"Camelot" at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.

Even in a musical, this idyllic world cannot last forever. The problems of the real world - war, greed, betrayal - come crashing in despite the legendary King Arthur's dreams of peace. Perhaps turning a blind eye to reality is not the best way to keep the peace, but it sure was nice while it lasted. Even though I have some issues with the book, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres beautifully brings the mystical and idyllic world of Camelot to life with gorgeous design, a fantastic cast, and beautiful music.

"Other Desert Cities" at the Guthrie Theater

Other Desert Cities is the first of two 2012 Tony nominees for Best Play in the Guthrie's 2012-2013 season (the second is the Tony winner Clybourne Park, coming this summer). It's a family drama written by Jon Robin Baitz, creator of the TV family drama Brothers & Sisters. Similar to the Walker family featured in Brothers & Sisters, the Wyeths are a well-to-do political California family with secrets. The Walkers are liberal, but their eldest daughter grew up to be a Republican and moved to the East Coast. The Wyeths are California conservatives (hobnobbing with the Reagans) whose eldest daughter grew up to be a Democrat and moved to the East Coast. She returns to her parents' Palm Springs home with the manuscript of a book she has written and wants to publish, which will air all of the family's dirty laundry that her parents have worked so hard to overcome.

Unlike the Walker brood of six, the Wyeths have three children. The eldest died decades ago, after becoming involved in the bombing of a recruitment center in the 70s. Middle child Brooke was permanently effected by the tragic death of her big brother and has struggled with depression as she tried to make sense of it. The only way she could do so was to write her memoir, the story of her brother from her perspective as a young girl watching it unfold, but not really being able to grasp the whole story. Trip, the youngest, is a producer of reality TV, working really hard to be happy and keep the peace in the family. Polly is the epitome of tough love, especially where her daughter is concerned, and Lyman would do anything for his children. Rounding out the family is Aunt Silda, Polly's recovering alcoholic sister who is living with them until she gets back on her feet. She's not afraid to tell it like it is, and these five people with very different and strong opinions about the situation make for a Christmas to remember, and an entertaining play.

the Wyeth family secrets come out

Another similarity to Brothers & Sisters is that the Guthrie's production of Other Desert Cities features a fantastic ensemble cast, made up of some Twin Cities favorites as well as a few newcomers (directed by my favorite director, Peter Rothstein of Theater Latte Da). As the family patriarch and actor-turned-politician, David Anthony Brinkley is the stern but loving father, a calming presence until he explodes when overcome with love and frustration. The fabulous Sally Wingert (who I like to refer to as the Meryl Streep of the Twin Cities theater scene, but I may have to change that to the Sally Field of the Twin Cities theater scene, now that she's played two Sally Field roles - the matriarch in a Jon Robin Baitz family drama and Mary Todd Lincoln) is the tough love mother, and Michelle Barber is a hoot as her sister Polly. Sally Wingert and Michelle Barber should play sisters whenever possible; that's something I'd like to see repeatedly, these two divine and powerful actresses sparring with each other on stage. The Wyeth children are played by two welcome newcomers to the Guthrie stage, Kelly McAndrew and Christian Conn, who really dig into their roles. Kelly as the messed up Brooke, and  Christian as the loveable Trip, trying to cheer everyone up and smooth things over, but soon revealing some torment of his own. This a family that is entertaining to watch as they try to make it through this crisis intact.

I found myself getting frustrated with Brooke, still blaming her parents for things that happened decades ago, when she doesn't really know the whole story. There comes a point when you have to forgive your parents for what they did or didn't do, and just accept that they did their best and take responsibility for your own life choices. When you're young you think your parents hung the moon, then comes the stage where all you see is their mistakes, and finally, you come to accept them as human beings. This is what Brooke finally seems to learn by the end of the play, which jumps forward several years in a sort of postlude.

I find it interesting that Other Desert Cities is playing across the lobby from Long Day's Journey Into Night (at least through this weekend). Although one takes place 100 years ago and one is modern, both plays are about a dysfunctional family dealing with mental illness and drug addiction, who love and support each other despite everything (although perhaps not in the most healthy of ways). Other Desert Cities has some lighter moments and doesn't feel as hopeless as Long Day's Journey, but it's interesting to me that family dynamics haven't changed all that much in 100 years. The Wyeth family will be residing in the sunny and airy Palm Springs home on the Proscenium stage now through March 24.

