July 21, 2009 'School' entertains, despite its familiarity As Yogi Berra might opine after attending a performance of "Disney's High School Musical 2": "It's deja vu all over again." It's deja entendu, too, because if you've seen or heard the initial installment of "Disney's High School Musical" in any of its many manifestations (TV, CD, DVD, live theater), expect a total recall experience once the first song of "Part Deux" blasts across the footlights of the Vandivort Center Theatre. Thanks to a talented group of young performers, though, the regional stage premiere of "High School Musical 2" offers a diverting trip down Short-Term Memory Lane. These kids look and act like real high school students instead of toned and glossy Hollywood wannabes. Under Gretchen Teague's sympathetic direction, they supply the joie de vivre missing from the formulaic songs and script. Tunes like "What Time Is It?," "Work This Out" and "You Are the Music in Me" are cut from the same cloth as the first batch of radio-friendly hits, but welcome Latin and Hawaiian accents have been added to the mix this time around. The treacly ballads about teen love and eternal friendship are also much the same as before, but Sally Trtan and Micah Scroggins put them across with winning sincerity as star-crossed lovers Gabriella Montez and Troy Bolton. The plot finds the Wildcats taking summertime jobs at the swanky Lava Springs Country Club, managed by Mr. Fulton (Shawn Teague) but founded by the family of snooty Sharpay Evans and her twin brother Ryan. Sharpay hopes to lure Troy into her wicked web and prevent him from teaming up with Gabriella to sing the latest opus by tunesmith Kelsie Nielsen (Nikki Boldt) in the annual talent show. Meanwhile, hunky pastry chef Zeke Baylor (Quintin Huckabee) and the rest of the gang alternately party and slave away in the club's hot kitchen. Happily for the show, Sharpay is played with pouting conviction by Paige Deragowski, who delivers the catchy "Fabulous" nicely and is so amusingly self-centered that you applaud her redemption in the final scenes. Christian Cook is also a winner as Ryan, the part made famous by Springfield native Lucas Grabeel. For me (and for Yogi, I suspect), the show's most entertaining number is the clever "I Don't Dance," wherein Ryan slyly coaxes terpsichorean moves from confirmed baseball player Chad Danforth. Brandon Looney plays Chad with boyish charm and matches the nimble Cook swing for swing in their high-spirited sport-vs.-dance competition. Another high point finds Ryan leading the tongue-twisting "Humuhumunukunukuapua'a," a festive song about a Polynesian princess and her enchanted fish-prince. (I didn't quite catch the entire tale, as the pre-recorded instrumental track drowned out some of the lyrics in this and other numbers.) Young fans of the first "High School Musical" will find plenty to like in the affable sequel, while adults will enjoy the evocation of earlier teen musicals starring the likes of Mickey and Judy, Frankie and Annette, and John and Olivia. "Disney's High School Musical 2" plays through Aug. 2 at the Vandivort Center Theatre, 305 E. Walnut St. For tickets ($12-$20), call 831-8001.

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February 27, 2009


Feminism hailed in 'Vagina Monologues'

Everything you always wanted to know about women, but were afraid to ask (in public, at least).
That's right, "The Vagina Monologues" has returned to the Vandivort after a five-year absence to amuse, enlighten and perhaps even shock local theatergoers. (I can't even quote the best lines in this review.) Eve Ensler's controversial play about the joys of the female anatomy gets a stylish staging courtesy of director Rick Dines and his skilled quintet of free-speaking, shape-shifting actors Leslie Ballew, Kristin Farr, Stephanie Judkins, Chelsea Russell and Maxine Whittaker.
Each woman adopts several personas during the 95-minute piece, ranging from Ballew's intimate account of a young girl's first successful sexual encounter to Whittaker's poignant reflections of a 72-year- old who gave up sex altogether after a disastrous early experience. In between, there's Farr's chilling report of crimes against women in Bosnia; Judkins' witty portrait of a well-read Brit who overcomes her skepticism about feminist issues; and Russell's virtuosic and hilarious survey of female "moans" in all their permutations.
The subject matter can seem overly reductive at times. Declarations like "It was me, the essence of me" and "It's who you are" are either empowering or limiting, depending on your point of view. But part of Ensler's intention is to provoke discussion of primal matters that have been kept under covers for millennia. The Vandivort's provocative staging reaffirms the success of her endeavor.
Larry T. Collins reviews the performing arts for the News-Leader.

