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Friday, December 17, 2004
True Colors’ ‘Wiz’ kids
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”The Wiz.” Through Dec. 30
One day, it’s the Great White Way. Next day, the Yellow Brick Road.
Sailing on waves of critical adoration for his Broadway staging of August Wilson’s ”Gem of the Ocean,” Kenny Leon returns home to deliver a funhouse holiday package from somewhere over the urban rainbow.
We’re talking about ”The Wiz,” William F. Brown and Charlie Smalls’ 1975 funkadelic retelling of ”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,”’ which Leon reimagines here with an all-youth cast for his Atlanta-based True Colors Theatre.
Working in and around Guy Tuttle’s set, which resembles an exploded McDonald’s playground, these ”Wiz” kids shatter the cuteness meter with their indefatigable mixture of courage, heart and brains.
While Tatiana McConnico’s silver-slippered Dorothy, Devere Rogers’ preening cowardly Lion, Tory Thurman’s scattershot Scarecrow and Richard Miron’s creaky Tin Man all live up to the demands of these iconic roles, the entire ensemble sticks together like a Kansas tornado â€â€? mustering impressive acting, strong singing and the kind of exuberant dancing that can never be faked by older hoofers.
Credit must be given to choreographer Patdro Harris and music director J. Michael for turning these raw bundles of energy into soaring stars of the future.
From Miller Grove Middle School (Jeremy Williams), Greenfield Hebrew Academy (Jason Feldman), Tri-Cities High School (Rogers), Pace Academy (Victoria Petrosky-Silva), Morehouse College (Marcus Johnson) and Emory University (Kristen Wood), this is a groovy, talented and diverse bunch.
Rogers, who recently won a scholarship to New York University, is a booming baritone with a hysterical sense of comedic timing.
Born an ”only cub,” this vain, cowardly feline has spent years in therapy with an owl, and he’s more concerned with touching up his new hairdo than being a ”Mean Ole Lion.”
McConnico, who recently played young Celie in the Alliance Theatre’s ”Color Purple,” may be as tiny as a teardrop, but her singing ripples with emotion (”Home”). And Miron projects a natural charisma that’s winning without being showy.
Thurman’s performance is among the most detailed and thoughtful, yet it somehow gets lost under Sydney Roberts’ complicated costume.
At the same time, André C. Allen’s lighting is sometimes unnecessarily harsh, and the fog machines can create a hazy glare that feels more like an airport smoking lounge than the magical Emerald City.
But ”The Wiz” always finds ways to delight and surprise. The Yellow Bricks have attitude. The red Poppies are intoxicating. The Kalidahs are seductively spectral, and B.J. Myers’ screeching, somersaulting Monkey is terrific.
In a season glutted with familiar family entertainments, ”The Wiz” is a welcome diversion.
A meditation on the elemental urge to find one’s way home again, it’s particularly resonant at a time when we celebrate peace, comfort and joy.
The verdict: Ease on down to the ticket booth.
SHOW INFORMATION: 2:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; Dec. 22-24; Dec. 27, Dec. 29 and Dec. 30; 7:30 p.m. tonight-Saturday; Dec. 21-23 and Dec. 27-30. $18-$30. True Colors Theatre, 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.truecolorstheatre company.com.
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A new theater and ‘A Christmas Memory’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”The Thanksgiving Visitor” and ”A Christmas Memory.” Through Dec. 24.
Truman Capote’s ”A Christmas Memory,” about an Alabama boy’s deep connections with an old-maid relative, is soaked in fruitcake-sweet sentimentality. But it remains a rich and evocative glimpse of the vanishing South — and a wise commentary on the intricacies of friendship, kindness and giving.
It’s fitting, then, that Theatrical Outfit Artistic Director Tom Key has chosen to inaugurate the new Balzer Theater at Herren’s with a deliciously detailed reading of the 1956 classic, which the Alabama-born actor knows as intimately as he does the scent of satsumas and japonicas.
Thursday night’s performance was Theatrical Outfit’s first at its new $5 million downtown space, and though the celebration was low-key, the significance of Capote’s tale of selflessness and generosity couldn’t have been lost on anyone.
Bill and Peg Balzer, who gave more than $1.3 million toward the renovation of the historic former restaurant, were presented with flowers. Then Balzer insisted that Key, who was in character and ready to rumble, come out of the wings to get a gag gift, a cigar that had been custom-detailed to say: ”It’s a theater.”
There were hugs all around.
And then The Balzer, a classic design that harks back to the stone amphitheaters of Greece, became a magical lantern lit by a single candle. It was Key, immersing himself in ”The Thanksgiving Visitor” and ”A Christmas Memory,” Capote’s two lovingly sketched portraits of the sensitive little boy Buddy and his kite-making, whiskey-sipping boon companion, Miss Sook.
Looking back through a curtain of time, the actor makes the the grown-up Buddy sound more like a sober Tom Key than the famously nasal bon vivant, Capote. This is a good thing. But Key uses his impeccable timing, rubbery mug and numerous shades of twang to create a scrapbook of vivid characterizations.
The titular ”Thanksgiving visitor” is Buddy’s archnemesis, a bully and petty thief named Odd Henderson, who Key portrays with the pale demeanor of an old biscuit. ”You’re different,”says Odd to the boy. “I’m straightening yew out.â€? By contrast, the young Buddy has the maladjusted, asthmatic sound of a Dickensian orphan.
”The Thanksgiving Visitor” is not as familiar as Capote’s fruitcake yarn. But it dispenses with some of the author’s trademark Norman Rockwell-meets-”The Waltons” folksiness to become a superb, almost Chekhovian story of initiation. The tables are turned on Buddy, who learns that ”deliberate cruelty” is the one unpardonable sin.
In ”Christmas Memory,” Key makes the wonderfully named Mr. Haha Jones, a moonshine dealer, seem as grave and gruff as an old Indian chief. But it’s with the scratchy falsetto voice of Sook that Key finds his piece de resistance.
Knocking on the door of Mr. Haha’s” ’ ‘sinful’ … fish-fry and dancing cafe down by the river,” she almost chokes on nerves. ”Mrs. Haha, ma’am? Anyone to home?”
Wait a minute. Is this Tom Key or Geraldine Page? (The late actress played the old woman in a beautiful 1966 TV film of the story, narrated by the author, and you can feel her presence in Key’s mimickry.)
Key captures every nearly sparkling detail of Capote’s lush poetry.
”Morning,” says Buddy, describing the pair’s mystical search for a Christmas tree. “Frozen rime lusters the grass; the sun, round as an orange and orange as hot-weather moons, balances on the horizon, burnishes the silvered winter woods. A wild turkey calls.”
And only in a Capote story would there be a dog named Queenie. The canine laps up coffee laced with whiskey (”she likes her coffee chicory-flavored and strong”) and tries to eat a Christmas-tree angel that’s been fashioned from ”aved-up sheets of Hershey bar tin foil.”
That Key can evince so much whimsy and filigree from Capote’s tales is a testament to his gift as a story-teller. With his new playhouse, Tom Key looks like an Alabama boy beside a Christmas tree, tasting his first chocolate-covered cherry.
The official opening of the Balzer Theater won’t happen til January, but Key’s cutting the symbolic red ribbon now. How splendid. What a gift to us all.
THE VERDICT: Classics light up new theater.
SHOW INFORMATION: 7:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Dec. 19 and 24. Through Dec. 24. $25-$35. Theatrical Outfit, The Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 404-577-5255., www.theatricaloutfit.org.
