SAN DIEGO THEATRE SCENE

"CURTAIN CALLS" #244

By Pat Launer

www.sdtheatrescene.com

05/23/08

Music, film and drama are local boasts;

Now we’ve also got Holy Ghosts.

Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth

THE SHOW: Holy Ghosts, the 1971 folk drama by Romulus Linney (father of screen actor Laura Linney), who frequently writes about outsiders and down-and-out Appalachians. A native of the South (North Carolina and Tennessee), he’s well acquainted with fundamentalists, evangelical cults, fire-and-brimstone preachers and Holy Rollers. The play was first produced at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and was presented twice Off Broadway.

Well-respected local director DJ Sullivan has coached many San Diegans over her four decades in the business, including former San Diegan Tony Award winners Brian Stokes Mitchell (Kiss Me, Kate) and Christian Hoff (Jersey Boys).

THE STORY: Nancy Stedman is an unhappy rural Southern wife of less than a year, who flees her abusive, hard-drinking husband and barren marriage, and takes up with a sect of snake-handlers. The angry, brutish Coleman Stedman comes roaring after her, lawyer in tow, screaming abandonment and demanding divorce – and the return of his Dodge pickup. He discovers that his wife is planning to marry the Pentecostal preacher, Obediah Buckhorn, Sr., who has an open-door policy and a penchant for young parishioners, whom he regularly weds, though they do seem to die off right-quick. As the marrieds duke it out, the congregation chimes in, each outcast stepping forward to tell a tortured story. It all culminates when the snakes come out, and the wailing and convulsing, testifyin’ and salvation begin.

Linney is by no means ridiculing, satirizing or condemning these believers. He presents them rather sympathetically and lets us make up our own minds. There’s a poignancy to their stories; these are the American underclass: uneducated, un(or under)employed, frequently humiliated, often desperate. All they want is a little acceptance, and a sense of belonging. That the Rev. Buckhorn happily provides.

And the snakes? Well, the belief is that handlers are touched with spirit and power. They hear the voice of Jesus telling them that if they believe, anything is possible. Even a deadly snake won’t harm them. They quote Scripture to support their actions (which are illegal in many states): “… They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17-18). They say they’re “just doin’ what God told us to do.” And as for the ‘deadly thing to drink’ … there’s a jar of strychnine on the altar. You need to “need this faith really bad,” the preacher says. Then you can join them in “waiting for the Holy Ghost.”

Truth is, many real-life, Southern snake-handlers have met their maker thanks to snakebite, but the explanation is they just weren’t imbued with the power. As Obediah puts it, “Laws were passed and we’re still here. People have died, and we’re still here.” And they are, in fact, still around. At the Rock House Holiness Church in northeastern Alabama, the snake-handling evangelist John Wayne “Punkin” Brown died after being bitten by a timber ratter in 1998 (his family contended that the cause of death was heart attack). Three years earlier, in Kentucky, his wife died of a snakebite. And another Kentucky handler bit the snake-dust as recently as 2006.

But the play isn’t really about the snakes (though the snake-handling scene is its powerhouse, crescendo moment). Its main concerns are faith, freedom of religion, and most of all, finding your own path, family and community.

THE PRODUCTION: In the small, spare, 60-seat Swedenborgian Hall (interestingly, a non-mainstream church in its own right), the Sullivan Players are snaking through their fifth season. The production values are spartan, but Sullivan has clearly focused her time and attention on making the play work on an emotional level. The actors are as committed as the characters, and they play their roles with earnestness and in some cases, passion. The proceedings are enhanced by fervent hymn-singing, and pre-performance ‘mountain music’ provided by mandolin/harmonica-player Peter DuBois (who just happened by a rehearsal and offered his services for the run of the show).

Melanie Sutherlin does a fine job as Nancy; her interactions and arguments with Michael Barnett’s Coleman are especially potent. Barnett is forceful and compelling, heavy on the yelling at first, but also able to be quiet and contrite, and to collapse credibly into a heap of tears. Theater veteran Joe Nesnow plays Obediah with force (if not the preacher’s implied sexuality). Alan Lewis gets the laughs (and the whiskey) as the retired lawyer who’s ready for a new life (and maybe even a new wife).

