Philly Stage

Tags

FrankX, Lantern Theater Company, PhillyStage, Plays&Players, Robert Bolt

A Play for All Seasons

The Lantern Theater Company

A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Plays & Players Theater, Philadelphia

Through April 10

http://www.lanterntheater.org

The Lantern Theater Company returned to live performances with a gorgeous revival of Robert Bolt’s ‘A Man For All Seasons.’ Peter DeLaurier directs a stellar ensemble cast led by FrankX as Sir Thomas More, the uncompromisable nobleman who navigates the treacherous minefield of the court of Henry VIII.

As good as the 1966 movie starring British star Paul Scofield and directed by Fred Zinnemann remains, many of Bolt’s soliloquies are condensed or cut completely. And it is terrific to hear a full rendering of Bolt’s script on played out on the Lantern stage.

For contemporary classical actors it presents a gallery of rich characters and Bolt’s riveting dialogue cycles DeLaurier’s sharp and sensitive direction illuminates every angle of this brilliant script.

It is not only a thrilling depiction of political hubris, but about ideas conscience in a corrupt world, as timely today as it was in the 60s or the Tudor court of the 1600s,’ in other words, it resonates in this or any other season.

The story unfolds at Thomas More’s estate and the private world he has built for his wife and his daughter, revered by King Henry VIII, but maintaining his political distance from scabrous court intrigue.

When Henry VIII seeks a divorce from Catherine of Spain because she has borne him no son and heir and is now in love with Anne Boleyn who he knows will bear him sons, he orders Cardinal Wolsey to get Sir Thomas More to officially support him.

Cardinal Wolsey summons Sir Thomas in the middle of the night, but his veiled threats are to no avail, as More dances around the arguments and stands on his principals.

Henry then visits More and his family at their estate. He matches wits with Thomas, complimenting and stroking his ego, but gets nowhere, so hurls some veiled threats that More doesn’t take seriously. When Wolsey dies, Henry sicks the ruthless Cromwell to find dirt on More, to charge him with corruption. ON manufactured evidence More loses everything and is jailed.

FrankX gives an electrifying, revelatory performance. It adds to his gallery of consummate performances from Shakespeare to Beckett that make him one of Philly’s most versatile actors of classic repertory.

Jake Blouch’s Henry VIII is full of fire, humor, and mystery and as the awkward journeyman Thomas, humbly courting Lady Margaret. Scott Greer is the ‘Common Man’ portraying multiple subservient roles with cynical swagger. Gregory Isaac also in multiple roles first as the wryly humorless Cardinal Wolsey trying to match wits with More, the as Thomas the awkward suitor to Lady Margaret and as the goateed, furtive diplomat Chapuys jockeying for court power by playing both ends against the political middle.

Bolt gives Lady Alice and Margaret a lot of heavy lifting from the sidelines of much of the dramatic action but Leah Brockman is as Lady Margaret and Elizabeth Scallen as Lady Alice captivate throughout.

Even though Margaret is not groomed to be a court decoration or married off to nobility, More is sternly against her betrothal to Thomas, whose agnosticism More considers heretical, even as he admires the young man’s convictions. Scallen’s Alice is heartbreaking as the wife knows the machinations of the court and what harms it can do her family.

Anthony Lawton is terrific as the snarlingly ambitious Cromwell . Benjamin Brown equally dynamic as More’s earnest compatriot, who tries to save him from being too noble, lest he end up in the tower. .Paul Harrold, in his first role as the court climbing Richard Rich is convincing as the malleable rube who can’t resist overriding his conscience for position.

Bolt’s brilliant script full of drama, tenderness, intrigue, and comedy elements that director Peter DeLaurier balances with tight, illuminating direction.

Lantern’s Fine production team make the most of Plays & Players proscenium theater. The production design by James Pyne, of a two-tiered stairwell gallery, in tandem with Lilly Fosner’s shadowy lighting design conjures gothic atmospherics. Add to that Chris Collucci’s period music adds Tudor noir soundscapes. And Kelly Meyer’s costume design with lush robes, gowns, accoutrement is dazzling court couture.

Stage

Tags

EgoPo Theater, PhillyStage, Sam Shepard

EgoPo Classic Theater

Buried Child

By Sam Shepard

Directed by Dane Eissler

Latvian Society Theater

7th & Spring Garden St. Philadelphia PA

through-Nov.10

www.egopotheater.org

Walter DeShielfs & Damien Wallace in a scene from Buried Child (photo courtesy of EgoPo Classic Theater

EgoPo Classic Theater explores the fertile theatrical ground of Sam Shepard this season in revivals of ‘Curse of the Starving Class’ ‘Fool for Love’ and his Pulitzer Prize winning stunner ‘Buried Child’ currently on stage at the Latvian Society Theater in Philadelphia.

The play is one of Shepard’s most scabrous works. A true tagi-comedy about myths of the American Dream. it is set on the fallow Illinois farm of Dodge and Halie, an elderly couple whose marriage has descended into a constant argument, often centered by the wayward paths of their two sons.

Halie is preparing to go out from her upstairs bedroom and hectoring Dodge about stopping smoking and taking his pills, her voice booming down the stairwell.  She laments over her sons, Bradley and Tilden, once having promising futures, now aimless and underfoot. Dodge, meanwhile, is camped out downstairs on the couch coughing his head off, as he swills bourbon, pops pills and chain smokes.   

Tilden has been profoundly affected by their disappointments. Once was star football player, ‘All-American,’ Hallie is fond of reminding him, he has just returned to live back on the farm from New Mexico, perhaps on the lam and trying to get his bearings by clinging to familial relationships and remnants of his former life.

Bradley ostensibly tries to keep things in order, or so he thinks. He cuts his hair when he is passed out, confiscates his booze and cleans up around him.  Dodge fights off Bradley’s fussing and theirs is a mutually bullying relationship.  Halie, meanwhile, has moved on in a fashion to cope with all of this dysfunction carrying on a fantasy relationship with a church pastor.

The drama and the comedy heats up when Tilden’s son, Vince, turns up after a six-year disappearance with his girlfriend Shelly and all hell breaks loose when no one seems to know him, except for Halie.  Secrets, lies, resentments, jealousies and betrayals flare up through this strange reunion. Halie returns from church to discover all of the mayhem unfolding in her house and then all hell breaks loose.  

Director Dane Eissler turns up the volume of Shepard’s more surreal plot twists in this family drama. There are increasingly puzzle and chunks of exposition are just more pieces to the puzzle. It is American gothic portrait at its most poignant and corroded.  A satiric character study, with echoes of No Exit with a Twilight Zone twist or three.

 Even with some bumpy transitional scenes as the scenario get more absurd, Eissler and a strong ensemble cast deliver Shepard’s electrifying dialogue cycles that resonate more than ever 40 years later.

Simpson and Wallace give great performances, and their dramatic gravitas and well as their adversarial comedic chemistry is riveting. Walter De Shields is haunting as Tilden, who zones out and becomes a silent child at any given time, giving up trying to communicate with Halie and Dodge, instead receding into an almost catatonic state. Carlo Campbell’s Bradley is alternately aggressive, perhaps compensating for any feelings of physical vulnerability because he has a prosthetic leg.  

Merci Lyons Cox and Mark Christie have a lot of heavy lifting as Shelly and Vince, as the outliers who turn the linear narrative inside out.  Shelly wants to get out of there, but finds herself thrust in the middle of the ugly family meltdown.  Cox and Christie’s millennial naturism to these roles gives this couple, and the play, a more contemporary feel.

The production design by Colin McIlvaine is vintage 70s Americana down to the earth tone furniture, wood vaulted windows and creepy stairwell. The symbolism is rich, especially in tandem with Molly Jo’s slashing filmic lighting design and Chris Saninno design of meditative music that flames out ominously.

Shepard died in 2017 from complications of ALS and there has never been a more appropriate time for EgoPo to remind us what an adroit and passionate observer of the delusions of the American psyche he was, now when we need it most.

Stage

Tags

Actors, CommunityTheater, Designers, Directors, PhillyStage, Shakespeare, Shakespeareans

Shakespeare in Clark Park

King Lear

Directed by Kittson O’Neill

Youth Symphony, Andres Gonzales, musical director-conductor

Set & Costumes by Sebastienne Mundheim

July 24-28, 2019

Clark Park, West Philadelphia

www.shakespeareinclarkpark.org

Charlotte Northeast, Kimie Muroya & Jessica Money as Goneril, Regan & Cordelia are summoned by Lear

On July 26 about a thousand people in West Philadelphia gathered in the natural amphitheater dubbed “the bowl” Shakespeare in Clark Park’s production of King Lear. Director Kittson O’Neill orchestrated a spirited ensemble cast of veteran and new-gen Shakespeareans, as well as a Community ensemble of actors, is supporting players that including military Veterans as King Lear’s loyal Knights.  

 The costume design by Sebastienne Mundheim an inspired mix of period Globe theater rustic tunics for the noble underlings- belts, silk doublets and battlement couture- contrasted by stunning court Japanese Kabuki Theater designs for Lear and his daughters.

Mundheim also used fabrics and simple block set pieces, staging tents and modular scrims that worked the sloping main staging area of Clark Park’s panoramic environs.  Visually it worked perfectly.  

 “King Lear” has so many crisscrossing plot lines and court intrigue in Lear that the plot points can be hard to follow.  O’Neill and dramaturg Meghan Winch streamlining the play with surgical cuts and sharp scene focus, all the while eliciting some of the most exciting performances of the year.

 Dan Kern is both entirely regal Lear and completely fragile father. His interpretive skill lets both the dialogue true breathe and the soliloquies resonate to every dramatic and poetic dimension. Brian Anthony Wilson equally moving as loyal, blinded Gloucester. His physical performance after he is blinded just riveting artistry and command is unforgettable.  Another protean classical actor Dan Hodge as Kent, impeccable naturalizing of the dialogue cycles, but losing none of the dramatic intensity.

Brian Anthony Wilson & Ezra Ali-Dow as Gloucester & Edmund in King Lear

 Charlotte Northeast’s masterful portrayal of Goneril can cast more Bardian shade than the majestic trees in Clark Park.  Northeast is the lusty and conniving Goneril, who betrays her husband the Duke of Albany. Kimie Muroya’s Regan proves she can be just as calculating to get what she wants as they divide up the spoils after Lear’s abdication.  And Jessica Money’s Cordelia has all of the deportment to make Cordelia earthy and heroic.

David Raine plays Albany who has few lines in before the denouement but weighs in mightily in the final scenes of the play.  Dan Hodge pitch-perfect as in dual roles Kent, and his alias as undercover rogue spying on Lear’s enemies. 

Breakout performances by younger players Cameron Delgrosso as Edgar, who also dons another persona as the mad beggar to navigate the court intrigue and to save Gloucester from death. Ezra Ali-Dow as Edmund, Edgar’s lusty false friend who has an affair with Regan.  

Play On! Philly’s Youth Symphony scores King Lear

 In the Arden over the staging area, the 19 musicians of the Youth Symphony presented by Play On! Philly musical education project. Andres Gonzalez, Musical Director, Play On! Philly, conducted The Youth Symphony, working in some Baroque interludes, as well as dramatic cinematic scoring, including some cracked note court heralds, that definitely would have sounded on involved period horns. The entire band performed appropriate percussive rain and wind score 20-minute scene during the storm. (& birds chirping & busses wheezing and whistles during some of the bawdier love scenes)  the classical excerpts and F/X atmospherics performed by  Youth Symphony from Play On!Philly

Jenna Kuerzi & Dan Hodge as The Fool & Kent in King Lear

Another musical highlight came as Lear starts to go mad, musing on “this great stage of fools.” And we were all fools in love for Jenna Kuerzi’s starry night, performance as Lear’s court Fool keeping in straight with ironic wisdom about life’s inescapable paradoxes. We were all fools in love for Jenna Kuerzi’s starry night performance belting out the Animals classic House of the Rising Sun-  Kuerzi a fine blues hollerer in Shakespeare in Clark Park’s holler. 

O’Neill’s dynamic use of the natural environment while maintaining scene focus keeps the play’s theatrical arc at a thrilling clip with clarity. O’Neill orchestrating this ensemble lead cast and the Community Ensemble actors tackling more than a dozen small roles made for rich moments.  Zounds! those Philly accents were as resonant as ever delivering Will’s timeless truths.