A FRESH, RELEVANT `MENAGERIE’

THEATER REVIEW

Mary Johnson, The Baltimore Sun

March 12, 2008

Having suffered through too many The Glass Menagerie performances dated by flowery language and gloomy Depression-era struggles, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bay Theatre’s new production invests freshness and an emotional relevance to connect the audience to the characters, all on an amazingly authentic set.

Every role is so well cast that we recognize aspects of ourselves in this family from 70 years ago. Some mothers still want their children to conform to social dictates and may fantasize that they excel, while some sons and daughters, afraid to disappoint them, may help foster such illusions while longing for freedom to establish their own lives.

Tennessee Williams’ first major success, The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway in 1945 and is set in 1930s St. Louis. Tom Wingfield relates through flashbacks the lives of his mother – Southern belle Amanda, abandoned by her husband years before and now existing in her idealized genteel past – and his crippled, shy sister Laura, who shrinks from the real world and fills her imaginary one with glass animals and music from old phonograph records.

The family struggles to survive on Tom’s meager $60-a-month warehouse salary. Amanda sells magazine subscriptions to fellow Daughters of the American Revolution members, while Laura has secretly quit business school.

The play has autobiographical touches: Tom is a writer who, like Williams, worked a menial job in a shoe factory. Laura might have represented Williams’ mentally ill sister, Rose.

Here Bay Theatre’s co-founder and artistic director, Lucinda Merry-Browne, defines anew the role of Amanda Wingfield. So immersed – and transformed – is Merry-Browne in the role that my husband, Bud, commented, “That woman can really act,” unaware that this was a woman he’d photographed several times.

Not only does she look and sound different with her Southern drawl, but she has become a multi-dimensional Amanda who clings to her illusions as tightly as to her beloved jonquils. She badgers her children because she knows they are moving away from her – Tom escaping through the movies and Laura embracing the fantasy of a gentleman caller.

Ben Russo as Tom Wingfield opens the play with a passionate poetic soliloquy that sets a high standard for what follows. Russo is always believable as he communicates Tom’s frustration and longing to flee the warehouse and his mother’s badgering. Russo also interjects unsuspected humor and conveys a protective sense of duty to Laura.

Kristen Calgaro makes a memorable Bay debut as Laura. Her singing “There are smiles that make us happy” is potent in expressing her contentment in her imaginary world – a joy that Amanda shatters with inquiries about her whereabouts when she was presumably attending business school. Calgaro conveys the intense pain of an awkward young woman who had a high-school crush on the man soon to arrive as her Gentleman Caller.

Judson Davis completes the perfect four-person cast as the likable Gentleman Caller, who refuses to be discouraged by his menial warehouse job, happy to be remembered by Laura as a fine debater and singer. Davis’ Caller treats Laura with the sensitivity he’d use in handling one of her fragile glass animals. But he also sweeps Laura into his arms for a dance that seems as close as she’ll ever get to dreamed-for romance and happiness.

Perfection doesn’t end with the cast – it is seen in the work of director Nancy Robillard and in the set design of Dave Buckler and costumes by Eric Langmeyer with effective lighting by John Burkland, all who together evoke the era and the family’s shabby gentility.

The set, on the tiny confines of the stage, is a particular delight. It incorporates a realistic, subtly lit fire escape strewn with ticket stubs and cigarette butts inside the gratings to become an ideal exit and entry point, complete with sound effects. Not only does it heighten drama, but it also serves as a porch setting for important explanatory soliloquies.

The Glass Menagerie continues on weekends through March 29 at Bay Theatre, 275 West St. in Annapolis. Ticket information is available at 410-268-1333 or www.baytheatre.org

A FRESH, RELEVANT `MENAGERIE’

THEATER REVIEW

Mary Johnson

March 12, 2008

Having suffered through too many The Glass Menagerie performances dated by flowery language and gloomy Depression-era struggles, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bay Theatre’s new production invests freshness and an emotional relevance to connect the audience to the characters, all on an amazingly authentic set.

Every role is so well cast that we recognize aspects of ourselves in this family from 70 years ago. Some mothers still want their children to conform to social dictates and may fantasize that they excel, while some sons and daughters, afraid to disappoint them, may help foster such illusions while longing for freedom to establish their own lives.

Tennessee Williams’ first major success, The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway in 1945 and is set in 1930s St. Louis. Tom Wingfield relates through flashbacks the lives of his mother – Southern belle Amanda, abandoned by her husband years before and now existing in her idealized genteel past – and his crippled, shy sister Laura, who shrinks from the real world and fills her imaginary one with glass animals and music from old phonograph records.

