Women Behind Bars. Stages Theater, Fullerton

21^st Aug, 2009. Stages Theatre, Fullerton, opens the revival of this campy 1975 spoof of earlier Hollywood exploitation moves.

Set in the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village we follow the lives of a varied assembly of kooky characters, over several years, under the masochistic supervision of the outrageous matron and her sidekick Louise.

I saw the play first on opening night when it showed a few creaks and uncertainties. But watching it again on Sunday evening it was lovely to note the whole cast had settled in, and the early jitters had all gone.

I'm glad to say that because I must have been dyspeptic when I penned my first reactions. When red wine is opened it needs to breathe for a while before judgment is passed on its quality. I was too hasty!

The inmates range in their crimes from prostitution to manslaughter. Enter new inmate, Mary Eleanor, very well played by Elizabeth Serra, who is immediately sodomized with a broomstick by the other inmates, and later raped by the matron, whom, we should mention, is played by Jeffrey Rockey in an outrageous drag role. His larger than over-sized portrayal is brash and irrepressible. But wait for surprises. Yes, this has adult language and situations, but all of them have us laughing.

The play is truly a "them and us." The Matron and Louise, backed up by the guards, bully and harass the inmates - some of whom are lifers. Mind you Matron is equally stern with her assistant, played by Andrea Evans, who finds an amazing range of comedic expressions with which to keep us entertained.

The prisoners include the whimsical, dreamy Blanche (Autumn Browne, the writer's wife!) who lives in the permanent delusion that she is Blanche Dubois, to the maniacal Ada (Neda Armstrong) who suddenly believes she can fly, and sets off to do so. Ada rapidly becomes a great favorite with the audience who probably sympathize with her on account of being forever kicked by Matron. Jacqueline Bustamante plays the vivacious, fast-talking Puerto Rican, Guadalupe. She will be the victim of Matron's worst bile.

Bridgette Casales' dyke portrayal is strong and laced with hard-bitten cynicism. Nikki Frohling as prostitute Cheri looks great though she slightly underplays her part. Sherri Askew is Jo-Jo but her character gets rather lost among the other stronger characterizations. I'm not sure I ever see her eyes connect with the audience. That would help.

The guards were a somewhat laid back (Adam Poynter and Wendell Good) and effectively doubled in other cameo roles.

If the story revolves around Mary Eleanor, it is the rip-roaring Matron and her almost equally zany sidekick, Louise (Andrea Evans) who constantly stir the pot and introduce one provocation after another. As the play progresses the hatred of these two will grow. Convicts who have committed the worst of crimes might be forgiven for cherishing the day when revenge might come.

There is a good fight between Blanche and Cheri near the beginning. And the many other face slaps are beginning to connect and make great sounds. The women move easily from one confrontation to another with a few lyrical passages of caring and love. The play has the potential to be very fragmented but director David Campos has woven it together neatly. The scene changes are fast and well supported by the lighting plot.

The theatre staff look after us with great flair - a very nice touch indeed.

A cute little nuance is the way the show is introduced as though were are about to watch a movie (like the movies of which this is a send-up.) Make sure you read the closing credits to the very last line!!

The play is certainly worth the outing. It’s very funny, outrageous, deliciously offensive and raw. It was challenging to stage and the designers did very well in the small space available. The show has started well and will only get better.

Top: Matron and Louise usher Mary into the common room, flanked by the guards.
Left: Elizabeth Serra with her pained innocence.
Right: Autumn Browne in a Belle Rive reverie.
Last, Right: The girls attack the male visitor.

Images from the Stages Theater website

Now for Magnolia

Friday May 15th - Magnolia High School. The Invisible Friend, by Alan Ayckbourn. If you want the plot, it's here.

Autumn and I arrived to see this show while hundreds of students were on the campus: you could hear the roar coming from the gym. Probably a basketball game. Nearby a small, but intimate theatre space held an audience of about 25 people. The theatre department is tiny - John Napierali has just one class. His wife does sets and costumes. But small though they were those students put on a very fine show. They threw themselves out there with gusto and certainly won our hearts. The scenery and lighting was very good and the lead - who has a huge amount lines - was magnificent. Going just on that performance, I would grade it as an A. But then that hardly compares with the monumental effort put out by Anaheim HS to produce Musketeers, or Loara's Little Shop of Horrors, where teamwork and planning was huge.

Theatre is not doing well in the High Schools of AUHSD. There are many reasons for this which we will get into as the school year gets under way. It is not enough that a drama department merely provides a safe little space for the few who already have acting in them and want to share their art together. Art needs apostles! It needs proponents, preachers, actors who will mix it up in the school environment and become high profile before their peers. It require driving passion from theatre directors not just for their own players but for the creative welfare of the school.

And I felt obliged to write this after going to Magnolia High.

And yet more school plays!

So we come to Katella High School. The date, May 22nd. I think they bit off more than they could chew: The Producers.

