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Home - Theater
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Dolly Dearest - |
Dozen Dollies bow to Denise in Bluffs musical
by Warren Francke
The climactic entrance of a woman in a red gown gives musical theater one of its most endearing moments. “She’s here, she’s here,” the waiters shout and then sing, “Hello Dolly.”
That’s also the name of the musical, of course, and when B&D Productions opens Hello Dolly on July 18, Denise Putnam will make that entrance as Dolly Levi. And she won’t share the spotlight with any other diva in a Dwayne Ibsen costume.
That wasn’t the case a week earlier when the show was previewed for the National Costumers Association. Ibsen, who directs the musical on the Chanticleer stage, hosted the costumers’ convention and arranged for 12 red Dolly gowns from across the country to join with the one he provided for Ms. Putnam.
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Cold Cream - |
Weigh the work that goes into the 40 or so productions and some 160 nominees for the annual Theatre Arts Guild awards and you can understand why it might take two weeks of Cold Cream to sort it out. After all, we’re talking about the entire 2007-08 season.
That includes active theater companies completely omitted from that long list of nominations. Nada from the John Beasley Theatre, Chanticleer, Creighton and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Not a single nominee.
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Trailer Treasure - |
Trailer park musical breaks up rehearsals
by Warren Francke
If rehearsals run a little long for The Great American Trailer Park Musical, it’s because the cast and directors spend the evening breaking up with laughter. And Cathy Hirsh, as a neighbor named Pickles, gets most of the blame.
She opens the show with “This Side of the Tracks,” which introduces the quirky characters: Norbert the toll collector (Todd Brooks), Jeannie his agoraphobic wife (Mary Carrick) who rarely leaves the trailer and Pippi the runaway stripper (Amanda Miller).
“She just had us rolling,” Carrick recalls.
The worst breakup came when Hirsch sang “It Doesn’t Take a Genius.” Her interpretation of the line, “I hear I’m dumber than a box of hair,” made music director Keefer Peterson helpless, according to director Daena Schweiger.
In fact, “everyone in the room was laughing so hard Cathy couldn’t continue with her next lyric.”
And so it went each time Peterson tried to pick up the song … for about five minutes. That was the longest interruption, but another one of Cathy’s lines caused Schweiger to “leave the room for fear of wetting myself.” That’s after hearing it the umpteenth time.
Schweiger also said Carrick, whose BroadStreet Productions presents the musical, “cracked the room up” during her “Panic” number, when her agoraphobic character gets locked out of her trailer. The crackup came when Carrick “channeled Linda Blair” while complaining, “It’s Satanic.” |
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Catechism Schism - |
Sister Mary cracks ruler on audiences
by Warren Francke
The Howard Drew Theatre at the Omaha Community Playhouse will become a Catholic grade school classroom from July 11-Aug. 3, and playgoers attending Late Night Catechism may end up in its punishment chair if they misbehave.
And don’t plan to put anything over on the nun in charge. Mary Zentmyer has played that role for years, in Chicago and elsewhere. From the Windy City to Arizona, the interactive comedy has enjoyed runs of nearly a decade.
Producer Vicki Quade, a co-creator of the show, offered to “explain the beauty of Late Night Catechism.” It’s scripted with audience involvement built in. For example, the Vatican sent out a list of saints, so Sister examines them and lets the crowd decide who stays on the list and who should be voted off.
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Cold Cream - |
Here’s good news on a busy weekend for local theater: An Evening at the Purple Peacock will raise funds to put Baby D Inc. back in business. The other openings have a few weeks to run, but Thurs.-Sun., July 10-13, are your only chances to see a variety show with a bunch of Omaha’s top talents.
Rob Baker will host as George Burns, complete with cigar, with a little W.C. Fields mixed in. He’s joined by Erika Hall, Jonathan and Aaron Wilhoft, Theresa Sindelar, Audrey Fisher, Beth Paprocki and Wes Clowers.
They’ll do impersonations ranging from Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn to Dean Martin and Al Jolson. The press release doesn’t reveal every pairing, but one hopes Erika will do Patsy Cline and Peggy Lee, among others.
And it might be worth the $18 admission ($2 discounts for seniors, students and active military) to see big Jon Wilhoft as Carol Channing in Hello Dolly. It’s in a classy setting: the Scottish Rite Theater on the second floor at 20th and Douglas. You enter on the east rather than the grand steps on the north.