The family struggles to survive on Tom’s meager $60-a-month warehouse salary. Amanda sells magazine subscriptions to fellow Daughters of the American Revolution members, while Laura has secretly quit business school.

The play has autobiographical touches: Tom is a writer who, like Williams, worked a menial job in a shoe factory. Laura might have represented Williams’ mentally ill sister, Rose.

Here Bay Theatre’s co-founder and artistic director, Lucinda Merry-Browne, defines anew the role of Amanda Wingfield. So immersed – and transformed – is Merry-Browne in the role that my husband, Bud, commented, “That woman can really act,” unaware that this was a woman he’d photographed several times.

Not only does she look and sound different with her Southern drawl, but she has become a multi-dimensional Amanda who clings to her illusions as tightly as to her beloved jonquils. She badgers her children because she knows they are moving away from her – Tom escaping through the movies and Laura embracing the fantasy of a gentleman caller.

Ben Russo as Tom Wingfield opens the play with a passionate poetic soliloquy that sets a high standard for what follows. Russo is always believable as he communicates Tom’s frustration and longing to flee the warehouse and his mother’s badgering. Russo also interjects unsuspected humor and conveys a protective sense of duty to Laura.

Kristen Calgaro makes a memorable Bay debut as Laura. Her singing “There are smiles that make us happy” is potent in expressing her contentment in her imaginary world – a joy that Amanda shatters with inquiries about her whereabouts when she was presumably attending business school. Calgaro conveys the intense pain of an awkward young woman who had a high-school crush on the man soon to arrive as her Gentleman Caller.

Judson Davis completes the perfect four-person cast as the likable Gentleman Caller, who refuses to be discouraged by his menial warehouse job, happy to be remembered by Laura as a fine debater and singer. Davis’ Caller treats Laura with the sensitivity he’d use in handling one of her fragile glass animals. But he also sweeps Laura into his arms for a dance that seems as close as she’ll ever get to dreamed-for romance and happiness.

Perfection doesn’t end with the cast – it is seen in the work of director Nancy Robillard and in the set design of Dave Buckler and costumes by Eric Langmeyer with effective lighting by John Burkland, all who together evoke the era and the family’s shabby gentility.

The set, on the tiny confines of the stage, is a particular delight. It incorporates a realistic, subtly lit fire escape strewn with ticket stubs and cigarette butts inside the gratings to become an ideal exit and entry point, complete with sound effects. Not only does it heighten drama, but it also serves as a porch setting for important explanatory soliloquies.

The Glass Menagerie continues on weekends through March 29 at Bay Theatre, 275 West St. in Annapolis. Ticket information is available at 410-268-1333 or www.baytheatre.org.

Credit: Special to The Sun

In its little theatre beside the kayak shop, Metro Stage is presenting a most delightful theatrical production with the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s Rosemary and I. It’s a touching comedy about a woman coming to terms with her mother’s lesbian relationship and in the process developing her own voice and sense of self. The entire play flows smoothly, much like the vocal harmonies that float through the air throughout the performance.

The plot set up is very straightforward. After a recent divorce, Julia (played by Miss Ayvazian) has rented a room to sit, play solitaire, and write. At the same time she is also going through her mother’s belongings, which she now possesses. Using the belongings as creative spurs she is attempting to write a play and the play becomes her own internal discussion about her childhood and her parents lives. It’s through these conversations we learn her mother Rosemary (Judith Roberts) was a famous singer who traveled extensively. And its through these conversations we learn that, while still a young woman, Rosemary met Julia’s dashing father (Sam Groom) and quickly married, but eventually fell in love with her accompanist and traveling companion Elizabeth (Jewell Robinson).

Ayvazian has an almost magical way of writing that relies on the subtle movement of language. The shifts in her characters’ personalities seem not to come so much from breakthrough moments, but more from a gentle eroding of their defenses. Thus we learn that Rosemary and Elizabeth never physically consummated their relationship except with a kiss in a park in Paris. They never spoke of the kiss, but after this brief interlude would quietly hold hands while walking down the street or simply spend time together enjoying each other’s company. It’s through reading her mother’s diary that Julia learns all this and begins to connect the dots of her parents marriage: her father’s affair, her own isolation in her room trying to get her parents’ attention, the reasons Elizabeth was always around the home, and eventually the outcome of the two women’s relationship.

