Tiny Beautiful Things at Loyola’s Marquette Theater through May 25
Dear Sugar –
As you may know, Crescent City Stage is presenting Nia (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) Vardalos’ adaptation of “your” book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (written, of course, under your real name of Cheryl Strayed) at Loyola University’s Marquette Theater through May 25 here in New Orleans, and I’m tasked with writing a review of it.
I’m of two minds on it and would very much like to know what you think I should say and how best to put it.
On one hand, Michael A. Newcomer, making his directing debut (I guess he’s a newcomer to directing, eh? Lol), has created a first-rate production as it shows your journey from successful but not very well known writer as you took over this column to eventually becoming internationally renowned, in part because of your advice, in part because of your memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was the first selection of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and, later, was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie.
Though the bulk of the play is epistolary in nature, Newcomer keeps his cast in pleasing motion so his stage pictures never becomes overly static. His pacing is good, capturing the script’s tempos. He avoids falling into the trap of oversentimentalizing the various advice seekers. These are all things that more experienced directors often fail to do, and so I hope he continues to direct as well as act.
Newcomer is aided by the black & white projections of James Lanius III which add visual variety to the proceedings as they comment indirectly on the narrative.
The cast cannot be faulted. Rashif Ali, Helena Wang, and Steve Zissis play letter writers of all different ages and sexes, shapeshifting from one to another, with compassion; Zissis is especially moving as a father inconsolable after the death of his son due to a drunk driver. Tenea Intriago embodies you with honesty and authenticity, deploying an appropriately conversational tone even when discoursing about your wilder days (your heroin addiction, etc.).
Rashif Ali, Tenea Intriago, Steve Zissis, and Helena Wang in Tiny Beautiful Things (photo by Brittney Werner)
And given your openness and insightful responses, I can understand how Dear Sugar went from obscurity to tremendous popularity.
In short, Crescent City Stage’s is as lovely a production of Tiny Beautiful Things as you could hope for.
But…
By the nature of this beast, as it goes along with you giving answers to the questions submitted, the play becomes a bit repetitive. And we get just one perspective on each of these situations–yours. I hasten to add that I credit Vardalos with expertly crafting the script so that there seemed to be some narrative thread, however thin, that kept me engaged throughout. Yet as letter followed letter, while I always appreciated your smart responses, after a while, I can’t say that I really cared about them as it was all “telling” and no “showing”.
As said, I admired Intriago’s performance; it never became showy or actressy. Yet it remains very much on the same level throughout; given the nature of the script, this is less criticism than observation but one wishes Newcomer/Intriago could have somehow infused it with a bit more variety.
And with Vardalos admirably capturing your empathetic sensibility, “radical sincerity” as you call it, it reminded me of Philip Galanes’ similar approach in his New York Times column, Social Q’s, which I always enjoy reading. Social Q’s, however, takes less than 5 minutes to go through; 80 minutes of radical sincerity, no matter how well done, becomes a teeny bit monotonous. (After a while, I wouldn’t’ve minded a little “radical snarkiness” a la Joan Rivers (“Can we tawk?”) or Bianca Del Rio (“Guuurrrllll…”).)
So there you have it. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
NOLA Theater Critic
[For more information and tickets, go to https://www.simpletix.com/e/tiny-beautiful-things-tickets-206345]
The Wiz at the Saenger Theatre through May 18
Everybody rejoice and ease on down the road to the Saenger Theatre because The Wiz is back and it’s a wow!
Director Schele Williams has instituted a thorough reimagining of the show. With Hannah Beachler’s smooth sets that come & go, Sharen Davis’ fantastical costumes, and Daniel Brodie’s spectacular videos & projections that instantaneously take us from Grant Wood-inspired Kansas to NOLA-esque Munchkinland, and from Wagnerian forests to a dazzling Emerald City of Oz, this Wiz looks like a million, filled with visual enticements and detailed embellishments.
Amber Ruffin has contributed additional material to William F. Brown’s original book that nicely updates it; with Dorothy now a big city girl relocated to her Aunt’s farm in Kansas after her mother has died, this gives more context to such songs as Home.
JaQuel Knight’s choreography draws on NOLA second lines, bounce music, and Dunham technique as well as ballet and modern dance to create a rich gumbo of movement that propels the story along.
