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Home > Blogs > Arts and Entertainment > Archives > 2008 > July > 27
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Futurefest play mixes fun and hate
Scripts by Carole Lockwood and Carl Williams, who have both had plays produced at previous Futurefests, closed out the Dayton Playhouse’s 18th annual new play festival on Sunday, July 27.
Lockwood’s disarmingly and imprecisely titled “The Mary Band Road Show,” was the stronger and more original of the two.
A sometimes surreal combination of “Nunsense,” “Waiting for Godot” and “Strange Fruit,” it followed a consistently comic Act 1 with a tragic Act 2 and the parting silhouette of Ku Klux Klansmen.
Directed by Alan Bomar Jones, who was also pressed into service as an actor in early scenes due to the late arrival of a cast member, it takes place in 1965 near Montgomery, Ala., along the route of a march led by Martin Luther King.
Characters include Catholic nuns Agnes (Dodie Lockwood), who’s 89 and doesn’t suffer fools, or anyone else; Mary Mary (Renee Franck-Reed), who’s 65 and as simple-minded as a child until she displays complete clarity of thought during a crisis, and pragmatic young Cathy (Becky Barrett Jones), who’s still in training.
The leader is Agnes, who was portrayed with such detail that Act 1 might have been called The Dodie Lockwood Show.
Her equal is elderly black preacher Eli (Roi Williams), who surfaces in the same roadside shack as the northern sisters while waiting for this grandson, an angry young man named Jonesy (Duante Beddingfield).
Meanwhile, the Klan prowls the night for victims. As Sister Agnes points out, Catholics, too, had reason for concern.
Some scenes run on into repetition. One or two might be cut entirely. But “Mary Band” is an unusual pairing of fact and fantasy that like another of the festival’s plays, “Heartland,” offers a fresh look at history.
It juxtaposes opposites that others wouldn’t consider or dare combining — most notably a lynching with the “Banana Boat Song.” The results are both off-putting and thought-provoking.
Williams’ “Coming Back to Jersey” is a fairly conventional domestic comedy fueled by martial boredom, suspicion, jealousy and revenge. Jim Lockwood directed a cast including Dave Nickel and Debra Kent as Howard and Norma Karchmer, Lynn Kesson as Louise, Robb Willoughby as Freddy, Susan Robert as Dorothy Arnfield and Richard Young as Sidney Hersch.
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Hippiefest reviewed. What did you think?
Peace signs were flying, flowers were powered, tie-dye was in full effect and good vibes were flowing at Hippiefest on Saturday, July 26 at Kettering’s Fraze Pavilion.
Still, there was one big, obvious difference that the Turtles Flo and Eddie (original members Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman) summed up best: Back in the day, “we smoked pot, did hash and opium … did black beauties and tooties.” Today Kaylan and Volman said they do drugs like Lipitor, Zocor and Ambien. “In 1967 we took everything we could to kill ourselves, now we’re doing everything we can to keep ourselves alive.”
In other words the hippies have aged … a lot.
As a person who was not on-hand to experience the ’60s and who did not experience the music or culture of the ’70s in any kind of meaningful way, I can only really comment on what I observed.
Jonathan Edwards started things out promptly at 6:30 p.m. with a brief 25-minute set that included a rocking rendition of “Sunshine” and ended with a version of the Nylons’ “This Island Earth” delivered a cappella because as Edwards pointed out, “it’s easier to play that way.”
Other highlights played with various members of a backing band included Badfinger’s guitarist Joey Molland playing “Baby Blue”; Melanie’s “Brand New Key” which, although not always in key, was still fun to hear; The Turtles friendly sing-along song “Happy Together”; Jack Bruce, best known as lead vocalist and bassist for British rock band Cream, performing the rocking “White Room”; and Eric Burdon and The Animals “House of the Rising Sun” which brought most of the Fraze crowd to it’s feet.
So, was making it out to the Fraze Saturday night for the almost four-hour show a bad trip or a good trip? It all seemed to depend on when you were born and where you were coming from.
It was definitely a time warp where the voices weren’t what they used to be and nostalgia seemed to be everything.
Were you there? What did you think?
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Day 2 of Futurefest gets to the heart of things
“Heartland,” a play about persecution of German-Americans during World War II, emerged as a frontrunner for honors Saturday, July 26, in the Dayton Playhouse’s 18th annual Futurefest.
Set on a Wisconsin dairy farm in 1945, the two-act drama by Lauren Simon and Anita Simons brought a little known chapter of American wartime history to light.
A play that can do that has already succeeded on one level. This one also proved to have a satisfying emotional range, clear characters and relationships.
Presented at 10 a.m., it opened day two of the three-day, six-play festival with a cast including Becky Lamb as Berta, a German-born widow trying to run a family farm with her two daughters and young son.
Two German prisoners pressed into labor on the farm as part of a U.S. government program seem a godsend at first. But the way the two — Rolf (Micah Stock) and Gunther (James Goodwin) — blend so easily in with the family attracts the suspicions of closed-minded neighbors and the banker who holds the mortgage. The FBI arrives one night to haul Berta away to jail as a suspected spy and the family’s fortunes soon descend.
“I thought the Nazis and Japs were our enemies, not our own government,” says eldest daughter Sonya (Allison Husko), who strives to hold onto the family home.
Director Linda Dunlevy’s casting and her actors’ convincing German accents were both effective, but the staging was an awkward mix of dramatic reading and free-ranging performance. Lines spoken downward into open scripts were sometimes lost.
Sweet romance blossoms between daughter Emma (Sarah Gomes) and Rolf. The cast also included John Bukowski as the banker, whose villainy prompted hisses from the audience, Stefanie Pratt as busybody Peggy and Casey Dayton Blunt as son Peter.
The matinee was a three-act and three-hour biodrama about American stage legend Laurette Taylor, who landed the role of Amanda in the Broadway premiere of “A Glass Menagerie” after many lean years of missed rent payments and heavy drinking.
Directed by Fran Pesch, “Yellow to Lavender” reflected playwright Carl Rossi’s passion for his subject, but proved to be mostly extended dialogue and very little action.
The worthy central relationship includes Taylor (Barbara Jorgensen) and the acting student who becomes almost a daughter to her (Devan Norsworthy as sweet Eloise Sheldon).
The edgiest play in the festival, Bill Hollenbach”s “Inside the Gatehouse,” filled the Saturday night slot.
taged by Saul Caplan and Greg Hall, it depicts a quartet of privileged middle-aged folks who gather in their gated enclave for a night of socializing before they head out the next day to shoot and kill black bears.
But first they become the prey of unseen, amazingly adept vigilantes who disable the high-tech sanctuary and psycho-terrorize its occupants into some very uncivilized behavior. Along the way, the rulers-turned-captives drink to excess, confess considerable sins and brutalize each other to repetitious extreme.
It’s a setup with tense, horror-tinged promise, but “Inside the Gatehouse” doesn’t go anywhere. It introduces us to unlikable people and never gives us any reason to care about them.
As alpha-boor Art, Dave Williamson was a seething stereotype brought to erupting, type- A life. He verbally trashes his wife (Cheryl Mellen as Carol), gets his kicks driving golf balls right out his front door and bellows like a water buffalo at those who expose his folly. Geoff Burkman was Jackson, a voice of nervous reason until he revives a drinking problem. K.L. Storer was foul-mouthed Zipper, who ends up seeming tame compared to the others.
Futurefest will continue with two more plays on Sunday, July 27, at the Playhouse, 1301 E. Siebenthaler Ave. Tickets are $16. Call (937) 424-8477.
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