They’re Playing Our Song At the Fox Valley
Repertory By Dan Zeff St. Charles – Why is
“They’re Playing Our Song” such a rarity on regional stages? The 1979 musical
is a certified hit, running for 1,082 performances on Broadway. It has a
glittering creative pedigree, with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Carole
Bayer Sager, and book by Neil Simon. And perhaps more significant for our
parched economic times, the show is basically a two-character show. But it’s
rarely staged. The
Fox Valley Repertory is reviving “They’re Playing Our Song” in a chirpy
production that demonstrates that, while the vehicle isn’t a masterpiece, it
provides plenty of comic pleasure. “They’re
Playing Our Song” is based on the turbulent real-life romantic relationship
between Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager. In the musical, Vernon Gersh, the Hamlisch
character, is a neurotic wisecracker and a successful music theater composer.
Into his creative and personal life explodes Sonia Walsk, the Sager character,
a kookie Bohemian type who drives Gersh crazy with her off-the-wall manner. A
few minutes into the show it’s obvious that Gersh and Walsk are in a “can’t
live with him/her, can’t live without him/her” love affair. The story is a
series of bickerings and reconciliations, salted with Gersh’s one-liners and
sarcasm and Sonia’s offbeat behavior. Vernon
and Sonia are the show, but they get some assistance from a chorus of six
performers (three male and three female) who pop into the action as the alter
egos of the hero and heroine, singing and dancing and changing the scenery.
There is a third character we never see but hear a lot about in Leon, Sonia’s
off-stage boyfriend and an ongoing annoyance for Vernon. The
best song in the Hamlisch/Sager score is the title number. The other numbers
are serviceable if not memorable. The success of the evening resides in the
sparks set off by the Sonia-Vernon up-and-down romance. The Neil Simon
trademark zingers in the dialogue are consistently in evidence. Some of them
are character driven and some injected, it seems to me, by the author to flash
his verbal cleverness. If you love Simon’s rapid-fire joking, you’ll love this
show. If you find Simon’s comic style a bit overbearing, you’ll need to exercise
some tolerance. The
stars of the show are the actual husband and wife team of Michael Mahler and
Dara Cameron, both established figures in area theater. Mahler lays on the wisecracks and the neuroses
with the prodigality the role demands and Cameron is appropriately weird as
Sonia, though she actually gets stronger as the character matures toward the
end of the show. The six-person chorus delivers lots of bounce and charm, but
the costumes worn by the three females could stand some upgrading. The
Fox Valley Repertory has brought in Jonathan Berry to direct the show. Berry
has made a name for himself in Chicagoland theater directing edgy modern dramas,
and a Broadway musical is a departure for him. His guidance is unobtrusive but
sure. “They’re Playing Our Song” does not invite high concept experimentation
and Berry’s directing is true to the sassy New York City comic nature of the
show. The
production fits perfectly into the intimate Fox Valley playing area. Chelsea
Warren’s basic set is just right for the physical action, nicely abetted by
Miles Polaski’s sound and Sarah Hughey’s lighting. Maureen Janson’s lively
choreography is performed with energy and enthusiasm by the chorus. An
off-stage trio led by Ken Jones does a fine job of musical accompaniment and
sounds much bigger than three musicians. “They’re
Playing Our Song” runs through October 9 at the Fox Valley Repertory at the
Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 East Main Street. Performances are Friday and
Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. with some additional Thursday
performances added. Tickets are $29 and $39 with dinner show packages
available. The Atrium Restaurant, a short walk from the theater, is providing a
multi-cultural buffet that should interest playgoers who want something different
in pre-curtain dining. The buffet features cuisine from the United States,
Mexico, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Thailand, all for a single price. The
restaurant looks out on the first hole of the resort golf course, a most
attractive setting for something a little different in eating. For
information call 630 584 6342 or visit www.foxvalleyrep.org. The show gets a rating of three
stars. Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. August 2011 Visit him on Facebook.
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Around the World in 80 Days
At the Fox Valley Repertory
At Pheasant Run
By Dan Zeff
St. Charles – “Around the World in 80 Days” seems the most unlikely of stories to put on the stage. How does a theater dramatize a trip around the world in the nineteenth century, starting in London and continuing through Asia and the Orient and North America, before returning to England? There are no jet airplanes for transportation, just railroads, steamers, and an elephant, complicated by an Indian attack in the American West and a typhoon at sea.
Jules Verne wrote the novel in 1872, when the possibility of traveling around the world in 80 days was a fantasy. The Fox Valley Repertory is giving the Verne saga a brave try, using a 2001 adaptation by American playwright Mark Brown.
The story starts when a mysterious Englishman named Phileas Fogg bets members of his London club he can circumvent the globe in those 80 days. The humorless, unflappable, and endlessly inventive Fogg meets and defeats all manner of obstacles to win his bet, assisted by his equally inventive French valet, Passepartout. Fogg not only wins his bet, he gains the love of a beautiful princess he saved from death in India. Along the way, Fogg’s challenge is complicated by a British police inspector shadowing our hero in the belief that Fogg is actually a bank robber on the lam.
The Brown adaptation takes the “less is more” approach. His version uses only five actors to play multiple characters (the press release says 39 and it seemed more like 100). The story is framed as a dream by a boy in Victorian England, so that the setting is both the boy’s bedroom and the countless locations Fogg and Passepartout must traverse to reach their goal. The boy is on stage the entire performance, accompanying the characters from place to place and occasionally chirping in a bit of dialogue.
The production relies heavily on costume changes to shift from character to character. Most of the storyline is conveyed to the audience directly by narration from the stage, abetted by clever and witty video work designed by Liviu Pasare projected on a large circular screen at the rear of the stage.
Brian Hamman holds the show together as the steadfast and unshakable Philieas Fogg, meeting every bizarre setback with true English phlegm. Matthew Sherbach plays Passepartout and Lauren Pizzi, the one female in the ensemble, takes on the Indian princess Aouda. Peter Defaria and Sean Patrick Fawcett combine to deliver a couple dozen supporting characters who pass swiftly through the high-velocity adventure. The young actor playing the boy character alternates between Caden Bohmer and Colin Steele. I saw the eight-year old Bohmer and he was fine.
The energized cast sweeps through the story, injecting numerous droll bits of humor to enhance the derring-do of the narrative. Unfortunately, Brown and director John Gawlik too often intrude nudge-nudge-wink-wink shards of low comedy, like performers interacting with the audience and breaking character, presumably to extract additional laughs. The story can stand on its own whiz-bang merits without flourishes of silliness to remind viewers that what they see on the stage is really pretty nonsensical. The French and English accents also got thick at times and I lost a few of the funny lines in the dense brogues.
All that being said, the show still gets high marks as a resourceful effort to bring alive a tale best suited to the printed page or to the movies as in the great mid-1950’s Michael Todd film that employed virtually every actor and actress in international cinema.
The nineteenth
century costume design by Kimberly G. Morris nicely captures the time period
and Stephen H. Carmody’s set design accommodates the rapid flow of the action
and settings with the effective use of doorways and the shift of a few bits of
furniture. The sound design by Christopher Kriz and the lighting design by
Charles Cooper theatrically recreate the typhoon and other physical impediments
Fogg faces. The visual element carries much of the burden in this production
and the design team comes up big.
As a larky summertime evening of entertainment, “Around the World in 80 Days” mostly works. I just wish the adaptor and the director had trusted the play more and not felt the need to embellish the presentation with those unnecessary asides and other attempts to lure extra giggles from the audience.
“Around the
World in 80 Days” runs through July 31 at the Fox Valley Repertory at the
Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 East Main Street. Most performances are Friday and
Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $29 and $39 with dinner
packages available. For those interested in high end dining, the Harvest
Restaurant never disappoints. It’s only a few steps from the theater and the
salmon and porterhouse steak entrees are incandescent.
Contact www.foxvalleyrep.org or call 630 584 6342.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. June 2011
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Always…Patsy Cline
At the Fox Valley Repertory
By Dan Zeff
St. Charles – “Always…Patsy Cline” is a two-hander that portrays the friendship between the country music star and a zealous fan during the two years before Cline’s death in an airplane crash in 1963. The show is both a concert survey of Cline’s greatest hits and a mostly comic interaction between the singer and Louise Seger, a Houston, Texas, divorcee and Patsy Cline idolater.
“Always…Patsy Cline” has been popular in regional theater, partly for economic reasons (a small cast and single set) and partly for the humor and sentiment woven into the story. Plus there are all those terrific Cline songs. The show is being revived by the Fox Valley Repertory in a theater space just right for the intimacy of the musical. A fine four-piece country music band sits at the rear of the stage while Louise and Patsy do their thing up front.
The Cline role is
a demanding one for a performer. The actress sings 27 songs, a few as duets
with the Louise character, but mostly on her own. That’s a lot of singing for a
show that runs well under two hours, even with an intermission. Along with the
vocalizing, the singer has to project Cline’s distinctive personality. Patsy
was bold and bawdy at a time when country music belonged almost entire to male
performers. She wore elegant gowns as well as cowgirl costumes and her
appearance as well as her singing style influenced many female country singers.
Cline’s career lasted a brief six years, really only about three during the early 1960’s when she recorded nearly all her hits. But in that short time she helped shape the Nashville sound into the music that revolutionized popular music in America.
Megan Long plays Cline in the Fox Valley staging. Long doesn’t sound much like Cline, her style more of a Brenda Lee impersonation. Long also had problems with her lower register on opening night, though her singing improved in the second act. More problematical, Long doesn’t sufficiently project Cline’s outgoing personality. Her Patsy seems almost demure for most of the evening, ceding the spotlight to Louise Seger, who should play second fiddle to the star while serving as the show’s narrator.
Director John Gawlik and actress Kate Brown obviously see Louise as the engine that drives the show. But Brown’s brassy and sassy Louise often upstages Long’s Cline, notably when Brown distracts the audience with jive, shimmy dance movements while Cline is singing. The audience is forced to choose between watching Louise gyrate or listening to Cline singing, with Cline the loser.
The boisterous Louise periodically interacts with the audience, executing a few dance steps with male viewers on the aisles, demanding to know if the audience is having a good time, and urging the viewers to deliver ever louder responses to her questions. Still, the opening night audience sounded like they were having fun with Seger’s exhortations. I just have a low tolerance for this kind of special pleading from the stage.
Brown’s zest is impressive but the imbalance in energy between the two characters shortchanges Cline, who, after all, is the star of the show. The imbalance also cuts into the chemistry between Louise and Patsy, an improbable but deeply felt friendship that really existed during the last two years of Cline’s tragically short life (the show’s title comes from Cline’s sign-off in the many letters she sent to Louise).
The evening still has its pleasures with those great Cline numbers, like “I Fall to Pieces,” “Sweet Dreams,” Faded Love,” and “She’s Got You,” plus a sampling of rock ‘n’ roll, pop, and traditional numbers. Instrumental support by the band led by Ken Jones provides a strong musical underpinning.
Ian Zywica designed the single all-purpose set that morphs easily from a concert stage to assorted interiors. Kimberly G. Morris designed Cline’s multi-colored wardrobe. John Horan designed the lighting and Joseph Fosco the sound.
“Always…Patsy Cline” runs through May 15 at the Fox Valley Repertory at the Pheasant Run Resort Mainstage, 4051 East Main Street. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., with some Thursday performances. Tickets are $29 and $39, with dinner packages available to either the Harvest or Jambalaya resort restaurants a few steps from the theater. Either is recommended for a pre theater meal but Harvest is one of the premiere restaurants in the metropolitan area for patrons who enjoy upscale dining. If casual dining with a Southern tinge is your pleasure, Jambalaya is an excellent choice. Call 630 584 6342 or visit www.foxvalleyrep.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. April 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Leaving Iowa
At the Fox Valley Repertory
By Dan Zeff
St. Charles—Co-authors Tim Clue and Spike Manton were in the opening night audience of the Fox Valley Repertory (formerly Noble Fool Theatrial) production of “Leaving Iowa.” The dramatists were likely expecting a conventional rendering of their humorous and touching tale about parents and children in America’s heartland. What they saw was a prickly, if often comic, portrait of a dysfunctional family.
Since its first performance in 2004, “Leaving Iowa” has been a popular play among regional theaters, winning much praise as a warm and nostalgic trip into middle America. The action moves back and forth in time between today and perhaps 25 years ago in the lives of the Browning family of Winterset, Iowa. There is the father and the mother and offspring Dan, the narrator, and his younger sister. Much of the play follows the foursome as they take a family automobile vacation that turns into a continuous calamity.
The vacation trip is framed by the now adult Dan visiting his Iowa home from Boston, where he is a successful journalist. Don and his father had an uneasy relationship right up to the old man’s death three years previously. Dan decides to take his own automobile voyage of discovery to find a place to deposit the urn containing his father’s ashes. His solo journey turns out to inflict as many miseries on him as the old family jaunts.
“Leaving Iowa” is intended to be warm and nostalgic, a return to the days when an entire family would pile into a car and drive to some nearby attraction. This was a world untouched by Disney World and family cruises to the Mexican Riviera. But the Fox Repertory revival portrays the Browning family as a disagreeable lot. We can cut some slack for Dan (Alex Goodrich) and his kid sister (Katherine Banks). They are youngsters and expected to fight and whine. As the adult Dan, Goodrich has a whiff of Jimmy Stewart about him, which fits the everyman character nicely.
But Don Forston’s father is a loud and stubborn man, a sort of ineffectual bully. He should be endearing but he’s mostly abrasive. Diane Dorsey’s mother seems emotionally disconnected from the rest of her family, criticizing and complaining and dithering. Those two performances set the combative tone that rests uneasily with the touchy feely intentions of the co-authors.
This isn’t to say that the production lacks comedy. The incessant confrontations within the family, both on the vacation and in the modern scenes, are filled with humorous possibilities. But the laughs have an edge to them, often scored off the sister’s brattiness and the father’s bluster. A lot of the humor comes from a bizarre assortment of characters the family meets then and now, all performed with impressive comic versatility by Sean Patrick Fawcett and Valerie Glowinski.
The
production is directed by Rachel Rockwell, one of the area’s best directors.
Presumably Rockwell obtained the results she sought in making the Brownings
such a quarrelsome family. Possible I’m overreacting to the belligerent clashes
among spouses and siblings, but I saw a production of “Leaving Texas” at the
Royal George Theatre in 2007 that captured the human family ties built into the
script. For many viewers, the Fox Valley Repertory will work very nicely. I
just remember it as being a much different and much more ingratiating play. I
missed the love.
If there is a hero in this staging, it’s Mike Tutaj for his witty and creative video design. Come to the theater early and be entertained by all the Iowa lore projected on a screen at the rear of the stage. Kevin Depinet is the scenic designer. In particular, Depinet cleverly evokes the family auto with a set of crates assembled on stage by the characters. Elizabeth Flauto designed the costumes, and Miles Polaski the sound.
“Leaving Iowa” runs through March 13 at the Fox Valley Repertory at the Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 East Main Street. Most performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $29 and $39, with dinner packages available. The resort has three main eating venues, the Harvest, Jambalaya, and the Atrium buffet. On Friday and Saturday evenings the Atrium offers a Chef’s Table, with a salad and soup bar and a dessert buffet along with a selection of one of four entries and prepared in full view of the customer. The Chef’s Table strikes a nice balance between the high end Harvest and the casual Jambalaya, all for one reasonable price. Nice atmosphere, superior service, and just a short walk to the theater. For tickets call 630 584 6342 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.
“Leaving Iowa” gets a rating of three stars. January 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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