While I'm not insensitive to the ravages of AIDS, the hardships of principled artists, the daily struggles of open gays, or the poignant tragedy of a composer who didn't live to see the premiere of his defining work, I've never really liked Rent. At all. One time when a Rent tour played Charlotte, I discreetly missed it.
As the day neared for "The Farewell Tour" to hit Charlotte, I was tempted to miss Jonathan Larson's last will and musical testament yet again. But without seeing Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp as Roger and Mark, the pivotal roles they created on Broadway, how can a critic really say he's never liked Rent? To make that statement authoritatively, I had to go to Ovens Auditiorium and give "La Vie Boheme" one more chance.
Well, I'm glad I did. I'm not sure I can remember three notes from "La Vie" -- or any of the 26 other non-Puccini songs -- and I certainly haven't revised my opinion that the work never deserved a Tony or a Pulitzer. I still have deeper respect for Larson's tick, tick ... BOOM! but I found far more in Rent's farewell than in any of its previous hellos. Chalk that up to Pascal and Rapp. Makes a difference when you sing the lyrics with clarity and an actor's conviction.
By simply acting their characters, Pascal and Rapp dispelled the impression of noxious self-absorption that their touring predecessors emitted with every rock-concert hop, superstar mannerism and slurred lyric. There's a story here with human protagonists, and these guys were willing to give it up for art. Just like those Bohemians they were portraying.
Pascal didn't help me very much with the question of what songwriter Roger Davis was doing with his life, but suddenly there was poignancy to his doomed, sporadic romance with junkie exotic dancer Mimi Marquez. And if indefatigable filmmaker Mark Cohen still doesn't convince me that taking a commercial job (and paying your damn rent) extinguishes your artistic flame, Rapp makes his passion and his dressed-down zealotry as real as an East Village loft.
I liked the swagger of Lexi Lawson as Mimi in "Out Tonight" nearly as much as her ultra-tight tush. Otherwise, the large sprawling cast strutted across the stage with the same I'm-starring-in-Rent attitude that had plagued previous tours. Lyrics were intermittently intelligible, the "Light My Candle" duet came off with all the tender intimacy of an MTV video, and slumlord Benny (Jacques C. Smith) and Legal Aid lawyer/community organizer Joanne (Haneefah Wood) were so breathtakingly bland in their coolness they might as well have been interchangeable. Director Michael Grief indulges the conceptual clutter, allowing style to vanquish substance.
Only a couple of other cast members have a clue. Michael McElroy wears his heart on his sleeve as computer geek Tom Collins, unabashedly carrying his torch for transvestite Angel Schunard (Justin Johnson). His vocal excellence is equaled by Gwen Stewart, an original cast member whose cameos supply welcome infusions of musical and emotional grit.
Staying away from Rent all these years helped me to feel a genuine tug when Mimi was carried into Roger's shabby apartment for the denouement -- more emotion than I'd felt up at Lincoln Center during my umpteenth La Boheme in December. But then Mimi survives?! All Larson's righteousness about selling out to mass culture is unmasked in that instant as totally bogus.
So I still despise Rent. But not altogether.
Ken Ludwig has written two of the most successful comedies of the past 20 years, Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, so the guy knows how to get a theater crowd laughing. On opening night at Theatre Charlotte last Thursday, Shakespeare in Hollywood proved that Ludwig hasn't lost his finely tuned funnybone. Nor has he strayed from his customary paydirt, keeping within the confines of showbiz -- from Broadway to the boonies -- as always, transporting us back to the Golden Era pre-dating the fatal demise of The Ed Sullivan Show.
In his Shakespeare, movie history mixes with fantasy at a most appropriate time: as Austrian theater director Max Reinhardt is filming A Midsummer Night's Dream for Warner Brothers with a cast including such notables as James Cagney, Dick Powell, Joe E. Brown, Victor Jory, Anita Louise, Mickey Rooney and the soon-to-be-notable Olivia de Havilland, Reinhardt's huge discovery.
The anomaly of Warner Brothers bankrolling the Bard gets Ludwig's full comedic attention, as the playwright incentivizes producer Jack Warner with a starlet honey he's burning to placate. Reinhardt deftly helps Lydia tighten the screws on Warner to get the film green-lighted, but then he must endure her Shakespearean inadequacies in the key role of Helena in Midsummer.
So does Shakespeare actually materialize in 1935 Hollywood? Not exactly, although there are numerous patches of telltale pentameter beyond the realm of Midsummer that indicate Ludwig toyed seriously with that idea. These fruits from the First Folio are now the province of Oberon, the fairy king, and his delightful minion, the incomparably incompetent Puck. Their arrival on Reinhardt's movie set is serendipitous, to be sure, since Jory and Rooney are indisposed.
