Review of PRAYER by Jonathan Kravetz at Nouveau 47 plus a chat with Kevin Kautzman

Review of “Prayer” by Jonathan Kravetz
*Regional Premier*
Nouveau 47 Theatre, Dallas, TX

I spent the weekend running around the Metroplex playing host to the up and coming playwright Kevin Kautzman who had come up to hold a playwriting workshop atNouveau 47’s space in Fair Park. Friday and Saturday were overcast by the gloom of the first hard rain of the nascent spring and I put nearly 250 miles on my car running between the workshop, the premier of Larry Herold’s THE SPORTS PAGE at Stage West in Fort worth and back to my home base of Denton. With Sunday came the sunshine and a renewed energy for the final leg of a theatre packed weekend. Kevin and I sat around the kitchen table drinking French Press coffee and talking about the upcoming production of his play IF YOU START A FIRE at Monday’s Dark Theatre in Manhattan this coming April. As we finished up our talk, I was already jonesing to get on the road back to Nouveau 47 for the final showing of the opening weekend of Kravetz’s play, PRAYER. 

I knew very little about the play going in, other than Kravetz’s THE BEAST IN MY PANTS had been read as part of the inaugural “New Works, New Voices” festival at N47 last year. Kevin also had a play read and I knew the calibre of his work stood up to the kind of production that I have been eagerly anticipating at N47 since we first interviewed them before their opening a while back. This is the second show in their second season and I can’t think of a better way to bring in March than to take on a challenging piece of theatre that deals directly with issues close to my own consciousness. While we were packing up to head to Dallas on Sunday, Kevin noticed a number of books on my shelf that had to do with ultra-fundamentalism and the dangers of state sponsored torture/terrorism. I knew that PRAYER dealt directly with those issues and I was intrigued by what I had seen of the set, designed by N47 Technical Director Donny Covington. 

We arrived at the theatre with a few minutes to spare and it turned out that the only people sharing the theatre with us on this day, with daylight savings time having wreaked its own kind of havoc on the early Sunday crowds, were Covington’s family and Literary Manager Melissa Hennessey. A more appreciative, thoughtful group I could not have hoped to share the experience of PRAYER with. Covington’s set transforms the N47 space into an oddly shaped cell. The severe thrust of the space and the high, forbidding wall broken only by a metal clad door with bars served as almost the only set. A pair of cots spoke to two occupants that had yet to arrive. I noticed immediately that there were what appeared to be ghostly outlines of bodies on the back wall. Traced as though left by a firing squad, the penitent sinner placed against the wall and dispatched of. As the lights went down for the beginning of the play, one of the prisoners, played by Brian Witkowicz, entered in the dark. His grungy hair and costume spoke of long neglect and while lay on the cot waiting for the arrival of his new cell mate, he oozed a nervous tension that set the mood for what was to come. 

The arrival of Jacob Bergson, played by Randy Perlman, sets the play in motion. We are now in a future world where ultra-fundamentalist anti-intellectuals have taken over the country. They rule with a conglomeration of rules straight out of 1984 and The Handmaids Tale. Prisoners are not given the option of council and the farcical concept of the rule of law has no place in the world of PRAYER. Bergson stands accused of being a seditious doctor who has written a book he claims never to have read. Dr. Hawkes, the imagined hand behind the banned book, seems to have created a tome designed specifically for the erosion of blind faith, something that Bergson only understands on a surface level. He pines for his wife, Sophia, and for the children he never had. 

Kravetz’s first act is taut and fraught with unrealized tension. The Priest (Dwight Greene) and Sub-Priest (Ben Bryant) along with a guard (Sam Swanson), who conveniently used to shop at Bergson’s stationary store, move with too much ease. Their menace is depleted by the conversational ease they carry with them in their physicality. I didn’t feel a sense of danger in the first third of the show, the acting, while very good, lacked something of the frazzled and frightened nature of the accused but un judged. Act II brought to full realization the brutality of Kravetz’s writing, Bergson enters the stage moving so heavily that it is clear he has been under severe stress, encouraged to confess his crime. Pearlman’s bulk become less softening and more solid, he has withstood an immense amount of torture but will not break because he still believes that he will be given a trial. In a particularly incendiary performance, Pearlman and Witkowicz fulfill the promise of their characters when Bergson challenges Nelson’s (Witkowicz) assertion that God is a bastard child. Not since Sundown Collaborative Theatre’s production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 have I felt such power coming from the stage. 