 December 16, 2008

'Striking 12' perfect cure for holiday blahs

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

If you're anything like the holiday-phobic hero of "Striking 12," you'll be sequestered in your cozy apartment, surrounded by a pile of classic books and hoping that no one calls with a last-minute party invitation. When the clock finally strikes 12, you'll be blissfully and grumpily alone.

The latest production at Vandivort 2nd Stage marks the area premiere of pop group GrooveLily's lilting musical about the New Year's Eve blues. The funny and touching off-Broadway hit takes the form of a semi-staged concert by five performers who are called upon to act, sing and play one or more musical instruments.

Under Rick Dines' polished direction, this "rewired" version of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Match Girl" strikes just the right balance of post-modern hipness and old-fashioned sentiment. With clever writing and 20 catchy pop/rock songs, "Striking 12" provides the perfect cure for the holiday blahs.

Ryan Thomas King is winning as a "grumpy guy" whose deadening office job and failed engagement have put him in a Christmastime funk. Just as he's settled in for a solitary "Last Day of the Year," someone knocks on the door. It's none other than a modern-day match girl, a waif-like figure who goes door-to-door selling high-powered light bulbs that combat SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

He shoos her away, then turns to his handy volume of Andersen's tales to learn the fate of the 19th century character. For the rest of the 90-minute show, the action shifts smoothly from present to past and back again to comment on the vagaries of the human condition.

Bethany Ziskind plays bass and acts the roles of the Light Seller and the Little Match Girl. Her ragamuffin charm is perfect for the tender ballad "Snow Song," while deeper, more heartfelt emotions surface in the anthemic "Caution to the Wind."

Tina Sibley serves as narrator and plays the electric violin with finesse. The instrument lends a melancholy Celtic tinge to songs like the plaintive "Can't Go Home," then casts a haunting spell in the solo "Violin Ascension."

Shawn Teague propels the music from the drum kit before taking center stage in "Give the Drummer Some," his lament at having to play secon-banana parts in the saccharine "Match Girl" story. (He gets revenge in the encore, a cheerful rock version of "The Little Drummer Boy.")

Music director Ned Wilkinson handles keyboards, plays party animal Jack and supplies tasty sax backup to King's '50s-style rock 'n' roll vocalizing in "Green & Red (& I'm Feeling Blue)." His most thought-provoking song, though, is "Screwed-Up People Make Great Art" which, like the endearing show itself, poses some serious questions in toe-tapping comical form.

"Striking 12" plays at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Friday-Sunday and Dec. 31, Jan. 2-3; and at 2 p.m. Jan. 4. at Vandivort 2nd Stage, 440 S. Campbell Ave. For tickets ($16-$20; $12 student rush), call 831-8001.

Larry T. Collins reviews the performing arts for the News-Leader.

THIS IS GOING TO BE SUCH AN EXCITING SHOW...I'm just beside myself!

This was such a difficult decision ... you have no idea...

I just want to remind everybody who auditioned, that you were terrific and I would gladly welcome you back to audition for me again, anytime, for future shows. Please, don't be discouraged, especially the young ones... remember what I said...you are all VERY talented and I want you too be proud of what you did for me!

I will be sending out emails with detailed information on rehearsal schedules.

I have decided to postpone the orphans first rehearsal until Sept. 28.
Details will follow in the email

THANK YOU, TOO ALL WHO TOOK THE TIME TO AUDITION!!