Every parishioner has a story; one of the most memorable comes from Carl, who’s obsessed with his beloved bird-dog. His long monologue of loss and devotion is expertly handled by Shaun Farrell. Bonnie Bridge (Kate Cruz) tells a harrowing tale of being an unattractive, unpopular girl with a beautiful sister; she endured a lifetime of ‘lifting her skirts for any good Christian boy,’ but she found her home at this little church, even if it didn’t work out so well for her sister. Young Billy Boggs (Christopher Hickey) speaks the unspeakable; he reluctantly acquired a wife and now has a 3 month-old baby he doesn’t really want. The piano-playing Mrs. Wall (Jo-Darlene Reardon) was “let loose” after 30 years of teaching Sunday school, replaced by a young college graduate (“That’s religion now”). Lorena Cosburg (Lucy Ann Albert) snuck away from her husband and children to attend the service. (“The only time I ever crossed anyone in my life was comin’ here!”). Big, lunky Oby (Adam Marcinowski), the preacher’s son, rhapsodizes about “the religious nature of bowling… the clear, pure wood and the ball rollin’ down and a perfect strike – it’s Him”). Cancer Man (Kevin Six, looking frighteningly pallid, but not particularly pained) has no treatment options and no place to go; but he’s a gentle, caring soul. And then there’s Howard and Orin (Michael Bova and Tom Walker), who found love and acceptance when one saved the other from suicide.

Coleman calls the histrionics “a sideshow…. a bunch of lunatics in a circus.” But we come to feel for these losers, loners and lowlifes, and we begin to understand what they get from this serpentine sanctuary that offers recognition, solace and salvation.

THE LOCATION: The Sullivan Players at Swedenborgian Hall (University Heights), through May 25

Intelligent Design

The most intelligent aspect of this week’s presentation by Carlsbad Playreaders (in addition to the writing and performances) was bringing back the wonderful Rolin Jones play, The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, which played at the Old Globe in 2004. Seema Sueko reprised her Patté Award-winning performance as an agoraphobic Chinese teen with OCD, a compulsion to build a robotic doppelganger and an obsession about finding her birth mother. If possible, she was even better than before, a whirlwind of tics and habits and smartass chatter.

The hip, serio-comic fantasy tackles so many issues – adoption, psychiatric disability, parental expectations and of course, intelligent design. Jennifer Marcus (Sueko) builds a robot from spare government parts, obsolete missile components (it’s kinda complex, but let’s just say she’s good enough for government work). She calls her creation, an android conception of herself, Jenny Chow, and sends her careening off, airborne, to China to find the birth mother that Jennifer can’t even leave her house to seek herself. It’s a poignant, heartbreaking story, on many levels.

Siobhan Sullivan chose an excellent cast, importing wonderfully malleable actor David G. Peryam from L.A. to play four very engaging and disparate roles, from a porno-crazed Mormon missionary to an offbeat Russian scientist. Jacob Caltrider(recently seen as the adorable dog Stonewall in the Diversionary Theatre premiere of The Daddy Machine) delightfully inhabited Jennifer’s stoner friend, Todd; and her parents, a tightass, insensitive mother and gentle but disaffected father (an injured fireman who longs for his former flame), were well played by Dana Case and Jim Chovick. As the Narrator, Gibran Lozano filled in the blanks, so we knew what was happening, even without a lot of techno-wizardry, which was a cornerstone of the Globe production directed by Kirsten Brandt and designed by her talented husband, David Lee Cuthbert. But without all the inventive technical distractions, this simple staged reading proved what a powerful play it is, and made it clear that some small theater should bring it back for a revisit soon.

NOTE 1: This was the season finale for Carlsbad Playreaders. Artistic director Jack Missett promises some intriguing changes next fall. Check back here for details.

NOTE 2: This should be dubbed The Year of Seema… It’s shaping up to be an amazing series of successes for the tiny dynamo. The group she founded, Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, was chosen to be the first local resident theater at the La Jolla Playhouse, where two of her productions will be mounted over the coming year. And next season, she’ll be directing at the Old Globe Theatre, bringing her searing work on Since Africa to an even broader audience (casting TBD). She’s finding it all thrilling, but a little scary… she keeps waiting for “the other shoe to drop.” But that doesn’t look likely. She’s definitely on a roll.

And this is the second local reach-out by the Globe: they’ve also chosen Esther Emery to direct next season (Sight Unseen, 8/2–9/7). Two locals, two directors, two mega-talented women. Bravo to both our esteemed Tony-winning theaters – and to San Diego’s newest superstars!

Three Cheers… for a local movie that’s getting shown at Film Festivals around the country. I was lucky to get a screening copy of “Ready? Ok!,” a wonderful, heartful, touching and funny film written and directed by San Diego filmmaker James Vasquez. Familiar local faces appear in comic roles: the inimitable Sandra Ellis-Troy plays a pot-smoking, hippie grandma; Jim Chovick is an avuncular priest; Steve Gunderson has a funny cameo as a befuddled mail carrier and Ari Lerner is a jeering peer of the central character, played by terrific child actor Lurie Poston. Carrie Preston (who appeared in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Christian Barcelona” and is a series regular on the new HBO show, “True Blood,” set to premiere in the fall) won Best Actress at FilmOut San Diego. Her real-life brother, John G. Preston, plays her twin in the movie; they were both excellent and convincing. At this year’s FilmOut San Diego, the film was also singled out as Best U.S. Narrative Feature and James Vasquez was named Outstanding Emerging talent. The film is sheer delight, about a smart, precocious preteen boy who just wants to be a cheerleader, despite the censure of his classmates and Catholic school administrators, and the uncertainty of his confused, single mom. He gets encouragement from his irresponsible uncle, his free-spirited Grandma and the gay tailor who lives next door. A wonderful story of outsiders that promotes the message: ‘Don’t break the rules. Change them.’ “Ready? Ok!” now heads off to film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Ft. Worth and Baltimore, and more. Wish it luck… and wide distribution.

An Evening of Music and Learning… A little like a Hershey Felder play… without the high drama… A wonderful lecture/recital series, part of the 9^th annual San Diego Jewish Music Festival, it’s called “Jewish Composers – Jewish Music in the 20^th Century,” and it’s presented by Steven Cassedy, Professor of Literature and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at UCSD. His background is in Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature, but he was also trained as a classical pianist at Juilliard (pre-college division) and the University of Michigan. The first of the three weekly sessions focused on Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1051), who composed music that helped overturn conventional Western harmony. Schoenberg converted to Lutheranism at age 23, but with the rise of Nazism, ‘re-converted’ to Judaism, emigrated to the U.S. in 1933, and spent the rest of his life breaking down musical barriers and repeatedly returning to Jewish themes in his music.

This week’s presentation was all about two Jewish immigrants in early 20^th century America: George Gershwin (1898-1937) and Jerome Kern (1885-1945, best known for the 1927 score of Show Boat). The evening, which was attended by a crowd in excess of 400, was framed by Cassedy’s performance of “Rhapsody in Blue,” which served as a springboard to a discussion of how Gershwin succeeded in integrating jazz into both classical and popular music. He also quoted from the notoriously anti-Semitic Henry Ford, who equated the Jews with the “monkeys” who create “Congo music” and the “seductive syncopation that swamped the harmony of real music.” Highly enlightening info, and Cassedy’s piano-playing really enhances the experience. The final lecture/recital focuses on Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) and Ernest Bloch (1880-1959), composers who emigrated from Europe and taught at American Universities. Listen and learn, at 7:30pm on Tuesday, May 27 at the Lawrence Family JCC in La Jolla. 858-362-1348 or tickets.lfjcc.org.

NEWS AND VIEWS ….

… Sweet 15… The San Diego Repertory Theatre is closing its 32^nd anniversary season with the 15^th annual Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival (May 27-June 30)… and it’s filled with drama. One highlight is acclaimed monologist Josh Kornbluth, who will present two of his signature solo performances. Red Diaper Baby, an affectionate re-telling of Josh’s leftist upbringing, recently premiered on the Sundance Channel as a concert film and will soon be available on DVD. Wed. May 28 at 7:30pm, in the Lyceum Space. Citizen Josh is just right for the election season, a rip-roaring piece that considers the role of civility in modern debate. This one’s co-sponsored by ion theatre and Sledgehammer Theatre which, under the aegis of Kirsten Brandt, brought Josh to town to perform both these pieces several years ago. 7:30pm on May 29 in the Lyceum Space.

This year, the Arts Festival is inaugurating the 1^st Annual Festival of New Jewish Plays, an event that recalls the enlightening 1980s days of the Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays. The first Festival plays include Bluish, by Atlanta playwright Janece Shaffer, which explores what happens when an aspiring Jewish TV reporter discovers that his non-Jewish fiancée was actually born Jewish. This unnerves the couple and leads them to examine what being married, and being Jewish, are all about. The play had a successful run last year at the Arizona Jewish Theatre Co. June 16 at 7:30pm.

The Wondering Jew is a world premiere reading created by prolific local actor/director/writer Matt Thompson, new artistic director of the new Compass Theatre (formerly 6^th @ Penn). In his comedy, a Jewish son brings a very non-Jewish date to his family’s not-so-traditional Passover seder. June 17 at 7:30pm. Both plays will be presented at North Coast Repertory Theatre. www.northcoastrep.org.