Duane Deering’s sound design brings the world outside the cell into near perfect contrast, the voices of the impending revolution are realistically muffled from beyond the imagined wall of the prison. Clay Cook’s lighting creates the different lighting in the cell with skill, moments of the play take place in near darkness, some only lit by the bars in the door. Costumes by Samantha Rodriguez are at once perfect and cliche; prisoners are perfectly costumed and the guards are predictably a blend of fascist and Nazi. Uncredited makeup design was perhaps some of the most well researched and subtle I have seen. The evidence of all kinds of torture were inscribed on the bodies of the actors in such a way that it was perfectly clear what had happened to them off stage. 

Jim Kuenzer, whom I had the pleasure of sitting in the playwriting workshop with earlier on Saturday, created some of the most powerful graphic design I have seen recently. The faces of the characters washed out with only a QR code to give more information about the play, stunning in their simplicity but also creating an other/future world aesthetic.

I left the play with a number of impressions. First, Kravetz’s play, while very good, is not perfect. I felt an ending about three or four minutes before the final blackout. That said, the acting and directing (Diana Gonzalez) created such a rich world that the weakness of the ending didn’t bother me as much as it might have otherwise. Secondly, sad though it was that I was only in the theatre with five other people, knowing that this kind of intimate and powerful acting is taking place in the metroplex made me happy to know that the promise of N47 is coming to fruition. I was also gratified to see such care taken with the technical aspects of production, too frequently smaller productions are left wanting in this regard. Finally, I left with an evangelical urge to let everyone I know about the powerful work happening through March 24 at Nouveau 47. Go see this play. Really. Go. Drive down, take the DART, carpool. Whatever it takes to get you down to see this worthy work, do it. I’m honored to count Nouveau 47 among the theatres in DFW with whom we have had a long relationship and this is one piece of theatre that makes me look forward to the future of theatre in DFW. Go.

Also, check out the upcoming production of Kevin Kautzman's IF YOU START A FIRE in NYC!

Podcast: A Chat with Kevin Kautzman and Review of PRAYER

Writing workshop with Kevin Kautzman and Larry Herold.

Spent the afternoon talking playwriting with folks down at Nouveau 47. Intermission update from Stagewest's production of Larry's play. Made good changes to the script but acting is missing the spark. Director Jerry Russell's pacing a little slow. Look for full report later plus a chat with Kevin about the performance and his upcoming production in NYC of "If You Start A Fire (Be Prepared to Burn)".

Three Reviews From the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.

A Most Happy Stella, Waking Up and Raspberry Fizz

This past Saturday I headed down to Addison from Denton to catch a couple of shows at the WaterTower Theatre Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. I first became aware of the festival as I was finishing grad school in 2009 and participated in 2010 where I connected with Audacity Theatre Lab Artistic Director Brad McEntire. Since then, he has been an active presence with Stage Directions Blog and I was more than happy to make my way down to see his latest show, and incidentally my first of his work, Raspberry Fizz in a double bill with Greyman Theatre Company’s Waking Up by Kelsey Ervi and directed by Emily Christine Smith. I drove down early (around 1:00) to catch the matinee opening performance of A Most Happy Stella by David Parr and directed by Eric Amburg. I will be the first to admit that I like to go and see work that my friends do and in this case, I went to see three of my friends working in a new play (also something that I love). I had no knowledge of the production and was not involved in any way, other than as a delighted audience member. I don’t consider myself a journalist in the sense of a totally objective reaction to a piece, my reaction is my own and in publishing my opinions on plays that I see (or that Dan and I see together) I am simply trying to capture my experience and give others an opportunity to get some information about the play before they go. That description sounds like a journalist, but I am also involved in the craft of making theatre, I am an educator and playwright and director, among other things. This is my reaction. 

A Most Happy Stella is for all intents and purposes a series of vignettes that riff on classic films that I assume Parr holds in high regard. They are campy and at times beautiful, always witty and quite acerbic as well. Walking into the main stage at WaterTower, I was confronted with a Jazz combo headed by Rebecca Cordes (who wrote the musical The Great White Way with Parr, seen at last years festival). Cordes knew exactly when to step back and let the be-dreaded bass player and the cool trumpet of her bandmates shine, and shine they did. The last minute addition of Brian Casey on bass brought the performance to a virtuosic level, he soloed with smooth grace and lighting quick, complex constructions. Jason Webb on trumpet brought out melody lines in unexpected ways and John Allnutt on drums rounded out the ensemble. When Cara Statham Serber came out and began singing a jazzy “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” it seemed like a step backward for the play. As apropos as Cobain’s song is for the theatre, it is a tired convention by this point and while I understand the impulse, I feel it was a misguided attempt at relevance (albeit from the 1990’s). The production took an immediate step up from this moment with the clever and fast paced Long Gays Journey Into Night which saw the Dallas based portion of acting ensemble come together for the first time. DeAnna Gonzales, Serber, Zane Harris and Travis Stuebing had fantastic chemistry as a group of siblings and a mystery man. Parr’s writing never strayed from the sharp, biting dialogue that played with misunderstood characters being quoted immediately after in a pun/wit form. Going from the titles of the pieces, this was most probably his intent. 

