Laughter on the 23rd Floor at Harlequin

Heidi Rider and Nathan Rice

I was told by someone whose opinions about theater I respect that Laughter on the 23^rd Floor is Neil Simon’s funniest play. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I will say it accurately captures the Rat Pack-style sophistication and the snappy, Borscht Belt one-liners of the ’50s in-crowd. Plus it exposes the corporatization of popular media with its resultant dumbing down of content and the “red-scare” milieu of the times.

 Laughter on the 23^rd Floor is Simon’s most autobiographical play. It is based on his experience as a comedy writer for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows. The play is set in the writer’s room for Max Prince’s variety show, with Prince (Jason Haws) based on Caesar. The writers are Brian (Jimmy Blackmon); Val (Christian Doyle), an immigrant from Russia; Ira (Xander Layden), possibly the most severe hypochondriac ever but also one of the best writers in the room; Carol (Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe), the only female writer on staff; Kenny (Gabriel McClelland); Milt (Nathan Rice); and Lucas (Mark Alford), a thinly disguised Neil Simon avatar who periodically addresses the audience as a narrator. And there’s a seemingly ditzy but actually smart secretary named Helen (Heidi Rider).

Jason Haws. In background from left: Christin Doyle. Gabriel McClelland, Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Mark Alford

Lucas is a new intern who hopes to be accepted by Max and hired as a staff writer. Wise-cracking Milt is always “on”—relying on attention-getting hats and suits and snappy one-liners to win favor with Max and his fellow writers (for all the writers it’s always about pleasing Max). Brian is convinced Hollywood is going to buy his script or some TV mogul is going to give him his own show. Kenny is a cynic and the only one in the room who can stand up to Max.

In front: Xander Layden; around table: Christin Doyle. Gabriel McClelland, Jimmy Blackmon and Mark Alford; standing: Maggie Ferguson-Wagstaffe

The network thinks the show is too intellectual for the broad audience they want to attract, and the writers have heard rumors that one or more of them is going to be fired—possibly even the whole team. While they all obsess with keeping their jobs, Carol is upset about Joseph McCarthy’s red baiting.

The ensemble cast does a good job. I was particularly impressed with McClelland for his measured approach combining common sense and humor, and with Layden, who is emerging as a first rate comic actor (witness his recent outstanding acting in TAO’s The Head That Wouldn’t Die). Rider was stylish and funny as the secretary. Doyle does a standup job in his portrayal of Val, but understanding his Russian accent was not easy.

Once again Jason Haws owns the stage. There’s little I can say about his acting without gushing like a fan after a Frank Sinatra concert in 1953. I defy you to look away when he’s on stage.

I loved Darren Mills’ period costumes. The hats, the suits, and Max’s garters make these writers look like 1950s versions of today’s geeks and nerds.

Marko Bujeaud’s video projections of city scenes outside the window lend class and verisimilitude to the set.

I suspect that many audience members will be so caught up in the comedy they’ll forget they’re watching an accurate depiction of an important part of entertainment history and of a crucial part of American politics.

WHEN: Thursdays through Saturdays, 8p.m., Sundays 2 p.m. through Oct. 28

WHERE: State Theater, 202 E. 4^th Ave., Olympia

TICKETS: prices vary, call for details

INFORMATION: 360-786-0151; http://www.harlequinproductions.org/

Talk Radio

Tacoma Little Theatre is doing a one-night-only reading of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio.

Two shows: Hart James and Aisha Harrison

Collaboration Installation, Aisha Harrison and SPSCC art students, courtesy SPSCC

“In the Forest Dark,” oil on canvas by Hart James. Photo courtesy the artist.

Published in the Weekly Volcano, March 5, 2015

If you’re reading this on Thursday, March 5, you have only two days to see Aisha Harrison’s collaborative installation at South Puget Sound Community College and only until Saturday to see the big Hart James exhibition at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts in Olympia. So get moving. I’d hate for you to miss either one of these.
Aisha Harrison is the best realist sculptor in the South Sound. I don’t mean realist in the sense of slick, fool-the-eye realistic stuff like Duane Hanson and John de Andrea’s figures. I mean realistic like Rembrandt and Courbet. Harrison is the real deal.