Founder/director Lorie Obradovich needs the funds for renovation of an unidentified midtown site where she expects to re-establish Baby D in October. |
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Sweet, Delicate Omaha Zinfandel - |
by Kyle Tonniges
You’ve seen Todd Barry — either in one of many appearances on Letterman, Kimmel or Conan O’Brien, or as the bongo-playing member of “Flight of the Conchords” (also named Todd) on HBO. Touring in support of his latest CD, From Heaven, he’ll appear at Slowdown, Wednesday, July 9. The soft-spoken Barry prefers his interviews via email. Here’s what he had to say about Omaha, food and the logistics of international travel with children in tow. |
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Cold Cream - |
* The rain-soaked opening of Shakespeare on the Green brought reports that made me wish I was there. “It was electric indoors with audience members nose to nose with the actors,” as director Cindy Melby Phaneuf saw it.
Another observer spied the daily’s reviewer, Bob Fischbach, “sort of wet” in the balcony. That’s better than being “all wet,” a comment once applied to my reviews.
“We’ve never had this much rain and threat of rain in our 22-year history,” Phaneuf noted. They went the first three years sans rainouts, then lost a performance of Merry Wives of Windsor in 1990 because they weren’t prepared to move inside. |
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Final Curtain - |
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Grande Olde Players
bow out laughing,
then sad farewell
by Warren Francke
Before the final curtain falls, the Grande Olde Players will bow out of their theater at 90th and Blondo with lots of laughs. But the laughter will come from three one-act comedies, not from what may be a tearful farewell to the space.
Mark and Bonnie Gill Manhart started the GOPT 24 years ago to provide more performance opportunities for seniors. They moved productions from Paxton Manor and other venues to the current location, recently renamed Omaha On Stage, but will end nearly two decades there when the comedies close July 13.
“Saying goodbye to the space will be very difficult,” Bonnie said, “especially since we have looked at all kinds” of alternatives for several months. “None compare with the intimacy, acoustics and comfort of our place.”
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Cold Cream - |
* Yes, we promise regularly that Cold Cream looks weekly at metro area theater, but the Tony awards come only once a year with a prime-time spotlight on Broadway. And there’s always a local angle, even if it’s only that South Pacific won seven prizes while a comparable production still plays at the Omaha Community Playhouse through Sunday.
From what we saw performed on awards night, both our Greg Ryerson and Angela Jenson-Frey compare well with Paulo Szot and Kelly O’Hara, Broadway’s Frenchman and Nurse Nellie Forbush. Add the fact that Tracy Letts looks more and more like America’s most promising new playwright. He won the Tony for August: Osage County. |
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Playing Dress Up - |
Five Women rollicks through post-nuptials
by Sarah Wengert
Women are notoriously fearful of being caught in the same dress as another gal at the same event. The only occurrence they are perhaps more fearful of is being a member of that redundantly (and often horrendously) outfitted gaggle: the bridesmaid party.
Alan Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at the Blue Barn Theatre sees five bridesmaids take an uproarious trip through “wedding hell.” Ball, (“Six Feet Under”/American Beauty) injects what could have been a fluff-fest with his own brand of snide comedy and observation.
The Blue Barn’s set is simple: one bedroom (upstairs in a Knoxville, TN estate that’s the site of a daughter of the family’s wedding). The cast uses a window-seat there as a means for spying on the reception below.
The cast is simple as well: consisting of the five bridesmaids and one male usher (Ben Beck as a perfect Southern gentleman, Tripp, who makes his appearance late in the final act).
The five represent various types of women: a naïve, judgmental Christian (cousin of the bride, Frances), an easygoing, quick-witted, recovering slut who’s recently gone sour on men (old friend of the bride, Trisha), an unhappily married train-wreck (every wedding needs one — another old friend, Georgianne), a lesbian who finds herself slightly alienated at the affair (sister of the groom, Mindy) and a sarcastic, young pothead (sister of the bride, Meredith).
What’s not simple are the matching peach-sherbert taffeta, monstrosities (including matching heels and a hat that’s referred to as both a lampshade and a pin-cushion) that the group is forced to wear at the bidding of the (never-seen) bride Tracy. |
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Dream Come True - |
South Pacific deserves claims for greatness
by Warren Francke
It’s one of the grace notes in the life of theater that finds directors declaring, “It is an honor to explore this great work with such a dedicated and talented group of people.” Gracious words, but so routine they risk being ignored.
This time, in the case of South Pacific at the Omaha Community Playhouse, the words of director Susan Baer Collins deserve the honor of our attention. She has directed some of the most memorable musicals, including a magnificent Ragtime, in the more than four score years of the nation’s top community theater.
The Playhouse’s decision to extend the run of South Pacific adds weight to her words. Earlier, a loving tribute by John Lahr in the New Yorker (April 14) reminded that “great work” is no exaggeration.