Porn Yesterday saw the NYC portion of the ensemble, Joleen Wilkinson and J. Stephen Brantley riffing on the film Born Yesterday as a couple ostensibly celebrating an anniversary with a “you choose one and I choose one” scenario. Wilkinson shone as New Jersey style white trash, Brantley came across as stiff and disconnected. He warmed up as the show went on, the two were heartbreaking in Alas Poor Yorick, probably the most fully realized of the pieces besides the final number. A Most Happy Stella, the final piece of the show felt like it alone was the reason for the production. A musical take on Streetcar, the piece was funny and biting. Stuebing’s Stanley was the highlight of the piece for me. He brought the right amount of machismo and femininity (especially when draped in more feather boas than I could count). As a piece of theatre, the vignette construction brought the production into the Youtube age; short, comic scenes with strong acting all around and some music thrown in to tie everything together. The ensemble provided a varied and consistent canvas for Parr’s writing and Director Eric Amburg avoided the long pauses I noticed in 2010 when he directed Parr’s Mimi at the 44th Parallel and found just the right tone for each scene. I imagine it was difficult bringing together a cast from NYC and from Dallas in a short rehearsal period, in this case it served to highlight the differences in the scenes and provided two distinct groupings of actors who each brought out the quirky humor. 

After I couldn’t get tickets to Autobahn by Neil Labute, I waited around until the 8pm show where I was pleased to see that I was getting in on a double bill. Grayman Theatre Company began the evening with Waking Up, a befuddling short play about...coupling. There were four actors playing three couples in various orientations and stages that were bounced back and forth between one central bed. Using one set piece for the whole production was a brilliant touch, actors threw pillows off and put them back on to the blanket-less bed. From the beginning, Nellsyn Hill was the standout in this group of Baylor BFA students. She provided the most genuine moments and rarely struck a note that didn’t seem to be coming from the immediate experience. All of the performances were solid, the script seemed to be lacking in clarity and direction. While it was enjoyable, it wasn’t something that stuck with me as I waited for the final show of the evening Raspberry Fizz. 
 

Raspberry Fizz, by Brad McEntire and directed by Andy Baldwin (who opened Lord of the Flies at Levelground Arts on the same night) is a delightful piece of theatre, expertly acted by Jeff Sweringen, Natalie Young and Shane Beeson. The piece tells the story of a young boy and girl on the cusp of teen-hood, the boy waiting to ask the girl to a harvest dance. The Carnival Barker is there to create a sense of mystery and he continually recites a mantra designed to capture the interest of the young boy. Sweringen as Ellson hits all the right physical notes with his character; one would hardly believe he wasn’t a child based on his physicality. Young as Samantha is pitch perfect in her flat, midwestern accent that reminded me of something out of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man. Beeson’s Barker was a little more challenging, at times his patter came across as forced but it didn’t detract from the overall performance. The final moment of the piece, Sweringen and Young dancing slowly, was a nice end to the evening. Tension built up and released by the slightly childish dancing on the part of the two actors. 

What was interesting for me in the double bill was the difference in the age of the performers. Grayman is made up of University students and Audacity Theatre Lab’s cast is decidedly not but the two groups in the same space within the same time frame created two distinctly different but complimentary pieces of theatre. Searching for love and purpose, belonging and raspberry fizz.

For more information about Out of the Loop performances, visit www.watertowertheatre.org. Each of the productions reviewed has a number of performances remaining at the festival. 

Podcast 5 March 2012:

Review of Music Theatre of Denton's "Avenue Q" Regional AmDram Premier.

Love "Avenue Q"? MTD Presents a mixed bag.

When I was a kid growing up in South-Central Montana, just a stone’s throw from Colorado and the creators of “South Park”, I dreamt of a world where the profane, perverse baby voice that I practiced in the parking lot of the local IGA would someday find a voice. Then, as now, the idea of a child or childlike object spouting the darker aspects of humanity was at once funny and disturbing to passersby. I got some very strange looks from the old ladies walking in to do their shopping as my little baby voice spouted out things that would make my physics teacher, who had just spent a summer on board a NOAA vessel, blush. As things progressed and I became more and more interested in the theatre as an art form, I noticed that certain things were becoming acceptable; things that were unthinkable in the isolated upper midwest were finding a foothold in far off New York City. 

