Reason to dream
Curtain Call
Review: Man of La Mancha a delightful show
The Tony Award-musical Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman (book), Joe Darion (lyrics) and Mitch Leigh (music) debuted on Broadway in 1965 boasting a sympathetic brand of righteousness that just so happened to apply to the political confusion of a country at war in Vietnam and struggling for civil rights. Its call to action remains notably relevant today as we long for “change” in the Obama era.
The play within a play format utilizing common prisoners as storytellers is one that bodes well for community theatre productions. Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre opened a well-sung stab at the windmill under the direction of Tony Alberti last weekend despite a broken boiler that saw audience members cozy in their coats, sipping on complimentary hot beverages at intermission. Performances continue Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. All tickets are $18.
The show finds Cervantes as an actor/tax collector charged by the Spanish Inquisition with trying to collect, according to the law, from a monastery. When his fellow prisoners charge him with being an idealist, a bad poet and an honest man, he’s forced to defend his manuscript in order to save it. I would have liked to see more defined characters for these prisoners as they assume roles in the story of Alonso Quijana.
A dying old man who’s lost his mind over the injustices and ugliness of the modern world, Quijana retreats into a world of his own imagination in which chivalry is not so rare. An errant knight on a quest for beauty and goodness, Don Quixote is accompanied by a manservant who can’t help but like the old man despite his delusions.
Even if you don’t find Joe Sheridan’s presence quite suitable to Cervantes/Quijana, there’s no denying his conviction in the role. Thomas Major is a gem as sidekick Sancho Panza. Thoughts of Jason Lee’s brother Randy on NBC’s My Name Is Earl vanish as he sings with stunning skill and delivers his “belly full of proverbs” with appropriate comic timing. It’s not long before they meet the maid and part-time whore Aldonza (Ashlee Elizabeth Danko) at a run-down road side inn, which Quixote sees as a castle. He elevates her to the position of a noble, virtuous lady much to the confusion of the innkeeper (Greg Korin), his wife and the coarse mule keepers passing through. The young Danko tackles difficult rhythms with gusto. Less savage than called for, she errs on the side of pretty.
Kevin Holbert’s amplified acoustic guitar is an ideal match for the sentimental, Spanish dance-inspired score. The percussion is disappointing with no significant castanets, maraca or finger cymbals, and the small four-piece orchestra struggles too often to match the score’s tricky time signatures to the actors’ (Sheridan, in particular) self-determined pace.
Particularly pleasing among Quijana’s fearful family are Marcelle M. McGuirk as niece Antonia and Cathy Alaimo as the housekeeper. Their duet “We’re Only Thinking of Him” is a highlight. Richard Brandreth is adorable as the compassionate Padre, tugging heartstrings with “To Each His Dulcinea.” Gerard Angeli is falsely fierce as prosecuting prisoner Duke but his singing via Dr. Carrasco is exceptional.
It’s a pipe dream, perhaps, that even the most skillfully told tale might emancipate prisoners from the chains of conformity borne without resistance, but it’s one Man of La Mancha thankfully reminds us to keep dreaming.
Alicia Grega-Pikul - Electric City/ Diamond City (Mar 26, 2009)
Deep, Dark and Well Done
Curtain Call
THEATER REVIEW: Music Box Players' production of Sweeney Todd a must-see
The Music Box Players new production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is not for the faint of heart. Not because of the blood spilled, the cannibalism or the lechery, but because it is three solid hours. No sweat for the dedicated theater enthusiast, but Tim Burton's 2007 film version, by comparison, runs only 116 minutes. If you prefer the glamorous gothic icing to a tough gnaw on the musical's meaty heart, you might not be ready.
Fortunately, the players fare well with the challenging material under the direction of Kevin Costley. The ticket is undoubtedly a worthwhile purchase, particularly if you haven't yet seen the show live. And I recommend you do for comparison's sake before the national tour based on the 2005 Broadway revival in which actors are also the orchestra arrives at the Scranton Cultural Center in February.
Ron Araya's Todd is pasty and sickly looking and at times reminiscent of a lobotomy patient. Sentenced to life in Australia on a trumped up charge, he's been traumatized from 15 years of hard labor in the colonies and the gruesome realities of the near year-long voyage back to London. Part of his soul has clearly died and what little is left is itching for vengeance when he's not staring off into space. Perhaps most fascinating are the moments in which the immediate demands of life - a question posed by Anthony (Salvatore Infantino) or joke cracked by the endearingly sunny Mrs. Lovett (Nancy Brown) - cause him to forget his pain for a moment before he suddenly remembers the tragedy of his loss.
The most chilling moment of the play may be watching Todd sit so still in Mrs. Lovett's parlor that we can feel the insanity of his energy radiating as he glares at the air, anger and hate seething forth almost visibly.
Thankfully, the sudden melodramatic final scenes of the show don't detract from the reality of this triumph. At the end, he sees Toby (Kyle Segarra) coming for him and we understand how glad he is to die. Segarra's energetic presentation of the unfortunate boy is a definite high point. He quite suitably summons tears during "Not While I'm Around" opposite Brown, who doesn't miss a note in the considerably challenging role of the not quite sympathetic yet admirably pleasant pie maker Lovett.
Dane Bower portrays three characters and accents as Todd/Barker's one-time Irish shop assistant turned pseudo-Italian medicine show barber and later as British asylum proprietor Mr. Fogg. Larry Vojtko doesn't disappoint as Judge Turpin, but neither does his safe, mildly predatory portrayal inspire. Marcelle McGuirk's delicate soprano is less grating than the other Johanna's I've heard. I would have liked to see her a little more shaken by her time at Fogg's, however. Both she and Infantino were difficult to hear at times, but not enough to justify the distracting sounds of electronic amplification.
The orchestration as performed only by musical director Aimee C. Radics with help from Ted Anderson on a synthesizer is outstanding. So much so, that you're not likely to miss the presence of additional instrumentation. More anticipated is another set by Michael Gallagher which makes the impossible flow smooth. Granted I've seen the show staged before, but not once did I wonder where the characters were or fluster to decipher the story line. I further appreciated Gallagher's stunning use of shadow, even as I missed some of the industrial accents often seen in this show set in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.