He noted that it won Rodgers and Hammerstein only the second Pulitzer Prize for drama awarded a musical, one year after the story won James Michener a Pulitzer for literature. Then the cast album was number one for 69 consecutive weeks.
But its defining impact, Lahr suggested, came from its question, “If you don’t have a dream/How you gonna have a dream come true?”
Prime among its dreams? The brotherhood of man defeating bigotry. That was a powerful theme when it was written just after World War II and it remained one during the Playhouse run that drew a full house in mid-week after an African-American became the presidential nominee of a major political party. |
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Bard-foot in the Park - |
Boesing as Lear merits Much Ado over Shakespeare
by Warren Francke
Other than the finest in free professional theater, what does the 22nd season of the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival offer? As always, something old and something new.
And the old promises the perfect contrast between Much Ado about Nothing, with its “merry war between the sexes,” and King Lear, with much ado about something that inspires debate: Is it the greatest Shakespearean tragedy or simply the greatest play of all?
What’s new to Shakespeare on the Green in Elmwood Park may be overshadowed by the traditional, but there are variations on the familiar themes of picnicking and pre-show musicians. Starting June 19, “Bard-B-Q” on the green begins at 5:30 p.m. and “Much Ado” picnic baskets can be ordered in advance.
The play’s the thing at 8 p.m., after the educational “Shakes-perience” at 7 p.m. On Sunday, June 29, the tradition of bringing pets to the park takes a new twist with the “Will’s Best Friend Dog Contest.”
But all the frills shrink to insignificance next to the anticipation of Paul Boesing playing the title role in Lear’s first return here since 1995. With his friend D. Scott Glasser directing, Boesing’s Lear will ask again, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” |
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Cold Cream - |
Lets assume, somewhat perversely, that a few of you don’t want to sit in the grass to watch Shakespearean comedy, much less subject yourself to something as monumental as King Lear. That’s sad, but possible.
For lighter fare, you might catch the three comedies set for Thursday, June 26-July 13 at the Grande Olde Players as they close their 24-year run at 90th and Blondo — more on these one-act quickies next week.
Otherwise you may wait until July 11 for really non-Shakespearean stuff, namely Broadstreet’s The Great American Trailer Park Musical and the Omaha Community Playhouse production of Late Night Catechism. If you haven’t seen the latter, you must not travel much to Milwaukee where it has been running 15 years, or Chicago (eight years) or Scottsdale, where it holds an Arizona record for longevity.
It’s an interactive comedy, with “Sister” teaching the audience what to feel guilty about. Audience participation makes it a different show every night.
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Queer as Folk - |
Lil’ Dog Laughed,
So Does Audience As Connie Shines
by Warren Francke
The Little Dog Laughed is easily the funniest play I’ve seen this season, and that’s saying a lot at the end of May. But that’s still not the most significant fact about the Douglas Carter Beane comedy.
The SNAP! Production directed by Todd Brooks at the Shelterbelt gives Connie Lee a chance to shine in a role that guarantees more honors coming her way. She’s Diane, the agent who represents actor Mitchell Green (Jim Palmer), a gay man whose career and hers hinge on keeping him in the closet.
From her hilarious opening monologue to a closing speech that completes the nursery rhyme title (“to see such sport and the dish ran away with the spoon”), Lee is simply delicious despite her character’s crass Hollywood pragmatism. No review can capture her delivery, but imagine the quintessential Connie bursting into a room, catching her movie star and a young man (Michael Juarez) with their pants down and complaining, “Puh-leeze!”
Or preparing Mitchell to face the press and barking, “For me, butch it up, Mary.” Or declaring, “All gay men hate women unless they’re in a black and white movie and suffering majestically.”
If you’ve only seen Ms. Lee in such serious roles as Regina in Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes, don’t fail to catch this facet of her wide-ranging talent.
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Cold Cream - |
Three cheers for theatrical comebacks. First comes the revival this weekend of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress with much of the cast that made it so popular earlier at the Blue Barn Theatre.
Susan Clement-Toberer once more directs such talents as Teri Fender and Erika Hall, among others, with Ben Beck joining the dress-sharing bridesmaids. If you want to enjoy their journey through “wedding hell,” call 345.1576 for information and reservations for the show running in the marital month, June 12-28. Speaking of comebacks, Rehearsals are underway for the July 10-12 performances of The King and I at Northwest High.
It took 29 years for the summer musical program of the Omaha Public Schools to return after a tax lid ended the venture that gave many their start in theater. Call 557.2444 to learn more about this one-weekend event. |
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Patricia Neal Does Omaha - |
by Leo Adam Biga
Actress Patricia Neal’s appearances at the Great Plains Theatre Conference are an annual rite of spring in Omaha. As one of the old Hollywood studio system’s last surviving contract stars, she shines brightest among the luminaries here for the week-long theater celebration. The 2008 version concluded last weekend.
