“La Cage Aux Folles” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse

The News Tribune, May 23, 2014

“La Cage Aux Folles” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse is fabulous.

Andres Fry and Georges and Jeffrey Bassett as Albin. Photo by Kat Dollarhide

The only criticism I have is that the romantic dance number with Jean-Michel (Joey Schultz) and Anne (Emily Tuomey) needed a few more rehearsals, but since I saw it opening weekend, here’s hoping they’ll put more spark in it in coming performances.

Beyond that it was as nearly perfect as a romantic musical comedy can be. The sets by Judy Cullen, lighting by John Chenault and costumes by Margot Webb and Grace Stone are gorgeous. Jon Douglas Rake’s directing and choreography are in top form, and the orchestra directed by Jeff Stvrtecky is as good as I’ve ever heard them. In short, everybody involved in this lavish production seems to be having the time of their lives, and they convey their love of the show to the audience.

Previous versions of “La Cage” that I have seen were campy in the extreme. This version is just campy enough, but underneath the glitter is a sincerity that is palatable. Beyond the over-the-top comedy and the great music and dance, it is a sweet love story and a message never too old to be told — that everyone should be celebrated for who they are, a theme stated in the opening musical number, “We Are What We Are.”

Les Cagelles. Photo by Kat Dollarhide

The stars are Georges (Andrew Fry), the aging emcee at La Cage Aux Folles, and his longtime life partner, Albin (Jeffrey Bassett), a transvestite performer who lives in drag on and off stage. Their son, Jean-Michel (a child born out of Georges’ one-and-only tryst with a woman years ago) is engaged to marry Anne, and has invited her uptight, ultra-conservative parents to meet his parents, meaning Georges and his real mother whom he’s never even met. He’s worried that if they meet Albin and realize who his family really is it will wreak havoc on his wedding plan. This situation sets the stage for more cross-dressing and mistaken identity worthy of a Shakespearean comedy.

TMP’s forte has always been big, lavish musical numbers, and the big numbers here, featuring a chorus of men in fabulous drag with a few women mixed in (I challenge audiences to spot which are which) are as lavish and as delightful as any I’ve seen in quite some time. The acrobatic dancing and creative choreography is quite impressive.

Georges’ emceeing is in the style of an old school song and dance man, and Fry inhabits the role so comfortably it’s easy to forget he is acting. His dancing is smooth and graceful, he sings with heart, and he conveys his deep love for Albin with sincerity. Bassett plays the more outlandish Albin with just the right touch of flamboyance, without overdoing it, while coming across as fully human and vulnerable. Both Fry and Bassett are veterans of musical comedy, and they were marvelously cast in these roles.

Also outstanding are Isaiah Parker as Jacob the “maid,” who is the campiest character in the whole show, Dana Johnson as Anne’s mother (hilarious in a drunk scene), and John Miller as the stage manager at La Cage who is disastrously in love with a dominatrix in the chorus.

If you see only one musical comedy this year, make it “La Cage Aux Folles” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through June 8

WHERE: Tacoma Musical Playhouse at The Narrows Theatre, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma

TICKETS: $20-$29

INFORMATION: 253-565-6867, http://www.tmp.org

Erin Dengerink’s “The Hole in Your Heart”

The Weekly Volcano, May 22, 2014

Seashell Fossil, detail from installation by Erin Dengerink

Erin Dengerink’s installation “The Hole in Your Heart is a Portal to Another Dimension” is a mixed media installation of small, whimsical arrangements comprising a surreal landscape that delivers a message of hope to the heartbroken.

That’s what the description on the Artscapes website says. To me it is a delightful little confection consisting of two dioramas in adjacent display cases that are fun to look at. I guess that could be interpreted as “a message of hope to the heartbroken.”

The dioramas are made from tin cans of various sizes stripped of their labels and painting with white paint. To be more accurate, the paint appears to have been dipped in and poured upon, and allowed to drip and puddle in fascinating ways on and around these stacked tin cans. They look like frosted wedding cakes stacked in layers of descending sizes, but the figures on top do not look anything like traditional bride-and-groom cake toppings. They are tiny figurines of people, and most of them have been combined with similar little models of animals, all coated with the same white paint.

There are women riding the backs of hippopotami, rhinoceros, elephants, polar bears and other creatures, some of which are phantasmagorical creatures. There are figures that combine parts of human figures with animal bodies. There’s a woman with a seashell head, for instance, riding the back of an elephant like some kind of circus performer.

There is an interesting symmetry to these dioramas with stacked cans of similar sizes and with similar figures balanced off against one another. They are arranged in a balanced way with, in one instance, a pyramidal formation with the tallest piece in the center and on top of it a bright pink flower on a long stalk reaching high in front of the sun or moon on the back wall, this being almost the only color in the installation. This disc, by-the-way, detracts from more than it adds to the overall look. For another example of the symmetry there are a man and a woman in almost identical jackets at the same height and equal distance from the center. But these are not normal men and woman (I won’t describe — must leave something to the imagination).

