Category Archives: Theater

The Cottage

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The Cottage

The Cottage is an airy—and gassy—comedy about cheating. Set in the English countryside of the Twenties, this Noël Coward style sendup is an amusing little farce. The title and setting of this play is a family’s country getaway. In the East and I guess in England such dwellings are referred to as cottages. While, here in the Midwest we call them cabins. These summer homes can range from modest affairs to fabulous mansions such as in Newport, RI. The set for this show would seem to indicate that this play’s cottage favors the latter.

Weird how MAGA went from “they must pay!” to “we must pray!” the minute they found out it was a white dude. Too bad the shooter did not fit their narrative. I think that it is time that we move on and release the Epstein files. It is what Charlie Kirk would have wanted.

Props for Dan

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Props from Dan

Dan has repurposed a pair of formal ladies’ gloves that were once my mothers. They have been incorporated into an automaton that he created for an upcoming show. It shows a woman applauding. It is just one of a series of these unique automatons that he made. Other creations in this suite include a disembodied playing violin and a horse’s head. He likes the work. He is very good at it and other people seem to like it too. He has just finished this job and now has two more job offers. One of these jobs calls for building devices that are computer controlled, and he plans on using a Raspberry Pi for that. I assume that the noise of the mechanism will be drowned out by the music from the show, but I hope that the metronome will still be heard. He has been making these copper filament creations since art school. I find it interesting after all of these years of working in movies and TV, he finally seems to have found some traction with live theater. Lookout Broadway, because here he comes!

Dan Demonstrating Some Sailing Maneuver

Crazy Elon

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I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy

I’m not saying that it was DOGE, but it sure followed their MO. All last year, Dan worked on Wall Street, building the set for Will & Trust, an immersive theater project that was being produced by the same group that had produced the highly successful and long running Sleep No More. This new set spanned six floors of an old bank building. It then came as a shock and surprise when without warning this play folded on Easter Sunday. The only notice given was that tickets would be refunded. Employees discovered this closure when their work emails stopped working. No further explanation was given. So, rumors abounded, but facts were nonexistent. It is a mystery. Currently, Dan is now working on another as yet cannot be named immersive theater project, but instead of having to troop to work somewhere else, he is working from home. He is tasked with making half-a-dozen specialty items for this new show. 

Sherwood

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Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood

Everything seems like politics there days, at least to me. We went to the theater last night to see Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood. This show is a rather light take on the familiar Robin Hood legend. Played mostly for laughs, it featured in addition to Robin Hood himself, all of the usual suspects, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian. It had comic allusions to both the works of Shakespeare and Monty Python’s Holy Grail. On the antagonist’s side of the coin, it’s cast included the likes of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisborne and Prince John.

Audience participation was encouraged with both an applause sign and on its reverse a sign for booing. Robin Hood and his Merry Men are all into helping the poor. This made them the obvious choice for the good guys. That leaves the Sheriff, et. al. the role of the bad guys. Some slapstick mistaken choices with signage only egged the audience on. A couple of asides was all it took to tie this historical struggle to the current political situation. 

Those tie-ins had less than universal appeal to the mostly white and elderly house. Maybe they were still preoccupied over their 401Ks. It is natural for all this rigmarole over tariffs to allude to the Robin Hood legend. Tariffs are a tax, effectively a regressive sales tax. If left in place these tariffs will result in a massive reverse Robin Hood scheme, stealing trillions of dollars from the poor to pay the rich. The same rich who are searching for money like this to pay for their sought-after massive tax cuts.

Athena

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Athena Graphic

When the obstacle becomes the way—motto of the Greek goddess Athena

“En garde! Prêts? Allez!” Athena is all about fencing and not about fencing at all. The stage is a piste—the official flat strip of a platform where fencers compete. The audience is seated on both sides of the action. We were seated front row center. The two teenage épée fencers spend most of the play in full gear. Action, action and more action is always happening. These seventeen-year-olds are training for nationals. Athena (a nom de guerre) and Mary Wallace are different sides of the same coin. Athena, the daughter of a famous journalist is angry, hostile and friendless. While Wallace, the daughter of teachers is sensitive, maybe too sensitive, but more approachable. Athena lives in the city. While Mary commutes to NYC from the burbs. They agree to train together and begin to create a friendship. These two actresses comprise 90% of the play, until its climax, when a third fencer is introduced, during the qualifiers for nationals. After this short 75-minute play in the Rep’s black box studio, we adjourned next-door to where else, but Cyrano’s, for a late-night dessert. Touche! 

Million Dollar Quartet Christmas

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On December 4th, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins all happened to meet at the Sun Records studio in Memphis, Tennesse, where they had all had their start. They then played together in an impromptu jam session, which Sun Records owner, Sam Phillips dubbed the “Million Dollar Quartet.” Colin Escott later lionized this event in his musical by the same name, which we saw in 2017. Apparently, Escott has taken another dip at the well, with his Million Dollar Quartet Christmas show that we saw last night.

Back in ’56, Sam had rolled tape that fateful afternoon, from which several albums ensued. Phillips had also snapped photos of this gathering, “Because otherwise no one was going to believe that this ever happened.” The most popular version of that shot is on the left and shows a closeup of the quartet around the piano. The actual photo has a wider angle that included Marylin Evans, Elvis’s girlfriend at the time, sitting on the piano beside the four. The quartet had primarily played old gospel songs, because those were the only ones that they all knew, but in Escott’s retelling of this event it is almost all rock and roll. With twenty-two tunes in that show, there are way too many to enumerate.

That December was a hard time for Sam Phillips and Sun Records. He had already sold Presley’s contract to RCA just to keep his business afloat and Cash’s contract was ending. Perkins had all but faded, Sam only hot prospect left was Jerry Lee Lewis. And boy did he know it. Lewis and his ego have a gift for getting under people’s skin and riling everyone’s tempers. In this retelling of a retelling, Marylin steps forward to sooth those ruffled feathers and bring a little Christmas cheer. The original musical replaced gospel music with rock-and-roll and in this new one, rock-and-roll is replaced with Christmas music, with a Sun Records touch, Mele Kalikimaka was not ever on my dance card.

Even with all of this holiday cheer, the second act draws to a downbeat close. Elvis has just gotten his draft notice. Meaning he and the rest of the quartet are set to go their separate ways. As they began to file out the door to the tune of a Presley ballad, a whole third act/encore is cut loose. First bringing the audience to their feet, only to then be told to sit down again and stay awhile longer. It was a great show that sure as heck beat another retelling of a Christmas Carol.