Oberon has no idea why he's in Hollywood and, until he gets there, no knowledge of his purported creator, Shakespeare. He can materialize and dematerialize in an eye-blink, but the sovereign still trusts Puck to secure those magical herbs and sprinkle them in the right eyes at the right moment. Believe me, there's enough of that love-pollen to enflame the entire cast with passion. Borrowing from the zany Act 1 curtains of George S. Kaufman, Ludwig makes sure that happens.
He doesn't seem to have any loftier object than that one madcap tableau. Ultimately, we never learn why Oberon is there, why his stay must be so brief, or what he and Puck have accomplished with their visit.
An outstanding Theatre Charlotte cast, assembled by director James Yost, helps us not to care one fig. Dignity is provided by Ted Weiner as Max, who occasionally narrates in his Teutonic accent; Philip Robertson, nothing short of sensational in his Charlotte debut as Oberon; plus a sprinkling of bustling pomposity added by Anne Lambert as Louella Parsons. Among the multiple sources of physical comedy, Elizabeth Simpson as Puck, Nick Iammatteo as Joe E. Brown, and Robert Haulbrook as Will Hayes are all excelling. The scene where Hayes, the gargoyle of Hollywood censorship, is held in thrall by Oberon's magic gets my nod as the funniest scene of the night.
Hayes isn't the only Hollywood type held up to ridicule. Jack Warner and his main squeeze, Lydia Lansing, are equally matched in their vulgarity as portrayed by Victor Sayegh and Jennifer Lynn Barnett. But of course, we crave a pure starry center amid all this gossamer silliness. Longtime Children's Theatre/BareBones/Collaborative Arts stalwart Greta Marie Zandstra supplies it as Olivia Darnell, the budding legend who falls hard for Oberon. Ah, but Oberon's medicinals are a strong cure for that affliction, and dreamboat Dick Powell is waiting in the wings, ardently done by Michael Sharp.
So Jack shall have Jill, Lysander shall have Hermia, and Jory and Rooney shall emerge from the infirmary. Quiet on the set. Action.
Drew Allison brought his Grey Seal Puppets to Wachovia Playhouse last weekend, and though there were more than two dozen flora, fauna, and fairytale contraptions walled up with him underneath his little stage, all went smoothly on the playboard for A Tangle of Tales. No tangles at all.
Interspersed between three narratives, there were musical interludes where strange exotica -- a hairy garlic, a fortune cookie insect and balletic sugar cubes would be tentative descriptions -- danced to the music. The tales were mercifully less abstract. "The Frog Prince," "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," and "The Three Little Pigs" are all palatable kiddie snacks that Allison tells with an admirable array of voices to complement his puppet casts. Allison came out from hiding after the Saturday afternoon show, as is his custom, and canvassed the ImaginOn audience on which of his villains was their favorite.
The anklebiters mostly scorned the Witch who had capriciously turned the Prince into an upbeat Frog, and the Troll who terrorized the billy goats -- now a reformed vegetarian -- had no better luck with the toddlers. Big Bad Wolf ruled. Decisively. So Allison brought out the vicious marauder and showed everyone how he worked.
All in all, good omens for Children's Theatre. On the heels of the Grey Seal version, Children's Theatre presents The True Story of the Three Little Pigs at Wachovia beginning on Feb. 13 and running through March 1. Tarradiddle Players, the Children's Theatre touring company headquartered at ImaginOn, will be performing this mock musical exposé, and nine of the 14 shows were already sold out before the month began.
Some encouraging developments down in Rock Hill, where the new Edge Theatre Company presented the world premiere of Geography Club, adapted by Brent Hartinger from his own novel. Performed at cavernous South Pointe High School Auditorium, the show explores some meaty high school themes, including bullying and homophobia. Led by Russell, the gays at his school congregate secretly after school by forming a Geography Club, confident that nobody who isn't in on the stratagem will ever join.
Deeper than the suspense of will it really work is the question of whether it's best that it should. An edgy script that Children's Theatre should consider bringing to the Q.C.
Meanwhile, director Jimmy Chrismon already has plans to bring his next original production, Broadway: Gender Bent, to Rock Hill Community Theatre's new space at 240 East Black St. Migrating to a more intimate venue closer to the center of Rock Hill -- and Charlotte -- will certainly improve the experience for actors and audience alike. Once Edge becomes more visible, the talent pool, already promising, will become more competitive and accomplished.
