"The Big Show" by Theatre Forever at the Southern Theater

I grew up on game shows. Shows like The 10,000 Dollar Pyramid, Hollywood Squares, The Joker's Wild, and my favorite, Family Feud. Theatre Forever's The Big Show hearkens back to those good old days, and it's great fun. But it also digs a little deeper as popular host Jackie Cartwright takes the opportunity of his final show to look back on his life and the sacrifices he made to get where he is. In addition to being funny and entertaining, The Big Show is also sad and poignant at times, with some really beautiful images created in the gorgeous space that is the Southern Theater. Unfortunately the show is closing tonight, so let me get right down to it:

• Brant Miller as Jackie Cartwright is, as always, so funny and inventive and totally committed to his character. Jackie is a combination of every game show host from the 70s, with more than a little Richard Dawson and his penchant for kissing the ladies and the catch phrase "survey says!" But there's a desperation just underneath the big personality, as he contemplates what his life will be like now that the show is ending after he pushed everything aside for it.
• This wonderful ensemble (who also helped to create the piece along with director Jon Ferguson, Dominic Orlando, and Brant Miller) includes Joanna Harmon and Tony Sarnicki as game show contestants, as well as Jackie's wife and son; Katelyn Skelley and Leslie O'Neil as the game show assistants/dancers with their perfect 70s hair; and Mark Benzel and Robert Haarman as a couple of stagehands that help to set the scenes both in the game show and in Jackie's life.
• The trippy 70s vibe is fantastic, and the women's costumes are especially fab, from the flowy pastel dresses of Jackie's assistants, made for twirling, to Joanna's super cool floral jumpsuit.
• The lighting (designed by Per Olson) helps to create the mood of reflection, with some really lovely effects created by the hanging light bulbs and light bulbs on sticks wielded by the cast. Various props are also put into effect, my favorite being the single feather that softly and elegantly falls from the ceiling. Jackie has an obsession with the night sky, which comes into play in the beautiful ending. 

A note in the program summarizes the impetus for the show as such: "Brant wanted to make a game show, Jon wanted to make a piece about afterlife, and Dominic wanted to make a piece about a nervous breakdown on television." Mission accomplished on all fronts. Fresh and original, with a touch of nostalgia, tons of humor, and some really lovely moments such as the one below.

"Basic North" by Live Action Set at the Southern Theater

The bare, cavernous, gorgeous stage at the Southern Theater. That's about as exciting as it gets in the world of theater - you never know what magic is going to happen in that big open space in front of you. Currently, it's Live Action Set's new creation Basic North: a performance in three directions. But I didn't see three directions, I saw one cohesive piece, where one "chapter" flows into another and back again. I don't want to say too much about the show, firstly because it's difficult to describe, but mostly because it's the surprise factor that makes it so delightful. I really had no idea what to expect, and I was entertained, moved, amused, and yes, delighted by what I saw.

The three chapters consist of:

• Without Wax: a six-person ensemble (Crane Adams, Artistic Director Noah Bremer, Joanna Harmon, Skyler Nowinski, Tyler Olsen, and Katelyn Skelley) dressed in party clothes and sharing seemingly mundane details about their daily life. Using a technique developed by director Dario Tangelson based on the "neutral mask," each actor looks directly at the audience and speaks with no expression, while the rest of the ensemble shuffles around to stare at them blankly. It's strange and fascinating.
• Start Select: a dance piece featuring Emily King, Dustin Maxwell, and Stephanie Shirik. I'm not a dance expert so I'm not sure how to describe this, other than it's inventive, expressive, and seamlessly woven into the other parts of the piece (and the bright costumes and wigs are adorable!).
• Quiet Heart: a solo piece by Noah Bremer, using clown techniques. He opens the show with just a spotlight and a microphone (that he never actually speaks into), which sets the stage for the rest of the show to come. He's so expressive without saying a word, conveying emotions with just the expression on his face or the movement of his body.

I'll end this with a quote from one of the performers, Joanna Harmon, who's also the Executive Director of Live Action Set: "It takes guts to say, 'Surprise me! Show me what ya got! Throw me a curve ball,' and with joy, choose to experience a show in which you have never before been immersed." If that sounds at all intriguing to you, then you should definitely catch one of the remaining five performances. And if you missed last year's brilliant and Ivey Award-winning 7-Shot Symphony, you might also want to check out the one-night-only performance of the show, along with a CD-release party (from the bluegrass band Tree Party) on Monday July 2, also at the Southern.

no, these are not the costumes seen in the show,
but I'm sure they symbolize something...

"Come Hell and High Water" by The Moving Company at the Southern Theater

Come Hell and High Water is the third show of my Southern Theater season, which includes four plays I’d never heard of by small local theater companies unknown to me. Like the previous shows in the season (Theatre Novi Most’s Oldest Story in the World and Four Humors Theater’s Age of Wordsworth), Come Hell and High Water is not your typical evening at the theater. All of these shows stretch the definition of theater and play with music and movement as storytelling devices. This is what makes theater fun for me.  I never know just what to expect when I go to the Southern Theatre, but I'm always delighted and surprised by what I see.

Come Hell and High Water is a production of a new theater company called The Moving Company ("we do theatre"), founded by Steve Epp and Dominique Serrand of Theatre de la Juene Lune, which closed its doors in 2008.  Sadly, I was only just beginning to become aware of all of the amazing and varied theater companies in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area at that time, so I never saw a Jeune Lune production, for which I am now kicking myself. But hopefully a bit of their spirit lives on in this new company.  Their mission is "to create and produce new and challenging theatre that builds on the past, is grounded in the present, and looks to the future. To maintain and nourish an atmosphere for the development of new ideas."

Come Hell and High Water is an adaptation of William Faulkner’s novella Old Man. Steve Epp (who I’ve seen twice previously this year, in The Homecoming at Center Stage in Baltimore, and recently as the title character in Ten Thousand Thing’s Man of La Mancha) adapted the story and plays the old man. As the play opens, the "old man" wanders in from the street, recently released from prison in New Orleans on the brink of Hurricane Katrina.  He begins to recount his experience as a prisoner during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (the most destructive river flood in US history).  Nathan Keepers plays his younger self, and both actors are onstage for the majority of the 90 minute show. Steve and Nathan do a wonderful job of playing one character, often completing each others sentences or speaking in unison, and adopting the same voice and mannerisms. By the end of the show I felt like they were one person.  Back in 1927, the old man is a young man in prison for attempting to rob a train. When the flood comes he’s given a boat and told to rescue a woman in a tree and a man on a roof. He never finds the man, but he rescues the very pregnant woman.  She gives birth as they float down the river to New Orleans.  It’s a transformative event in both of their lives.

This production features beautiful and eclectic music. Most of it is music of the time and place, a traditional Americana sound (which I love). Other than voices, the only instrument is a guitar played by Per Halaas.  Christina Baldwin is responsible for the music arrangement and also plays the woman in the tree. She has an incredible range, both in the notes she can sing and in the styles of music she can sing. I’ve seen her in such diverse shows as Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance at the Guthrie (one of my all-time favorite Guthrie shows) and Grey Gardens at the Ordway, in which she played Little Edie. In this show she sings everything from "Peace in the Valley” to a classical piece. The ensemble of about a dozen people, curiously dressed as a priest, a mailman, and other seemingly displaced characters, provides the musical backdrop and witnesses the story unfolding. They also play with water, at times making music with it. At the end of the show water rains down on the Southern Theater, and it’s a beautiful release.  (No need to bring an umbrella, the audience doesn't get wet. ;)

As I mentioned, there's water on set, in bins set into something like kitchen counters. There's also a refrigerator on stage, and everything has a water mark a few feet above the ground as if it had been through a flood. One of my favorite parts of the set is a sort of teeter-totter – a wooden plank balancing on a stack of sandbags. It serves as a boat for part of the story, and the convict and the pregnant woman perform a magical balancing act that looks effortless and graceful.  But I imagine that it took hours of rehearsal to get it that way!  Another unique feature of the show is a deer played by dancer Katelyn Skelley with all the skittishness and grace you'd expect in a deer.  Why there's a deer in the flood I'm not sure, but it adds another unique and beautiful element to the play.

This show is a timely piece with the recent flooding along the Mississippi River (was there ever a time when the Mississippi didn’t flood?). Come Hell and High Water uses water and floods as a way to explore themes of the past, regret, racism, hope, and hopelessness. As the old man says in the opening line of the show, “The past is never dead. It ain’t even past. It’s just there… same as a river.” This is a really beautiful production of a new work that’s inventive, surprising, moving, entertaining, and a pure pleasure to watch.