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at the Guthrie

In keeping with the theme for Valentine's Day, I followed the delicious Dial M for Murder at the Jungle with the Guthrie's production of  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a tale of not just one, but two dysfunctional marriages.  Also delicious, but in a much different and darker way.  Like Dial M for Murder, I hadn't seen this play before, or the 1958 movie, so I had no expectations. Except that I love Tennessee Williams; his plays are always so intense and really dig deep into human relationships.  That definitely holds true of this play as well.

For the one or two of you who, like me, have never seen the movie, here's a brief plot summary.  Big Daddy is the wealthy owner of a plantation in the Mississippi delta.  His two sons and their wives return home to celebrate his birthday.  Big Daddy dying of cancer, and everyone knows it but him and his wife Big Mama.  Gooper is the elder son, but Brick is his father's favorite, maybe because they're more alike.  Gooper and his wife Mae want to take over the plantation, but Brick's wife Maggie is determined not to let that happen.  Brick himself doesn't seem to care much about anything, except drinking, since the death of his friend Skipper, which he calls the one true thing he ever had in his life.  He's completely shut out his wife, and she's desperately trying to get back in.

I'm trying to decide who the star of the show is, but I don't think there really is one. Each character has their moment, and every actor in this cast is up to the challenge (even Gooper and Mae's five adorable children, who continually run across the stage hootin' and hollerin').  Peter Christian Hansen (Brick) always brings a wonderful intensity to his roles, but this one is much more subdued.  Brick mostly listens in apathetic silence as others go off around him.  He's constantly drinking, and moves around the stage on crutches with an awkward grace, his glass always in his hand.  But when he's provoked, he explodes.  Until he drinks enough that nothing matters anymore (click). Emily Swallow is wonderful as Maggie the cat, about to jump out of her own skin, desperate to make her marriage work so she doesn't have to return to the life of poverty.  Melissa Hart (Fraulein Schneider in Frank Theatre's Cabaret) is amusing and sympathetic as the loveable busybody Big Mama, who just wants her children to be happy, especially her favorite Brick.  And David Anthony Brinkley is marvelous as Big Daddy. Such a different role than the last time I saw him, as Big Mama Turnblad in Hairspray at the Chan.  It's no mystery why he left that show to do this one - it's such a rich, meaty role, and he inhabits it fully.  Chris Carlson and Michelle O'Neill as Gooper and Mae, whose only concern seems to be their inheritance, complete the dysfunctional family.  None of these characters are very likeable, but they're all fully realized people.

Once again, the Guthrie beautifully brings to life the complicated, messed up world of Tennessee Williams - mortality, mendacity, families, relationships.  You can almost feel the sweltering heat through the southern drawls, the set with the towering blue doors and windows, the 50s costumes.  It's not a world I would like to live in, but it's awfully engrossing to observe.

"Hairspray" at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

I saw the musical Hairspray at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres yesterday, and I'm still singing and dancing!  I've seen the show several times and it's one of my favorite musical theater soundtracks, so it's no surprise that I loved it.  It's a great cast of Channhassen regulars and newcomers, and a really wonderful production.  I went with my family, a group of 15 people ranging in age from 4 to 66 (including several teenagers), and a good time was had by all.  But it's more than just a good time, it's a great message - togetherness, standing up for what you believe in, and the realization that despite the fact that we might look different, we all just want to dance and have fun and be free to live our lives.  It's easy to forget that segregation wasn't really that long ago in the history of this country.  Today I saw I Wish You Love at Penumbra Theatre (more thoughts on that coming shortly), which gives a much more brutal, realistic view of segregation.  Both shows are about using music and television to enact social change, but that's where the similarities end.  In real life, segregation didn't end cleanly and easily with everyone dancing happily together.  But like Director Michael Brindisi writes in the playbill, Hairspray "is a fairy tale, but it can come true."  Humor and music and dancing is a legitimate way of dealing with an important part of our history.

