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RIPPLES: April 2008 |
| Headlines |
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| Jungle Book |
Rudyard Kipling’s life was a tale of two worlds. Born in India – where he set his most famous works – and educated at boarding school in England, his life was full of richness and contrast. |
| That’s reflected onstage April 25-27 and May 2-4 when Riverwalk Theatre hosts All-of-us Express Children’s Theatre and its production of Jungle Book. |
| “This show is different from the Disney version” of Jungle Book, said director Scott Sorrell, an LCC student and All-of-us Express alum who is directing the show. “This incorporates some of the troubles of (Kipling’s) life back into the Jungle Book. It makes a connection between the two.” The play was adapted by Joseph Robinette from Kipling’s book. |
| In All-of-us Express shows, kids do all the work onstage and behind the curtain. They include assistant director Rebecca Thelen and 71 other kids. Among the behind-the-scenes jobs they’ll accomplish for Jungle Book: building a rotating set that reflects the two sides of the show: England and India. Sorrell is excited about that. |
| “It kind of makes this really majestic effect,” he said. He’s also pleased with the performances he’s getting from the young actors. |
| “This cast has come along amazingly,” he said. “These kids are just getting this whole thing down and there are no issues.” |
| The cast – some of whom have double roles in the boarding school and jungle portions of the show, include: Austin Homant as Akela and Price; Austin Elieff as Baloo and Crofts, Deanna Domino as Fielding and Shere Khan, Renee Hoekstra as Hanley and Tabaqui, Camila Nicholson as Hathi, Lindsey Blair as Kaa, Christopher Hibbs, Natalia Walter, Roman Ford and Haven Allison as monkeys; Andrea Hibbs as Mother Wolf, Kily Buta as the Old Woman, McKenna Fernandez as Rann, Corbin Hatton as young Mowgli, Jonathan Turkus as the older Mowgli, Colin McCarthy as Willies/Bagheera and Audrey Horrocks, Jazmyn Patterson, Caitlyn Brown, Juliana Elieff, Amber Sodman and Kyle Sodman as wolves. Emma Fedorchuk plays Dari, the Young Woman. |
| A bonus for those who attend the April 26 or 27 shows: Potter Park Zoo staffers will bring “special guests” to the theater between shows from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., giving them a chance to meet real animals along with the make-believe ones on stage. |
| Sorrell started with All-of-us Express when he was 12 and had had roles in Gareth the Gentle Gargoyle at Riverwalk, among others. He also was assistant director on The Hobbitt. |
| “It’s very very fun to come back and try to make it come full circle,” he said. |
| He thinks kids will really be able to relate to the show. |
| “Not only does it show how people can overcome every little problem in their lives, they can do it through the powers of their imagination,” he said. “It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s kind of everything all rolled into one.” |
—Kathleen Lavey |
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| 'night, Mother |
| “Jessie, it’s the last snowball, sugar. Put it on the list, okay? And we’re out of Hershey bars and where’s the peanut brittle?” |
| So begins an evening of theatre which The New York Times described as “a shattering evening,” and New York Magazine called “honest, uncompromising, lucid, penetrating, well-written, dramatic, and ... unmanipulatively moving.” |
| Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mother won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Broadway production, starring Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak, received four Tony Award nominations. The 1986 film version of the play starred Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, and in 2004 Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn brought the drama back to Broadway. |
| Now ‘night, Mother comes to Lansing as part of RWT’s Black Box Theatre at the Creole Gallery series. In this production, Linda Gras plays “Mama,” and Tina Brenner — returning to the Lansing stage after taking time off to raise a family — plays “Jessie,” the daughter. |
| “The strength of this play,” says director Bob Gras, “is that it is so deceptively simple. Jessie makes her first entrance asking Mama if she has any old towels that she no longer wants. A few pages later we find out why she wants them: she intends to kill herself with her father’s gun and doesn’t want to leave a mess!” |
| “This intense life-and-death struggle between mother and daughter,” says Gras, “takes place in a world of cocoa, caramel apples, manicures, folded laundry, and garbage bags.” |
| ‘night, Mother opens Friday, May 9, at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing’s Old Town and plays for two weekends, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. |
| $12 at the door for all ages; reservations guarantee admission but seating is first-come-first-served, 482-5700. |