In the gallery at SPSCC she has collaborated with 17 art students to create a marvelous installation comprising a single black skeleton lying on an island of white rock salt. It is life-size and sleek and shiny as obsidian, and the skeleton and its bed of salt reflect in the equally shiny black floor like an island afloat on still water. It is simple but mesmerizing to look at.

The students are in Joe Batt’s Introduction to Sculpture class. Also helping with the installation was ceramics technician Robin Ewing.

Harrison wrote, “I am interested in the experience of power and privilege derived from an individual’s race, class and/or gender identity.” Each viewer of the installation may wonder for themselves or discuss with other viewers how this applies to the black skeleton — the harsh contrast of the blackest black and whitest white, the reference to death, or other meanings not overtly stated in the work.

Hart James is a landscape painter who is fairly new to Olympia. Her show at the Washington Center includes 48 paintings spread throughout the lobby, mezzanine and balcony. Most are woodland scenes with dense tangles of trees and patches of sky poking though. In almost every instance the sky seems to advance forward to lie on the same surface as the trees — everything flattened in the modernist fashion. The paint is predominantly a heavy impasto applied with palette knife or other flat instrument, sometimes applied in contrast to lightly brushed background colors. Cezanne immediately comes to mind, and to a lesser degree van Gogh. But her landscapes are not from French woodlands but most definitely the dense forests of Western Washington. One striking exception, however, is a painting titled “Land, Water and Sky — Iceland,” which has an open feel, a windswept ski and colors that are cold as ice.

Another exception is “Meditation on a Group of Trees,” which is brushy and sketchy. I suspect some viewers might think it looks unfinished. I single out these two not because they are better than the others but because they are so different, signaling perhaps new directions the artist can pursue.

This is a large show, and the work is excellent.

Hart James, noon to 4 p.m. through March 7, The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, enter through the Black Box door.
Collaboration Installation with Aisha Harrison, noon to 4 p.m. through March 6,
The Gallery at the Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts, 2011 Mottman Rd. SW. Olympia, 360.596.5527, www.spscc.edu/gallery

Seven Ways to Get There

from left: Kirsten Potter, Bob Williams, Bradford Farwell, Jim Lapan, James DeVita, Ty Boice, Charles Leggett and Darragh Kennan. Photo by Truman Buffett.

from left: James DeVita, Kirsten Potter, Ty Boice and Bob Williams. Photo by Truman Buffett.

lifting Peter (Charles Leggett) in trust fall. Photo by Truman Buffett.

Playwright Bryan Willis has outdone himself with his new play Seven Ways to Get There now playing at ACT’s Allen Theatre in Seattle. Co-written by Dwayne J. Clark, the play is based on Clark’s experience some 16 years ago when he took part in men’s therapy group.

Seven men come together under the guidance of therapist Michelle (Kirsten Potter) for raucous group therapy sessions—the “seven ways” of the title referring to the paths each take to reach their goals. The sessions change them all, but not necessarily all for the better.

Vince (Ty Boice) is a tall, handsome and, at first, silent man whose problem seems to be that women want to make love to him. He says he’s had sex with a thousand women, perhaps as many as two thousand. And apparently he gets little pleasure out of it.

Nick (James DeVita) is filthy rich, arrogant, and in counseling only because his wife has threatened to divorce him if he doesn’t get help.

Also having wife problems is Mark (Bradford Farwell), a less-than-successful artist who believes his wife is having an affair with her rock climbing instructor.

Anthony (Darragh Kennan) has a severe enough anger management problem that he has been court ordered to therapy.

Richard (Jim Lapan) is a happy-go-lucky fellow who is addicted to porn. He doesn’t want to cure his addiction, he wants to form a porn co-op with the guys in the group.

Peter (Charles Leggett) prays a lot.

Mel (Bob Williams) says he hasn’t decided yet why he is in therapy and he can’t decide anything.

And the therapist, Michelle, has a hard time keeping the group from getting totally out of control.

Seven Ways to Get There deals with some tough stuff and is also outrageously funny. The clashes between these seven men and their therapist are brilliantly written. Scenes such as when the men suddenly break out in dance and when Richard points out that it is International Talk Like a Pirate Day are genius.

Director John Langs does a masterful job with pacing and blocking. The pace is often furious, but interjected with moments of quiet and often uncomfortable hesitations that make it all feel natural.

The in-the-round configuration of the Allen Theatre is like the Roman Coliseum with the audience looking down into the pit of a gladiator battle, which in many ways is what’s happening on stage as these seven gladiators battle their demons and each other. It is an adult-only comic tragedy, not recommended for children younger than 14.

Seven Ways to Get There runs through March 15 at ACT's Allen Theatre with shows at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

http://acttheatre.org/Tickets/OnStage/SevenWaystoGetThere

Review: The Miracle Worker at Lakewood Playhouse

Published in The News Tribune, Feb. 27, 2015

 

(L to R) JAMES A. GILLETTI (Mr. Keller), GRETCHEN BOYT (Mrs. Keller), LIBERTY EVANS-AGNEW (Helen Keller) and DEYA OZBURN (Anne Sullivan). Photo by KATE PATERNO-LICK

I attended the preview performance of “The Miracle Worker” at Lakewood Playhouse. The preview is the final technical dress rehearsal and the cast’s first opportunity to try it out in front of a live audience. As Managing Artistic Director John Munn explained in his curtain speech, things are expected to go wrong during a preview performance. In this case, nothing of significance went wrong. It was practically flawless.

“The Miracle Worker” is the story of the developing relationship between young Helen Keller (Liberty Evans-Agnew) and her teacher, Annie Sullivan (Deya Ozburn). The title comes from Mark Twain, who called Annie a miracle worker. It was also alluded to in the beginning of the play when Annie’s teacher, Anagnos (Dennis Worrell) sends Annie off to Alabama to work as Helen Keller’s governess. Anagnos says, “No one expects you to work miracles, even for twenty-five dollars a month.”

Unable to see, hear or speak, Helen expresses her frustration by violently acting out, and thereby throws the Keller household into a constant state of turmoil. When Annie arrives at the Keller home and meets Helen and the family, she quickly realizes that she has to somehow teach her how to understand and sign words, and perhaps more urgently, she must figure out some way to discipline her. Helen is essentially feral.

(L to R) LIBERTY EVANS-AGNEW (Helen Keller) and DEYA OZBURN (Anne Sullivan).
Photo by KATE PATERNO-LICK

James Venturini’s set design is attractive and functional, with separate rooms in the Keller house in the back corners of the in-the-round stage area and a large central area that doubles as dining room, yard, and Annie’s school for the blind. And there is a large window high up that Annie has to climb out of when Helen locks her in her room. The only drawback to the set is that audience members on two sides have to turn heads in order to see certain scenes.

Rachel Wilkie’s period costumes are outstanding, Daniel Cole’s lighting design works beautifully, Pug Bujeaud’s direction is superb, and the acting is of the highest caliber imaginable.

Gretchen Boyt as Helen’s mother and James A. Gilletti as her father are totally believable. Boyt’s acting is relatively subdued for such a highly emotional character. The audience can see and feel her sometimes tortured changes of thought and feeling conveyed through posture and facial expression as she struggles against her natural inclination to indulge Helen’s every whim. This is tellingly displayed particularly in her background acting when others are speaking.

Gilletti also convincingly portrays inner struggles as his autocratic nature butts heads with his softness of heart. His Southern accent is spot-on in conveying both place and class.

Ozburn’s Annie and Evans-Agnew’s Helen are mesmerizing. Ozburn is a seasoned pro whose performances I have been praising for years (most recently in “The Children’s Hour” at Lakewood Playhouse) and she nails it as Annie. Evans-Agnew is a newcomer to the stage. She is 13 years old, and her only other stage appearance was as Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird” at Tacoma Little Theatre. If they handed out Tony Awards for community theater it would be hard to decide which of these two deserved it most. The intensity and the reality of their physically demanding performances are mind-boggling. I can’t imaging watching their performances without aching for them and celebrating their final triumph.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through March 15

WHERE: Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd., Lakewood

TICKETS: $25.00, $22.00 military, $21.00 seniors and $19.00 students/educators, pay what you can

INFORMATION: 253-588-0042, www.lakewoodplayhouse.org