On the floor of the cases there are puddles of the dribbled paint that look like pools of water with grasses or lily pads in them. Here also there is a touch of color, green and blue for water and vegetation.

Dengerink’s installation can be seen in the main hall of the Old Post Office at 1102 A St., downtown Tacoma. It will be on view through Aug. 21.

Also on view in the Old Post Office is “Invoke the Muse,” an photography exhibit and community event consisting of nine beautiful and romantic, soft-focus photographs of lovely ladies by Jennifer Chushcoff. The exhibition includes information on the women, each of whom is a muse who has inspired the photographer, and there are postcards that the public is invited to take and write their own messages to the muses. There is more information on Facebook. Just search for Invoke the Muse. This exhibition will remain on view until Sept. 28. It is part of the ongoing Artscapes program.

Wet’ and expressive at B2 Fine Art

The Weekly Volcano, May 12, 20014

"You Have Been Warned" digital mixed media by Chuck Smart

The exhibition called “Wet” and subtitled “Abstract Expressionism in fluidity, movement and space” at B2 Fine Art is a retrospective of work by Chuck Smart with some works by other well-known artists thrown in — like Yakime Brown, who is beginning to make a splash in New York; Judy Hintz Cox, a regular at B2 who has four excellent paintings in this show. And just for good measure there are a few glass vessels by Dale Chihuly. But Brown, Chihuly and Cox are bonus artists. What this show is really all about is the amazing artwork of Chuck Smart.

As an artist and musician, Smart has earned recognition throughout the world. He passed away in 2008. B2 owner Gary Boone calls this showing of his work a retrospective. It is a small but varied sampling of his work (approximately 20-30 pieces). I was astounded at his ability to work in many different styles and media with obvious skill and vision in each, from highly expressive digital and mixed media imagery combining abstract and figurative elements — a blending of Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, de Kooning, a hint of Kenneth Patchen and a big dose of Jean-Michael Basquiat — to simple, pop-related imagery with flat but vibrant color application (no visible brushmarks), to soft-focus and blurred photographs of faces and urban scenes. 

 

Eclectic? You bet. And in a most delightful way. Most of all it is the haunted and fearsome faces glaring at the viewer and his broken, staccato line that makes this work so powerful.

A signature piece at the front of the gallery is “Art Is,” words and images in a combination of collage, digital prints and paint all awash in a vortex of red. Another piece titled “Cleveland” uses all of the same elements plus pencil drawing, but instead of the swirling tornado of paint the imagery is unified by bands of soft red and tan that weaves it all together like a basket.

The most haunting of all his works may be “You Have Been Warned,” digital mixed media with Basquiat-like drawings of four figures with big heads, saucer eyes, and distorted and emaciated bodies, much of the drawing done by scratching into wet paint with something like (probably) the wrong end of a paint brush.

Brown’s paintings are mostly of fountain-like floods or sprays of paint bursting upwards with brilliant colors and paint as much as a quarter-inch thick. I can see that these could be exceedingly popular, but to me they are too slick, too pretty. His most powerful work is a black and white painting called “You Talk Too Much,” a waterfall of white on a smooth black ground gushing downward from the top of the canvas and splashing back up when it hits the bottom. Underneath all of this movement is a cascade of hundreds of letters in something like Arial bold type.

My favorite Hintz Cox works are two mostly black on white paintings that are incredibly rich and expressive.

[B2 Fine Art Gallery, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, till 9 p.m. Third Thursdays, through June 14, 711 St. Helens Avenue, Tacoma, 253.238.5065]

Bye Bye Birdie at Tacoma Little Theatre

pictured l to r: Steven Wells as Hugo, Melissa Maricich as Kim, DuWayne Andrews, Jr. as Conrad, Steve Barnett as Albert, and Ashley Ortenzo as Rosie

photo courtesy: DK Photography

I regret to say I wish I had not agreed to review Bye Bye Birdie at Tacoma Little Theatre. I regret to have to report that this show — originally staged in 1960, a perennial favorite with high school theaters and revived on Broadway at recently as 2009 — is as silly, hokey and sophomoric now as it was then.

In his review of the Broadway revival, New York Times critic Ben Bradley suggested patrons send the theater get well cards. I shall try not to be so snarky, but this piece of confection should not continue to be foisted on the public.

