyfriend Peter in her stead. This final spectacle yielded the dubious opportunity to behold longtime Charlotte favorite Graham Smith in a sky blue summer dress. Until the wicked Wolf's triumph, Festival director Marc Masterson had Smith constantly donning and shucking a flowing pelt of a wig, delivering Jacqueline's windy oratory at a constant bellow, amplified with a body mike to irritate us all the more.

It was loud, lyrical, pretentious, and a total mess. GRADE: D+

B>Slide Glide the Slippery SlopeP> by Kia Corthron -- Twin sisters Erm and Elo were separated at a very tender age by their impoverished adolescent mother way back in the 60s. Now on the verge of their 36th birthday, the gruff reclusive Erm gets an unexpected visit at her farmstead from her long-lost twin. Elo has been devastated by the accidental death of her daughter, but she yearns to become better acquainted with her sib and brings a hefty inheritance check from their father.

All this unlikely back-story gives Corthron the excuse to dramatize the quandary of human cloning and polemicize about the ethics of Elo's choice. Yes, that's what Elo wants to do -- clone her dead daughter. Contrivance, you may have guessed, isn't Corthron's strong suit. Closer contact with reality might have told the playwright that a bereaved African-American with a $25,000 check isn't a formidable threat to shatter the human cloning taboo. There's a multitude of richer, whiter folk ahead of her in line.

Erm, we gradually discover, is the mother of a Down Syndrome son whom she has cast away. Two successive fantasy scenes -- where the twins talk to their normal, healthy dream children -- give the evening a momentary flicker of power. But most of the evening is spent on polemics or fruitless detours with Erm's sickle cell I>adoptiveP> sister and the obligatory reunion with Erm's birth mother.

More desperate are the cutesy scenes where we hear pronouncements from Erm's sheep. It's a doll, of course (get it?), who slide-glides into sight on a rail. Thanks to the aptly named sound designer, Bray Poor, hardly a single word from the wooden Dolly was intelligible.

Given Erm's sullenness and Elo's incessant whining, the chief comfort we take from Corthron's sterile case study is the certainty that neither of the twins' genes are destined to be perpetuated. Watching all two hours and 20 minutes of this ponderous mess gave me the feeling that I>I'dP> slipped on something. But it was more like a cow-pie than a slope. GRADE: D-