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April 27 at 6:30pm (Mint Museum of Craft & Design), April 29 at 6pm (Levine Museum of the New South).
All of the People, All the Time by Patrick Cook - A pet project of Rep's Michael Bush for the past two years, People/Time is custom-tailored for two topnotch up-close magicians: Darwin Ortiz and David Roth. We follow the co-stars' progress toward the Mecca of close-up magicians: The Magic Castle in California. Aside from the obligatory sleight-of-hand bravura, Scott (Fully Committed) Helm and Lane Morris Coates supply the character-acting magic.
April 28 at 6pm (Main branch, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg Co).
Bonnie and Clyde by Michael Aman, Oscar E. Moore and Dana P. Rowe - As we all know, the notorious Barrow Gang were just a bunch of young folk who went looking for fun during the Great Depression, knocking over banks and similar hijinks. It's a two-year crime spree crying out for a contemporary soundtrack of line dancing and killer country music. Rep's literary manager, Aman, delivers the goods with his cohorts. Dennis Delamar, Deborah Rhodes, and Patrick Ratchford are among the blue-chip belters who help out.
May 1 at 7pm (Booth Playhouse, after 6pm Closing Ceremony).
David Mamet's Speed The Plow launches InnerVoices at new facility innervoices plows aheadChances are, in the topsy-turvy universe of David Mamet, that the most elusive of his titles, Speed-the-Plow, was perversely given to his most accessible satire. I saw the original Broadway production, arguably Madonna's finest hour, and was pleasantly surprised by the lightness of Mamet's touch and the sunny coherence of both plot and dialogue.The tasty script proves the perfect vehicle for launching the innerVoices Theatre Company at its new base of operations. While the Central Avenue Playhouse doesn't exactly pop out at you, productions such as this make it well worth seeking out.
We begin -- and end -- at the office of Bobby Gould, the newly promoted head of production at a major Hollywood studio. Into his lap, courtesy of his old crony Charlie Fox, falls a can't-miss package with a bankable star.
But in the middle act, Bobby goes head-to-head with a hot temp secretary, trying to win a $500 bet with Charlie on whether he can score with her. The tables are turned -- presumably with some pillows and sheets -- when the ambitious Karen convinces Charlie to green light a film based on a visionary novel that he was according a mere "courtesy read."
Mamet keeps two elements of his suspenseful tale deliciously ambiguous: Karen's sincerity and the relative merits of the two film properties. InnerVoices executive director Carver Johns preserves the ambiguities and the comedy, but in the role of Bobby, he delights in fracturing the dialogue, emphasizing the false starts and repetitions that are Mamet's hallmarks.
Michael Simmons proves to be the perfect companion in this fractured idiom as Charlie, switching from hideous comb-over to hideous wig between Acts 1 and 3. Serena Ruden is seductive enough as Karen, but she misses the toughest facets of the opportunist and needs to speed-the-pace a smidge. Production is very slick for a new facility, much belying the drab impression of the building's exterior. Right behind the White Rabbit Bookstore, between Hawthorne and Pecan, innerVoices has created a new theatre Wonderland.Up in NoDa, Off-Tryon Theatre Company has trotted out its strongest dramatic effort of the season, Never the Sinner. Using techniques that prefigure the more celebrated Gross Indecencies, playwright John Logan recreates another "trial of the century," the Leopold-Loeb trial that shocked Chicago in 1924. It's clear that Logan wished to probe the motives of this heartless crime and sound the issue of applying the death penalty to such obscenely young defendants. Director Glenn T. Griffin, however, is more preoccupied by the relationship between the youngsters and their infernal pact. For agreeing to become Loeb's accomplice in crime, Leopold gets Loeb for his sexual partner.
Bradley Moore, last seen at OTTC in the title role of Dracula, brings the same mesmerizing magnetism to Richard Loeb. His smug conceit finds its match in the finely shaded portrayal of Nathan Leopold, Jr., by Joseph Baez, reigning CL Newcomer of the Year. Their chemistry made my flesh crawl.
The trio of trial reporters -- played by Stuart Williams, Kristen Jones, and Jonathan Ewart -- double nicely as key witnesses. Either because they were under-rehearsed or over-directed, Myk Chambers as defense attorney Clarence Darrow and John Hartness as prosecutor Robert Crowe had some stiff, tentative moments. Neither marred the overall impression, which was quite powerful.
