Showing posts with label Dramaworks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dramaworks. Show all posts

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Palm Beach Dramaworks Stages an Inspired Rendering of August Wilson’s ‘Fences’


It begins sweetly, the easy jousting of two old friends, Jim Bono and Troy Maxson, so innocently that the audience is quickly ushered into their lives.  Although these are two garbage men returning at the end of a work week in 1957 Pittsburgh, a bottle of gin to share, and are African-Americans, we identify with the universality of their banter.  Troy has dutifully brought his weekly pay to give to his wife, Rose, and enjoys spinning yarns to his appreciative listener, Bono.  So begins August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Fences and Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production which steadily builds to a cathartic climax.

Palm Beach Dramaworks' Producing Artistic Director, Bill Hayes, also the Director of Fences, has undertaken to make this production a signature piece in his company’s long history of triumphs.  He picks PBD’s productions with a vision for their excellence and relevancy to our lives and then selects a cast to work with its talented technical crew. 

John Archie, Lester Purry
Here the cast are all accomplished actors dedicated to the works of August Wilson, among the greatest of American playwrights.  Many have played in several Wilson plays, often in the same role.  Although just beginning its run, Fences’ cast has already come together as a “family.”  Their performances soar, unforgettable, mining the heart of Wilson’s poetic dialogue and the African-American experience many of us can only imagine.  Here we get to viscerally walk the walk.  It is enlightening and heart-wrenching.

Hayes takes the play to the very edge of Wilson’s intent, wanting Troy’s vulnerabilities and his humanity to be on full display.  There is an element of “every-man” in the universality of the themes.  He underscores the many comedic aspects of Wilson’s first act, disarming the audience, leaving us all the more susceptible to the dramatic fire kindling beneath that will blaze into full fury.  Hayes saves his most emphatic directorial statement until the end with a touch of magical realism but throughout, the director’s vision coupled with his love of the play and cast is tangible and affecting.   

This is no easy task as the span of the play’s eight years is panoramic and emotionally consuming.  And its main character, Troy Maxson, is a conundrum of a character, full of tragic flaws and yet possessing traits of nobility along with a disarming honesty.  He is larger than life, an inherently good man who has been seriously damaged by his father, poverty, and the disadvantages of his race, and deterministically visits the sins of the father upon his sons.  In so doing he impacts the lives of all in his orbit.  And like many of us, he is wrestling with his own mortality, symbolized by his imaginary encounters with death, building a fence to metaphorically keep the grim reaper out.

Lester Purry, Karen Stephens

Making his PBD debut, Lester Purry’s portrayal of Troy Maxson is seismic and when he is on stage it’s as if all the oxygen is taken out of the room by his performance, his forceful voice reaching one’s very solar plexus.  He alternates between accepting his lot in life, assuming his responsibilities, and then helplessly allowing his subliminal rage of victimization to rise to the surface.  He is intransigent about his beliefs and can be a terrifying bully, particularly toward his son, Cory. 

It all starts with Troy’s own father who was a failed sharecropper, tantamount to being a “free slave.”  His father had one mandate for his son: work.  As Troy recalls, he had taken a 13 year old girl by a creek when he was supposed to be working.  His father finds him and begins to whip Troy with the reins from a mule.  He realizes that his father was chasing him “so he could have the gal for himself.”  They fight but in the end, his father beats the 14 year old Troy senseless.

Purry delivers Wilson’s words passionately to Bono and his son Lyons, allowing the full emotion and poetry of the author to settle upon the audience as this hideous act is at the core of the generational family dysfunctionality:

“When I woke up, I was laying right there by the creek, and Blue…this old dog we had…was licking my face. I thought I was blind. I couldn’t see nothing. Both my eyes were swollen shut. I layed there and cried….The only thing I knew was the time had come for me to leave my daddy’s house. And right there the world suddenly got big. And it was a long time before I could cut it down to where I could handle it.”

In the “cutting down” period he is incarcerated for 15 years, having unintentionally committed murder during a robbery, becomes a star baseball player in the Negro leagues afterwards, marries Rose, and becomes a garbage man in Pittsburgh.  When Troy says “you got to take the crookeds with the straights,” it is a baseball metaphor which has grown into how he now looks at the world and becomes his advice to his sons.  Yet there is always the resentment that he was denied the chance to play baseball in the major leagues, “born too early” to break the color line. 

