Match Flame of the VanitiesThe original "The Elephant Man" proved to be a hit in every sense of the theatrical term including advertising, staging and casting. The show stacked up seven Tony(tm) nominations, including the title role for Philip Anglim. The Tony(tm) winners for "The Elephant Man" include Carole Shelly (Best Actress), Jack Hofsiss (Director) and Best Play (Bernard Pomera
nce and producers). Word on the street at that time was Philip Anglim's the show was a vanity.
New York theatre "buzz" in the 70s was rabid with schadenfreude. A sign of the times? "Avenue Q's" 2004 Tony Award(tm) winning score sports a song titled "schadenfreude," so take it as you will.
Seema Sueko as Anna in Mo'olelo Performing Arts' "Night Sky."
It's tough to see those couched around you lauded for a show you carried on stage and off. Whether a blow or a balm, Mr. Anglim chose a terrific play, a role fit to his talent and skills and the right director with the right take on the show that capitalized on his abilities. The actor purchased the North American rights to the show. In the end, he limped all the way to the bank.
Today we have Seema Sueko's Mo'olelo Performing Arts Company's production of "Night Sky" by Susan Yankowitz. The show inaugurated the La Jolla Playhouse's Resident Theatre Company Program with parsimonious amounts of ingenuity and recessionary size vacancies of risk. For Ms. Sueko, who plays the lead, it is not a well-chosen vehicle.
Considering the significance of the opportunity and commitment in context of the La Jolla Playhouse's ongoing contribution in the American Theatre dynamic and Mo'olelo's aspiration to produce "edgy" work one would think Artistic Director Seema Sueko would hit the ground with an audacious choice and start running. The Playhouse program rewards the most vibrant of "homeless" theatre companies in San Diego. What went wrong? Is it Mo'elelo or is it San Diego?
Artistic Director Seema Sueko chose the play and cast herself in the lead role of Anna, instructor of astronomy. Ms Sueko's performance as a Type A Prof proved pat with a narrow emotional spectrum and lacked spontaneity. Her performance appeared choreographed. With a character obsessed with control, it would have been savory to see Anna's vulnerability in earnest and elevated into the spiritual especially given this play’s "movie-of-the-week" tone.
SupportI left Mo'olelo with a sense the Ms Sueko led her company through a project with the deliberateness of someone who kept her pants up with a belt and suspenders. Not that one should drop their pants. For example, Siobhan Sullivan's direction lacked imagination taking a conventional mid-west regional theatre approach to interpreting the work. Ms Sullivan's passion for the material was not evident.
"Night Sky”’s supporting cast turned in dutiful performances, but there is no telling what the actors were truly capable of in their role in this loosely explored production. The play is hardly an enthralling study of the aphasic experience. The show demanded fully realized performances with touch-and-go ensemble work to carry the evening.
The show's set design held more promise. David F. Weiner's architectural rendering of brain forms used a series of successive horizontal lines and levels, not unlike the "slices" of an MRI. But Mr. Weiner's choice of black for the unit set repeats design's age-old practice of using the color black to allow a unit set's flexibility with multiple scene locations. C'mon folks, let’s get a little bit wild or at least show a little moxie. Why not flip the color pallet and play with a clinical white? Throw the old forms behind.
Jeannie Galiotos' costume designs were serviceable. The show's light designer (Jason Bieger) gives away his potentially most stunning design element of the evening, a starlight curtain, as soon as the audience enters the room. (Today starlight curtains appear to be standard lighting fixtures in theatres the way strobe lights are found in discos.) The lighting design is another element of leaden obviousness eagerly served up in Ms. Sueko's show.
Who's producing whom?
The company lists among its Creative Team biography's Thomas Baker, PhD. Is he responsible for the project's tepid results? His biography identified him as the Executive Director of the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation, a Mo'olelo board member and as having produced an instructional video. What qualifies him as a theatrical producer? (If Dr. Baker is an "Executive Producer" in the sense one's name is listed in monetary contribution categories why pass him off as creative staff?)
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It should be noted that the company emphasizes its Green approach as evidenced by two pages of "puff piece" program notes written by its intern and a recent award for their efforts. Mo'elelo produces exemplary artwork; email blasts, newsletter updates and weekly updates of exactly how many seats are available for a particular performance. Ms Sueko personally answers new requests for inclusion to their email list.
The audience needs Mo'olelo's emphasis on the work. "Night Sky" is disappointing for the rich potential the company possesses. The program bio's list enough fodder for a "blow the roof off" experience. The company has the potential to reach out and change hearts and minds of paying audiences, new and typical alike. I believe this is Mo'olelo's desire.
In my theatre circles, if we refer at all, we refer to a failed show as a "flop" or a "dog," and add one or two supporting words to justify our opinion and leave it at that.
Nevertheless, questions of how and why a project doesn't work provide interesting discussion and reinvigorate one's artistic values even if the discussion occurs in a closet.
I know from experience that actors are not driven by charity to establish a theatre company. An actor must produce work of merit (or married to the owner of Seagram's). It takes more than performance skill to create the critical mass of workers and volunteers required and Ms Sueko proves this point to be true: Seema is a terrific producer.
At least a sliver of monomania ignites a theatre company's creation as Charles Ludlam informed us in his play "Stage Blood." If any actor-manager from the past fifty years could demonstrate, sovereignty can produce inspired work it was Mr. Ludlam (he, too, wore a dress) and his Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Congratulations, Charles, for sublime work on the page, stage and revealing this plot point.
“Night Sky.” Closed.
Cast: Seema Sueko, Tom Andrew, Bibi Valderrama, Justin Snavely, Nicole Gabriella Scipione, Brian Mackey. Director: Siobhan Sullivan, Stage Manager: Tareena Devona Wimbish, Scenic Design: David F. Weiner, Lighting Design: Jason Bieber, Sound Design: Paul Peterson, Costume Design: Jeannie Marie Galioto.
“Dying is Easy”The most effervescent intermission chats I’ve had so far this year was in the company of actors Walter Murray and Gail West. Gail reminded us of Charles Ludlam’s platitude about playing comedy: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” (Spoken with the substance of overwhelming defiance and indignation with surgical steel-like articulators and rich textured tone. Try it sometime: it’s refreshing.)
Ms. Gail WestLudlam and company guided their work by such platitudes with Obie Award winning results. Thanks for the reminder Gail. Gail and I played opposite each other as husband and wife actors, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton Stone, Sr., in Ludlam’s “Stage Blood” when Diversionary Theatre performed in the now named Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre.
The show was an artistic hit. The San Diego Reader (Jonathan Saville) called it the best show in town. I was expecting a flop.
As the Artistic Producing Director of a fledgling gay theatre company in 1988 San Diego it took fighting City Hall to rent the space. Once there, we had to fight Marie Hitchcock’s attempt to get us thrown out of the space based on her moral standards. (I even threw a puppet in the show to appease her! Not really.) More details on this show down another time.
Walter and Gail recently appeared in "Caliban’s Island" at Talent to aMuse Theatre Company.
October 2004’s most unconvincing performance award goes to…
OJ Simpson upon hearing guilty verdicts for 12 counts of armed robbery read aloud in a Las Vegas courtroom. OJ wasn’t up for a Vegas caliber performance that day. I witnessed a weary older man feigning empty responses of incredulity. When a celebrity drops from star treatment of a “Dream Team” in LA to playing a virtual solo in a room off the “strip” it’s gotta be a tough act to pull-off.
Punch me, please!If you threw a great punch and could fly across a room when it was returned and you hung with a bunch of buddies who got into the same, what might you do?
Some chicks found a remedy and could have taugh the Blues Brothers a few things. Babes With Blades in Chicago is a company of stunt actresses have been performing together for over nine years. Check out their most recent offerings.
Sorry -- I didn't mean to call you women chicks.
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/theater/64291/land-of-the-freeMore at
http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/theater/15106/an-affair-of-honorYoung enough to play “But soft…”
And naive enough to do it anyway. I guess I wanted to give the Romeo speech a go as I knew I’d never play him. Now at age 52, I was right right on that call.
Estelle Parsons was playing “Miss Margarita’s Way” on tour at the Boston University Theater and while there held a master acting class in one of the empty dressing rooms.
“Who wants to do a monologue?” she rasped.
Immune to silence, I usually went first when this question was asked and so I gave it a go. It was a shy Romeo, amazed that he was amazed at the beauty he was experiencing and the overwhelming rush of getting turned-on by it. Looking back, I identified with his fascination and awe at the beauty of another young creature in the night. I was doing poppers as a kid and maybe that was my unwitting sense memory reference. In those training days we “used anything” that “got us there.”
I didn’t know what I was doing with the character except giving myself over to the language with full facility and honesty.
“Terrific!” was the word that Ms. Parsons uttered and then explained what I was doing to my realization.
Ms. Parsons is 80 and knocking out eight performances a week as the leonine mom, Violet Weston, in “August: Osage County” and enjoying rave reviews.
Get more insight on one of our country’s great actresses in Smith Galtney’s Broadway.com interview.
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/buzz_listing_w_photo.aspx?type_id=18
Preening is not the beginning nor end unto itself. You gotta check-out this guy’s stuff.http://www.avltheatre.com/forte/2008/06/theatretube_taylor_mac.htmlOkay, let’s lose Tiny Tim!What list would omit Dickens' “A Christmas Carol?” Consider the list your “middle of the road” meat and potatoes for regional theatre fare.
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/ATtopten.cfm
“Everything Will be Different” by Mark Schultz is a psychological study of a teenage girl and the events that precede her suicide. We know this from the evening’s onset. The victim of covert incest by her recently widowed father, Charlotte struggles to find her sanity in a world he is savagely distorts. She seeks to order her world in attempts at sexually pleasing men (failed) in order to gain physical beauty, attention, acceptance and, hopefully, love or at least a bit of comfort. Fantasy is her most effective narcotic. 
