Echoes of the Heart at NOCCA’s Press Street Station
Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve missed something until you reencounter it after too long an absence.
For example, billed as “a cabaret experience”, The NOCCA Stage Company’s recent original song cycle Echoes of the Heart took me back to the heyday of Le Chat Noir, that intimate boîte run by the stylish Barbara Motley on St. Charles Avenue that provided a wonderful venue for all sorts of cabaret experiences. Since it closed in 2011, New Orleans has been without a locale for such offerings.
Now, Press Street Station, an event space associated with the NOCCA Foundation, with its high ceiling, concrete floor and industrial, if inviting, atmosphere, is hardly the ideal cabaret setting. Miraculously, however, with small tables and chairs arrayed under Dan Zimmer’s atmospheric lighting, The NOCCA Stage Company overcame those challenges to create a welcoming and appropriate space for Echoes of the Heart.
Billed as “an original song cycle that weaves together personal struggles, love, heartbreak, and the quiet, transformative power of music and lyrics,” Echoes of the Heart was original in the sense that Director/Creator Blake Coheley selected songs from Broadway and off-Broadway shows, some well-known, some obscure, with the intention that “as the evening unfolds, what begins as individual journeys gradually becomes something collective.”
I’m not sure if Echoes did all that; with six performers, individual journeys proved a bit challenging to follow. But no matter–with the cast’s beautiful voices and material intelligently chosen by Coheley, the evening took an adult approach to its intended themes and coalesced around them in an impressionistic and utterly engaging manner.
The ensemble–Michael Breath, Jr., Samantha Helmstetter, Kesha McKey, Siddalie Ogeron, Mark-Anthony Thomas, and Hardy Weaver, all NOCCA alums except for Breath–singly and in various combinations, all demonstrated their ability to put a song over, not only vocally, but emotionally using keen dramatic, and occasionally comic, talents.
The cast and musicians of Echoes of the Heart
Helmstetter, a 2008 Ambie Award nominee for Best Actress in a Musical for NOCCA’s Jane Eyre, balanced heartache with resilience in the 9/11-themed I’ll Be Here as well as Not a Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along.
McKey, a graduate of NOCCA as well as the school’s current Director of Arts, found the playfulness in Everybody’s Girl from Steel Pier and the deep-seated yearning in The Wiz’s Home.
Orgeron, whom I admired as Velma Kelly in Chicago two years ago at NOCCA, displayed a clarion soprano as she sang Fun Home’s Changing My Major with youthful exuberance and I’m Not Afraid of Anything from Songs for a New World with determined optimism.
Breath, a performer new to me, emanated teenage hormonal angst in Be More Chill’s Michael in the Bathroom to hysterical effect, while Thomas achieved similarly hilarious results by outrageously acting out the title of Cry Baby’s Girl, Can I Kiss You with Tongue? Thomas, whose credits include many operatic performances and is Chair of Vocal Music at NOCCA, also delivered a powerful, gender-reversed And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.
Weaver, who has appeared on Broadway & on tour in The Book of Mormon and won a 2005 Best Actor in a Musical Ambie Award for NOCCA’s Floyd Collins, reprised How Glory Goes from that musical and handled the sly humor as a, um, flamboyant caveman in Way Ahead of My Time with delicious panache.
Coheley’s staging made full use of the Press Street Station space even if that necessitated some head twisting at times. And what a wise choice not to use mics even if occasionally, when a singer was far upstage, it was a bit difficult to hear them entirely; it still was worth it, overall, to hear the singers’ gorgeously unamplified voices.
Zimmer achieved theatrical magic in a challenging space by stringing a canopy of lights with ever-changing colors overhead. Musical Director Travis Haas conducted a trio that was well-attuned to the both the performers and the musical style of the evening.
My only criticism of Echoes of the Heart is that, at two and a half hours, it was simply too long; it reminded me of a fabulous meal where after a while you became full but the food just kept coming and coming. This was truly a case where less would’ve been more.
Speaking of fabulous food, The NOCCA Stage Company partnered with NOCCA’s Culinary Department to offer scrumptious bites before the show and during intermission. Fig & brie tarts, mini-shrimp cocktails, and cream puffs, among other goodies, delighted the palate in just-right portions. If only Echoes of the Heart had been likewise portioned to, say, two hours (or less), it would’ve been perfect.
Miss Julie and Venus in Fur at CANOA
Similar to Echoes of the Heart, Fat Squirrel’s recent pairing of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie and Venus in Fur by David Ives at CANOA was too much of a good thing as these two one-acts had a combined running time of three hours.
“Why Miss Julie and Venus in Fur?” you might ask as either one could provide a full and worthy evening of entertainment. Well, apparently, Fat Squirrel Executive Artistic Director Andrea Watson had considered doing one or the other but, as she delved into them, she discovered that they shared not only thematic matters such as power struggles and sexual dynamics, but that there are enough comparable bits of stage business between them that one might plausibly wonder if Ives wrote Venus in Fur with an open copy of Miss Julie by his side.