As one of the best plays of American theatre, each character has real depth and development.  Troy’s wife, Rose, is played by PBD veteran Karen Stephens.  This part was Stephens’ dream role.

She displays her comically loving moments with a heartfelt admiration of Troy, and even when he humiliates her, she accepts her situation.  From Wilson’s stage notes, “She recognizes Troy’s spirit as a fine and illuminating one and she either ignores or forgives his faults, only some of which she recognizes.”

Her performance intensifies when Troy confesses that he’s been having an affair.  In fact he’s going to be a father.  He rationalizes that this relationship is separate from his love for Rose (implying that he’s staying with Rose), saying this other woman makes him feel special, and that for 18 years (with Rose) he feels like he’s “ been standing in the same place.”

Karen Stephens, Lester Purry
Stephens now agonizingly tells her version of the truth: “….I’ve been standing with you! I’ve been right here with you Troy. I got a life too. I gave 18 years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me…. But I held onto you Troy. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owe you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room with the darkness falling in on me… I gave everything I had to try to erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest man in the world. And where ever you was going… I wanted to be there with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was going to survive as your wife. You always talking about what you give… and what you don’t have to give. But you take too. You take… and don’t even know nobody’s giving!”

Those words, so achingly delivered by Stephens, illustrate the poet in the playwright, some repetition to drive home themes, the rhythm sublime.

Other than Rose, nearest to him is his sidekick, Bono, worshiping Troy, and serving as a sounding board and Troy’s conscience.  PBD’s veteran, John Archie, reprises his recent Florida Repertory Theatre role as Bono, the best friend who articulates the thematic heart of the play “some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to all of you. She loves you. “

Archie wrings out all the emotion portraying Bono who, towards the end of the play, comes by one last time to give Troy a loving tip-of-the-hat to acknowledge that “[you] learned me.”  By this time, Troy is a very lonely man finding consolation in his gin.

Much of the play’s drama focuses on Troy’s relationship with his two sons.  Troy bestows his own peculiar kind of love on the one hand and his ever present wrath on the other.  Each is caught up in his own generational perspective, Troy’s formative years being so different than his sons.  His fatherly skills rise only to the point of wanting his sons to find “responsible work,” expecting they abandon their own dreams.  But in his heart he simply does not want them to turn out like he did.

Jayla Georges, Warren Jackson
Lyons is his older son from a previous relationship with a woman who left Troy while he was in prison.  Warren Jackson in his PBD debut plays his part with a benign, arms-length acceptance of his father.  There is some playful back and forth between Troy and Lyons, his son always borrowing some money from Troy, his father holding that over his head, admonishing him to get a real job, not as a part-time musician.  Jackson conveys the absent father theme, like a leitmotif saying “hey Pop why don’t you come on down to the grill and hear me play?”  He knows the answer will always be an excuse and Jackson’s expressions of regret are never lost on the audience. 

Troy and Rose’s biological son Cory is played by Jovon Jacobs, his PBD debut.  Jacobs just finished a highly praised engagement as Walter Lee in New City Players' A Raisin in the Sun.  He has an explosive relationship with his father, Jacobs showing his character’s developing strength of conviction, distain for, and then willingness finally to challenge his alpha male father.  His is another bravura performance, seething with heart hurt fury.
Lester Purry, Jovan Jacobs Photo by Alicia Donelan
Cory is the depository of all his father’s shattered dreams of sports glory, the generational violence, and Troy’s denial of Cory possibly playing football on a college sports scholarship.  No, Troy insists, he must find a trade to survive in a white man’s world, not accepting that times have changed.  He demands that Cory address him as “sir.”  They finally have a highly charged climactic confrontation:

“CORY:  You talking about what you did for me…what’d you ever give me?
TROY:  The feet and bones! The pumping heart, nigger! I give you more than anybody else is ever gonna give you.
CORY:  You ain’t never gave me nothing! You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time…what’s Papa gonna say if I do this?...What’s he gonna say if I do that?...What’s Papa gonna say if I turn on the radio?   And Mama, too…she tries…but she’s scared of you.”