The honored playwrights and their Pulitzers make the literati go ga-ga but Academy Award-winner Neal trumps them in popular appeal. She’s a movie star, baby. A big screen queen whose celluloid imprint looms large. She’s also an endangered species.
Neal’s beguiling persona has served her well from ingénue to mature leading lady to crusty old character actress. At 82, there’s something of the regal, southern grand dame about her, appropriate to her oh-so-theatrical expressions — “fabulous,” “I love it,” “I adore it,” “Oh, that’s gorgeous,” “divine,” “lovely.”
At her best playing unadorned women, she’ll forever be fixed in our imagination as Alma, the no-nonsense housekeeper who spurns stud Paul Newman’s advances in Hud (1962), a role that won her the ‘63 Best Actress Oscar. Her earthy charm, keen wit, dreamy eyes, dark hair, fair complexion and gin joint voice enchant. That voice, rich and thick as molasses, still exudes the wry knowing of a stand-up gal who’s seen a thing or two. |
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The Play’s the Thing - |
From young hopefuls to Pulitzer winner, play-packed week
by Warren Francke
The twin sister says, “There’s only room for one arrogant asshole in my life.” And her twin brother Michael adds, “Remember, Natalie, I’m the only man allowed to be a jerk to you.” Taking notes was a young woman with blond, spiky hair.
For this theater lover, she was the essence of the third Great Plains Theatre Conference. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t enlightening to hear honored playwright, Doug Wright, talk about his award-winning I Am My Own Wife and to see Nick Zadina repeat his much-honored role as the remarkable German transvestite.
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Cold Cream - |
The play’s the thing, Will Shakespeare wrote, and it’s the heart and soul of the Great Plains Theater Conference. Nothing against the actors, directors and others who brighten the week-long event, but let us bow briefly to the one-page play.
How do you write a one-page play? You might start with Robert Caisley’s tips for defeating writer’s block:
Jot down your greatest fear, or your dream, or an inanimate object, or an assumption about the world. Then tell a story about that fear or dream, and squeeze it onto one page … without resorting to a ridiculously small type font.
Caisley, a playwright and professor from Idaho by way of L.A., led the one-page play workshop at Metro Community College in a room full of budding writers of all ages — from teen-ager Hannah Koslovsky to grizzled seniors. His advice ranged from “Don’t get it right, get it written” (not agonizing over the first draft) to Louis B. Mayer’s reaction to a wordy film script by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “I can’t shoot adjectives.”
He also likes the Sam Shepard test: “Can you see the writer facing himself on the page?” After asking the playwrights, “Am I boring you?” Caisley sailed into the most scintillating summary of Hamlet this grizzly scribe has heard.
In other words, he wasn’t boring us. And that can be said for every phase of a week filled with theatrical creativity. |
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Cool Cats - |
Fats Waller means some Misbehavin' at the Beasley
by Warren Francke
“It’s 4 a.m., and everybody’s here but the police,” sings Leander Phelps. But the show’s title insists he Ain’t Misbehavin’, he’s “savin’ all my lovin’ for you.”
That may be, but the Fats Waller musical at the John Beasley Theater offers just the right mix of loving and misbehaving, thanks to a cast that knows just when to take it over the top. Phelps goes on in that “Viper’s Drag” riff to lavish his love on “a reefer five-feet long … but not too strong,” and next up Tyrone Beasley tells his woman “Your Feet’s Too Big.”
So Melony Watkins, the comedic queen in this cast of five plus three sweet accompanists, delivers her sad reply, “Mean to Me.” Whether she’s playing shy, high, gleeful or staggering drunk, Watkins can’t be ignored. Watch her at work and tell me you don’t want to see her again and again. |
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Cold Cream - |
Life offers second chances and so does theater. Because the Great Plains Theater Conference is honoring of Pulitzer Prize playwright Doug Wright, you have a second opportunity to see why his I Am My Own Wife was the play most honored by the Theatre Arts Guild and the Omaha Entertainment Awards.
With Nick Zadina returning in the title role, Wright will introduce his story of transvestite survival in Nazi Germany at an 8 p.m. Friday performance in Creighton University’s Lied Center. CU’s Lied is also the scene of an evening with scenes from Wright’s work at 8 p.m. Thursday. And he’ll be honored at a gala hosted by actress Patricia Neal, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Metro Community College Fort Omaha campus. Earlier, his Oscar-nominated film, Quills, will be screened.
The Reader will offer more later on Breathe, a new play on white and black justice by Javon Johnson.
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