Dinner and a show last night, but first Gyro. Amber Alert! Amber had some gossip, just days before the streets and parking lot outside the studio were the scene of a shootout and highspeed chase as two cars circled each other guns a blazing. Apparently, no one was hit and all that was left was a massed cop car callout. Her news and the workout she put us through were enough to lead us to dueling couch naps in the afternoon. We awoke in time for dinner and the show.
Anne had the cioppino, a seafood medley and I had the walleye. The theater was a madhouse. Two productions were being performed. There was the hot new show that is all sold out now and ours, Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire. Ring featured almost thirty of his songs strung together with the story of his life. The tunes were good. Afterwards, the cold front had arrived, driving the days record high temperatures down, down, down. Summer is over and winter is back.
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Eboni Booth’s heartwarming play, Primary Trust offers up a modern, tiki-lit homage to slices of Americana. Kenneth’s predictable life—Mai Tais at his favorite bar, Wally’s, and a steady job at a local bookstore—unravels, forcing him to confront a childhood loss amid the uncertainties of adulthood. With guidance from an imaginary friend, a kind waitress, and a splash of liquid courage, he discovers that trust, love, and friendship—much like the perfect Mai Tai—are best mixed in unexpected ways.
Mai-Tai
Primary Trust is about Kenneth dealing with change—his only job, ever is going away. When you first walk in, you are immersed in his upside-down world—quite literally. The set itself appears upside down, a creative decision meant to mirror the main character’s turmoil. Kenneth doesn’t really know how he fits in this world. He’s dealing with trauma and trying to figure out how to heal. His coping mechanisms—including relying on an imaginary friend, Bert—seem strange, but as his story is told, you see the deep roots of his emotional survival.
Primary Trust is set in the mythical town of Cranberry, New York, located forty miles east of Rochester. It is a small enough town that everyone knows everyone else, except for Kenneth. That is because his circle of friends is so small. Expanding that circle is the journey that is made in this play. Although the playwright and most of the cast is black and this is Black History month, the play is not really about race. Primary Trust is the name of the bank where Kenneth gets a job after the bookstore closes, but as the name of the play, it signifies the deep level of trust that Kennith needs to develop with other people.
Last night, we did dinner and a show. Dinner was at Big Sky, and the show was the Rep’s production of Emma. This rather campy treatment of the Jane Austen novel of the same name was written by Kate Hamill. It is chuck full of modern reference, sexual inuendo and features extensive breaking of the fourth wall. Emma is the story of a wealthy aristocratic woman with a penchant for meddling in other people’s lives. Set during England’s Regency period this show is a comical mix of 18th-century mores and modern sensibilities. It makes for an amusing and light fare, perfect for entertaining the holiday crowds.
We are a week out from Halloween, the height of the scary season. Decorations litter neighborhood lawns. So, it is natural or rather unnatural to expect spooky themed entertainment to abound. For a month now streaming services have bulked up on Halloween fare. The Reps latest offering, The Woman in Black, is similarly themed. Based upon Susan Hill’s gothic horror novel, as adapted for the stage by Stephen Mallatratt, it is currently the second longest running play in London’s West End. Cast members from that production performed in Saint Louis for this show. The cast is small, just three actors.
The Woman in Black is based on the Susan Hill gothic horror novel of the same name. It follows an accountant, Arthur Kipps, hired to review the accounts of the deceased Alice Drablow. He travels to Mrs. Drablow’s country manor house to discover, in the manner of all great ghost stories, disturbing noises and a mysterious woman in black with a skeletal face. The Woman in Black has all the tropes of gothic horror: a house in the middle of a formidable countryside, a room with a locked door holding a mysterious secret, and a woman gone mad haunting the house. And as Kipps explores the house, as an audience member, there’s an urge to shout, “Don’t open the door!” horror-film style—New York Theater Guide
This play makes repeated use of the jump scare, a technique in horror, designed to startle an audience by using a sudden, unexpected image or sound. These scares often rely on building suspense and then disrupting it with a loud noise or a shocking visual, like a creepy face, to elicit a physical reaction such as a gasp or a startle. While they can be effective when used with a slow build-up, they are often considered a controversial and sometimes cheap tactic, when overused.
I am not a big fan of horror. I find that there are more than enough horrible people in real life that reaching for something supernatural is superfluous. This play makes use of many tropes. In addition to that jump scare thing, its whole setting is bordering on the cliché “it was a dark and stormy night” territory. This play also uses the old play within a play crutch, or rather a rehearsal within a play, since what we are presented is supposed to be a rehearsal. Still, I can see why this show has aged so well. Its small cast makes it economical to produce. Its smaller set design makes it cheaper still. Horror has always been an avenue for low budget entertainment. If you turn off all of the lights, the audience is left alone in the dark with only their imagination for company. It is upon this facet that this show preys best.
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.
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.