Jacobs delivers these lines with intensity, his eyes flaring with hatred.  Cory knows a secret about his father, his using some of the money Troy’s brother, Gabriel, gets from the government.  Upon revealing this knowledge to his father, their verbal combat escalates into a terrifying physical brawl, stunningly choreographed by Lee Soroko.

Uncle Gabriel, Troy’s brother, is masterly played by Bryant Bentley, also his PBD debut although a veteran of several Wilson plays.  Having suffered a mentally disabling head injury in WW II, he is now convinced that he will play his broken Gabriel’s trumpet to open heaven’s gates one day.  Bentley plays up the role with a moral purity and a child-like innocence frequently foreshadowing the action.  

Karen Stephens, Bryant Bentley, Lester Purry
He loves Rose, usually bringing her a rose when he visits during his many wanderings through the streets.  Gabriel is a symbol of African-American pain, his screaming incantations at the end of the play a stake in the heart of American racism.  Bentley’s performance is stirring, cutting through to truths about how our society marginalizes people of color or those with disabilities.

There is still another half sibling in the play, Raynell.  We first see her as an innocent baby in Troy’s arms who Rose agrees to raise after Troy’s other woman dies in childbirth, and then as a delightful young girl at the play’s end.  Raynell’s youthful innocence has a pivotal role in helping Cory get past his blind anger as they plaintively share the refrains of a song their father used to sing:“…I had a dog his name was Blue/You know Blue was mighty true/You know Blue was a good old dog ….”  Ultimately there is forgiveness and hope for the future.  The part of Raynell is alternatingly played by two local elementary school actresses, Jayla Georges and Raegan Franklin.

Scenic design is by Michael Amico who has created a masterpiece set by capturing a slice of a downtrodden Pittsburgh neighborhood in the 1950s.  It rises on the PBD stage as a monument to the lives that are so accurately portrayed by Wilson.  There life stubbornly pushes forth from the ashes of the past.  Little patches of grass can be seen beneath the porch, and although two buildings next to the Maxson house are abandoned during most of the play, at the end there is life in them and it is spring.

Resident costume designer Brian O’Keefe nostalgically recreates the working class outfits of the economic and social station of the characters.  Rose, in particular, with her changing housedresses and church going costumes and glorious wig recall with perfection those outfits that live in the memory of the PBD audience.  His usual attention to detail enhances the realism of the play.

George Jackson’s lighting design bathes most of the production in full light with an occasional dimming spot at scenes’ end.  Dabbled lighting on the buildings show the shadows of trees.  His dramatic lighting at the conclusion enriches the dramatic effect envisioned by Director Hayes.

Sound design by David Thomas focuses on realistic street sounds stage right, a barking dog stage left, and swirling wind as the play transits six years at the end, enhanced by musical blues riffs between scenes as well as some traditional 1950s jazz.  (Wilson himself said the blues influenced his writing more than the work of other playwrights.)  Thomas’ sound and Jackson’s lighting effects join together to offer a consoling conclusion to this incredible piece of work.

James Danford
The importance of the Stage Manager, James Danford, cannot be overstated.  The accuracy of the endless details, from timing of costume changes to cues for the technical crew, to the placement and movement of props between scenes depend on the split second timing controlled by him.  We learned that Danford, at the end of this play’s run, will be retiring after nearly 40 years and 225 shows.  He will be missed, but it is fitting that as in the case with some major leaguers, his retirement comes at the pinnacle of his distinguished career.

With Fences Wilson has written an ode to his protagonist, befitting his literary beginnings as a poet.  The language is rich, rhythmical, and through the prism of the African-American experience.  PBD’s production of this great play ranks as one of its very best in many seasons of consistent achievements.


Cast Photos by Samantha Mighdoll

Sunday, February 3, 2019

The Spitfire Grill Serves Up Hardy Fare at Palm Beach Dramaworks


An exuberant production by topnotch professionals convincingly delivers The Spitfire Grill’s message of the redemptive power of forgiveness and second chances.  This compelling effort by Palm Beach Dramaworks’ cast enhances the play’s many transformational high points, as satisfying as meat loaf with mashed potatoes and a helping of hot apple pie for dessert.  American literature and theatre has always been susceptible to the wholesome yet troubled heartbeat of small town life, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, William Inge’s Picnic, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, and in film Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  Add this production of The Spitfire Grill to the list, distinctive and deeply moving in its own way.

