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Friday, May 25, 2007
Weekend pick: ‘Metamorphoses’ @ Georgia Shakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like earth separating from water, the myths of Ovid have settled into themselves with an ethereal, timeless beauty at Georgia Shakespeare.
Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” — first presented last summer in an acclaimed production that won five coveted Suzi Bass Awards — has been reprised for a quick swim in set designer Tim Conley’s luminous 24-foot, onstage pool.
The intermissionless, 90-minute play is a one-of-a-kind evening that pours the ocean-size tales of the ancient gods into a human-scale vessel dripping with love, desire and death. Sometimes all those passions converge into a single image, as when the grieving Queen Alcyone (Park Krausen) and the drowned King Ceyx (Daniel May) are transformed into the birds of the Halycon Days.
This year, actor Brandon J. Dirden has been replaced by Brik Berkes, a marvelous addition to this company of polished, articulate and physically striking performers. In particular, Berkes is terrific as the all-devouring King Erysichthon. Chris Kayser is delightful as the languorous and lugubrious Sleep. And Courtney Patterson makes an awe-inspiring transformation from a regal queen in one scene to a lurching and cadaverous Hunger in the next.
Though there are funny moments to be sure, director Richard Garner’s tone seems more subtle, hushed and melancholy than it did on the first outing. As one character says, “Time can only move in one direction.” In helping us reflect on the joy and despair of the journey, “Metamorphoses” is the most ennobling and evocative show in town. It would be a shame to miss it.
THE 411: Through June 3. $15-$35. Contains nudity and adult situations. Georgia Shakespeare, Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-264-0020, www.gashakespeare.org.
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‘Mount Pleasant Homecoming’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B +
Evening, folks. How y’all doing tonight? Glad y’all could come. With Mervin heading out to pastor in Texas and June expecting her firstborn, this here promises to be a right special night at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church —- ‘specially since the Sanders Family has scooted in to sang for us.
If Mervin would stop boohooing over any mention of his late Mama, if Denise could just make little Eldon and Weldon behave themselves, we might be able to have us a real nice homecoming. We shore do have a lot to discuss, since Dennis is back from the war, Burl has done bought the homeplace and Mervin is bidding adieu to his job at the pickle plant.
If you know Alan Bailey and Connie Ray’s “Smoke on the Mountain” or “Sanders Family Christmas, ” the screwball Southern church group known as the Sanders Family needs no introduction. Regular visitors at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square for years now, these hee-hawing hallelujah nitwits are back with the world premiere of “Mount Pleasant Homecoming, ” a delightful gospel hootenanny that packs enough hillbilly nonsense to guarantee a baptism by laughter.
Bailey and Ray have mastered the rhythm of their corn-pone brand of storytelling, which operates in the time-tested tradition of Sunday morning worship: pithy, hayseed testimonials, followed by giddy and infectious hymn singing, which is almost always a cue to deploy a handy arsenal of impromptu percussive devices and props. These crackpot comedic scribes know how to circle back again and again to the same gag —- be it pickle punditry, Scripture slams or the Sanders gals’ propensity for producing twins.
Doubling as director and set designer, Dex Edwards creates a beautifully authentic country-church interior, then fills the quiet sanctuary with a ruckus. His hammy ensemble exploits the ’40s-era material chapter and verse.
Chief among the buffoons are Alan Kilpatrick as the overwrought Rev. Mervin Oglethorpe and Jennifer Akin as his unexcitable wife, June, elder daughter of the Sanders clans. Whereas Kilpatrick excels in outsize, foot-in-mouth physicality, Akin is a delightful practitioner of understatement, as when her character struggles to conceal a creeping case of nausea. Blech.
Laura Floyd’s Denise Sanders Culpepper has a lovely soprano voice and a Scarlett O’Hara silhouette and becomes hysterically unglued when her demonic offstage twins wreak havoc in the parking lot. Poor thing.
At 2 1/2 hours, 16 songs and two extended medleys, “Mount Pleasant Homecoming” feels 15 minutes longer than necessary; as every character shares his or her spiritual epiphany, time drags.
But who am I to quibble? Theatre in the Square’s audience is eating it up. The house, according to managing director Raye Varney, is “sold to the rafters, ” and after the show closes June 10, the whole kit and caboodle is moving to the newly renovated Dallas Theatre in nearby Dallas, Ga.
A foolproof family entertainment that already feels like a classic, “Mount Pleasant Homecoming” appears to be “leaning on the everlasting arms” of a grateful and spirited community.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through June 10. $22-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, www.theatreinthesquare.com. June 22-July 8 at the Dallas Theatre in Dallas, Ga. Call Theatre in the Square for details and tickets.
THE VERDICT: Reserve a pew.
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‘Stick Fly’ @ True Colors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: D+
The LeVays seem to have it all. The men are rich and good-looking. They have Ivy League educations and a house on Martha’s Vineyard. They have servants. Oh, and by the way, the LeVays are black.
In a perfect world, skin tone wouldn’t make any difference. But playwright Lydia R. Diamond’s “Stick Fly” is a domestic powder keg that derives its tension and heat by stirring together elements of race, adultery, hypocrisy and family dysfunction.
At first glance, this True Colors Theatre production looks like a sendup of the African-American middle class, which, based on the evidence here, seems to be as shallow and materialistic as its white counterpart. But what Diamond has in mind is far more than just a gentle poke at the brand-consciousness and navel-gazing of the elite.
The trouble in this seaside paradise doesn’t begin when the elder son (Javon Johnson) brings home a white girlfriend (Elizabeth Wells Berkes), but when the sensitive younger son (Jahi Kearse) introduces his fiancee (Je Nie Fleming), whose abandonment issues ultimately reveal her to have a good deal in common with the daughter of the family maid (Ayesha Ngaujah).
If you’ve watched a daytime soap, you won’t have any trouble predicting where the story of imperious patriarch Joe LeVay (GregAlan Williams) is going —- particularly since Diamond drops plenty of hints. Though director Derrick Sanders keeps the drama on track, “Stick Fly” is a tedious, derivative and virtually humorless train wreck of a play overstuffed with issues, status jokes and gratuitous, lukewarm sex.
Novel-writing son Kent (Kearse) is vintage Tennessee Williams. His strident girlfriend Taylor (Fleming) is pure Lorraine Hansberry. Joe is an upscale version of August Wilson’s Troy Maxon. And so on. Though you understand how True Colors wants to identify emerging voices, this choice is a befuddlement. Men are pigs. Women and children suffer. Tell us something new.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through June 3. $20. True Colors Theatre, Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 768-528-1500, truecolorstheatrecompany.com.
THE VERDICT: A big mess.
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