Inspired by the hoopla surrounding Elvis Presley’s induction into the army in 1957 and the fears that he would be forgotten by the time he got out two years later, “Bye Bye Birdie” puts teen idol Conrad Birdie (DuWayne Andrews, Jr.) in the same situation. His agent, Albert Peterson (Steve Barnett) and his secretary, Rosie (Ashley Ortenzo) cook up a publicity scheme designed to seal his popularity. The scheme is for Conrad to go to Sweet Apple, Ohio, a typical small town in middle America and sing a new song, “One Last Kiss” and then kiss a typical teenage girl goodbye on the Ed Sullivan show. The lucky girl is Kim MacAfee (Melissa Maricich).

The cast and crew of the TLT show give it their all. The period costumes are well chosen, and the Laugh In-style set by Blake York is colorful with a nice ’50s kitchen table and some great blue stools, but some kind of backdrop other than a plain screen was badly needed. The lighting by Pavlina Morris was okay but there were a couple of spots where Birdie should have been spotlighted but wasn’t.

I did enjoy the work of the backstage orchestra directed by Terry O’Hara with trumpet by Blane Gosselin, Bill Golterman on guitar, Peter Tietjen on percussion and keyboard by O’Hara.

I commend TLT for its color-blind casting — a black actor in the role of the heartthrob singer patterned after Elvis Presley, and a black kid (Donovan A. Muirhead, Jr.) as the younger brother in an otherwise all white family. Muirhead is cute and displays some admirable acting ability. Andrews, sporting a suitably comical Elvis wig, is a competent but not memorable actor and singer. He has some nice dance moves that bring to mind both Elvis and James Brown.

Barnett is a veteran of many roles at Tacoma Musical Playhouse where he is Director of Education, and his experience clearly shows in this production. No one else in the cast manages such a range of both acting and singing skills with such apparent effortlessness.

Maricich was beautifully cast as Kim. I enjoyed her rendition of “How Lovely to be a Woman,” a song about putting away childish things like the Conrad Birdie Fan Club now that she’s a woman and going steady (she’s playing a 15-year-old).

Many members of the opening night audience enjoyed the show and laughed uproariously at bits that were only mildly funny. With a cast of 30, I suspect that many there were family and friends supporting the cast.

I can’t recommend this show. I just hope that director Chris Serface — who has done a lot of excellent work in previous shows at TMP and Capital Playhouse and who is doing a great job as TLT’s new Artistic Director — gets a much better vehicle to work with the next time he directs.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday through June 1

WHERE: Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N “I” St., Tacoma

TICKETS: $25-$15

INFORMATION: 253-272-2281, www.tacomalittletheatre.com.

Also see Michael Dresdner's review.

Thomas Johnston paintings a photos at Salon Refu

The Weekly Volcano, May 8, 2010

“Washington Center Covered Over”photo by Thomas Johnston

Susan Christian continues to show the strongest art to be seen in Olympia in her little “Project Space” Salon Refu. Her latest show is Thomas Johnston Palmpeset II, paintings and photography.

This is some powerful stuff — most notably “Envelop,” the painting used on the posters and invitations. It is a large and imposing painting in oil on linen over panels that are shaped as two triangles over a rectangular base, 48 inches high by 72 inches in width. The face of this painting is a modulated surface of running, dripping, layered and scraped rust-colored paint. The two inverted triangles created a negative shape that is a third triangle — the blank white wall between the triangles reads as a positive shape so that the positive-negative push-pull is as strong as a battle of wills. This is minimalist, color field painting at its very best with a delicious touch of gestural abstraction.

The best paintings in the show are the ones that, like “Envelop,” take on a shape other than the traditional rectangle. “1991” is a chevron-shaped painting. “2012” and “2013” are blunt L-shaped paintings. The smaller paintings are not as effective. Most are square, some as small as 5¾inches -square. All of them look like rusted sheets of painted tin or sign boards or the sides of barns where part of the paint has flacked off exposing earlier layers. They are like decorative tiles, all surface texture and no form. It’s painting that begs to be done on a larger scale.

There are also a number of photographs in the show. Many of these are close-ups of urban settings that mimic the colors and textures of his paintings, some of which are every bit as powerful as the paintings. “Chelsea” is a photo of the edge of a building with an indefinable wedge shape in rust brown on a white wall with part of an across-the-street wall and two cars seen in the background, and “Blue Square” is a striking photo of a dark pole with a bright blue square attached to it and greenery in the background. These are strong abstract forms.

The strongest of all the photos is “Washington Center Covered Over,” a picture of part of the Washington Center for the Performing Arts in Olympia while it was undergoing renovation. It is unreadable as an object but fascinating as an abstract painting. If there were nothing in this show other than this photograph and “Envelop” it would still be a mind-blowing exhibition.

inH

Salon Refu, Thomas Johnston: Palmpeset II, Thursday-Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. and by appointment through salonrefu@gmai.com, through May -25, 222 Fourth Ave. W, Olympia.