The music and lyrics by James Valcq with lyrics and book by Fred Alley is based upon the 1996 film by Lee David Zlotoff, but with an unabashedly (and in these times desperately needed) upbeat ending. While in prison our young protagonist, Percy Talbott, prepares for her life as a parolee by randomly cutting out a photograph of the fictional town of Gilead, Wisconsin in resplendent fall colors from a travel magazine.  She chooses this as her serendipitous destination upon release.  But she finds it a depressed community; people on guard about her, including the local Sheriff, Joe Sutter, who declares she’s come to a place to leave (projecting his own feelings).  There is no real employment other than at the centerpiece of the town, the now failing Spitfire Grill, a diner owned by cantankerous Hannah Ferguson who has been trying to sell it for years.  

The townspeople come and go through this diner, ultimately revealing their own figurative prisons.  Hannah’s nephew, Caleb Thorpe, is still bitter that the stone quarry closed, losing his job as foreman.  He’s lost his self respect, dominating his timid wife Shelby who ultimately comes to help out at the diner.  The postmistress, Effy Krayneck (names don’t get much more vivid than that) carries the town gossip and supplies some much needed comic relief.  There is also the mysterious stranger who never utters a word but stalks the action. 

This incendiary mixture ignites a cathartic yet palliative plot for revealing secrets and allowing the town to see itself in a new light.  The awakening begins with an idea Percy suggests – aided by her persuasively written contest copy -- to give the outside world an opportunity to enter an essay contest with a $100 fee “Why I want the Spitfire Grill.”  Those essays arrive in increasing numbers, and with heartrending content.

This dramatic musical is delivered with soul searching intensity by an outstanding cast and musical accompaniment.  It is not a big Broadway production but is reminiscent of Sondheim’s work where language and song seem to merge, and the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters are transported by the lyrics.  Each performer in the PBD’s production is ideally suited to his or her part, making one wonder whether they are exceptionally talented actors who can also sing, or professional singers who can also act.  

Ashely Rose as Percy, Photo by Samantha Mighdoll
Ashely Rose, her PBD debut, plays Percy, the parolee with a dark secret, a shocking past.  Rose carries her character’s deeply seated hurt and trust issues with a defensive jadedness; slowly opening up to the community as friends are made and ultimately secrets are shared.  She once played the lead in Always…Patsy Cline and here she delivers her songs with that country sensibility, always reaching those notes of loneliness and powerful emotional truths that country music so often evokes.  Rose’s comedic talents are on full display in her number “Out of the Frying Pan” as she sings this country song while wrestling with the demands of cooking, frantically juggling pots and pans, reminiscent of a Lucille Ball. Her show-stopping song near the end, “Shine,” is both musically heartrending and dramatically affecting.  It is at this moment that she finds the light, the “shine” in herself and can cast off her past.
Amy Miller Brennan, Ashely Rose Photo by Alicia Donelan
Amy Miller Brennan’s performance as the initially introverted, browbeaten Shelby, is metamorphic as she blossoms into an independent woman right before our eyes.  She and Percy bond at the Grill and it is there she sings her beautiful ballad to Percy “When Hope Goes” revealing the day the town’s childhood hero went to war, Hannah’s son, Eli, much admired by the town, never to return and changing the town forever.  Brennan has an exceptional musical theatre voice, so ideally suited for pairing to Rose’s as is evident in their duet, “The Colors of Paradise.”  Also a PBD newcomer, her passage from Caleb’s often abused wife is heartening to witness, culminating with her song, “Wild Bird” consoling Percy in her arms. 

Elizabeth Dimon and Ashely Rose,Photo by Samantha Mighdoll
This is also a play about three wildly different women miraculously bonding and the bedrock of that triumvirate is one of the grand dames of the South Florida theatre scene, the veteran of so many productions, including several at PBD, Elizabeth Dimon.  She’s the prickly, hardened Hannah, the owner of the Spitfire, who through her interaction with Percy and Shelby finds a family and redemption.  She, like Percy, has carried a sad secret and is ultimately able to cathartically expunge it.  Her beautiful musical rendition of the dirge like ballad, “Way Back Home” displays her talents both as a singer and an actor.