The "ANNIE" Cast

ANNIE Hannah Ceselski

MOLLY Rosalyn Schuster

KATE Parker Buzbee

TESSIE Carolyn Billingsley

PEPPER Brettany DeMier

JULY Annah Love

DUFFY Emma Brand

DADDY WARBUCKS David Rice

GRACE FARRELL Melissa Slamb

MISS HANNIGAN Sandee DePriest

ROOSTER/ENSEMBLE Clint Biggerstaff

LILY ST. REGIS/STAR TO BE/ENSEMBLE Erin Routh

BERT HEALY/ENSEMBLE Allen Grymes

MRS. PUGH/ENSEMBLE Jenny Fleming

SOPHIE/ENSEMBLE Terry Spyres

FDR/ENSEMBLE Gary Buzbee

DRAKE/ENSEMBLE Cliff Hopkins

HOOVERVILLE-ITES/ CABINET MEMBERS/

SERVANTS/ NEW YORKERS/ POLICE/ DOG CATCHERS/

CIRCUS CLOWNS…(ok, maybe not that.)

AND EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE CAST…

Amanda Winchester

Tiffany Woodall

Autumn Cole

Todd Turoci

Dennis Burnett

Lauren Slamb

If you need to reach me to deny your role... Regrets or Excitement

I will be in touch with all of you before the weekend is out with MANY more details!!

I'M SO EXCITED!!

 

Gary Lyons and your faithful Stage Mgr. Becca Finley

 

September 13, 2008

Drag role propels humorous 'Psycho Beach'

If it's true that girls just want to have fun, how do you satisfy the voracious appetites of a spunky Gidget-like teen who suffers from multiple-personality disorder? That's the tongue-in-cheek question raised by "Psycho Beach Party," Charles Busch's spoof of silly surf-and-sand flicks of the early 1960s, as well as more earnest split-personality films like Hitchcock's "Marnie" and "Spellbound."

Busch's satirical targets are even more dated now than when the play premiered in 1987, but teenage angst and sexual identity confusion are eternal. Vandivort 2nd Stage's maiden production, directed with a fine sense of the ridiculous by Tim Caldwell, offers campy, over-the-top humor scored to such era-defining hits as "Where the Boys Are," "Bobby Sox to Stockings" and "Pineapple Princess."

The 2000 movie version (which I haven't seen) starred Lauren Ambrose as Chicklet, but it's hard to imagine sullen Claire of "Six Feet Under" projecting the girlish glee of Alexander Grelle in his first "leading lady" drag role. (His riotous outing as Hysterium in Tent Theatre's 2007 "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" served as a kind of cross-dress rehearsal.)

All skinny legs and arms, with a tiny washboard chest stuck somewhere in between, Grelle's Chicklet is every girl's pubescent nightmare. She longs to join the sexy surfer dudes as they catch endless waves at Malibu Beach, but is dismissed as a kid until the day hunky Kanaka (Bryan Benware) glimpses her darker side: Just as it did to poor Tippi Hedren in "Marnie," the color red unleashes in Chicklet a randy alter ego born of past psychological traumas. How she copes with the affliction is the plot, which I won't spoil here.

Along for Chicklet's wild ride are her best friend, Berdine (Kaci Wilhoit); surf king Star Cat (Adam Gilgour); sassy sexpot Marvel Ann (Stephanie Judkins); B-movie film queen Bettina Barnes (Addie Barnhart); and inseparable surfing buds Provoloney and Yo-Yo (William Hudson and Meghan Carver), whose true feelings "come out" to the triumphal strains of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture."

Jackson McKeehan and Myra Lewis offer funny support and join five others to form a "Go-Go-Greek Chorus" that shakes and shimmies to tunes such as "Wipe Out," "Hawaii Five-O" and "Bikini Beach."

Special mention must be made of Chris Lewis as Chicklet's overprotective mom.

His drag routine actually hits a nerve, going beyond the merely humorous to the truly grotesque.

With a voluminous figure that makes the late Divine seem positively svelte, and decked out in a pastels-and-pearls parody of June Cleaver, Lewis proves riveting in his all-too-brief scenes.

One demented look, as he stares into the middle distance with crazed self-satisfaction, would stop Joan Crawford in her tracks and is, by itself, worth the price of admission.

"Psycho Beach Party" plays today at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., then Sept. 18-27 at Vandivort 2nd Stage, 440 S. Campbell Ave. For tickets ($14 and $16), call 831-8001.
 

