Campy ‘Bunnicula’ not too scary for kids

Published in The News Tribune, October 31, 2008

It is a dark and stormy night. Haven’t you always longed to see a show that starts that way? The modern children’s classic “Bunnicula” starts just that way – in spirit if not in fact. It is not only a delightfully entertaining story for children, it is also a campy takeoff on every old horror movie ever made.

On Tacoma Children’s Musical Theater’s big stage at the Narrows Theatre, it will be just scary enough and funny enough to entertain children of all ages without upsetting the younger children. Or so say the play’s director, Maria Valenzuela, and actor Chris Serface. “It was hot reading for kids in high school and college, (and) my 8-year-old just read it,” Valenzuela said.

Serface, who was a young child when the first “Bunnicula” book came out, said all of his friends loved the books, even up through high school.

As for the play, Serface said it is “very cartoonesque, like an old horror movie.” It starts off a little scary, Serface said, but turns funny before it gets too scary for the little kids – “almost like a spoof.”

It’s the story of the Monroe family and their pets, Chester the cat (played by Nelwyn Brady) and Harold the dog (Mark Rake-Marona), who is also the narrator of the story. The family goes to the movies and finds a bunny there and brings him home. Soon all the vegetables in the house begin to turn white, and Chester the cat suspects it is because the bunny, whom they named Bunnicula after Dracula, is a vampire, and he’s sucking the juices out of all the veggies.

The play is told from the point of view of the dog and features adult actors as animals and teenage actors as children, which means all of the props have to be appropriate sizes. To get an idea of what that is like, remember Lily Tomlin as 5-year-old Edith Ann in her big chair on the old “Laugh In” television series.

The children are played by Kody Bringman, 19, and Alex Gallo, 16. Both are from Puyallup and both are up-and-coming actors.

Bringman plays 10-year-old Pete, the oldest Monroe child. Patrons of Tacoma Musical Playhouse will remember him from “Grease” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” and can look forward to seeing him again in TMP’s next mainstage production, “The Slipper and the Rose.”

Gallo plays the younger child, Toby. Gallo was seen in “Ragtime” and has been in all three of TMP’s productions of “A Christmas Carol.”

Other actors in this production include Serface as Mr. Monroe and Christine Riippi as Mrs. Monroe.

And, of course, Bunnicula, a 4-foot-tall puppet built by Douglas Paasch, the master puppeteer at the Seattle Children’s Theater, where the play premiered in 1997.

The music has been arranged especially for this performance by musical director Sarah Samuelson with help from Valenzuela and TMP musical director Jeff Stvrtecky. Since the script didn’t come with a full score, they had to create their own. Traditionally, this play has relied on recorded music, but Valenzuela said TMP is dedicated to doing live music, so this production will use two keyboards and percussion, and we’re promised many comical musical special effects.

Other effects sure to be delightful, such as some very inventive lighting, are the work of technical director Will Abrahamse.

Tonight there will be a special costume party with a full performance of the play and prizes for costumes and jack-o’-lanterns.

All-in-all, it sounds so entertaining I wish I was 10 years old again.


WHEN: 7 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Nov. 8-9
WHERE: Narrows Theatre, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma
TICKETS: $15 general, $13 seniors/students/military, $10 children; $10 groups of 10 or more; Halloween party, $13 for children 12 and younger, $15 all others
INFORMATION: 253-565-6867, tmp.org

Looking and seeing

Sex offenders and snow globes on display at Fulcrum Gallery.

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Oct 30, 2008
Pictured: "Observations and Perceptions" installation view, photo by Jeremy Gregory

Fulcrum Gallery owner Oliver Doriss says the latest gallery exhibition, Observations & Perceptions, is his first show “incorporating social and political commentary.” He goes on to say, “I was apprehensive going into it” — particularly apprehensive about Jeremy Gregory’s installation with portraits of sex offenders and a spoken word piece by the singer/actor Tom Waits.

Gregory’s installation takes up half of the front room of the gallery, but viewers experience it beginning outside as they approach the gallery on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Behind the left side picture window hang two old sash-type windows with peeling paint. Inside the gallery, more old windows and doors hang from the ceiling to partition off the left side of the front room, creating a room within a room — and that room within a room is a unified, thematic installation that is, in essence, the mysterious building Waits talks about in his eerie spoken word piece “What’s That Building in There?” that loops over and over with creepy sound effects and Waits’ famously gruff voice.

The looped spoken word is like some kind of chant to an underworld god ceaselessly asking questions about a mysterious old building. Inside we see an old work table cluttered with tools and framed portraits of men whom we learn are all registered sex offenders. Above the work table are clotheslines, and clipped to the line with pins are sketchy ink drawings that seem to be snatched from moments in various lives. Along one wall are more portraits.

