Tag Archives: Saint Louis Repertory Theater

Achtung Liebert!

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Good Friday was a bad day at work. I came in to find that my computers were down. The computer room was 85 degrees, the machines had shut themselves down and there were three men in the room, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix things. They soon got the Liebert AC unit back online and the room cooled quickly. Their main problem was getting power back to the computers. It’s not like turning on a light bulb. This problem took all morning to fix, but by noon everything was up and running again.

Then around three I saw one of the IT guys, the computer had just paged him, there was another problem. The computer room was again warmer than it should be. It was eventually decided that the two Liebert units in the room were warring with each other. One of them thought that it was too warm and was trying to cool the room. The other one thought that it was too cold and was actually heating the room. This second unit was winning. It was eventually decided to turnoff the heater. We’ll have to wait and see what Monday brings.

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

Friday night was date night, we did dinner and a show. Dinner was at Big Sky Café, one of our faves and the show was the Rep’s last main stage production of this season, Double Indemnity. The following is the Rep’s synopsis of this play:

It is possible to commit the perfect crime? The beautiful and seductive Phyllis Nirlinger is willing to try. Aided by smitten insurance agent Walter Huff, Phyllis sets out to murder her husband and collect on a giant insurance claim. Caught in the femme fatale’s sinister web of guilt and betrayal, Huff finds himself on a deadly journey that may be more than he bargained for. Based on James M. Cain’s 1930s noir thriller, Double Indemnity is a dark and treacherous view of the power of greed and desire.

How do you feel about some sex marriage? ;-)

To my mind, with all of the hubbub this week about the sanctity of marriage, Phyllis and people like her do more to torpedo that institution than all the Supreme Court decrees ever will. In the play, she takes the rap as the evil temptress, but Walter seems just as culpable. Since he also narrates, the audience is left with a more sympathetic view of him compared to her.

The play’s title comes from an important clause in the husband’s insurance policy. The insurance company offers a double payout or double indemnity for train accidents. This is a marketing ploy by the insurance company. It sounds good to the client, but since train accidents are very rare, it won’t cost the insurance company much money to write into the policy.

We went for a bike ride on Saturday. This is only the third time since her bike accident last fall that Anne has been on the bike. Except for an errant sweet gum ball, Anne’ s ride was as smooth as silk. We did happen upon an accident scene, car versus bike. It was where the bike path crosses Clayton Avenue. There were four or five police cars there and one not particularly late-model Caddy. One of the cop cars had a bicycle sticking out of its trunk. We didn’t see any cyclist, but since Barnes Hospital is just on the other side of Kingshighway, he or she might have already been carted away by then. I don’t think that there will ever be any double indemnity insurance involving bicycling, because it can be so dangerous.

Tamarack House

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Bird Fossil #1

Bird Fossil #1

Not every dinosaur died in the mass extinction that ended the Mesozoic Era: birds survived. These fossils are evidence that bird survivors rapidly diversified in the tropical conditions of the early Cenozoic Era. By 50 million years ago numerous new forms had evolved, including ancestors of many living tropical birds. Both of these pictured bird fossils are from different but undermined species. They both are from the Eocene period, some 34 to 55 million years ago. These fossils were found at Fossil Lake, WY.

Tamarack House by Michael Dowling was the second offering in this year’s Ignite! festival that the Saint Louis Repertory Theater is producing. We attended a reading of this play on Wednesday evening. The following is the Rep’s synopsis of this play:

A big, old boarding house sits on a beautiful spot of land in a small New England town, but its days are numbered as housing developments encroach. The house is rundown and beat up but has hidden potential, like the discarded misfits who live there. Caught in the whirlpool of a fleeting American dream, they struggle to hold onto the house that defines them. They’ve got to figure out what to do, and quick. A funny, quirky and moving story by an exciting new American voice.

Playwright Michael Dowling hales from the Berkshires were you can imagine that this play was set. He studied with David Mamet at NYU and you can further imagine some Mamet influences in this play. Dowling’s writing is verbose, but his dialogue is snappy and the language is salty, all very Mamet like. I liked Tamarack House better than this year’s first offering Soups, Stews and Casseroles: 1976 by Rebecca Gilman. Both plays featured a twist ending, but the one in Tamarack House was the more believable. Further comparing the two plays, Gilman’s play seemed the more polished of the two, but that might just be where these two projects are in the development cycle. I want to give a shout-out to Joneal Joplin, the hardest working actor in Saint Louis. He played Earl, the retiring owner of Tamarack House.

Ancient tamarack trees could have been contemporaries of the fossilized birds shown here. They might have tweeted from its branches or hissed like a lizard. Who knows what they sounded like? Most if not all of the characters in Dowling’s play are on the verge of extinction. Their habitat, this house, is the key to their survival and they inhabit a very fragile ecology.

Bird Fossil #2

Bird Fossil #2

Density

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Density Hourglasses

Density Hourglasses

The sand in both of these hour-glasses is the same, but the liquids are different. One liquid is more dense than the sand, so it sinks and lifts the sand up. The other liquid is less dense than the sand, so it rises and pushes the sand down.

Last year, the Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis launched a new initiative with commissions of nationally recognized playwrights, culminating in three public readings. Called Ignite! this theater festival returned last Saturday, with the first of three reading, Soups, Stews and Casseroles: 1976, by Rebecca Gilman. The following is the Rep’s synopsis of the play:

When the main employer in Monroe, Wisconsin is bought out, a whole town learns what it means to have their livelihood, identity and destiny taken from them. The Duerst family is experiencing these tensions first hand, along with a few others of their own. The author of Spinning into Butter and many others, Rebecca Gilman is one of the most highly regarded playwrights in the US today. This play is a Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis commission.

Last year, we attended two out of the three readings. While not full plays, the readings are performed by real actors. The one that we missed, because it was performed during a work day, was selected for eventual production. We learned last year that a play’s production process runs about five years. These readings are just a very public step in this process. They are a bit wonky and likely not for everyone, but since we have been watching most of the Rep’s productions for decades, they are just our glass of tea.

The Rep seems to have learned some too from last year’s initial festival. This year’s festival boasts a stage and all readings occur outside of regular business hours. At $8.30 a seat, you can’t beat the price. Throw in wine and cheese after the reading and the deal is all the sweeter. The house is only a couple of hundred seats, three at the most. This festival has got to be a loss leader for the Rep. This reading employed for a week, half-a-dozen actors, most from NYC. The supposed return on investment, the fifteen minute Q&A that follows each reading, upon this third for me repetition, seemed more kabuki than substantive. I am grateful to the Rep for this festival, but puzzled over its motivation. 

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

I didn’t get it. Maybe I’m just dense, but I didn’t get the ending. Kat (Nancy Bell), wife and mother seemed the focus of this play. She is in almost every scene and every other character has a straight-line connection to her, but at the climax she has already left the play. We are left with no clear understanding of her feelings about Kim’s (Dan McCarthy), her husband, life altering decision.

From where after two turns of the glass did Kim summon the courage of his convictions? That came completely out of left-field for me. Throughout the play, he had pragmatically towed the party line, seeing the logic of even the company’s harshest moves. He chose to rise above, while others around him fell, until he didn’t. What cathartic moment changed his mind? I missed it.

Poor Willoughby

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Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility

“What do you mean poor Willoughby? Willoughby was a cad and a bounder and a libertine. He even admitted to being a libertine.” “What’s a bounder? Tigger was a bounder and you like Tigger.” “Tigger was a bouncer and not a bounder.”

The whole of his behaviour, from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it. ~Elinor

While Willoughby is certainly a flawed character, is he really all that more reprehensible than some of the other characters in this story? I can’t think of anything nice to say about John and Fanny Dashwood and they are kin. What about Robert Ferrars and Lucy Steele, two more vapid twits have never been penned. So why should poor Willoughby be singled out for century after century of feminine scorn?

Mama, the more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! ~Marianne

Willoughby plays the part of antagonist, to Marianne and Elinor’s duo protagonist parts. In such a role he is likely to come out on the short end, but without him the story could not exist. When they first meet, Marianne and Willoughby are two peas in a pod, hopeless romantics. Through her trials, Marianne is allowed to evolve past her initial, unrealistic romantic expectations of a man. This opens her heart for Colonel Brandon. Brandon in turn is then motivated to provide a curacy at Delaford for Edward Ferrars and Elinor. Happy ending, QED. None of this would have occurred without poor Willoughby’s involvement.

But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear – but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. ~Willoughby

At the story’s end Willoughby arrives distraught over the news of Marianne’s grave illness. He confesses to Elinor that he really did love Marianne. Now his fate is a loveless one, he must marry Miss Sophia Grey, a wealthy but malicious heiress. He is a broken man who is shown only pity by Elinor. He made the same mistakes that Marianne did. Well, maybe he did make one more mistake than she. Austin casts him down, while Marianne is allowed to rise. We know Marianne’s thoughts, we feel her feelings. Of Willoughby, we only hear of his actions and are left to guess his motives. I think that we should cut him some slack and let his two-hundred old ‘crimes’ be forgiven.

The photo with this post was taken from the program’s cover art. Pictured are Elinor (Nancy Lemenager) on the left and Marianne (Amelia McCain) on the right. They appear to be gazing on their ancestral estate, Norland Park. Friday night, we saw Jon Jory’s play at the Rep, adapted from Jane Austin’s, “Sense and Sensibility”.

4000 Miles

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Kicking Horse Pass, BC

Kicking Horse Pass, BC

“4000 Miles” was the Rep’s Studio Theater play last night. It was another Friday night dinner and a show, date night for Anne and me. We have season tickets to the Rep’s Main Stage, like last weekend’s “Good People”, but occasionally we go down the stairs, to the basement and partake of their less mainstream offerings. Dinner was at CJ Muggs, one of the triumvirate from our choices for Repertoire dinner-theater fare. The preshow was the many other parties dining there before the big Father-Daughter dance at Nerinx Hall High School. Nerinx is a girl’s school, which adjoins the Webster University campus. Webster use to be a girl’s school too. Never have I seen the male-female age demographics so skewed at Muggs. We couldn’t enjoy this preshow too long, because we had to leave to line up for the Studio Theater’s open seating. We got second row center, mainly because we were too shy to sit in the front row.

“4000 Miles” is Amy Herzog’s 2011 play about Leo, cyclist and grandson, who shows up unexpectedly at 3 AM at his Grandmother Vera’s Greenwich Village apartment. Leo has ridden from Seattle to NYC, 4000 miles. He has performed this feat, but there is a pall over it that the audience is not immediately privy to. The next day has Vera returning from a funeral for the last of the Octo-eight, “He was a bastard, but he was the last one, except for me.” The play progresses over several weeks, where Vera and Leo alternately spar, commiserate or simply learn from each other. It is an environment where a new age leftist meets his communist card-carrying ancestor and voting Democrat is deemed hypocrisy. There are two love interests, Bec and Amanda, but their importance is secondary to Leo and Vera’s growing acquaintance. Herzog’s play offers the gambit of humor, human emotion and hope. She succeeds in portraying a world where the young and the old actually speak with each other.

Anne and I both loved “4000 Miles”. It resonated for us on a family level. We saw many of our family members and their friends reflected in the characters portrayed in this play. Showing some discretion, I’ll not draw any particular analogies. This play really resonated for us personally too, because in our youth, we made a similar journey to the one alluded to in this play. Our journey was made in 1982 and we rode 5000 miles, but whose counting? Back then, there were no cell phones. We kept our relatives apprised of our progress the best that we could with postcards. Of course we left out the nitty-gritty details, in particular, the logging trucks, on the Trans-Can, in the mountains of British Columbia. What were we thinking? We had so much fun though and lived to tell it. Isn’t that adventure?

Good People

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American Flag Quilt at Big Sky

American Flag Quilt at Big Sky

I am so glad that I pre-blogged the last 36 hours. What day is it again? This is Saturday, right? My preplanning for a night out makes for more seamless blogging afterwards. Dinner and a show was what I was telling my co-workers at work on Friday. Friday night was date night. It was a double date night, with DJ and Captain Don. Dinner was at Big Sky Café and the show was at the Rep. We caught at the end of its run, ‘Good People”, by David Lindsay-Abaire.

I did not have the pot roast, as is my usual wont. [Happy, Gene?] Instead I had fish, Arctic Char. Our wait-person said that it is a sustainable species. Although, it did not taste like a cross between salmon and trout, like she said it would. The pictured flag quilt was past Don’s shoulder from my viewpoint at the dinner table.

The reason I was able to abstain from beef, was that I had been eating it all week. The genesis of this cuisine was last weekend’s WSJ. It had an article on beef bourguignon. The article listed various NYC restaurants that serve this dish. It also had a recipe for some DIY cooking. I bought the ingredients last Sunday, but what with all of our outing and abouting that day, we ended up punting.

The going-in plan was for me to do the cooking, but since it wasn’t until Tuesday that the meal was prepared, Anne ended up doing most of the work. There was one other wee bit of a problem. The recipe called for using a pressure cooker and we didn’t have one. This is the preferred method in restaurants, because it saves so much preparation time. We ended up resorting to Joy, so the result was a bit of a mongrel, but it still tasted pretty good.

In 2011, the play debuted in NYC. Frances McDormand was the Tony Award lead. In 2012, it was produced again in LA. There Jane Kaczmarek (“Malcolm in the Middle”) played Margaret. “Good People” opened this month in Saint Louis. Here Rep newbie, Denise Cormier is Margie. One of the advantages of not seeing a performance until the end of its run is the reduced risk of spoiling it. By the time that this is posted, if you are not already on the way to the theater, then you are not going to make it.

The play opens in an alley behind a Dollar Store, in South Boston. There Margie, a Southie, is being fired for repeated tardiness. Stevie, her boss and long acquaintance, explains that it is either her job or his. She begs for her job, but to no avail. Back at her apartment, we find her out-of-work, on the verge of homelessness, the single mother of an adult developmentally disabled daughter. A girlfriend tells Margie of her chance encounter with Mike, one of Margie’s old flames. Mike is one of the lucky ones; he made it out of the neighborhood. Asking for a job, Margie pays a visit to Mike’s swank fertility clinic.

I’d like to offer a hat tip here to Scenic Designer, Kent Dorsey, for his great taste in furniture. He decided to decorate Mike’s office with a pair of Wassily Chairs, identical to the ones that my Mom had purchased years ago. Nothing says sophistication more than Bauhaus designer Marcel Breuer. The chair was designed in 1925 and was inspired, in part, by the curved tubular steel handlebars on Breuer’s Adler bicycle. It was re-released in the 1960s, and was designated “Wassily” by its Italian manufacturer, who had learned that the painter Wassily Kandinsky had been the recipient of one of the earliest units.

In true Southie fashion Margie manages to bully Mike into tendering an invitation to his upcoming birthday party, calling him all “lace curtain” now. When they were both growing-up, they use to call the Kennedys lace curtain. Later, Mike calls her canceling the party. Convinced that she was just being uninvited, Margie goes to Mike’s house to crash the party anyway.

There really is no party. Mike’s young black wife welcomes her in any way. She eggs Margie on to regale her with some stories from Mike’s Southie past. The conversation soon spins out of control and Margie accuses Mike that he is the father of her daughter. Margie later recants and then flees.

The play ends later, on bingo night. An envelope of money has appeared. Thinking that it is from Mike she is ready to return it, until Stevie owns up to the gift. Also revealed is that the daughter is Mike’s baby, and “everybody knows it”.

Years ago, Margaret had chosen to shoulder her burden alone and not to spoil Mike’s chance to get out. Seeing how the other half lived, tempted her though, but she eventually saw that it was never to be and returned to South Boston. In the first act Mike is refered to as “good people”, but his actions speak differently. Margie is the real “good people”.

The Foreigner

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The Foreigner

The Foreigner

Friday night was Rep night with a twist. Rep night is our chance to see the latest offering from the Saint Louis Repertory Theater. This night’s performance was The Foreigner. The twist was that Rey, Dan and Annie joined us. At Cyrano’s Rey and Dan had dinner with us and then we picked Annie up on our way to the theater.

The Foreigner is a two-act comedy by Larry Shue. It is set in a fishing lodge in rural Georgia; the plot revolves around the visit of two guests, Englishmen Charlie Baker and Staff Sergeant Froggy LeSueur. Naturally shy, Charlie is also depressed because his wife may be dying. He tells Froggy, “I should have stayed with Mary, at the hospital. When a man’s wife is dying, he belongs with her, not – not in Georgia.” He begs Froggy, “Please. Try to understand. I can’t talk to anyone now.”

To help, Froggy tells Betty, the lodge’s owner, that Charlie is a foreigner who does not understand English. Betty, who has never traveled, is delighted to cater to a stranger who is “as foreign as the day is long.” At first, Charlie is appalled by Froggy’s fabrication and protests. Soon, though, Charlie overhears a private and emotional conversation, and decides he had better perpetuate the ruse.

Before long, Charlie finds himself privy to assorted secrets and scandals freely discussed in front of him by the other visitors. These include the spoiled but introspective Southern belle Catherine and the man to whom she is somewhat reluctantly engaged, the Reverend David Lee, a seemingly good-natured preacher with a dark side. Her younger brother, Ellard, a somewhat “slow” boy tries to “teach” Charlie how to speak English. Owen, the racist county property inspector, plans to oust Betty and convert the lodge into a meeting place for the Klan.

Shue’s Foreigner is somewhat autobiographical. He has described himself to be as painfully shy as his character Charlie. He and his wife moved from Milwaukee to Georgia to form a theater company, where his wife promptly left him. He returned to Milwaukee, but soon took up an acting assignment in Japan. He spoke not a word of Japanese and figured that most Japanese didn’t know much about Americans, but he believed that they did know cowboys. He bought a cowboy hat and it proved his ticket abroad. When he returned home this hat was adorned with the signatures of his new Japanese friends. It proved a life changing experience.

In the final climatic scene armed Klansmen attack the lodge, intent on driving out the foreigner and other guests and then stealing the lodge from Betty. Charlie organizes the other guests in resistance. A science fiction editor by trade, Charlie concocts a dramatization calculated to scare the superstitious Owen and his Klan away. Mixing one part The Day the Earth Stood Still, “klaatu barada nikto” and one part The Wizard of Oz, “I’m melting”, he succeeds.