Rosemary and I has been in development with Metro Stage for a year and a half and the theatre and playwright have put a great deal of love and work into the creation. Although the play’s not perfect, that dedication is quite apparent. While Ayvazian shies away from having her characters engage in anything more than a kiss, she does offer a lyrical, poetic dialogue that shows the deeper longing between the two women. Gay audience members will see she ends the play like so many other mainstream stories about gay lovers; however Ayvazian does offer us hope that Julia will eventually come to accept and honor her mother’s love interest and maybe even come to appreciate the role all three adults had in shaping her life.

Co-directors Olympia Dukakis and Nancy Robillard have pulled together a very sweet production. The small cast fits together perfectly, the humor is at times quite subtle, and the pacing of the dialogue and action is done at times leisurely, as if savoring the moment and the writing.

James Kronzer’s set is simple and wonderfully highlighted by Chris Lee’s lighting. The soft lighting highlights the pale blue drapes, steel bench, and neutral carpeting on the stage. The various lighting colors which range from blue to purple and then gold overtones, create nice effects on the smoky tinted backdrop as well as upon Marilyn Salvatore’s costumes. Ms. Salvatore’s wardrobe has the three older adults wearing pastels, tans, silvers, and pale greens, while Miss Ayvazian wears a bright red blouse.

The original score by John Hodian and vocals by Bet Williams are moving and quite beautiful. And while Metro Stage has other works by Mr. Hodian and Miss Williams available for purchase, you wish they had the play’s soundtrack on CD.

In the role of Julia, Miss Ayvazian brings a level of understanding and humor that turns what could be a self-pitying character into a person who simply desires to understand her past. You don’t tire of Julia, which is something that could happen if too much emphasis was placed upon the character’s perceived hurt and pain.

Judith Roberts excels in the title role of Rosemary. She brings just the right amount of self-absorption and airiness to the role of a singer being taken care of by outside forces and thus, ironically, never quite realizing her own voice or internal strength. She also provides a sarcastic sense of “Julia get over it already.” which balances out her daughter’s self-anguish.

Sam Groom is terrific in the role of Papa. Mr. Groom’s Papa is a fastidious man who wants everything in it’s place…and then not to be moved. It’s a role that could easily come across as one-dimensional, but Mr. Groom shows us the character is attempting to understanding the world through orderly control. When he states “I am here.” and then “This is my spot.” you see Papa’s vanity as well as his vulnerability in a heartbeat.

Jewell Robinson offers us an Elizabeth that is both graceful and determined. Although the accompanist, her’s is the voice that will not leave Julia until recognized. And Miss Robinson shines in helping us see how Elizabeth is a woman Rosemary loves and who in turn adores Rosemary, while also being someone whom Julia has been in competition with her entire life.

Rosemary and I is a lyrically sweet production and one that offers us something we so seldom see these days — an almost entire cast of older actors highlighting a story about older people. In a culture that seems to concentrate on people between the ages of 20 and 45, we forget about the rich stories people over 50 and 60 have to offer us. Metro Stage is currently providing us with a nice reminder of this.

Rosemary and I
by Leslie Ayvazian
Score by John Hodian
Directed by Olympia Dukakis and Nancy Robillard

starring Leslie Ayvazian, Judith Roberts, Sam Groom, and Jewell Robinson
Vocalist: Bet Williams
Accompanist: John Hodian
Set Design: James Kronzer
Lighting Design: Chris Lee
Costume Design: Marilyn Salvatore
Sound Design: Matt Rowe
Property Design: Dayana Yochim
Running Time: 1 hour and 15 minutes with no intermission
Metro Stage, 1201 North Royal Street, Alexandria
Telephone: 1-800-494-8497
THUR – SAT @8, SUN @2 & 7; $32 – $38
Opening 04/01/04, closing 05/09/04

‘Noel and Gertie’: Tasty Nibbles for Nostalgia Lovers

“I’m an enormously talented man,” Noel Coward once observed, “and there’s no use pretending that I’m not.” That spirit of cocky self-confidence animates “Noel and Gertie,” a pleasant but lightweight revue cobbled together by Sheridan Morley from Coward’s writings and compositions.

Chronicling the lifelong friendship between the playwright and actress Gertrude Lawrence — who starred in his “Private Lives” and “Tonight at 8:30″ — “Noel and Gertie” is a misty-eyed tribute to Coward’s personal flair, to his era and to the magic of showbiz. While making no incisive observations about either of the artists it portrays, it provides a framework for interwoven scenes from Coward scripts and for some of his classic songs.

Alexandria’s MetroStage has given this theatrical bauble an inoffensive, visually stylish production that should please Coward fans, Anglophiles, those nostalgic for the early 20th century and anyone who enjoys looking at martini glasses. Under the direction of Nancy Robillard, Carl Randolph makes a suave Coward who seems as comfortable dancing the Charleston as he is when he stands about in his tuxedo, narrating the basic overview of the playwright’s life. To be persnickety, his English accent does wax and wane a trifle, and as a singer he suffers in comparison with his co-star, Tracy McMullan, who plays Lawrence.

