I was just checking in to thank any and all of you MySpacers who came to my shows at the Cavern Club Theater last week! You all helped make our little workshop a smashing success. Now I'm preparing to do the show for the hometown audience in Charleston, WVa. The piece, called BACK HOME AGAIN/DREAMING OF CHARLESTON, has been commissioned by this years FestivALL.  Click on this link for more info!

But then I was looking on the FestivALL homepage and was THRILLED to see this lovely preview/review by a fellow West Virginian Beach Vickers (who was at the show this Saturday). If you are reading this Beach, thanks a BAZILLION!!!

From the FestivALL homepage

Having just enjoyed Ann Magnuson’s one-woman show “Back Home Again: Dreaming
of Charleston” in its first preview in a packed, literally underground theater in Los
Angeles (before it officially premieres as part of FestivALL in Charleston, WV, later this
June), I immediately emailed my mom and other West Virginia family members and
friends to not miss it. Ann cut her theatrical teeth in Charleston community theater before
taking on “Hollywood” acting and touring original performance art pieces across the U.S.
Her “Dreaming…” is a love letter to her hometown in songs, stories and even old film
footage of Charleston. Warning: it’s hardly a simple tale of “barefoot hillbilly” makes
good, but a surprise-a-minute hodgepodge of everything from science fiction monsters to
Mae West imitations, from creepy nightmares which turn out to be true to elaborate
teenage memories which might be partly a joke – or are they? Ann’s onstage accompanist
is a very cool harpist, equally at home playing “Country Roads” or hard rock! Prudes or
younger children shouldn’t go. Ann can slip in a couple of colorful (but appropriate)
words and knows how to poke fun – lightly but pointedly -- at drugs, sex, politicians, and
polluters.  But she entertains not preaches about the benefits of attachment to hometown
and one’s youth – even after you leave it. It’s very West Virginia-specific, right down to
the rhododendron, and so, since they gave the show a standing ovation its first night in
L.A., I’ll be interested to see how the hometown crowd reacts.
 
Beach Vickers
Former reporter for The Montgomery Herald
And Charleston community theater guy
Now at NBC Universal in L.A.
(June 3, 2009)