In Miss Julie, Jonathan Mares portrayed the valet Jean who aspires to rise from his station and open an inn. Elizabeth McCoy played opposite him as the titular character, daughter of the Count who owns the manor where Jean is employed. Jean and Julie flirt, spend the night together, talk about running away but, ultimately, Strindberg gives us a somewhat ambiguous ending (though, how “ambiguous” could be argued).
In Venus in Fur, Thomas (Mares), a writer/director, has adapted Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novella Venus in Furs for the stage and, after a long day of auditions, has yet to find the right actress for the female lead when into the room bursts Vanda (McCoy), an actress who pleads to let her audition for the role. Thomas, at first, resists, but she wears him down and mind games ensue between the two of them as they act out the script and debate its merits. It’s ultimately a bit of a mishigas, but a fun and well-written one that keeps an audience enthralled.
One certainly got one’s money’s worth from this double bill of works rarely presented here, Venus in Fur having been done once before by Southern Rep in 2013 while Miss Julie has not appeared on a NOLA stage in at least 20 years, maybe more. A shame as Strindberg’s brilliant writing still shines through (though the translation was uncredited).
Were they well-done? Yes indeed. Watson, who directed both works, as well as Mares, McCoy and Mallory Osigian Favoloro (the maid Christine, Jean’s fiancé, in Miss Julie), all understood the material and presented it with intelligence and conviction. When Favoloro, who properly made Christine down-to-earth and self-possessed, shot Julie a quiet look of disdain, it perfectly summed up their relationship.
Mallory Osigian Favoloro and Jonathan Mares in Miss Julie
Could they have been done better? Yes, too. These are both challenging works to fully pull off. By now, Miss Julie comes off as a period piece with its talk of “Counts” and “manors”; Watson might have chosen to reset it in some contemporary setting (several possibilities come to mind) to make it more accessible to present-day audiences. I’m willing to overlook that as I can admire Watson’s choice to present the one-act as written.
I do wish, however, Watson’s staging had been more imaginative. Too often, in both Julie and Venus, she had her actors stand in place and deliver speeches out to the audience for no apparent reason; particularly in Miss Julie, one sensed that Jean and Julie should be circling each other in a dance of death or passion. And throughout Watson could have, like a conductor, varied the tempi and dynamics of the lines in order to highlight certain plot points; when the characters in Venus started to act out the play-within-the-play, which involves some knotty relationships, things became just a bit hard to follow.
In Miss Julie, Jean is pompous, self-centered, and a touch pretentious; he has a nasty streak and could properly be called a “cad”. All these qualities came thru in Mares’ focused performance. What was missing was passion, of a sexual or romantic nature; after all, he’s had the hots for Miss Julie for ages (even if now he may be using her as a means to his own ends). Mares often seems like he’s suppressing his emotions; this worked well for his excellent portrayal of John Proctor in last year’s The Crucible. His Jean, though, could’ve used a little more fire closer to the surface.
McCoy expertly charted Julie’s descent from a haughty, if needy, ruler of the roost to a woman of abject despair, a slave to Jean’s wishes as her strength melts away. Might she have been a pinch wilder or flirtatious? Perhaps–after all, at one point Julie is described as “drunk.”
In Venus, Mares and McCoy seemed to relish being able to enact the playfulness of the script rather than Julie’s seriousness. As in Julie, McCoy’s innate toughness served her well, here making her transformation from a whirling dervish of unpreparedness and emotional sloppiness to one in control entirely believable.
Jonathan Mares and Elizabeth McCoy in Venus in Fur
Mares had the tougher role in Venus. Thomas is kinda pig-headed at the start. That he could completely fall under the spell of Vanda is conceivable but, as with Julie, we needed to see a little more erotic intensity to make it fully plausible that Thomas would blow off his partner, presumably his wife whom he’s in contact with by phone, in the way that he does.
Admittedly, I saw the production on opening night and it wouldn’t surprise me if Watson, along with her cast, might well have been discovering new angles and refining performances throughout the length of their all-too-brief run.
Reservations aside, in its brief four-year existence, Fat Squirrel has done a remarkable job of presenting classics, contemporary plays and new works. I just googled “qualities associated with a squirrel” and came up with “agile, intelligent, and highly adaptable”. As it’s become an increasingly essential part of NOLA’s theater scene, I’d unquestionably ascribe all those qualities to Fat Squirrel as well.
[For more information about Fat Squirrel’s upcoming productions, including Amadeus (Sept. 30-Oct. 10), go to https://fatsquirrelnola.square.site/]
In Memoriam
New Orleans lost an extremely talented writer/director when R’Myni Watson passed away suddenly on May 10 at the much too young age of 29.
I first encountered Watson in 2022 when she directed a most impressive regional premiere at UNO of Is God Is, Aleshea Harris’ blazingly powerful portrait of a dysfunctional family crossed with an Elizabethan revenge play. Watson staged this tale of revenge-seeking twins with complete assuredness to lacerating, and often hilarious, effect.
Earlier this year, I admired her original play baby love, also at UNO, about a young woman’s quest for acceptance, security and love. I had expected that there would be many more theatrical offerings from Watson that I would see and enjoy, including a production of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf that she was scheduled to direct for Fat Squirrel in December. She shall be missed. R.I.P.