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| The Sugar Bean Sisters: review |
| Aliens and Mormons and Snakes! Oh my! |
| This rare experience was a raucous delight. Riverwalk’s stage transformed into a backwoods swamp teeming with loons (not of the feathered variety) March 27 - April 6 for The Sugar Bean Sisters, written by Nathan Sanders. If you didn’t catch this show, you missed out on a great abdominal workout! This story of three kooky sisters on a fated Saturday night was a crowd hit that will have people saying “ooh buddy!” for a long time to come. |
| Audiences were transported to Buster Swamp on the outskirts of Sugar Bean in Watchalahoochee County, Florida, through the mastery of Craig Smith and Tom Ferris’s collaborative set, skillfully built by Bob Nees, Jay and Kate McCusker, Matthew Blackledge, Douglas Clewley, Merialice Jensen, Brian Stratton, and Leroy Cupp. Set dressers (the Ferrises) provided a delightfully tacky ambiance, with splashes of gaudy floral here, a rusty gas can there, vintage Santas every which way, and Christmas lights almost as colorful as the characters. We were further lulled into Sugar Bean by Dani Fawaz’s sound design; his blues-y, Cajun-y tunes had our feet a-tappin’ from the start. |
| The titular sisters are Willie Mae Nettles (Carol Ferris) and Faye Clementine Nettles (Jane Shipley Zussman); spinsters who have lived their entire sordid lives together. Willie Mae is a heaven-bent Mormon whose primary goal in life is to make it to the Celestial Kingdom and to marry a good Mormon man for a ticket in. Faye seems more down-to-earth, until we learn that she is actively anticipating the anniversary return of space visitors. So eager is she to witness their return that plotting to kill her sister to ensure their safe landing seems within reason. As Miss Videllia Sparks (SaDonna White) - a mysterious bird woman from New Orleans - stumbles onto the scene, all hell (and space and celestial kingdom) breaks loose. |
| We first met a seemingly trespassing Miss Videllia Sparks. Miss Sparks reminded us a bit of Delta Burke - with the iridescent purple dress, amped curly hair, and saccharine sweetness. Every whisky-swilling, malapropism-slinging, high heel-prancing moment was effectively carried out by White. |
Next we met polar opposites Willie Mae and Faye, sisters fresh off a trip from neighboring Disney World. Jane Zussman gave some of the best one-liners ever heard with dead-pan delivery.One audience favorite was, “You can’t piss in my ear and make me think it’s rainin’.” Zussman was at the top of her game here; she seemed at home among the aliens, murder plotting, and Faye’s arsenal of rude clichés.
Carol Ferris was perfect as the chaste Willie Mae; her subtle reactions and soft, genuine delivery made her both sympathetic and hilarious. Her longing reactions to Bishop Crumley on the porch were priceless. Once these three women started clipping along, it was like a well-oiled laugh machine. |
| Mark Boyd added charisma and testosterone to the mix as Bishop Crumley, the target of Willie Mae’s affection. Anyone would have agreed to walk into the light with him. Mary K. Hodges-Nees brought the house down with her spooky rendition of the Reptile Woman, giving everyone the creeps — barely recognizable underneath the wild wig and makeup. |
| Tom Ferris delivered an outstanding show that paid careful attention to detail and treated audiences to a truly unique experience. When else have you gotten to see spontaneous human combustion, Cajun incantations, killer snakes, and the piece de resistance: a spaceship landing? All in one show! Ferris was ably assisted by assistant director Mara Schaberg, costumer/producer Marge Hetherington, stage manager Merialice Jensen, lighting designer/tech Jack Hetherington (with help from Kate McCusker) and Carol Ferris doing double duty as properties designer. |
| Mickey Mouse hats-off to the entire cast and crew! |
| —Veronica Wing Quick |
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| Echoes of Thunder at Dawn: review |
| This Easter basket of earthly delights was an interesting take on the age-old story of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and His subsequent resurrection, as told from the perspective of three “modern” soldiers charged with carrying out the deed. |
| While it certainly does follow that story line — and some might attempt to extrapolate references to the current American occupation of Iraq — the play is really an intense character study of three men at different stages of their careers — which are their lives — and their reaction to a stressful situation fraught with uncertainty. |
| Within the tight confines of the Creole Gallery and a Black Box budget, director Bill Helder managed to conjure up a fairly realistic desert-outpost bar and the occasional outside scene, ably abetted by Joe Dickson’s thunder-as-battle sound effects. |
| His excellent cast personified the Three Stages of Man: |