The portraits are almost crudely drawn and colored in strange duotones. In one the face is black and white like a graphite drawing, and the background is a bright blue. Another face is green on a red background. Yet another is purple-faced with a green background. The colors are acidic, electric, dark, and foreboding. The facial expressions are those of mug shots.

Gregory says the portraits all come from a registered sex offender Web site. “ … you can enter your address, and it will display all the registered sex offenders in your area,” he explains. “When I typed in the Fulcrum address I realized that the Hilltop and surrounding area were heavily populated with these people. After experiencing a range of emotions I realized that most people, directly or indirectly, have been affected by sexual crimes such as harassment, molestation, rape, assault, etc.”

This is an emotionally powerful show. The smaller framed portraits on the table are much stronger than the larger portraits along the left sidewall. The larger ones are paintings and the smaller ones chalk drawings, and it appears that Gregory is much more at ease with drawing tools. The best things about these drawings are his color choices, which fit perfectly with the overall mood of the installation.

As for the windows and doors, I think the idea was good but wish it had been carried out more fully with walls and perhaps drawn window shades so viewers would have to step inside to see what’s there. That would have made it much more effective.

In addition to Gregory’s installation, there are glass works by Doriss, including some from his delicate Sky Ponds done for the W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory. There are also surrealistic snow globes by Conor McClellan, a fascinating wall of ID cards by Galen McCarty Turner (part of an ongoing project that is well known by people whose phone numbers start with 253), and three wonderful little op-art paintings by Elise Richman. The Richman paintings are particularly interesting upon close examination when what looks like typical landscape-based abstractions are seen to be raised points of “beads, dollops and pools of paint.”

[Fulcrum Gallery, noon to 6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Thursdays 6-9 p.m. and by appointment, through Nov. 16, 1308 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma, 253.250. 0520]

Random picks

Yesterday I went to Tacoma to review the current show at Fulcrum Gallery, and then headed on up north to Seattle where Gabi and I wandered around Pioneer Square checking out the galleries.
Featured at Fulcrum in Tacoma is an installation called "What's That Building in There?" with portraits of registered sex offenders and a strange spoken word performance by the one and only Tom Waits. Watch for my review in the Weekly Volcano next week.
Now for Seattle: If I spend the whole day visiting galleries in Seattle and see one good show I usually consider that a banner day -- meaning I'm usually disappointed. But yesterday I saw two good shows.
First was Glenn Ossiander at I/M/A Gallery, corner Jackson and Occidental. Ossiander is showing a group of small abstract paintings is intense colors, mostly red or red-orange. These are exciting paintings. The surface treatment is rich and the colors are burning hot.
Next was Terry Turrell at Grover Thurston. Large and small paintings and sculpture in mixed media with a density of marks and crisp edges and wildly imaginative imagery.
I highly recommend both of these shows.

‘Threepenny Opera’ mixes music, drama, humor superbly

Published in The News Tribune, Oct. 24, 2008
Photo by Glenn Raiha

The key to Capital Playhouse’s production of the Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill classic “The Threepenny Opera” can be found in this statement from director Jeff Kingsbury: “An interesting thing about ‘Threepenny’ is that there are no guides to the ‘right way.’ Not being produced often, there are decidedly few reference materials to look to.”

In other words, the director had more freedom to interpret the staging, presentation and tone of the play than directors are normally allowed. And Kingsbury has taken full advantage of this freedom to be inventive, daring and oh-so theatrical. The staging of this production – from the sets, lighting, costumes and makeup to the highly stylized and choreographed movement of the actors on stage – is dramatic, tense and dark, and all tinged with satirical and biting humor.

The set by Bruce Haasl is dark and bleak. Ostensibly a poor section of London in the Victorian era, this set with its rough balcony and spiral staircase and ragged curtains – and the big wheels that crank curtains of text and the bars of a jail cell – could be any place or any time, and it sets the menacing tone of the play. In something that has become a Capital Playhouse hallmark, movable props and set pieces serve multiple purposes and seamlessly incorporate set changes into the flow of the action.

Adding to this look are the rough-hewn and outlandish costumes designed by Tom C. Hudson and horror-show makeup. For example: Russ Holm as the beggar chief Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, is shirtless with big suspenders, and he has shaved half his head and pushed the remaining hair up into absurd twin peaks. His beautiful daughter, Polly (Erica Penn) wears sexy black tights and a kind of lace-up corset, and wields a whip. Adam Randolph, in a variety of roles, seems to be wearing countless layers of ragged clothes topped by an oversized trench coat and weird glasses, and most of the women in the cast are half naked and in disarray. And all of the cast members are heavily made up with black lines and smudges on their faces and dark smears around their eyes.

The mood is set in the opening number as the entire cast slowly comes out and groups and regroups in highly stylized, menacing and zombie-like movements as Randolph as the new beggar, Filch, unscrolls and reads the opening script and then sings the most famous of all songs from this show, “The Flick Knife Song,” better known as “Mack the Knife.”

From here the story unfolds, a story that glamorizes criminals and satirizes the rich and powerful – a social message epitomized by the question “Who is the bigger criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?” Food for thought today more than ever.

Peachum and his wife, Celia (Jennie May Donnell) control the beggars of London and take a cut on all they can beg, borrow or steal. Their daughter, Polly, marries Macheath (Harrison Fry), a criminal better known as Mack the Knife. Determined to break up their marriage, Peachum conspires to get Macheath arrested and hanged by convincing a prostitute named Jenny (Bailey Boyd) to betray him. He’s arrested, he escapes and is arrested again. And the plot thickens when it turns out that the police chief, Jackie “Tiger” Brown (Jesse Derron Gold) is Macheath’s oldest friend (interpreted in this production as a gay man in love with Mack) and the chief’s daughter Lucy (Bianca Davis) turns up and claims to be Macheath’s wife.

From Holms’ over-the-top antics to Donnell’s lovable and slatternly Mrs. Peachum to Randolph’s ability to assume many different roles, the acting in this play is outstanding, even down to the smallest movements of chorus members whose only roles are to sing backup and move with grace and precision.

The play is funny and challenging. The language and the themes of violence and sexuality are definitely for adults only. And the music, a balance between opera and pop music, is great – not toe tapping and hummable tunes, but stirring and dramatic tunes.

If you enjoyed “Sweeny Todd” and “Cabaret,” you’ll love “The Threepenny Opera.” This is definitely not Disneyesque family entertainment.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 1
WHERE: Capital Playhouse, 612 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
TICKETS: $29-$35 general, $23-$29 seniors and ages 16 and younger
INFORMATION: 360-943-2744, www.capitalplayhouse.com

Art at Work studio tours

I hope you'll read my article on Tacoma's Art at Work Month artists studio tours in the Weekly Volcano. You can pick up a copy at any of their distribution points or read it online by clicking the above link. Featured in the article are Carlos Taylor-Swanson, Janet Marcavage, Deborah Greenwood and Betty Ragan.

Bollywood West

Donald Fels and Indian sign painters at Tacoma Art Museum

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Oct 23, 2008

Pictured:
Donald Fels and his collaborators, First Sight, 2005. Oil enamel on aluminum, 8 × 12 feet. Courtesy of the artists and Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington.

Donald Fels and his collaborators, Global Trade, 2005. Oil enamel on aluminum, 8 × 12 feet. Courtesy of the artists and Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington.


Among the many exhibitions now showing at Tacoma Art Museum is one that may sound weird but that is filled with knockout images. It’s called What Is a Trade? Donald Fels and Signboard Painters of South India.

In 2005 Fels traveled to India to work with commercial signboard painters on a series of large-scale paintings based on Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage to India in search of a direct sea route for the spice trade.

Fels’ part in this project seems to have been sort of like that of a movie director. He provided the concept and vision and conveyed it to the Indian sign painters, giving them sketches and photos as starting points but encouraging them to interpret them in their own way. The resultant images are bright, colorful, bombastic, and very exciting.

The images are large and are stacked on the walls floor to ceiling. They are painted mostly in primary colors.

Of course there are stories and histories that are uniquely Indian, and one comes away with the strong feeling that the Indians are not overly fond of Vasco da Gama. Whereas Westerners may view him as a romantic explorer, the Indians see him more as an invader, much like the view American Indians have of Christopher Columbus — you know, the wonderful Italian explorer who discovered tribes of beautiful native people and then killed them.

But the style of these paintings seems to come from all over the world and from all of art history, meaning the art of the dominant Western culture. We see pop paintings reminiscent of James Rosenquist, whco, like these Indian painters, started out as a billboard painter and applied skills and design principles from billboard painting to fine art painting. We see pictures that remind us of David Salle with his harsh juxtaposition of images ripped right out of true-crime cover art. We see paintings reminiscent of propaganda posters from the Russian Revolution. We see bits of surrealism and of contemporary graffiti art. And due primarily to the nature of the materials these paintings are created with — enamel on aluminum — they have the look of advertisements seen along country roads and tacked on the sides of country stores here in the United States when I was growing up in the 1950s. Surely even young people today have seen some remnants of those and know the look I’m talking about.

The mishmash of styles turns the whole gallery into one big collage.

I suggest that viewers take it in this way: first, stand in the middle of the gallery and turn around slowly, letting the clash of images and colors wash over you, and then take them in one after another, reading all of the words and thinking about how they relate to history and world trade.