I have to take my hat off to Katella Theatre Department because they have weathered more storms than any theatre department can reasonably be expected to bear. They have some incredibly talented singers, dancers and actors. This is not an exaggeration. They are awesome. But they have suffered from a succession of drama teachers coming and going: some were not very good; others even worse - if I am to believe what I am told. But in this past year they had an angel. And by the end of the year she had been pink slipped! A casualty of district budget cuts policy.

The reason the kids hung together was because in the face of such uncertainty and the pressure of gang culture, they found themselves to be a family. And when Pam Chant came to be their director she soon became Mama Chant to those students; their teacher, role model and counselor.

Katella High School also has an extremely good theatre, but over the years it has been so abused and trashed that it is impossible to mount a production with the sound, lighting and sets the place deserves. See our somewhat abortive attempts to organize a rescue for the space.

Let's get to The Producers - a fine effort calling on the Band and the choir to field performers. As a collaborative effort their spirits soared high. But the Pam got hammered for her choice of material: The Producers is pretty raunchy in places. After the first night she was obliged to cut, cut, cut to reduce the raunchiness. But the night I saw it, it was still pretty, er, raunchy. Now I didn't mind. For God's sake, high school across the States are doing far more risky material.

The musical accompaniment, though willing, was under-rehearsed. It's hard stuff for a High School Band! The singing and dancing was, in the main, very good. And some of the character performances quite amazing. But the technical deficiencies of the theatre made what could have been a very good show somewhat painfully ordinary. Sad to note, the director herself played the part of the raunchy donor who funds the production of Springtime for Hitler and made the mistake of overacting, mugging, pulling focus, and trying to be too funny. Tut tut! Grade B.

Postscript. I believe Pam Chant has now been hired to teach theater at Cypress High, and that the theatre director from Cypress, Stefanie Williamson, is going over to Katella. Maybe we will yet get that theatre renovated!

More School Plays!

The saga continues ... You have to read prior posts to get the general drift.

May16th: Kennedy High School. I don't remember what this was called, but this was probably the most enthusiastic, and enterprising play of the whole bunch. The plot goes like this: a bunch students want to write a play and direct a play, but they cannot agree on the theme and the genre. Pretty dysfunctional stuff. It needs to be good to work. So Act I is a jolly old romp through all the conflicts both theatrical, relational and emotional. Act II is the play they eventually produced, and, of course, you see the themes laid down in Act I worked out to full, glorious madness in Act II.

The lighting was so good that the student lighting designer got head hunted to go and work for a big production outfit (Disney? not sure.)

The scripts was written by the students, with input and direction from the Theatre Director, John Hoganson. I met a couple of the students in my play writing class at the AUHSD Theatre Festival earlier in the year. I knew then what bright, creative, insightful students they were. It really showed.

Director Hoganson teaches about three subjects in the school, but his passion is theatre. He makes his classes totally experiential. Everyone is put to work in every aspect of theatre production so that when show time comes John has a well-oiled drama machine handling everything from concessions to stage management. The evening was exhilarating.

But guess where they did the show? In their own beautiful, new Kennedy Arts Center? Nope! Because the Theatre Department has no access to the theatre. So they went across the road to their Junior High feeder school, and performed in the cafetorium. It's amazing how District facilities policy is implemented. But in any event, John H. did not even want to stage his play in the Kennedy Arts Center. The space is not good for plays. That's another story, of course. It's best for concerts and dance shows. But NOT plays. What a shame the designers did not think of that in the first place. Grade for the Kennedy play: A+

May 21st, Ball Junior High School. Director Carol Philip, ably assisted by Valeria Orlando (choir). Carol was smart to choose a play that fell within the capabilities of 7th and 8th graders. It was kinda cute, under an hour in length, and had some talented actors and good singers. Yes - there ARE junior high kids who can sing in tune! A few other markers: it, too, was held in the cafetorium (Oh, what gloomy shells they are). They only did ONE performance, and the Principal was delighted to be there. The show was fun, uplifting, well appreciated by the very full house. The students were evidently enthusiatic.

The reason for the one show is that Carol Philip believes that with their demographic they don't think they could get a decent crowd on more than one night. That's a telling commentary! Of course, it is far more fun for the kids to perform three or four times. They can settle into the performances. They can work out the kinks in the first show and come back with greater confidence in the other shows. The succession of plays is something actors like. They NEED it. Maybe this can be addressed for next year. To get drama OUT THERE, impacting parents and friends alike, is hard work that requires imagination and determination. But it can, and must be done. It's probably something that needs collaboration from other schools and support from administration. Well done, Ball JHS. Grade. B+

School Plays

Now this gets interesting (to me, anyway). I work, with my wife, Autumn Browne, in the Anaheim Union High School District - the AUHSD. We set ourselves the task of attending as many of the Spring Productions as possible just to see what these theatre departments get up to. What a trip!

