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Friday, April 6, 2007
A Spanish cockroach. On your radio dial.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Center for Puppetry Arts has always had an international flavor. Next season, it will even have a Spanish-speaking cockroach.
For the first time, the Midtown theater will offer kids’ shows in a combination of English and Spanish, with two productions by New York-based Teatro SEA. “La Cucarachita Martina” (“Martina, the Little Roach”) and “The Encounter of Juan Bobo & Pedro Animal” join a 2007-08 season that also boasts two world premieres by associate artist Jon Ludwig and the return of Bobby Box’s delicate and evocative “Anne Frank: Within and Without.”
The rationale for enhancing the center’s Spanish-language programming came with the discovery that there are 43 Hispanic Girl Scout troops in Georgia, executive director Vince Anthony says. “They came to us, and we wanted to really try to step up our Spanish initiative.”
Tickets and transportation for the Girl Scouts and other minority visitors will be funded through a grant from the Goizueta Foundation. The $500,000 gift from the Atlanta philanthropy is being awarded over three years and is being used to support other family shows as well.
“Diversity is not only in the programming,” Anthony says. “It’s in the pricing. That doesn’t mean they can’t afford it. It means we have to go out and find [audiences] in different places and make sure the prices reflect their whole socioeconomic situation.”
Anthony recently mentored administrators at Teatro SEA (Sociedad Educativa de las Artes) and felt the ensemble’s bilingual storytelling would be a perfect fit for the center.
Meanwhile, fans of Ludwig (“Avanti, Da Vinci!”) will be tickled that he’s creating two new shows next season: “Cinderella Della Circus,” which reimagines the woebegone fairy tale character as a frustrated aerial artist, and “Duke Ellington’s Cat,” which riffs on the premise that the jazz icon had a feisty feline side-cat.
In next season’s New Directions Series for adults, Box will revive his dollhouse-proportioned take on the story of Anne Frank; Ludwig and puppet builder Jason von Hinezmeyer will reprise their 19th-century Halloween cabaret, “The Ghastly Dreadfuls’ Compendium of Graveyard Tales and Other Curiosities,” and zany political satirist Paul Zaloom returns with “The Mother of All Enemies.”
For more information about the season, go online to www.puppet.org.
Radio show should please theater geeks
If you missed Eve Ensler at Oglethorpe University the other day, you can hear what the playwright has to say about political theater, the “Vagina Monologues” phenomenon and the irrelevance of critics on “Downstage Center,” an XM Satellite Radio program produced by American Theatre Wing and stored online at americantheatrewing.org. Produced by the institution behind Broadway’s Tony Awards, the interviews, heard on XM Channel 28 or available free on iTunes, are more than pithy sound bites. The hourlong shows — featuring everyone from “Spring Awakening” star Stephen Spinella to “Company” director John Doyle to “The Color Purple” librettist Marsha Norman — are deep, substantive and entertaining. Ruben Santiago-Hudson talks about his connection with the work of August Wilson. Actor Billy Crudup helps elucidate the Tom Stoppard trilogy “The Coast of Utopia.” Jerry Herman waxes enthusiastic about composing for Carol Channing (“Hello, Dolly!) and Harvey Fierstein (“La Cage aux Folles”). My favorite so far: actress Blair Brown on Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House,” which she read as a judge for a playwriting contest and never expected to star in. “A lot of the play,” Brown says, “is about how laughter and tears are side by side.”
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‘Always … Patsy Cline’ @ 14th Street Playhouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
We all like to imagine that we could be friends with the artists we admire. I don’t mean painters, because pictures can be remote. Or movie stars, because they are often too grandiose to come down from the clouds.
I’m talking about singers. Earthy lounge acts. Cabaret divas. Those big-band canaries of yesteryear. Even the occasional “American Idol” contender. Because singing can be, should be, intimate and emotionally revealing. As tender and personal as a whisper. Or a kiss.
Patsy Cline oozed the kind of realness that makes those who are unhappy or unlucky in love feel less alone —- and Ted Swindley’s “Always … Patsy Cline” captures the way one Cline fan charmed her way into the heart of the big-voiced, Virginia-born songbird who died in a plane crash in 1963.
Backed by a terrific six-piece band, “Always” has parked itself at the 14th Street Playhouse to bodacious effect. Directed by the playwright himself and starring Cindy Summers as Patsy and Gwen Hughes as her ingratiating admirer, Louise, it’s a top-notch production that feels as warm and welcoming as the cozy ’50s dinette set where the two friends gather for a late-night plate of bacon and eggs.
Though Hughes has been a busy jazz singer around town for years, here she gets to unveil a comedic side that’s as vivid and unruly as her character’s orange-hennaed hair. To be honest, her big-as-Texas performance is so over-the-top and her twang so exaggerated that they take a little getting used to. At the other end of the spectrum, Summers is so well put together that she reminds you more of a daytime soap queen than a pint-size country gal.
Yet somehow, Summers’ exquisite control and Hughes’ warp-speed physicality make surprisingly compatible bedfellas. With her clenched smile, coy winks and dynamic renderings of the Cline repertoire, Summers seduces the audience without lifting a pinky, while Hughes bulldozes the crowd with her molasses-thick accent and Lucy-at-the-honky-tonk shtick. One small caveat: Though Cline died at 30, Summers seems to have overshot that number by at least a decade. Yet done up in an endless wardrobe of sequins and fringe (costumes are by Summers and Sandra Payne), she does more than just channel Patsy Cline. Wearing the confidence of her own remarkable talent as snugly as Patsy’s pink skirt, she’s pure radiance and charisma.
Like “Ain’t Misbehavin’, ” “Always … Patsy Cline” —- based on the true story of Cline and her friend Louise Seger —- is more than just a musical revue. It’s a bighearted, crowd-pleasing entertainment that suggests celebrities are often just regular people, hungry for the human touch.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 4 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 6 p.m. Sundays (no shows April 8). Through April 22. $39.50-$55. 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St., Midtown. 404-733-4750, woodruffcenter.org/14thstplayhouse.
THE VERDICT: You’d be crazy for not trying to catch it.
