Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2005 > September > 22
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Synchronicity’s ‘Women and War’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Women and War.” By Synchronicity Performance Group. Through Oct. 9 at 7 Stages.
The infomercial sounds so perky and cheerful that we can only guess what it’s trying to sell. A cubic zirconia ring as big as the Pentagon? A gadget for making a blooming onion? A self-help video for the sexually frustrated?
Turns out that Karen, the operator standing by to take our order, represents Combex, manufacturer of curiously strong combat boots, which are in great demand because nobody wants “the government-issued” variety. But when Karen begins to think about the faceless people who wear the product, the tone of Synchronicity Performance Group’s “Women and War” shifts from absurdity to poignancy. Consider the boots that are returned unused because the soldier never got a chance to wear them.
This is how the shoe drops in Synchronicity’s occasionally funny, often chilling and forever insightful look into the psychology of war in all its guises. The product of nearly 50 interviews with Atlanta-area women whose lives have been touched by the social scourge, the world premiere succeeds at the nearly impossible task of making a dreaded subject come to life as a provocative entertainment that gently touches the soul with compassion and generosity.
Though the show is largely fact-based, it resists the temptation to exist as a mere collection of testimonials, instead transforming the material into a multimedia hybrid for nine performers that uses visual imagery, dance, song and text to evince a remarkably effective theatrical experience.
At two hours, 20 minutes, “Women and War” is several scenes too long and probably would work better as an intermissionless one-act. But as a series of oral histories that have been thoughtfully dramatized and unified with beautifully crafted choreography, the show is a significant meditation on the topic of war.
What director Rachel May’s “Women and War” does best is reveal humankind’s capacity for suffering and the genetic predisposition to recover —- but never forget.
It would be nearly impossible not to be moved by the story of a Vietnamese woman who bursts into tears when she remembers her long-lost village, the Atlanta journalist who’s haunted by the suffering and famine of the Sudan or the young protester who was smashed by an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine. (In a variety of roles, actors Crystal A. Dickinson, Suehyla El-Attar, Kristi Casey, Joanna Daniel and Danielle Mindess give standout performances.)
Choreographer Celeste Miller uses a clear, purposeful dance vocabulary to make conversations around the situations suggested by the text, which draws on the Civil War diary of 10-year-old Atlantan Carrie Berry and the recollections of present-day spies, missionaries, suicide bombers, Marietta peace protesters and, yes, even employees of a Georgia boot factory.
One of the most striking things about “Women and War” is its constant movement. The actors rarely sit still. And how can they, when there is so much symbolic laundry to fold, suitcases to pack and unpack, evil spirits that need to be swept away?
Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the facts leave off and the fiction begins, and the accumulated technical bells and whistles can be overwrought (although considering that 24 artists collaborated on the project over 17 months, the noise and clutter could be worse). Ultimately, “Women and War” validates the work that went into it and reaffirms the promise of Synchronicity as one of Atlanta’s most exciting ensembles.
Political art can be hit-or-miss. And I’m the first to cry foul when the agenda jumps out and tries to strangle me. But for “Women and War,” I am grateful. Finally, a cultural experience that puts a human face on the barrage of contradictions we read about in the daily news. Now that’s good theater.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 9. $15-$20. Synchronicity Performance Group, 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-325-5168. www.synchrotheatre.com.
Verdict: Profound but not suffocating.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
Theatre Gael: ‘Plough and the Stars’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Plough and the Stars.” Through Oct. 16.
Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars” —- a bleak comedy about the shelling of Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916 —- is a noble meditation on the emotional costs of patriotism, as paid by those on the battlefield and those left behind.
Awash in a sea of terror that will consume her community and destroy her husband, Nora Clitheroe is a keening heroine cut from the cloth of Medea and Ophelia. Thankfully, O’Casey tempers his tragedy with a chorus of Irish poets, clowns and vagabonds whose salty poetry cushions the despair with laughter and humanity.
In this classic, Theatre Gael artistic director John Stephens hears an echo of our time. But instead of using his season opener as a shrill commentary on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he introduces a few devices that let theatergoers draw their own conclusions about the repetitive nature of history. Like the theater’s “A Man of No Importance” last year, the production turns a sprawling canvas into a clearly focused ensemble piece that radiates like a miniature gem.
That said, some of the best performances are the smaller ones, delivered by actors who render O’Casey’s vivid personalities with comic brio.
Peter Flynn (the hysterical Larry Davis) is a combination of fussy old maid and queer uncle, particularly when taunted by the Young Covey (John Chatham). Bessie Burgess (Lynne Ashe) is a hissing old biddy with her chin in her cups who sides with the cause of the crown. (Witness the scene in which she pops her head out of a cuckoo-clock-style window to croak “Rule, Britannia.”) The lovely Katie Merritt portrays Rosie Redmond as a sweetly vulnerable canary-of-the-night whose signature song is Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.”
Wait a minute. Piaf didn’t write that until the mid-’40s, and O’Casey’s play appeared in 1926. What’s going on here?
This is one of Stephens’ anachronistic touches, ironic winks that supply the 79-year-old drama with contemporaneity and resonance. During the evening, he introduces TV newscasts and a remote control, Huggies diapers and a Macintosh computer (in the looting sequence) and a graffiti wall featuring a mug of leftist du jour Che Guevara (1928-1967). The British attackers also speak in accents more reminiscent of Fort Bragg and Fort Benning than Bristol and Manchester.
As solid as Bessie and Fluther Good (the blustery Winslow Thomas) are, I found myself wishing the actors would bare more of the sharp edges they displayed so cannily in “Dancing at Lughnasa” and “Man of No Importance,” respectively. And while Marcie Millard is a fine character actor, she’s perhaps too physically mature to play Nora, the young wife of the doomed hero Jack (who’s quietly and handsomely detailed by Mark Russ). Still, theirs is a touching, if slightly mismatched, romance.
In a season brimming with onstage commentaries about war, “The Plough and the Stars” finds vitality in an old text. With a few masterful strokes, Stephens revivifies the play without mangling it. Given the climate of crisis both at home and abroad, his timely choice is sadly rewarding.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 16. $16-$22. Theatre Gael, 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-4750. www.theatregael.com
Verdict: Fresh take on Irish war classic.
Â
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
‘Moonlight’ over Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “Moonlight and Magnolias.” Alliance Theatre. Through Oct. 9
He’s already filmed the burning of Atlanta, but the birthing of Melanie’s baby will have to wait.
Halfway into the making of “Gone With the Wind,� producer David O. Selznick has fired his director and doesn’t have a workable script for Margaret Mitchell’s rhapsodically celebrated, 1,037-page epic, “Gone With the Wind.� Uh-oh. Time for a rewrite.
This is the premise of “Moonlight and Magnolias,� Ron Hutchinson’s loosely factual account of Selznick’s frenetic battle to get the tale of Scarlett and Rhett sealed in celluloid. And where better to deliver this delirious backstage romp than the Alliance Theatre, in the city where The Movie premiered and just a few blocks from the Peachtree Street apartment where Mitchell wrote The Novel.
If you are a Hollywood trivia buff or a lover of “GWTW� lore, the behind-the-scenes send-up of the dictatorial Selznick (Thomas Sadoski), cynical script doctor Ben Hecht (David Pittu), newly appointed director Victor Fleming (Kevin O’Rourke) and dutiful secretary Miss Poppenghul (Tess Malis Kincaid) is a play after your own heart.
But for a riff on the troubles of script-writing, Hutchinson’s play has its own set of issues, including a split personality to rival any honey-dripping Southern harlot.
For the record, it also has some rather delicious gossip.
Any story that hints at Clarke Gable’s indiscretions with George Cukor (the movie’s original director) and has a little fun with Margaret Mitchell’s control issues (square pillars for Tara, or else!) is more than likely to get a few laughs in the town that spawned the hoopskirt hoopla.
It’s true that Selznick turned to Hecht out of desperation. As the story goes, the producer went through a reputed 17 writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald (“He gave me two lines I could use!� Selznick snorts in the play) and Sidney Howard, who gets official credit. It’s true that he snagged Fleming from “The Wizard of Oz� after firing Cukor — and that he held Fleming and Hecht under a kind of house-arrest, force-feeding them peanuts and bananas, until they gagged up a screenplay.
Hutchinson fills in the gaps with adrenaline-stoked dialogue, Marx Brothers slapstick, jokes about Vivien Leigh and Judy Garland, and diversions about Selznick’s insecurities. Son-in-law of film mogul Louis B. Mayer, Selznick was obsessed with making a hit, but also haunted by his producer father’s failure. He was caught between satisfying mainstream taste and remaining true to the lustrous standards of Golden Age Hollywood.
Sounds like more than enough tension to drive a screwball comedy.
But Hutchinson seems bent on making political statements, too. So while Selznick imitates Scarlett, and Fleming pretends to be both Melanie and Prissy (which is quite funny in the baby-birthing fracas), Selznick has to fend off the PC goadings of Hecht as well. No doubt Hecht was a card-carrying liberal who cared about the treatment of blacks and Jews. But the Jewish self-loathing routine confuses the tone and nearly derails the show’s comedic engine.
This is no fault of the actors.
Sadoski captures the vast charm, and the megalomania, of the forever-conflicted Selznick. Pittu makes Hecht, who’d never read the book, into a wiry pit bull and Hollywood poet. (In real life, Hecht wrote “The Front Page� and co-authored “Twentieth Century,� which is now playing at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.) And O’Rourke invests Fleming with the cuddly gruffness of a large Teddy bear.
But in the much smaller role of the secretary, Kincaid misses an opportunity to quirk it up and toy around with her signature line, “Yes, Mr. Selznick.� That’s a device that’s designed for serious clowning — think of how Carol Channing or Margo Skinner, the late actress who originated the part, might have played it.
Santo Loquasto’s wood-paneled, wall-papered set is pretty, but the script seems to call more for Deco glamour than Victorian fussiness. Mitchell, however, would have appreciated Jane Greenwood’s sartorial correctness. (Now that I think about it, there’s something Mitchell-like about Poppenghul’s unerring devotion to decorum.)
Ultimately, there’s no harm done by this crowd-pleasing production, which the Alliance imported from Manhattan Theatre Club with an all-new cast. But there’s not much difference in the way Selznick consciously put the mediocre “GWTW� over on the hungry public, and the way the Alliance wants to cash in on our endless fascination with all things Scarlett.
Fiddle-dee-dee. If, to paraphrase Miss O’Hara, you’ve never gotten so tired of any four words in your life than “Gone With the Wind,� you can always go in the house and shut the door. For tomorrow is another play. THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 9. $15-$45. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org.
Verdict: “GWTW� farce has its moments.
