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Thursday, September 13, 2007
‘My Name Is Rachel Corrie’ @ Synchronicity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” Grade: B - 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 7. $15-$20. Synchronicity Performance Group, 7 Stages Back Stage Theatre, 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-484-8636, synchrotheatre.com
Rachel Corrie never lived to see her 24th birthday. But based on the trove of journal entries and emails she left behind, the peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer on the Gaza Strip had a profound and penetrating spirit. She was also a wonderful writer and precocious observer of human nature.
The young American’s brief but purposeful life is now being celebrated in “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” a one-woman show produced by Synchronicity Performance Group and starring Atlanta actress Courtney Patterson.
Directed by Rachel May, “Rachel Corrie” is a moving evening of theater, even if it’s a little preachy and a little padded. The opening scenes — in which Corrie relates material about her family, her boyfriend and her messy hovel of a room — are stronger than the second half, when Corrie travels to the Middle East. Here the material founders, as is often the case when the polemical subsumes the poetic.
There’s a kind of brutal beauty and symmetry in the way Corrie looks at the blood-red ceiling of her apartment and prophesies: “It is going to rip me to pieces.”
And there’s great good humor in the way the Washington state native comments that watching salmon swim upriver caused her to make a lifestyle change. “You imagine their moony eyes as you walk home from the bar in your slutty boots,” she says of her conversion from free spirit to freedom fighter.
Inspired by a trip to Russia, Corrie feels “awake for the first time.” Flying home to Washington, she knows that even the beauty of Puget Sound is not enough to satisfy her wandering soul. She wants to make a difference in the world.
With her ebullient personality and abundant talent, Patterson captures the quirky vitality of her subject. Is the actress too bright eyed and Lucy-like for this role? Is she a credible 20-something? Can she hold the stage alone for 100 minutes? These are legitimate questions, with no easy answers.
“Rachel Corrie” works better as a portrait of a regular kid than a martyr for a complex cause. To reduce her to an agenda, as this play too often does, is an easy out.
At a young age, Corrie had a sophisticated understanding of how time alters history and reshapes our own truth. Little did she know how time would change the way the world looks at her.
Bottom Line: Works better as a portrait of an regular girl than a political
‘Brewster Place’ @ Alliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B - At the Alliance Theatre. Through Sept. 30. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org
Inertia seems to be the guiding law of Gloria Naylor’s “The Women of Brewster Place.”
Living in a bleak inner-city housing project in a city at once anonymous and familiar, the women have magnificent stories to tell. Now if only they could get beyond that hulking wall that pins them into their abandoned corner of the universe.
Tim Acito’s new musical telling of “The Women of Brewster Place” opened Wednesday at the Alliance Theatre with all the dreamlike stasis of the novel. Working as composer, lyricist and librettist, Acito has assembled a glorious array of songs but failed to shape his complicated recipe into a satisfactory narrative pie. “Brewster Place” has layers of wonderful flavors, but it comes out more like a casserole than a souffle.
Too many ingredients. Needs finesse.
Though the 1989 “Brewster Place” miniseries was plagued with issues, it had Oprah Winfrey as Mattie Michael, a diligent single mother who ends up in the projects after her truant son strips her of her pride and most of her material possessions. Mattie’s the constant star in Naylor’s swirling galaxy of personalities. But with nine major characters, 27 songs and little actual dialogue, Acito gives almost equal treatment to each of Naylor’s seven, interconnected stories. As a result, his world premiere, directed by Molly Smith and scheduled for an October run at Smith’s Arena Stage in Washington, has no consistent point of view.
Having said that, I hasten to say, once again, that the music — and the performances — are exquisite.
As Mattie, Tina Fabrique is possessed of Sarah Vaughan’s throaty sensuality and Ella Fitzgerald’s sassy physique. Nearly every note she touches becomes a heart-melting experience. Her mesmerizing solo — “How Do We Get Through to You?” — follows the ensemble’s big opening anthem, “Gonna Sing Loud.” “Leave the Light On,” Mattie’s duet with Lucielia (Shelley Thomas), is a keening paean of love and loss, told through the eyes of mothers.
A mixture of the ridiculous and the profound, “Brewster Place” boasts the man-eating Etta Mae (Marva Hicks), the politically strident Kiswana (Monique L. Midgette), nosey neighbor Sophie (Cheryl Alexander) and frustrated lesbian schoolteacher Lorraine (Harriett D. Foy), among other vivid creations.
In the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” sequence, fairies dance in garish costumes that seem ludicrous even for a community theater production in the ’70s, but then the music transforms the piece into a haunting testimonal of Titania’s love for Bottom. In a funny but probably unnecessary bit of schtick, Lorraine sings the Jackson Five-inspired “Smile” to her unruly class. Total silliness. But then later, Lorraine’s “Ghosts With Paper Bones,” about the notes she sends to her estranged father, turns what might be pure sentimentality into a kind of magical realism of the heart. Gorgeous.
In an attempt to make a political statement, Acito renders a world without men or children, setting up some awkwardly pantomimed scenes with invisible beings, and a clunky resolution of Lorraine’s story.
Hicks’ Etta Mae is hysterical. But the character gets too many songs, including the extraneous “Sing, Billie” (as in Holiday). And Tee’s “Welcome to the D.M.V.,” like so many of the numbers, exists so the character can get her story in. As Sophie, Alexander doesn’t get a lot of air time, but when she does, her voice is so delightfully deep that it’s almost manly. Likewise, we don’t get to hear much out of Tee (Suzzanne Douglas), but when she finally steps up, she’s a powerhouse. As Kiswana, Midgette glows from within and seems to be everywhere. What a lovely actress.
Among other elements of the production, Kenneth L. Roberson’s choreography is blessedly organic and unfussy. Paul Tazewell’s costumes, as always, are just right — little vignettes that speak volumes about the ladies who wear them. Anne Patterson’s set is so drab and depressing — we get it, people! — that they might as well use an empty stage.
Acito has written a string of gemlike, character-driven tunes and situated them ever-so precisely. But the songs are all about personality, and they don’t propel the narrative. At once precious, messy and operatic, “Brewster Place” is an enigma. To succeed, it needs rigor, curatorial distance and spine. It needs more work and less love. Otherwise, it may never get beyond that wall.
