Sunday, July 18, 2010

Cherrywood @ Mary-Arrchie

CHERRYWOOD was written as a series of simple lines, a play without characters, allowing the actors to assemble their roles from the lines they chose to speak, originally devised and created by the Rude Mechanicals and Kirk Lynn of Austin, TX in 2004.
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"Welcome to the neighborhood. CHERRYWOOD is probably unlike any place you've lived before.
Or maybe it actually is all the neighborhoods you've ever lived in."
CHERRYWOOD at Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company


Sitting around the perimeter of this upstairs store-front turned suburban basement, one immediately feels at home in this Cherrywood world. That is probably because it’s a place most of us have landed before, or at least have the mental picture from shows about the crazy hijinks of the young & inebriated
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We are attending one of those parties where you run into friends you forgot you had and end up drinking out of cups you aren’t sure are yours. It is the Texts From Last Night world that will require help filling in the blanks come tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately, this production also left me with some gaping questions and a foggy recollection of what the point was. As an actor, it is a beneficial & rare opportunity to create a character from scratch (as opposed to executing the vision created by a playwright). I can appreciate the value of this exercise, but I don’t know if the production objective warrants the price of my ticket. Not an untalented cast or poorly executed vision, I just wonder about the quality of the vision as a whole.

Cherrywood was almost Rent-like in dealing with established issues like they were new in its’ awkwardly constructed skeleton of a plot. The quality of the world they created was muddled with clichés, ridiculous plot points, unnatural lines of thought, and shallow moments of meaning. The familiar authenticity of this party evaporated as the characters became actors who were acting like the stakes were inappropriately high. The play’s ending scenes were reminiscent of being sober trying to have a meaningful conversation with someone less so. Maybe there’s a little bit of merit, but it’s longwinded, redundant, and overall futile.
No revolution.
No enlightenment.

I would appreciated it if the artistic objective of Cherrywood had drawn upon the strengths of the ensemble. The production was an excellent recreation of normal and it would have been better to have maintained casual, character-driven feel throughout. Its’ strength was in the subtle, not the forced fortune cookie moments. The poetry should have fallen out through the casual and ordinary dialogue. This setting was a great opportunity to highlight the poetry that erupts in our vernacular, but that opportunity was lost on the effort put into creating drama.
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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Equus @ Redtwist

Equus @ Redtwist Theatre
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What the production lacked in innovative production, it made up for with an excellent cast who created a tight, familiar unit of strong individuals. The quality of this production always depends on the casting of Alan Strang and Dr. Martin Dysart; these performances of these two actors could positively or negatively override all the other aspects of any production of Equus. Luckily for RedTwist, the two men fronting this production exceeded expectation in every direction.

Andrew Jessop’s portrayal of Alan Strang lacked nothing. His small, tightly-wound physical stature and expressive eyes that somehow mirrored the stare of the horses created a physically perfect slate for his performance. He was reminiscent of my mind’s picture of a school shooter, which is an appropriate contemporary association to how this timeless role should be performed. His delicately expressive face, chilling performance, and unwavering consistency led to a performance that was much more colorful and articulate than the highly-publicized portrayal given by Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway last year.

Equally strong was Brian Parry’s portrayal of the psychologist Dr. Martin Dysart. His role serves as the grounding force of play because his sessions with Strang pull out the narrative’s story and his monologues slide into those of a narrator. His most defining strength was his strong, gruff, elastic voice that danced over dialogue with dimension and grace. This voice was one made for bedtime stories, Falstaff monologues, Grishams on tape, and serious commercials. Dr. Dysart is the backbone of this play, and Brian Parry provided a strong spine.

Also giving a stand-out performance was Jan Ellen Graves as Hester, the judge who sends Allan to Dr. Dysart for diagnosis. With her smiling but serious eyes, she lived up to the doctor’s line, “you’re really quite splendid.” She was quiet, consistent, charming and crafted a character one could envision as a magistrate or in other arenas of her life.

As Allan’s parents, Debra Rodkin and Laurens Wilson provided some poignant moments. Rodkin especially presented a contemporary and natural interpretation, and managed to deliver lengthy monologues with the clean, conversational tones. Wilson was not quite on par with the talents of the rest of the cast, especially during some monologues that required some inflation.

In the role of Jill, Holly Bittinger was adequate. She shined in terms of likeability, charm, and having a lovely speaking. Bittinger would have made a great guest star on Friends or Seinfeld, but I don’t agree with the choice to cast her as an aggressive older girl; whether it was the choices of the director or the choices of the actress, she seemed mismatched against Jessop.

In the last three minor roles, the actors shown during their spotlighted moments. Scott Butler played both Nugget (the horse) and the horse rider who first introduced Allan to horses as a child. In both roles, his physicality was fluid, languid, and controlled; he exercised the same skill in the delivery of his lines and carved out clever characters through subtle inflections and perfectly-timed delivery. As Harry Dalton, the owner of the mutilated horses, John Rusing presented a cohesive, distinctive, and engaging performance. Meredith Hogeland performed the role of the Nurse, and her presence/costume felt like a reminder of the setting when the set remained stagnant.

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