Every Brilliant Thing at Big Couch through April 6
Entering the theater at Big Couch recently, I encountered a Who’s Who of some of New Orleans’ finest theater artists, perhaps, in part, because it was a Monday night and most other venues were dark.
I was pleased to see (in alphabetical order) Leslie Castay, Becca Chapman, Keith & Leslie Claverie, Benjamin Dougherty, Bob Edes, Jr., Mary Langley, Mary Pauley, Alex Smith, Michael Sullivan, Matthew Thompson, and James Wright (apologies to anyone I might not have seen). I was struck by the talent in that room, musical/comedic/dramatic, that I’ve seen in classic, modern and contemporary plays over the years. While some of these folks have appeared on stage recently, for others it has been a while which led me to wish that New Orleans could support some sort of repertory system that would allow these thespians (and many others) an ongoing opportunity to trod the boards and let their talents shine, regularly. A guy can dream, can’t he?
In any case, all of these people, and many more, were at Big Couch to see Alex Martinez Wallace in The NOLA Project presentation of Every Brilliant Thing, a one-person show by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe which explores grief and how one family deals with it.
Wallace delivers a master class in acting as he portrays the unnamed Narrator and others such as the Narrator’s father. Throughout the 70-minute running time, he remains thoroughly engaging both as monologuist and during all his encounters with the audience (of which there are many). Wallace extracts so much material from the script as he brings to life the narration itself while adding a vital subtext to it, the emotions that percolate just below the surface, sometimes by putting a just-right twist on a word, at others with a look or a perfectly timed pause. One would be excused for thinking that he’s making it up as he goes along.
Alex Martinez Wallace in Every Brilliant Thing (photo by Megan Whittle)
Based on true (and untrue) stories, Every Brilliant Thing details how the Narrator began a list on November 9, 1992 when he was 7 years old and his Dad picked him up from school to take him to a hospital after his Mom had attempted suicide. He wanted everything on the list to be “genuine, brilliant and life-affirming.” And so we get everything from the obvious ( “ice cream”) to more rarified choices (“candy that smells like a purse”, “the word ‘plinth’”). The list is witty and fun to hear as audience members are asked to call out items from numbered slips of paper that are handed out as one enters.
As the Narrator ages from 7 to 17 and then goes off to college and enters the real world, MacMillan and Donahoe provide insight and empathy without hitting you over the head. There are detours which take in Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in which the hero commits suicide, and factoids like that in the month after Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, suicides went up 12% in the U.S., a response known as “the Werther effect”.
As the Narrator ages and the list stretches to 10,000 things and beyond, Every Brilliant Thing does become a bit precious and the Narrator a teensy bit whiny, but it takes an interesting and unexpected turn in the last15 minutes that kept it muscular and absorbing.
Director Natalie Boyd did an outstanding job of guiding (or possibly controlling the innately exuberant) Wallace to give a performance of human-sized proportions, making sure, also, that the production never became mawkish or overly sentimental.
Part of the script involves having audience members being drafted into enacting characters and, the night I saw the show, all were excellent, especially the gentleman who played the Narrator’s father for a stretch, giving endless variation to his one word of dialog, “Why?” If I didn’t know better, I might almost have thought that some of these had been plants.
While MacMillan and Donahoe rightly encourage those dealing with depression and thoughts of self-harm and suicide to get help and there’s information to that effect in the program, I wish somewhere in the script there had been something to distinguish between taking one’s life due to mental health issues and when one makes a conscious decision when one has a painful, fatal disease and wants to end their life with dignity. Same topic but very different situations.
Also, I would’ve liked a few more details about what the Narrator and his parents do for a living. While there are some hints, it would have given them a specificity that enriches the many items on the list.
These are mere quibbles, however, and while the subject of Every Brilliant Thing may not be the happiest, Boyd’s beguiling production and Wallace’s extraordinary performance will have you leaving Big Couch full of life.
[For more information and tickets, go to https://www.nolaproject.com/ebt]
Billy Elliot: The Musical at Jefferson Performing Arts Center through April 6
Simply put, Elton John and Lee Hall’s Billy Elliot is one of the greatest musicals of the 21st century and even of the last 50 years. With a score in which every song is memorable and hummable, and a book that provides moving stories both personal and political, one wishes it would be seen as regularly as other, lesser musicals tend to be. It’s a difficult show to pull off, however, as it requires an 11-year-old boy who can sing, act, tap dance and, most importantly, dance ballet at an extremely high level.
Jefferson Performing Arts is fortunate to have Charlie Stover in the title role who, tho appropriately young, seems to already be a seasoned professional. A triple threat performer, he brings a naturalness to Billy who’s discovering his talent and love for ballet as he’s entering adolescence and as his father, brother and the rest of his coal-mining community in 1980s northern England are going on strike due to Margaret Thatcher’s policies.
Directed and choreographed by Kenneth Beck, this Billy Elliot sounds like a million courtesy of Music Director Max DoVale and Conductor Dennis G. Assaf who, together with their entire cast, capture the choral power of Sir Elton’s songs, particularly the ensemble numbers that nod to Elgar’s works.
As Mrs. Wilkinson, the community center’s ballet teacher who discovers Billy’s talent, Leslie Castay, outfitted in dusters and leg-warmers, wields an acerbic exterior against a harsh world yet exudes deep concern for Billy and his future.
Leslie Castay and Ballet Girls in Billy Elliot: The Musical (photo by John B. Barrois)
Louis Dudoussat, as Billy’s widowed father, convincingly evolves from narrow-minded oaf to more enlightened parent as he slowly realizes, with the help of Mrs. Wilkinson, how talented his son is and how important a possible career in ballet is to him. Dudoussat, whom I’ve only seen in smaller roles before, shines especially in the second act as he carries the burden of the show’s drama to its satisfying conclusion.
Meredith Long-Dieth makes Billy’s Grandma, who’s in the beginning stages of dementia, brasher than other Grandmas I’ve seen to humorous effect. And Parker Portera-Dufrene follows up the promise he showed in last year’s School of Rock with another marvelous performance as Billy’s best friend (a role originated on Broadway by local actor David Bologna) who courageously comes out of the closet at a very young age. Portera-Dufrene and Stover’s number Expressing Yourself joyously shows them in gay/straight alliance.
Charlie Stover and Parker Portera-Dufrene in Billy Elliot: The Musical (photo by John B. Barrois)
While Beck’s choreography fulfills the extensive demands of the show, particularly in Billy’s big number Electricity, and he’s guided his entire cast to give authentic performances, occasionally, emotions are a bit blunter, less layered or nuanced than they might ideally be. I also wish his and Eric Porter’s sets didn’t spend so much time moving on and off the stage, which interferes with the production’s momentum.
I can overlook all that (and a few flubs, understandable as I attended only the second performance), however, when this Billy Elliot is so full of joy, righteous anger, and pride in being one’s true self.
[Tix and more info at https://www.jpas.org/performance/billy-elliot/]
Orpheus Descending at Loyola’s Marquette Theatre through April 13
A full review will follow in my next column, but swathed in emotional truthfulness and leavened by humor, The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans’s current production of Orpheus Descending is a gripping operatic fever dream. Williams’ story may have originally been written 85 years ago (when it was known as Battle of Angels), but some of the characters in it seem like they were ripped from today’s headlines.
Benjamin Dougherty, David Sellers, John Wettermark and John Jabaley in Orpheus Descending (photo by Brittney Werner)
[For tickets and more information, go to https://ci.ovationtix.com/35398/production/1216005]