Johnbarry Green makes his PBD debut a poignant success through playing the part of Caleb Thorpe, the nominal villain as he dominates his intimidated wife, Shelby.  But at heart, and Green brings this out with such conviction, he is a man who has been emasculated by the loss of work, and changes brought on by the passing of time over which he has had no control, the audience feeling his pain while he sings “Digging Stone.”  Green showcases his character’s loss of self respect with a heavy, mystified force.  Ultimately he too finds release from the prison of his own making with his clear baritone voice adding conviction to his acting and depth to his songs.  

Johnbarry Green, Blake Price Photo by Alicia Donelan

It is also the PBD debut of Blake Price as the Sheriff, yet another character who has failed to see the beauty of his surroundings and yearns to leave this sagging town for greener pastures.  Then he suddenly meets Percy and has a new insight on how his life could flourish right where he lives.  Prices’ strong tenor voice and handsome face win the audience over to him, rooting for something positive to come from his relationship with recalcitrant Percy.   Indeed, the outbound train that he had imagined being on now has “one less passenger,” as he sings his moving solo ballad “Forest for the Trees.”

PBD veteran of six productions, actress Patti Gardner, plays the busybody postmistress Effy Krayneck with comic ease and in perfect harmony with the cast.  Gardner also imparts her character’s inherent loneliness, and in the end finds her emotional place in the community, having “the thread” and “finding the needle.”

David A. Hyland is the “The Visitor.”  Hyland is a PBD veteran and it is strange to see him in a non-speaking role, but his hulking pained figure on stage speaks volumes about the past and regret, and tears easily well up in his eyes about his life.  Suffice it to say, the audience quickly surmises who the “Visitor” is and how he relates to the core of the story.

Director Bruce Linser has many musical credits on his resume, including last season’s smash hit, Woody Guthrie’s American Song.  He knows how to manage a complicated musical, and, in spite of its outward simplicity, there are so many moving parts to this show, different scenes, and times of the day, seasons, and the evolution from depression to outright joy, all of this in a relatively small space.  Scenes are changing on one side of the stage as another is underway on the other side.  Linser brings out the best from his talented cast and musicians, not allowing the characters to become stereotypes.  Each has his or her own story, becoming fully integrated as the plot evolves.

The incredibly talented Lubben Brothers, triplets Josh, Tom and Michael (who were such a hit in Woody Guthrie’s American Song) now perform under the show’s musical director, Joshua Lubben, along with his talented wife, Katie.  They form the orchestra for this show and resoundingly back the company with mostly piano, guitar, accordion, violin, or bass, the latter instrument underscoring the mournful moments.  Some of the music has almost a liturgical feeling, although deeply rooted in folk and country, with many elements of Celtic music.  Phrases are frequently repeated in a song, driving home meaning and emotion.  Even when the cast is not singing there are often musical riffs played in the background. 

Paul Black had the unusual task of being both the scenic and lighting designer.  Accordingly, he could conceive one knowing what he would do with the other so there is a harmonic effect.  This is a complicated play to design, the same challenges that Linser had to deal with in the performance space, he addresses in the physical space.  At first I thought the scenic design too intricate until the performance was underway, each scene flowing into the next, actors passing from the figurative outside, into the diner, through the back door and to the outside once again.  There are stairways to a second level which serve different scenes, including the opening one of Percy leaving prison and her concluding one, reaching the top of her emotional mountain.  Lighting had to denote seasons, times, moods, and highlight one side of the stage while another was preparing for the next scene. 

Costume design by Brian O’Keefe was similarly challenged given the cinematic, scene to scene, month to month, changes over a full year.  There are pallets of colors associated with each character, with costume changes to indicate the passage of time.  These are realistic costumes to identify everyday people in rural Wisconsin.  Think plaid, jeans, and mukluks.

Brad Pawlak sound design captures all this great music, and sounds from the woods – birds, geese flying overhead, and I thought I heard a few Wisconsin crickets.  In spite of a very busy sound design, the sound and the musical accompaniment never overwhelmed the lyrics.

Stage Manager James Danford, the veteran of untold productions, keeps everyone on cue and all props in their proper place, a feat in a complicated production such as this.  Stage managers are the unsung heroes of such productions, becoming, in effect, the director from opening night.

Indeed, “Something’s Cooking at the Spitfire Grill.”  Palm Beach Dramaworks serves up this heartwarming musical story with skill and enthusiasm.