Loara High School. May 6th, 2009. They staged The Little Shop of Horrors. You've all seen that, haven't you? It was fan-freakin'-tastic. Big Ups to director Vanessa Mongomery. You have to have three really great female singers who form a sort of doo-wap narrative chorus all the way through. They need to look hot, sing great and act pretty good. (Oof - this American English sucks at times - but it's functional.) They DID! Our two leads who played Seymour and Audrey, the bleached blonde, could've come right out of the movie, they were that good. (There was great collaboration with the choir department.)

Now - this is the point. Loara has a very large and somewhat forbidding auditorium. When we went, it was very sparsely filled. Maybe other performances pulled greater crowds. But for a school show to succeed it has to have more that excellent production values - it needs to command audience. This, for reasons I shall adumbrate later, is all important.

Loara: A in my book. Great job.

Next, South Junior High School where we saw the kids' version of Annie on May 13th. And I don't ever need to see Annie again.

We only stayed right through both acts because we have a great fondness for the Drama teacher. But the show itself was pretty grim. The thing is, I'm not sure that the Drama teacher knew it was pretty grim.

Rule #1. Do not do a musical if none of your kids can sing in tune and you (the director) cannot even tell they are out of tune. The kids had enthusiasm, they made sound, but a more dischordant bunch I have never heard.

Rule #2. Please learn the elements of blocking. It does not follow that simply because you are the drama teacher that you know how to direct a play. This was to become apparent to us on several other school play visits. You can learn how to block a play by going to classes, watching other plays (like, a lot!), reading books, poring over How To videos, etc. But you have to do it. AND, I suggest that if the drama teacher feels a little exposed and incertain about the staging, please ask for collaboration from a respected colleague who knows their stuff. School drama teachers need to help each other like this and not be too proud to work together. Nuff said. Grade: C-.

May 15th. Magnolia Theatre event. That's what the Palm Pilot says. But as for my memory, I guess I was in an inebriated haze all day long! Wait!! Autumn came back and reminded me. This is important. But see the separate post on Magnolia High School.

May 17th. Anaheim High School. The Three Musketeers - the Musical. This was a tour de force. The play has a million scenes and goes on and on. You almost NEED to do some texting just to add interest, but we are too correct to do that! Sharon King, Meg Elder and a bevvy of others did an amazing job with everything from set design, to costumes, to staging, to swordplay, to character development, to sheer gutzy enthusiasm. The lighting - awesome.

This is not an easy play for high school. But they really did it very well. It cost thousands of dollars to produce - but I don't know how much impact it had on the school as a whole. I suppose that plenty of parents came to see their kids on stage, but it is easy to get swallowed up in the sheer size of the Cook Auditorium. Anaheim HS has run a quality drama (and dance) department for many years and we hear they have now developed an in-house Arts Academy. I will have to find out more. It sounds good. With all the talent at this school I am hopeful the arts will begin to make more impact on the student body as a whole. Yeah! AND the staff. Grade: A

More school plays in the next blog.

How far back?

It's obviously pointless to try and recover all the plays I saw - and forgot. But I can go back a little way and endeavor to encapsulate the vague recollections that still linger like some ghost refusing to lie in its grave and be properly dead. These shall have a moment of retrospection and judgement.

Thank goodness for my Palm Pilot! So what do we have?

May 2009. This is humiliating (and it makes my point). I went to the Pacific Playwrights Festival at South Coast Rep and saw FOUR wonderful new plays:

• In a Garden
• Dr. Cerberus
• Extraordinary Chamber
• Circles

I can recall - nothing; except that they made me variously laugh and cry and filled me with awe that any human brain could devise scripts with such ingenuity and depth that I left feeling a total heel as a would-be playwright. Yes, the Festival was personally humbling. I obviously write like crap and have not an ounce of depth, perception, feeling, stickability and determination in my body.

If I find the programs I will revisit this blog and flesh out the details.

For myself - you understand!

Back Sliding!

It really is true that you can start off with the best intentions and then, owing to pressure, poor organization, and sheer laziness fail to follow through!

Ugh!

So it was some time after I started Stage Critter. The Sloth got me - along with its buddies called Too-tired and Too-busy. I wrote zilch. But during that time I saw plenty of plays - and all of them moved on like driftwood down a river to some netherland of forgetfulness.

Who is the loser? You? Probably not, because you may care not a fig for my opinions. But I lose - because my recall is not so amazing that it matters little if I don't write things down. So I have an ever diminishing memory of brilliant performances, stunning scripts, masterly direction and an experience that touched me. And that is to lose the richness of my life, to me. Hey-ho, get fat and die happy! When I'm gone I will follow the driftwood down river into the collective 'forgetory' of my family and friends.

Today, August 10th, 2009, I am renewing my feeble intention to make some record of the plays and performances I have witnessed.