This brings us to Bollywood, India’s most popular export. We’ll probably never know who coined the term “Bollywood,” but I suspect it must have been an American. Just as Bollywood films are mostly musical extravaganzas that are unintentional parodies of Broadway and Hollywood musicals, the paintings in this exhibition look like take-offs on many aspects of Western fine and commercial art traditions.

In another gallery at TAM and promoted as a sister exhibition to What Is a Trade? is Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire from the Dahesh Museum of Art. This show also looks at Western concepts and representations of the East.

Rounding out the museum offerings are two large exhibitions culled from its ever-expanding permanent collection: The Surrealist Impulse and Speaking Parts. These shows include works as diverse as Salvadore Dali prints; paintings by Morris Graves; Mark Toby and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; a film by former Tacoman Jared Pappas-Kelly; and a terrific early wall hanging construction by Scott Fife, who is best known locally for the big dog in the museum lobby.

[Tacoma Art Museum, through Jan. 18, Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Third Thursdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday noon-5 p.m., $6.50-$7.50, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

Cast shines in Shakespeare's difficult 'Antony & Cleopatra' in Olympia

Published in The News Tribune, Oct. 17, 2008
Pictured: John Bogar as Mark Antony with Mari Nelson as Cleopatra.
Photo by Jill Carter


One of the most difficult Shakespeare plays to produce is “Antony & Cleopatra.”

I spoke to director Scot Whitney before the opening of Harlequin Productions' performance of this tragedy, and he expressed trepidation, saying it is a tough play to bring off. It requires, among other things, top-notch professional actors in the lead roles as two larger-than-life characters who see themselves as descendents of gods. Whitney cast two of the best in these roles, Mari Nelson as Cleopatra and John Bogar as Antony.

Both Bogar and Nelson bring notable acting experience to their roles. Bogar has played in “Macbeth,” “Othello” and “The School for Scandal” with the Seattle Shakespeare Company. Nelson has performed on Broadway, in film and television, plus tons of Shakespeare, including “Twelfth Night” with New York’s Shakespeare Festival and last year’s production of the same play at the Seattle Rep.

In addition to these two fine actors, the show features two perennial local favorites in the person of Paul Purvine as Octavius (Caesar) and Dennis Rolly in multiple roles as Lepidus, Euphronius and a soothsayer and clown.

Still, with all this talent, it is a play that’s really hard to like. The drama is intense, most of the characters are not particularly likable, there is very little comic relief and there are big battle scenes and orgy scenes that have to be compressed and stylized and which I thought were boring and detracted from the more personal stories of the lovers and their antagonists. I did think, however, that Whitney did well in choosing to present some of these scenes as shadow shows behind curtains.

Nelson puts on one heck of a show as the legendary queen of Egypt. She is imperious, petulant, demanding, sexual, flirtatious and emotionally overwrought with both anger and heartbreak. How can a woman who believes she is descended from the goddess Isis be both a spoiled little girl and a heartbroken lover? To portray all of that takes some mighty large acting skills, and Nelson answers that challenge quite well.

Similarly, Bogar comes to the challenge of playing the boisterous, arrogant and love-smitten Mark Antony with panache.

Purvine plays Octavius Caesar with dignity and poise, and he looks the part. Some might think he’s too young, but Octavius was only 20 years old when he ascended to his power in Rome, and although the events depicted here took place over years, they are smartly condensed to a brief time period in the play.

Rolly is outstanding in various roles, most of which have needed comic underpinnings. He is like some of the great character actors that keep showing up in movies that everybody recognizes but few can identify and who are always kind of the same character no matter who they are playing (like Steve Buscemi or Harry Dean Stanton or William H. Macy before he became a big star).

Linda Whitney’s set has a heavy feel, and it serves well, without necessitating set changes, as both Cleopatra’s palace in Egypt and Caesar’s palace in Rome. The costumes by Monique Anderson were clearly well researched for historic accuracy. Changes in time and place are indicated by simple but effective light and music effects, with the only set changes being Cleopatra’s bed, which rolls out from behind a curtain and which at one point becomes a tavern where Caesar and his soldiers have a drunken night of singing (one of the best scenes in the play).

As with many of Shakespeare’s plays, the story is hard to follow if you do not already know the basic outline. Fortunately, the program for this play includes excellent commentary and synopsis, which help a lot. I would also suggest reading about it on Harlequin’s Web site before going.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 25
WHERE: State Theatre, 202 E. Fourth Ave., Olympia
TICKETS: $24-$33, rush tickets $12-$15 half-hour before curtain
INFORMATION: 360-786-0151; www.harlequinproductions.org