Possessed of a clear, strong voice that brings dignified expressiveness to such classics as “Mad About the Boy,” McMullan cuts a statuesque figure onstage, and she’s animated enough to at least suggest Lawrence’s reputed eccentricities. Lawrence — who is perhaps best remembered as the original Anna in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I” — possessed comic genius, according to “Noel and Gertie,” which quotes Coward as saying that his friend never played a scene the same way twice. It was perhaps this trait that inspired one of the droll telegrams that Coward had the habit of dashing off — when declining a Hollywood mogul’s suggestion for a likely Lawrence vehicle, Coward riposted: “UNABLE TO WRITE LIFE OF SARAH BERNHARDT FOR GERTRUDE LAWRENCE AS BUSY WRITING LIFE OF SAINT TERESA FOR MAE WEST.”

Although such examples of the playwright’s crackling wit do find their way into Morley’s script, “Noel and Gertie” favors Coward in poignant mode, as in the short play “Still Life,” which was turned into the movie “Brief Encounter.” By sampling bittersweet scenes of love lost and love remembered, “Noel and Gertie” borrows a kind of critical weight for the Coward-Lawrence story, which it turns into a romance minus the sex (Coward, of course, was gay).

The arc of this platonic passion finds a suitably elegant visual match in Kate Turner-Walker’s period costumes and in Tracie Duncan’s art deco set, which includes such luxurious details as a vase of peacock feathers and a bar laden with a glowing silver cocktail set. Music director Alfredo Pulupa also has a place on stage, behind a gorgeous grand piano, whence he cranks out accompaniments for songs that range from the comic “Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?” to the sad and wise “If Love Were All.”

As this description suggests, “Noel and Gertie” is rich on atmosphere, and if it is short on substance, that should annoy only those who would object to, say, eating a dinner created entirely of hors d’oeuvres.

Noel and Gertie, devised by Sheridan Morley with words and music by Noel Coward. Directed by Nancy Robillard. Music direction by Alfredo Pulupa. Sets, Tracie Duncan, costumes, Kate Turner-Walker, lighting, Ayun Fedorcha. At 1201 N. Royal St., Alexandria, through Dec. 14. Call 1-800-494-8497 or visit www.boxofficetickets.com.

Memories are funny things. They can be painful intruders or gentle friends. In the case of Julia in Rosemary and I, they are tools that help her come to realizations about herself and her family. Currently running at MetroStage, this one act memory play explores the impact a parent can have on a child.

The Rosemary mentioned in the title is Julia’s mother. Julia recalls her mother through the personal items left in a handbag. As Julia remembers, she becomes the playwright and her parents become her characters. She starts with Rosemary. In her younger years Rosemary was a concert singer. She is A vivacious woman with just a hint of diva in her. Julia’s father is simply called Papa. Papa is the direct opposite of his wife. He is a formal person and above else he is very “tidy.”

There is another character in Julia’s story. It is Elizabeth. Elizabeth was her mother’s best friend and accompanist. She was also quite possibly her lover. Julia also takes a role in her “play” as she remembers times from her early childhood to her adulthood.

Leslie Ayvazian wears two hats in this production. She is both author and actor. Ayvazian has written a lovely play. Those who saw her previous show at MetroStage know how descriptive her writing can be. Such is the case in Rosemary and I. Ayvazian paints a vivid picture that captures one’s attention. In her role as actor, Ayvazian’s portrayal of Julia is rather intense but she tempers that intensity with some well placed humor.

Judith Roberts is simply elegant as Rosemary. She successfully conveys a myriad of sides to this complex woman while always retaining an engaging smile. As her husband, Sam Groom does a wonderful job of portraying a stiff but loving father. Rounding out the group is Jewell Robinson who plays Elizabeth. She delivers a convincing performance as Rosemary’s doting companion. The actors are joined on stage by vocalist Bet Williams and her accompanist John Hodian. Together, they create a gorgeous sound.

The play is co-directed by Olympia Dukakis and Nancy Robillard. They do a good job of bring balance to a script that goes in so many different directions. Additionally, the show is served well by the impressive lighting created by Chris Lee and the simple set by James Kronzer.

There is so much packed into this 70 minute play and much like life, it goes by fast. Also, in life it helps to know where you have been in order to get where you need to go. Rosemary and I illustrates that very well. Rosemary and I runs through May 9th.