| Rick Dethlefsen as the seen-it-all Captain, who has seen just enough to know that some things might well be beyond explanation, and that he himself has his own flaws; |
| Ben Holzhausen, as the hard-bitten Sergeant at the peak of his confidence and abilities, for whom everything is black or white - there is no uncertainty in his world; |
| Joe Quick as the new-to-duty Private, thrust into Nail Detail without being ready for it, now consumed with guilt and puking his guts out because he believes he helped kill a messenger from God. |
| Quick had the most difficult role and performed it well, constantly knotted up with remorse, almost always on the verge of exploding either emotionally or gastrically. Kind of like a very taut piano wire — pluck it and you don’t know what might happen. |
| Holzhausen mustered up the most macho swagger of the three — do I remember a cigar in his mouth? — as he stomped around, terrorizing the Private and getting drunk with the Captain. You would not want to tangle with this guy on his own turf. |
| As the Captain, Dethlefsen was clearly in command, although without the hard edge he might have had perhaps 20 years before. He became the stern but forgiving father figure, particularly when he revealed his shameful connection to the death of the Private’s own father, some years before. |
| As a dramatic work, the play presented a couple of problems, having a few somewhat choppy “outside” scenes, and the fact that the main topic of the Crucifixion had already happened and most of what the characters did was talk about it. On the other hand, the characters were so well-drawn and well-played, that eventually you came to realize that the “action” was not what did or would happen with Jesus and the Crucifixion, but how each of these guys would ultimately end up, reacting to the situation they were in. |
| In the theater sense, Thunder at Dawn was certainly a festive holiday show, featuring intense drama, strong acting and crisp direction by Bill Helder. (And again, appropriate thanks to Ena Busby for having our Black Box back at the Creole.) |
| —T.E. Klunzinger |
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| Auditions for A Raisin in the Sun |
| AUDITIONS 5 pm Sunday May 18 and 7 pm Tuesday May 20 |
| Shows: Aug. 7-10, 14-17; director Wanda Wright-Gilkey |
| A lower-class black family struggles to gain middle-class acceptance. How will Mama’s $10,000 insurance check be spent? Son Walter Lee wants to invest in a liquor store; Mama wants to make a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood. This script tests the spiritual and psychological mettle of each family member. |
| Walter Lee Younger - the protagonist - desperate to be a better provider for his family — a dreamer who wants to be rich and devises plans to acquire wealth with his friends |
| Beneatha Younger - Walter’s sister - 20, attends college, dreams of being a doctor and struggles for identity as a well-educated black woman. |
| Lena Younger (“Mama”) - Walter and Beneatha’s mother — matriarch religious, moral, and maternal — anguished by conflict with Walter, but wants to fulfill her dream for her family to move up in the world, |
| Ruth Younger - Walter’s wife/Travis’s mother. Her marriage to Walter has problems, but she hopes to rekindle their love. About 30, weary but emotionally strong — pessimistic pragmatism helps her to survive. |
| Travis Younger - Walter and Ruth’s young son. Travis earns money carrying grocery bags and likes to play outside with neighborhood children. |
| Joseph Asagai - A Nigerian student in love with Beneatha — very proud of his African heritage, hopes to take Beneatha to Nigeria as his wife. |
| George Murchison - A wealthy, African-American man who courts Beneatha. The Youngers approve of George, but Beneatha dislikes his willingness to submit to white culture and forget his African heritage. |
| Mr. Karl Lindner - The only white character - offers the Youngers a deal to reconsider moving into his (all-white) neighborhood. |
| Bobo - One of Walter’s partners in the liquor store plan. Bobo appears to be as mentally slow as his name indicates. |
| Willy Harris - A friend of Walter and coordinator of the liquor store plan - never appears onstage. |
| Mrs. Johnson - The Youngers’ neighbor — takes advantage of the Youngers’ hospitality and warns them about moving into a predominately white neighborhood. |
| NOTE: all characters are African American except Mr. Lindner. Auditioners are encouraged to check out a perusal script at the Riverwalk office, Tuesday through Friday, 10 am - 5:30 pm. Call Mike for availability, 482-5700. |
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| You CAN Get Here from There |
Grand Ave. is closed for the next phase of sewer separation. Disregard “closed to through traffic” signs at Cedar and Michigan. You can still take Michigan Ave. west to Museum Dr., as usual, to get to Riverwalk.
(You can also get to Riverwalk off Cedar, by turning right on Museum Dr. just south of the City Market and driving UNDER the Lansing Center.) |
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