This all comes together with the dancers representing the Yellow Brick Road outfitted and moving as drum majors from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I’m not sure who’s exactly responsible for this, but it brilliantly encapsulates the new Afrocentric approach to this Tony Award-winning musical.
Dana Cimone and the Ensemble as the Yellow Brick Road in The Wiz (photo by Jeremy Daniel )
The entire cast acts, sings, & dances with verve and pizzazz, particularly Kyla Jade who as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, gives a rousing gospel rendition of Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News, while showing a softer, maternal side as Aunt Em.
The production’s stand-out, however, is Dana Cimone as Dorothy who not only combines spunkiness and warmth in this iconic role, but sings with a breathtakingly beautiful, pure of tone, pitch perfect voice that I could listen to all day long. The only question is whether she’ll be a future pop, Broadway or opera star? Or all three?!
Despite Ruffin’s updatings, there are still a few longueurs, especially in the first act; Dorothy’s journey in The Wiz has never been quite as engaging as the original cinematic version, though the Tinman’s Slide Some Oil To Me remains a fun number. And I’m not sure rejiggering Meet the Wizard to the second act was a wise choice; it seems more of a first act finale number. I also missed the Funky Monkeys ballet between No Bad News and the great Luther Vandross song, Everybody Rejoice; we need to see those evil monkeys in action to get a better sense of why everybody is rejoicing once they and the Wicked Witch have been vanquished.
Still, these are just quibbles as this Wiz was more entertaining that I had remembered it to be.
So ease on down to Canal Street before the engagement ends on May 18…or plan to catch it on the next stop of its tour. Whether that’ll be in Kansas or the Emerald City, however, I’m not sure!
[For tickets and more info, go to https://www.saengernola.com/events/the-wiz/ Next at the Saenger is the rollicking musical Chicago https://www.saengernola.com/events/chicago/]
Clowns are Bananas! at 1315 Touro Street through May 18
Just before the lights came up at the end of Nari Tomassetti’s Clowns are Bananas!, a hip-looking gentleman sitting next to me asked his companion “Is there more?” I guess I wasn’t the only one to wonder at the end of the brief 32-minute show “That’s it?”
Alas, it was. Billed as “a slapstick comedy for all ages” that implies plot, characters, narration, motivation or at least some cohesion. What we got instead, to start off with, was balloons, confetti, jugglers and a gent riding the smallest bicycle I’ve ever seen. Fighting among them ensued. I’m not sure why.
The cast of Clowns Are Bananas!
Then Chris Wecklein came out, very stylishly attired in an avant-garde sort of way, and sang Verdi’s La donna è mobile as small bananas were tossed around.
Mozart music followed and I noted “It’s not clear what’s going on; more like random chaos.”
Then people were encouraged to come up and have their photo taken with the clowns while there was juggling going on behind them. At least this made sense.
Then the tallest clown, GroundScore, sat down on the smallest chair (since all the regular sized chairs had already been taken) and there was a fart, which at least made me laugh for its being unexpected. The farting went on and on and on and on, a veritable ballet of farts in which the trombonist in the Hannah And The Bananas band got a workout. This was the funniest part of the show.
Then there was a cream pie fight which, of course, like the bananas represents classic clowning. In order for it to be funny, however, there must be a reason why the pies are being thrown–who’s mad at whom? Did an accident cause retaliation? Otherwise, it’s just people getting messy.
And that was it, all over after about a half hour, not counting the two clowns who made their way through the entryway as the crowd was waiting to go in who were laughing hysterically. But I couldn’t tell why they were laughing or what they were laughing at so it seemed like the ol’ No Soap Radio joke.
Clowns are Bananas! was especially disappointing as 5 years ago, Tomassetti’s 3 Ring Circus at the Old Iron Works featured a wonderfully bizarre love story, a pop/rock score, and classic circus acts all put forth with, as I noted in my Year in Review column, “blazing imagination, theatrical flair, and that only-in-NOLA ‘je ne sais quoi’.”
Though the entire Bananas! cast, which also included Justine Evans, Amelia Lormand, Hillary Neb, James Ryan, and David Wittenberg, got an A for enthusiasm, and we can all use some silliness in these fraught times, when the clowns are laughing more than the audience, something’s amiss.
