Comic Potential Review

http://www.willamettelive.com/story/Pentacle39s_new_play_doesn39t_live_up_it_it39s_quotPotentialquot121.html

Here is a link to my review of Comic Potential at the Pentacle Theater in Salem, Oregon, as it appears on the Willamette Live website.

Here is the text of the review:

Pentacle's new play doesn't live up to its "Potential"
By Maren Bradley Anderson
from WillametteLive, Section Stage
Posted on Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 03:37:22 PM PDT

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The shows I have seen at Pentacle Theater in Salem aren’t ashamed of their local-theater roots—the cheap sets, the thin costumes—because they know that the strength of the performances on stage will overshadow these things. There are limits to what good acting can gloss over, however. The current play doesn’t live up to my expectations of a Pentacle production.

Comic Potential, playing at Pentacle Theater through August 1, is a story set in the future on the set of a troubled daytime drama which is performed by android actors or “actoids.” One of the actoids, Jacie (played by Cheryl Witters), gains a form of consciousness and has a quasi-affair with a young (human) writer, Adam Trainsmith (played by Gary Strong), who is writing a TV comedy for her.

Witters and Strong, the leads of the show, are surprisingly good, and I mean that in that they surprised me. Neither of their characters is the focus of the show when they are introduced. Witter’s character, Jacie, laughs at inappropriate times during filming, and everyone assumes she is broken. I didn’t pick her out as a lead until she started talking late in first scene. Strong’s character doesn’t start to shine until he begins explaining physical comedy to Jacie in the same scene. These two actors successfully take the characters from flat stereotypes to “people” we can root for.

The script is fun and brings up all sorts of typical, android-linked discussions like “What makes us human?” and “Can a machine fall in love?” There were reflections of Pygmalion in the script as Adam tries to make Jacie more human, and so I find it more than a little ironic that Pentacle’s next play is My Fair Lady.

Another enjoyable part of the show was that the cast and crew have fun with costumes and music that reflects a love of movie and television icons, especially Star Trek, Laverne and Shirley, and Marilyn Monroe.

There were a few hitches. Annoyingly, there was a plot hole surrounding how Chance, a 20th century director (entertainingly played by Jon D. Miho), arrived in “the future” to direct daytime TV.

The major flaw with this production was with the set, which had two problems. First, the television studio on the main stage was clearly constructed of cardboard and duct tape. Perhaps the design team thought that they were making the consoles look fifty years old, as a character complained they were. From my seat, however, it was hard to suspend disbelief with the grain of the cardboard showing through the gray paint.

The second flaw lies in second stage built above and behind the main stage. This was used to great effect in Seussical the Musical a few months ago. In Comic Potential, doors hide the upper stage, which is used for a number of quick scene changes in Act 2. However, the process of changing the scenes is so noisy that it detracts from the action on the main stage. The crew should take its shoes off at least.

Finally, this is not a show I would take the kids to. There is lots of highly enjoyable sexual innuendo and some wonderfully colorful language that I wouldn’t want to explain to anyone under 17. Enjoy it as if it were at least a PG-13 rated movie.

Overall, this is an enjoyable show with good acting and directing. It is silly and fun and off-color in all the right ways and pokes fun at the world of acting in general. If the inexpensive sets bother you like they bother me, donate some money to the theater so they can use plywood next time. I did.

Another review! Suessical the Musical

http://www.willamettelive.com/story/Suessical_mixes_complexity_simplicity142.html

pitiful

I've seen at least four plays since the last time I posted here, including two in Ashland's Shakespear festival.

Here is a list:

UP
A Winter's Tale
Get the Ray Gun
Celebrity Row

Sometime I'll get around to reviewing them.

sorry to be such a busy loser. Check out my other blog for funny alpaca pictures:
http://et-farmsalpaca.blogspot.com/

m

Crowns Review

Not all shows strike chords with all people. Case and point is Crowns by Regina Taylor, which recently closed at Portland Center Stage. This show, directed by Andrea Frye, was not appreciated by my husband, Charles, although I enjoyed it quite a bit. I did agree with many of his criticism, however.

Crowns is an adaptation of a non0-fiction book called Black Women in Church Hats by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry. This book used interviews of black women about their church hats to make connections between African Americans and African traditions. Adaptations are tricky things, and obviously Ms. Taylor felt that to make the book into a play, she needed some sort of narrative arc.

Hence the invention of the character of Yolanda. This character is mean to be our introduction, our guide to the women in hats. Her story leads us to the deep South through the violent death of her brother in Brooklyn. She is sent to North Carolina to live with her grandmother, Mother Shaw.

Yolanda isn’t meant to fit in with the southern women and their hats, but she really doesn’t fit into the play well at all. The literary device Ms. Taylor is employing relies on an outsider to come in to a situation in the same blank manner that the audience does so that the audience learns as the character learns. Part of the problem might be that Yolanda is so hostile that the audience (or at least Charles and I) tire of her pouting.

Yes, at the end of the play we are shown that Yolanda is “saved” (in many senses) because of the time spent with her Southern counterpart, but I felt her part of the play was unnecessary. I would have been far happier with some sort of spiritual guide like Dickens's ghosts of Christmases. AS an audience member, I didn’t need Yolanda to show me that there is value in these women’s culture as she has to learn.

However, that aside, I found the show hugely enjoyable. First, I learned a lot about the connection between modern black churches, music and culture and their counterparts in Africa. Second, I thought linking the music of black American culture with the stories of the hats and the church was inspired. Both the music and the hats hearken back to Africa, as Ms. Taylor reminds us. The songs chosen were typical of American black music and were dispersed throughout the play and used to enhance scenes such as the wedding, funeral and church service.

Finally, every performance was a good one. All the actors could sing, which was important given the emphasis on music in the play. Crystal Fox, who played Yolanda, gave as good a performance as her part allowed, but there were some real stars in the show. Standouts included Pat Bowie as Mother Shaw, Thomas Jefferson Byrd as the Man and April Nixon (Jeanette) and Angela Karol Covey (Wanda).

The end of the play left me soaring with good spirits, although that was more a product of the music and hat material than the storyline. Charles slept through a good portion of the first half (something that happens regularly even at shows he is enjoying), but what he saw didn’t appeal to him. “There weren’t any car-chases,” he lamented. As I said, most shows don’t appeal to everyone.

Purpose

Hi!

Inspired by friends of mine and their movie review pages, I have decided to start a blog to review the plays I go to. As is indicated by the title of this blog, I am located in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, so I am mostly going to see plays in this geographic areas. However, I do have season tickets to Portland Center Stage, so I will post reviews of those plays, even though they are a bit far from my house.

Once Spring Break starts (I'm a teacher at a college), I will post some past reviews.

ta
maren