A few more thoughts:

• Chanhassen newcomer Therese Walth is the star of the show.  She plays Tracy with such energy and enthusiasm it's contageous, and her voice is big and beautiful.  Her energy is matched by another Chan newcomer, Kaija Pellinen, as Tracy's best friend Penny.  She's hilarious and endearing in her awkward lankiness and gum smacking as she follows her best friend and supports her in her adventures.
• David Anthony Brinkley and Jay Albright may be the best couple I've seen on the Chanhassen stages in some time. Their chemistry is so playful, fun, sweet, and believable, it's a thing of beauty to watch. They have an ad lib section in the middle of "You're Timeless to Me" in the second act.  I'm not sure what Jay was doing because his back was to me, but David was cracking up. I don't blame him; I don't know how anyone can look at Jay Albright and keep a straight face, he's such a clown! David usually plays a tall, distinguished, silver-haired gentleman so it was fun to see him play against type as a tall, big-haired, supportive Baltimore mother, and do it so well.
• Tom Rusterholz as Link Larkin is no Matthew Morrison (who is, really?), but he puts his Richie Cunningham charm to good use as the boy Tracy falls in love with, and who eventually proves he's worthy of her.
• Nice to see some new faces in the ensemble along with old faves, including my favorite Chanhassen dancer and perennial teenager Tony Vierling. In any of the big, fabulous dance numbers (choreographed by Tamara Kangas Erickson), my eyes naturally gravitate towards him.  Two more Chanhassen faves Julianne Mundale and Janet Hayes Trow play the two less than supportive, but very funny and entertaining, mothers.
• Kasano Mwanza has the moves as Seaweed, and the voice too.  Run and tell that!
• After I saw the Elvis jukebox musical All Shook Up at the Chan last year, I wrote this: "If Aimee K. Bryant was auditioning for the role of Motormouth Maybelle in next year's Hairspray, she won it in my book!"  Apparently it wasn't only in my book, as she is playing the role and doing an amazing job!
• We had an understudy for Corny Collins, Ben Johnson, and he was excellent.  He's everything Corny should be - suave and charming with a beautiful voice (he sings with the Minnesota Opera).  Speaking of understudies, I see Kinaundrae Lee is an understudy for the Dynamites, which I would love to see!  He played Angel in a local production of RENT last year so I know he can sing and dance in heels!

Hairspray has been extended through May so you have plenty of time to make the trip out to the Southwest suburbs to see this colorful production of a super fun show.  You'll laugh and dance, and maybe even be reminded that like Tracy, sometimes you need to take a stand to make a difference.  It may not end up with everyone happily dancing together, but it might get things moving.

"The Scottsboro Boys" at the Guthrie Theater

I just got home from seeing The Scottsboro Boys at the Guthrie Theater, and am listening to the soundtrack as I write this. It’s a brilliant new musical by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, and we get to see it here in Minneapolis before it moves to Broadway this fall. It’s funny, disturbing, thought-provoking, moving, and filled with great music and choreography (Susan Stroman directed and choreographed the show). The majority of talented cast will be heading to Broadway with the show, one exception being David Anthony Brinkley, frequent member of the cast at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, as the Interlocutor (sadly, John Cullum, aka Holling Vincoeur on my favorite TV show Northern Exposure, did not make the trip to Minnesota). Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon play Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, fixtures in the minstrel show and comic relief, and several other characters. The nine talented actors and dancers protraying "the boys" are led by Joshua Henry, who gives a beautiful and heart-breaking performance as Haywood. The youngest of the boys really was a boy – 13 years old and played by the adorable Jeremy Gumbs.

The Scottsboro Boys is the final show of the 2009-2010 Guthrie season in the McGuire Proscenium Stage. My season seat in this theater is in the front row, which is actually the cheap seats because apparently the first row is “too close,” which doesn’t exist in my world. When I got to my seat I was excited to see that there’s an actual pit with an orchestra (before I was a theater geek, I was a band geek, performing in the pit for two shows in high school). The music is wonderful and remiscent of Kander and Ebb's other great shows, Cabaret and Chicago. The set design for this show is really interesting; it mostly consists of mismatching dining room chairs painted silver, moved around and put together in different configurations to represent a train, a bus, a jail cell, and a courtroom.

The show is structured as a minstrel show, telling the true story of nine black men who were accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. They were convicted and sentenced to death in a sham of a trial, just a few weeks after they were accused. The appeals and trials lasted for six years, going all the way to the US Supreme Court. The show illustrates what these young men went through to find justice, and challenges us to rethink our own ideas.

The Scottsboro Boys is the kind of show that gives me hope for the future of musical theater; in an age where every other show on Broadway is a TV or movie adaptation, this is an original piece about a unique and important story. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see several Tony nominations and wins for this show next year. As Guthrie Theater Director Joe Dowling wrote in the program, “If, as I strongly believe, Oscar Wilde was right when he said that theater is ‘the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being,’ then The Scottsboro Boys teaches us about ourselves and our history while reminding us of these nine young men whose ordeal deserves to be remembered and commemorated.”

See John Kander talking about the show: