The Andrews Brothers
By Roger Bean
Directed by Michael Edwards
Musical Direction by Chris Leavy
Winter Park Playhouse, Winter Park FL

I think I saw this in an old Phil Silver’s Show, or maybe in an Abbott and Costello film. The premise is simple – the Andrews Sisters are the ONLY musical act in the USA during the deprivations of WW2 and they can’t make it to a remote island for a USO show, so the men on the island drag it up and pull off a hit. The leggy Peggy Jones (Sarah Michele) is the only available female, but fortunately everyone else is an exceptionally talented stage hand of some sort. Act one agonizes over whether the Andrews Sisters will show up, Act Two throws in the towel, the boys dress up and the physical comedy takes over. Stage left we find a compact musical group: Chris Leavy on keys, Sam Forrest on rhythm, and Ned Wilkinson as multi-instrumentalist covering trumpet, conga, and whatever other musical doodads are requires to get that boogie woogie Big Band sound of the era.

The songs tend toward period standards; the hot numbers in Act One is Peggy’s “I Wanna Be Loved” and her big sloppy kiss in “On a Slow Boat to China”. Act Two’s best number is her “Stuff Like That There”, but the funniest song is “Six Jerks in A Jeep.” Audience members are recruited and put into less than typically embarrassing positions as they drive a cardboard jeep around. The actors on stage each had their own special talent, a buff Kevin Kelly faked a stutter and got the girl, the smallish Todd Mummert did the sexy girl with glasses number and Roy Alan – well, Mr. Alan did some excellent tap while wearing pumps, but in drag he’s one of the scariest women I’ve seen. There’s a mixture of styles here, Hawaiian folk tunes come out as 8 bar boogie, there’s a German love song which felt weird in a WW2 piece, and “Mairzy Doats” sounds as lame as it did when I first figured out the lyric as a kid. Still, this mixture of sexual frustration, unbridled patriotism and men is dresses entertains without threatening and reminds us that tap dancing can always raise the sophistication of the silliest premise.

For more information on Winter Park Playhouse, please visit http://www.winterparkplayhouse.org

Bus Stop
By William Inge
Directed by Joshua Eads-Brown
Starring Rochelle Curbow Wheeler, Nathan Bartman
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park FL

Nothing like a blizzard to bring out the best and the worst in people. Tonight Mr. Inge lodges eight frustrated people in a snow-beset diner just outside of Kansas City. Ahead of them lay the lonely western plains and mountains, behind them the suspicious and claustrophobic mores of Eastern morality. Everyone is paired up, but not everyone is destined for happiness. Cherie (Wheeler) is a dance hall floozy who nearly married her 14 year old cousin, but now rambunctious rancher Bo (Bartman) is carrying her off to Montana. It might be abduction, it might be consensual, she just can’t make up her mind. Robust sheriff Masters (Jeff Hole) keeps the peace, but he can’t just baby sit Bo, there’s a blizzard and the phone lines are down and someone needs to deliver coffee. Diner owner Grace (Karen Hill) is missing her husband but finds a companionship from horny bus driver Carl (Kenny Jardine.) He claims he can walk for “hours and hours, it helps the stiffness.” We presume the stiffness is a side effect of driving long haul buses thought the prairie. Drunken yet loquacious Dr Lyman (Brett Carson) nearly seduces Grace’s assistant Elma (Anna Kraeger), but is stopped by the wave of gossip that precedes him. That leaves Virgil (K. Musselle), Bo’s sidekick and mentor. He offers good advice like “women like men with a tender side.” But when Bo and Cherie ride off, he’s the abandoned one, and only he knows why.

This classic study of personalities in a locked room is a delight, the cast is well matched and everyone hits their marks under Eads-Brown’s direction. Bo dominates the show, you really feel he’s about to punch out everyone on stage. Carson is florid and demonstrative and has one of those endlessly self refilling hip flasks that only TV boozers can buy. Hill looked desperately horny, although she does have the piece of mind to ask Carl to keep his mouth shut, some of the other bus drivers don’t appeal to her that much. Mr. Hole’s sheriff seemed like an earthy, hands on guy, he’ll beat the crap out of you when required, but then buy you a beer and a band aid. This is a nice, compact show, and a piece of classic American theatre that doesn’t get done often enough. Get there before the snow melts.

For more information, please visit http://www.breakthroughtheatre.com

Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show Part 2
With Crispin Hellion Glover
Feb 22, 2012
Including the film “It is Fine. Everything is Fine”
Directed by Crispin Hellion Glover and David Brothers
Starring Steven C. Stewart
Enzian Theatre, Maitland FL

Rarely have I been so stumped walking out of a show. Yeah, Glover follows a Dada esthetic and is notorious for genuinely weird shows, but this evening made my jaw drop. Mr. Glover is a pleasant looking man with a friendly, pleasant demeanor and vaguely British accent. His TV and film resume impresses (“Gilbert Grape,” “Back to the Future,” “Hot Tub Time Machine,” “Donner Party”) although some of his projects have amazingly low IMDB scores and there’s even an anti-fan campaign to drive “Epic Movie” into the IMDB “Bottom 100″. Mr. Glover is certainly interesting, but let us begin at the beginning.

A line of storms blew thought town as I headed to the show, yet I was shocked to see a huge line of people lined up on the mulch carpet. I just barely got a ticket, and the auditorium was crackling with energy. We began with little ceremony; Mr. Glover’s head appeared in a small, angry red pin spot against a black curtain. As pages of his surrealist books appeared behind him, he read such titles as “Concrete Inspection,” “Rat Catching” and “Oak Mot”. He did edits on the fly, there was quite a bit of material to get through and judiciously skipped lines did not diminish is effect. Each of these books appears to date from Victorian times with the type fonts and illustration styles of 150 years ago, but Mr. Glover has done major editing and art revision and created clearly derivative works for our new century.

He began with “Concrete Inspection.” Words in the underlying book are blocked out and rewritten in a scratchy pen hand. Original meaning is muddied, the text redirects to a place only his internal muse can visit, and the audience reacts favorably. Staccato laughter and occasional applause arise spontaneously but as he proceeds, the laughs diminish, more and more people find reasons to retreat to the lobby to text or pee or pick up a copy of the Orlando Weekly or the Park Press. Clearly the spirits of Marcel Duchamp and René Magritte haunt him, but I find less and less to intrigue. My table mate leans over and asks “How many books has he read so far?” The answer is not important, but the sub text is: “I’m bored. When will he stop?” Staunch your wounds, brave literary soldier, that was the last one. Assess this as a poetry reading and it’s tolerable, but as storytelling it’s … Technically, its story telling. Leave it at that.

And now its film time. Glover shows volume two of his trilogy of films, and his reputation as an eccentric shines through in “It is Fine. Everything is Fine.” Here we meet Paul Baker (Stewart) who has cerebral palsy and a rich fantasy life. While his reality is trapped in a nursing home, in his mind he’s a suave ladies man, and while none of us can understand a word he says, the women find him irresistible. His first conquest is middle aged divorcee, and then her barley legal daughter. Their long hair fascinates him, but when the women think about cutting it, he murders them. More women enter his life, the sex becomes more explicit, and pretty soon we are in a serial killer sex film with full on Rule 34 cerebral palsy hard core. As credits roll Mr. Glover takes the stage for Q&A time. I forget the first question but it gets a rambling 10 minute answer explaining the motivation and back-story of the film. A trailer for his first film “What Is It?” rolls; it features naked Down’s syndrome people wearing elephant masks. His point, as I understand it, is to question “What makes the depiction of disabled on screen so troubling?” While that’s a legitimate question, I’m not sure I want to explore it with him anytime soon. But it’s just a trailer, it’s late and I’m done with questions and have to go pick up tree limbs.

Keep up with Mr. Glovers appearances at http://crispinglover.com/

More Enzian Theatre events can be found at http://www. Enzian.org

Hedda Gabler
By Henrik Ibsen
Directed by Eric Zivot
Starring Robb Ross, Melanie Whipple, Steven Lane
Mad Cow Theatre, Orlando Fl

Hedda Gabler: proto feminist, victim of circumstance, female Hamlet – take your pick. Tonight she’s a conniving little social climber with a brace of pistols on the dining room table, just in case someone needs to fight a duel of honor or politely excuse themselves from her social climb in the salons of Oslo. Just as soon as the maid Berta (Sara Humbert) finishes dusting the exposition, we meet the feisty Hedda (Whipple). She married dishrag and scholar George Tesman (Ross) who is more interested in medieval French domestic industries than modern Norwegian bedroom activities. His appointment is at risk, rival and alcoholic Lovborg (Lane) prepared a sensational manuscript that will vault him to notoriety over Tesman. I always recommend bringing the single copy of your life’s work along when you go out for a hard night’s drinking, otherwise how else would Tesman find it in the snow? Oily Judge Brack discovers Hedda has destroyed the manuscript and plans to use that fact for a little side entertainment. Thank goodness for everyone those decorative pistols come complete with powder and caps.

Like all early century northern European manners plays, this one is crammed into a suffocatingly congested set. Large chairs fill the narrow aisle between the audience and even in the back row you’re always close enough to see Hedda’s pores. Whipple’s crimped and hennaed hair and fussy dress scream “I’m respectable! I have money” even as Tesman’s demeanor and shabby vest whisper “I hope someday to sit at the cool table in the faculty lounge.” There’s some chemistry between Lane’s dissolute young genius and Hedda and as soon as we see him it’s obviously she played the wrong hand. Agent provocateur Judge Brack moves effortlessly between moral dilemma and relentless self gratification – Lanier often plays the frustrated loser, but as a man with hidden power he’s actually a bit intimidating. Opposite Hedda is her friend and puppet Mrs. Elvsted (Emily Killian,) she’s left one husband and has Lovborg’s working notes. She may be a pushover but she’s dangerous to Hedda’s position and Brack might not help Hedda, but we will help himself. There’s nowhere to go now, so we might as well turn off the lights.

Director Zivot build a powerful set of emotions in this tiny space – while Hedda’s social position is subject to forces she can no longer control, she still wields some power over the men surrounding her. She ably leverages desire and availably to recover her original goal, but like a man levering granite blocks on top of one another slippage is always an option, and failure a painful crushing force that you initiate but cannot stop.

For more information on Mad Cow, please visit http://www.madcowtheatre.com

Writing Down The Beat: An Introduction to Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac Writer In Residence Program
February 25, 2012
Part of ArtsFest
Kerouac House, Orlando FL

I’ve seen the greatest minds of my generation consumed by Angry Birds. I’ve seen the inside of the Kerouac house – a bungalow from another generation, filled with replicas of the past and writers of the future. I’ve seen my youth mocked, by itself, by the internet, and it was funny. Yes, I’m back at ArtsFest. This time it’s the Beat Writer’s Workshop, a splendiferous mash up of history and literature and the wanabees and gonnabees of the next generation. The house is small, the audience friendly. A woman named Jenna with a hobbitish accent guides us through the session: a stream of consciousness video with a local newscaster, a short history of the house, then a vintage Coronet film made during Kerouac’s most active years encouraging us to “plan ahead.” As a writer, if you don’t plan you do so your own risk. You write 800 page self-published trilogies and ask your friends read them and not point out the dialog is trite, the story hackneyed, and the premise done to death.

Wannabee and Gonnabee writers.

Coffee. They have coffee, it’s the fuel of spurious thoughts and the lubricant of business and it is HOT. Hot and bitter liked a spurned lover, hot like a hippy at a Gingrich rally, hot like a black vinyl car seat and cut off jeans. There is a Writer in Residence. She resides here, writing and residing. I don’t know what she writes, did write, will write, can write, could write, but she reads well. She reads a passage from “On The Road.” I read half of it years ago and ran out of steam. I feel guilty – sitting here, drinking Kerouac’s coffee, using Kerouac’s electricity, Kerouac’s guest bathroom, his oxygen, his bandwidth, his good will. I should read it to assuage my guilt. I have a hard copy and bootleg kindle version so I have no excuse. I would rather play Angry Birds.

Would Jack Kerouac own this lamp?

Being a workshop, we are now put to work. Told to write, asked to show our work, encouraged to revel in other’s work. We are all seriously writing, spread out on benches and chairs writing the next Great American Paragraph. Some write in the place Kerouac survived a fever, some write in his bathroom, his bedroom, his mother’s arm chair. We are all typing, scribbling, creating. I think, I pray, supplicating the gods of writing, gods with a small “g”:Mr. Royal, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Smith, Mr. Corona, and most recently Mr. Gates. I pray “Please god: don’t let this suck.”

Thank you. Tip your server. I’ll be here all week.

More events at the Kerouac House may be seen at http://kerouacproject.org/

Arts Fest events are listed at http://www.artsfestfl.com

Tea & Letters: Great Urban Spaces 2
Voci Dance
February 19, 2012
The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL

It’s a windy breezy afternoon, pollen is in the air and oak leave skitter across the brick pavement at the Mennello Museum of American Art. ArtsFest has passed out some tickets to see this elaborate dance event and I’m about #80 on the list but I also have faith. All the ArtsFest events have a few no shows, and as you’ve heard showing up is 80% of success. While waiting for the show to start, I converse and eat a few cupcakes.

Love Letters We Do Not Like.

Voci shows tend to sneak up on you; a woman in a grey tattered dress stalks out of the crowd and wanders toward a large oak tree. The event begins as people focus on her and soon she’s unwrapping a roll of paper tape and reads a love letter in what might be Hungarian. More dancers appears, more scrolls unroll and soon a mass reading occurs, paper is shredded, and you wonder if this side of the romance will stick around. As love letters shred, one of the dancers steps up to the elevated statue of a seminude man mounted on a pole. He lives in the park, and the dancer introduces herself, makes a pass at him, and is rejected. His golden skin with the sun sparkling off it turns yellow and jaundiced, his eloquent hair gets the frizzies, and his exotic silence becomes annoying self indulgences. Good this she figured all this out before they picked a china pattern. Soon an “interval” is announced (That’s British for intermission) more cupcakes are consumed, and tea is passed out. All very elegant.

Pineing for the Man She Cannot Have.

Our next excursion takes us in the darkened galley with a single dancer illuminated in an alcove. In another room we meet a young lady drinking imaginary tea from a real cup. Her motion is as close to ballet as anything today as she performs around a pin spot that normally highlights a piece of sculpture. We reunite in the “Big Gallery”; here Earl Cunningham’s primitives form the main attraction of the Mennello’s collection. Three huge oriental rugs are surrounded by metal folding chairs, and the entire troupe reforms. As Sarah Lockhart reads Old Fashioned rules for formal letter writing (check your spelling, read it before you send it, stuff we can safely ignore today) more paper rolls are shredded, more virtual tea is consumed, and soon the room is invaded by a large black and red puppet called “Godrick.” He’s intimidating but attracts a young woman with his charms, they to hit it off, and she will certainly have something to write about this evening. Then it s bit more tea, a bit more Victorian probity, and we are spun back out into a perfect Florida spring day. Its modern dance, the old fashioned way.

The Precision Tea Drinking Team

Rejoining indoors, the audience is split up into groups based on the color of their heart shaped doilies. My group enters a gallery dominated by an oversized gilt bronze statue of the museum’s patron; it blends Margaret Dumont and Maggie Thatcher in a Victorian dress and sets her on the bow of the Hesperus. A single dancer executes some delicate maneuvers on the floor but she can’t seem to find her light and it’s hard to ignore the Bronze Goddess. I think I missed the intended effect.

Beauty and the Felt Beast

Other events and exhibits at the Mennello are described at http://www.mennellomuseum.com/

Visit www.vocidance.org for their next exciting dance event.

A Behanding in Spokane
By Martin McDonagh
Directed by Jeremy Wood
Howler’s Theatre presenting at Art’s Sake Studio
Winter Park, FL

Carmichael (Scott Browning) lost his hand. Something to do with redneck hillbillies and a train outside of Spokane. The details of this country love song are fuzzy, but he did see his hand waving as it went over the next hill and he wants it back if only for sentiment. Tonight might be his lucky night; Toby (Aaron Smalls) and Marilyn (Jamie-Lyn Markos) offer their spare hand for $500 even if it’s not racially correct. Maybe Marilyn brought the wrong one, and Carmichael is concerned the one they forgot back home matches his DNA. His are typical private party sales concerns all collectors have – authenticity, provenance and whether this hand reads “Hate” across the knuckles all influence his final decision. He ties up the sellers, sets a candle in a gas can, and takes off to do market research while the speed freak hotel clerk (Tony Demil) visits with the couple. Will the deal go down? Will the hotel burn quickly? Will anyone in the audience get shot?

“Behanding” mixes a gruesome comedy with foul language and insane emotions and while I’m never sure what the author is trying to say, I know I’m just barely safe huddling outside the 4th wall. Browning does what he does best; he’s the short tempered psycho about to explode. Marilyn isn’t too bright but she nearly flirts the desk clerk into releasing her. Toby knows he slipped up, and seems shocked to find that Carmichael isn’t just dealing with him. Craziest of all is the clerk, he gets whole scene of body building and Red Bull chugging, and while he might not have a gun, he might be even more deadly than Carmichael. Intense and edgy, this isn’t for everyone and while the director hoped for some bad press to get out and help sell the show, I won’t give it. See this on its merits, and remember – it starts at 10 for a DAMN GOOD REASON.

For more exciting information about Howler’s Theatre, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Howlers-Theatre/170793812961668

For more information on Art’s Sake Studios, check www.art-sake.com/