The Dracula Cast List:

Our 2008 summer salute to America!







Return to turn of the century America, when the innocent, slower-paced days of ice cream socials and hoop skirts are giving way to a bustling world of automobiles, electricity and the telephone. The story of these changing times brings Tintypes to life in a tuneful,
high-spirited brew of popular songs from 1890 to 1917.




Conceived by MARY KYTE with MEL MARVIN and GARY PEARLE
Musical and vocal arrangements by Mel Marvin
Orchestration and vocal arrangements by John McKinney

Directed by Gary Lyons
Vocal Direction by Ned Wilkinson
Choreography by Marty Almaraz
Designed by Barbara Dullum, Gary Lyons, Louis H. Schaeffer and Dennis Stewart

Featuring
RACHEL GITEL, GARY LYONS
CONZY MITCHELL-BURNS
MELISSA SLAMB, SHAWN TEAGUE



July 3-5, 10-12, 17-19, 2008 at 7:30 PM
July 6 & 13 at 2 PM
Tickets: July 3, 4 all seats $15
Fri & Sat: $20/$18; Thurs & Sun: $18/$16.
On sale June 3, 2008

Call the Theatre Box Office for more information

831-8001

According to Auntie Mame, life is a banquet. To Sally Bowles, it's a cabaret. But to the nameless singers in "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," it's clearly a carousel.

Actually, all three metaphors apply in Robert Bradley's elegant new staging of the ever-popular revue at the Vandivort. Bradley first directed "Jacques Brel" 35 years ago for Tent Theatre, just five years after its 1968 premiere at New York City's Village Gate Theatre. The welcome return of Brel's feast of song provides a potent reminder of the Belgian-born songwriter's musical bounty.

The world according to Brel is an up-and-down carousel of agonies and ecstasies, despair and hope, the gutter and the stars. It is populated by young and old, rich and poor, weak and strong, heroes and scoundrels, all of whom are caught up in a "Marathon" of survival. That opening number sets the tone for the evening, as the six cast members march onto the stage single file to form a human merry-go-round. The image returns periodically as a visual and thematic linking device.

Suspended from the ceiling is a large mobile of multicolored, mirror-like shards with images of Brel on one side and reflecting surfaces on the other. The jagged pieces, the focal point of Lou Schaeffer's spare yet lovely set design, allow Gary Lyons' dazzling lighting effects to mutate as often as the ever-changing moods of Brel's songs.

The show consists of 26 tunes, performed as solos and in various combinations by a talented cast of three men (Tim Caldwell, Jeff Carney, Sean Spyres) and three women (Liz Carney, Judy Luxton, Carol Reinert). The guys supply humor with "Girls and Dogs," while the female trio comments on the dark side of life in "Sons Of ...," one of several Brel songs recorded by Judy Collins in the late 1960s. The entire ensemble shines in "Carousel," "If We Only Have Love" and, especially, "The Desperate Ones," a haunting musical twin to Stevie Smith's poem, "Not Waving, But Drowning."

Luxton takes the spotlight in the ironic "I Loved" and the sentimental "Old Folks," while Liz Carney, making her theatrical debut, reveals an appealing vocal timbre similar to Judy Blue Eyes herself in "Marieke." Reinert offers a haunting account of "My Death," then interweaves understatement and passion in "If You Go Away" ("Ne me quitte pas").

Jeff Carney brings intense drama to the bitter lyrics of "Amsterdam," suggesting an angry collaboration between Hanns Eisler and Jean Genet. Caldwell acts out delusions of grandeur in "Jackie," belts the hectoring "Next," and joins Carney for the social commentary of "The Middle Class." Spyres charms in "Bachelor's Dance," then bites into the jolting political satire of "The Bulls."

Sparkling instrumental support is supplied by pianist Noah Karrasch and percussionist Kent Williams, with nice assists from three of the cast members.

"Jacques Brel" plays through April 19 at the Vandivort Center Theatre, 305 E. Walnut St. For tickets ($16-$20), call 831-8001.

Larry T. Collins reviews the performing arts for the News-Leader.