… No tears… IMHO, the dancing was the best part of Cry-Baby, the John Waters film-based musical that launched at the La Jolla Playhouse and went right to Broadway. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels that way. Choreographer Rob Ashford (who won his Tony for Thoroughly Modern Millie, which also went on to Broadway from the La Jolla Playhouse), was just honored with the Fred & Adele Astaire Award for Best Choreography on Broadway, and he also received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography, while the show’s Spencer Liff nabbed an Astaire Award as Best Male Dancer on Broadway.

.. Speaking of awards, another former San Diegan was nominated for a Tony. Danny Burstein (UCSD MFA 1990) received a nod for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Luther Billis in the acclaimed revival, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, which just out-stripped every other Broadway show at the annual Drama Desk Awards presentation, snagging five of the little fellers… And speaking of UCSD, first-year MFA playwright Ron McCants has triumphed again. His marvelous one-act, The Strangest Fruit, just premiered at the Baldwin New Play Festival, and won Honorable Mention in the Kennedy Center’s 2008 Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. Now the imaginative young playwright is one of three nationwide winners of a $10,000 Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship, presented by The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, in association with Ernst & Young LLP, in honor of the creator and long-time host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The scholarships provide support and encouragement for aspiring students to pursue careers in children’s media.

THE READING CORNER

… Don’t Duck out on Memorial Day … Catch ion theatre’s staged reading of The Wild Duck, the fifth installment of its yearlong Intimate Ibsen series. Written in 1884, The Wild Duck is both a domestic tragedy and a morality tale. Before the performance, which will be directed by San Diego Rep co-founder D.W. Jacobs, Ibsen scholar and series translator Brian Johnston will present a symposium on the play, followed by a discussion with the audience. Monday, May 26. Reservations highly encouraged. In the Lyceum Theatre Space: Symposium at 4pm, Reading at 7pm (with a one-hour dinner-break in between). tickets@iontheatre.com.

And ion has a SPECIAL OFFER for you. Smith and Kraus Publishers, corporate sponsors of “ion’s intimate ibsen,” is test-marketing a new series called IN AN HOUR, short works on playwrights such as Chekhov, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams. So, if you’ve seen ion’s La Gaviota or attended the Ibsen series or plan to buy tickets for ion’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire (previews begin June 28), call the ion-line (619-374-6894) and leave your name and phone number. ion will make a copy of one of the books available to you at their homebase at The Academy of Performing Arts. Fill out a survey after reading the book (hopefully, IN AN HOUR, as promised) and mail or fax it to Smith and Kraus; the publisher will send you a Smith and Kraus book of your choice for free. Such a deal. Check out their offerings at www.smithankraus.com.

… More drama on Memorial Day… Sandra Ellis-Troy and Antonio TJ Johnson star in a reading of Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about feuds, family, friendship, race and acceptance. Joe Powers is also in the cast, directed by Moonlight Stage Productions artistic director Kathy Brombacher. At the Avo Theatre, 7:30pm on Monday, May 26. http://www.moonlightstage.com/events.

DANCE DEPARTMENT

… Rincon Dance announces the Blurred Borders Dance Festival, an evening of multi-media dance-theater from three dance companies: Lux Boreal from Mexico, Yolande Snaith (London/San Diego/UCSD) and the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective, which features street footage from Buenos Aires video artist Paula Zacharias. 8pm on May 30 and 31, at the Saville Theatre, on the campus of San Diego City College (right next door to the KSDS Jazz88 studios, on C St. off 14^th). http://www.rincondance.org/events.html. 760-632-5340

…New digs for Mojalet… Faith Jensen-Ismay is thrilled to announce a new space for her Mojalet Dance Collective at the Rancho Bernardo Winery. “Mojalet’s Creative Community Center: The Vine” will house classes, and will serve as a small, black-box, 50-60-seat performance space. Renovations start in a few weeks; the plan is to make the venue available and affordable to other artists. The goal is to provide the North County community with music, theater, film and visual arts in a historic setting. Mojalet is planning a celebrational gathering on Tuesday, July 8. www.mojalet.com

'NOT TO BE MISSED!' (Pat’s Picks)

Corpus Christi – highly theatrical, thoroughly delightful – and very respectful (even if Jesus and the Apostles are gay)

Diversionary Theatre, through 6/1

The weather’s warming up, but theater’s always cool.

Pat

© 2008 PATTÉ PRODUCTIONS, INC.

For more than 20 years, Pat Launer has been the only regular broadcast theater critic in San Diego. An Emmy Award-winner with a Ph.D. in Communication Arts & Sciences, Pat sees and reviews more than 200 local theater productions every year. For the past decade, she has hosted and produced The Patté Awards for Theatre Excellence, a gala community event that honors local theatermakers (“San Diegans making theater for San Diego”) and celebrates the broad diversity of San Diego theater.