“Avenue Q,” first produced in 2003, captured the spirit of a depressed and newly vulnerable nation. Puppets were racist, misogynist, serial masturbators who had degrees and fully realized sex lives. The foil for humanity, the puppet, was a safe avenue for the expression of the darker feelings that had lain under the surface and were boiling up, finally, in the face of a growing war on terror and the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush administration. This all may seem to be high-flown rhetoric, but “Avenue Q” found an audience in NYC that craved an outlet. If puppets are calling each other racist and saying it is ok, if the childhood dreams of Sesame Street and people coexisting with Muppets could be a reality, wouldn’t it be more fun if they were more like us?
Music Theatre of Denton secured the Regional Premier for Amateur Production rights, Theatre Three is producing the musical in the coming months, and MTD found their audience opening night with an almost packed house. This production doesn’t suffer on the technical side. The set and lighting both serve their parts in this production and it is easy to imagine the apartments on any street peopled by both puppets and humans. Puppets, rented, are present and as raunchy as expected; some of the puppets even seem to be channeling their professional lineage by sounding as close to the Broadway production as possible. Trekkie, voiced by Ted Minette, is perhaps most guilty of cribbing from the cast recording. Perverted and lively, hearing what amounts to character theft come from the mouth of a puppet may be a sort of homage to the original production, in this case it comes across as what the majority of the performers in this production do: present a reasonable facsimile of what many in the audience had already seen in NYC. 

For some audience members, this isn’t a problem. For me, the shining performances came from actors that created their own versions of the characters. Kate Monster, voiced sweetly by Nikki Cloer, is perhaps the most genuine of the puppet characters. Cloer’s puppet voice was spot on, her face, while not distracting from her big, pink persona, was interesting to watch as the emotions of the character were played out. Not so with her love interest Princeton. Voiced by Matt Purvis, Princeton was flat and emotionless. The highs and lows of the character were seemingly vacant from Purvis’ face and it was difficult to focus on the story when the performer so clearly wasn’t present. As disappointing as this was, the lack of character was more than made up for in two of the human characters. Olivia Emile, playing the equivalent of an Asian Jim Crow, was fantastic. Her portrayal of Christmas Eve, the harpy wife of the average Brian (played by Eric Ryan), Emile played with the careful balance between forcing a stereotype and finding something in her character that was redeemable. Numbers like “The More You Ruv Someone” and “It Sucks To Be Me” were well served by Emile’s powerful voice. She was joined in this regard by Erica Cole (Gary Coleman) and Kelsey Macke (Lucy The Slut). All three of these performers raised the level of the show from mediocre to good, anytime one of them was onstage, the energy of the production jumped to a new level. Cole’s “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)" channeled the recently passed Etta James and Whitney Houston both. As Gary Coleman, Cole was clearly enjoying herself and she was perhaps the most comedic of the human characters. Macke positively exuded sexuality, as much as a puppet can, and made her number one of the highlights of the first act. 

One of the other standout puppet performances came from Chris Jordan as Rod, the sexually repressed, closeted gay puppet. Jordan clearly loved performing and it made his character one that I kept hoping would come back on stage. Following closely behind, the Bad Idea Bears bear mention. Travis Turek and Anna Marie Boyd were hilarious as the...bad angels that Princeton has on his shoulders.  

Jordan’s love for the opportunity to portray a character in “Avenue Q” is one of the elements that makes community theatre so appealing when it comes to avocational actors. Rather than looking at the performance as a step to something much bigger, each of these actors had the opportunity to step outside of their daily grind and transport themselves and the audience to a place where a puppet can say “Fuck you!!” and the things that a large majority of the audience would never utter are heard in full volume from the stage. 
Director, Bill Kirkley, did an admirable job with his cast, moments were just long enough and the flow of the production never slowed. Perhaps one moment that should be mentioned, passing hats during “The Money Song” completely pulled the audience out of the production. Lights were brought up and while the actors were singing and dancing (if choreographer Stephanie Felton’s work could be called dancing), the audience was digging in purses and wallets to fill the hats coming around.

Overall, this production will not disappoint the avid fan of “Avenue Q” (I saw at least two T-shirts from the London production walking around), neither will it disappoint a complete nube (in which category I will admit to being). The strength of the show comes in the script and in the shining moments that are brought to you by the letters S-c-h-a-d-e-n-f-r-e-u-d-e. Taking comfort in the suffering of others, be they puppets or your-fellow- man adequately states the purpose of this musical. You won’t suffer if you see this production, you may just not come away with all the comfort the writers would like.  

“Avenue Q” continues it’s run through 11 March. Tickets are going fast, reserve yours at http://www.dentoncommunitytheatre.com/tickets.shtml.

Podcast 4 March 2012: