School of Rock at Hammond’s Columbia Theatre on September 27
Cooper Andry, Merah Benoit, Blake Bosley, August Doussan, Waylon Hagale, Bailey Hall, Drago Han, Anna LaNasa, Andrew Letellier, Everly Materne, Annelise Perez, Parker Portera-Dufrene, Braiden Rome, Jane Sale, Basil Stanley, Laura Toomer, Olivia Yi, and Eleanor Zafirau.
Study the foregoing names. For when one of them wins a Tony or Grammy, or stars on Broadway or TV, you’ll be able to say “I knew them when.”
“They” are the kids of JPAS’ School of Rock which recently concluded its run at the Jefferson Performing Art Center but has one more performance on September 27 at the Columbia Theatre in Hammond. And though he’s not a kid anymore, the same could be said of Nathan Parrish, an actor new to me, who brings a monstrous talent to the role originated on screen by Jack Black. If you’re looking for an absolutely delightful evening of theater, plan to head to the Northshore that day.
Nathan Parrish and the kids in School of Rock
For those who saw the film, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical follows it pretty faithfully. Bookwriter Julian (Downton Abbey) Fellowes wisely didn’t mess much with Mike White’s successful screenplay and if parts of the script come off as preposterous, its strong narrative thread, not to mention good humor and overall high-spiritedness, keeps you involved.
If you haven’t seen SoR, it follows Dewey Finn, an out-of-work rock singer/guitarist who, needing cash, flimflams his way into being a substitute teacher at a prestigious prep school. After identifying musical talent in his uptight students, Dewey surreptitiously forms a band of fifth-graders in an attempt to win the upcoming Battle of the Bands.
The plot’s mechanics take a little while to click into place, but midway through the first act, as Dewey discovers the latent rockers among his charges (You’re in the Band), SoR takes off and gets an “A” in “Musical Comedy” as the kids blossom and hard-edged, if somewhat caricatured, parents learn important life lessons.
Glenn Slater provides witty, inventive lyrics (though they’re occasionally overpowered by the music as is the nature, I guess, of rock’n’roll) for Lloyd Webber’s tunes and if none of the melodies quite match his celebrated ones from Cats or Evita, they’re good enough and seem apt for this tale. Stick it to the Man may stick (and stay) in your head, but I’ll take that over so many other recent scores that are utterly forgettable.
It should come as no surprise that Leslie Castay did a great job directing all the kids to give fully realized performances; after all, her Guys & Dolls at NOCCA was a highlight of 2019.That she brought out the script’s warmth, to an even greater degree than on Broadway, led to lump-in-your-throat moments by the finale.
Parrish may have been less zhlubby and more the doofus than Broadway’s Dewey (a fine distinction perhaps), but if it meant a less obvious transformation, his endearing performance imbued the stage with even more heart. Without sugarcoating Dewey’s shortcomings, Parrish allowed his decency and iconoclasm to shine through. As a triple-threat actor/musician/singer, I look forward to seeing him in many more shows.
As the school’s rigid principal and Dewey’s putative love interest, Rachel Looney nicely filled out the role especially as her hard exterior started to melt. And she deployed her fantastic coloratura to outstanding use in some passages from The Magic Flute’s Queen of the Night aria, a luscious bit of lagniappe.
If the rest of the adults do as well as they can with roles that are one- or two-dimensional, it’s the kids, along with Parrish, that catapult the show into the buoyant Broadway-worthy stratosphere. Stand-outs include Yi as an overachiever who becomes the band’s manager, bossy but understandably so; Hall whose terrible shyness evaporates when she sings; Portera-Dufrene, adorable but with an edge as a budding stylist and likely homosexual; and the four who actually make up the onstage band (Letellier, Benoit, Han & Doussan, along with Parrish) and play live–terrifically–throughout the show.
Scarlett Lancon’s choreography may be enthusiastic but made me wonder if kids only jump up & down when they dance. Eric Porter’s sets eventually expand to fill the stage but, at first, seem rather bare-boned; Castay, working with Porter and lighting designer Scott Sauber, might’ve done something to camouflage that.
These quibbles aside, tho, School of Rock achieves summa cum laude distinction. The drive to Hammond is a pleasant one. It would be an epic fail to be absent on the 27th.
[Tickets and more info at https://www.columbiatheatre.org/whats-on/school-of-rock]
A Doll’s House at Loyola’s Marquette Theatre
Crescent City Stage recently gave the regional premier of Amy Herzog’s new version of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in a compelling production that demonstrated how brilliant and how modern this drama remains 145 years after its debut. If Ibsen incisively limned the tragedy of being a woman in late 19th century Norway (and, one could argue, in 21st century anywhere as well), the only tragedy related to this production was that Hurricane Francine trimmed its run by a third.
For those not familiar with A Doll’s House (or have forgotten it from a long-ago college class), it concerns Nora Helmer who, in order to underwrite a sojourn in warmer climes to improve husband Torvald’s health, secretly took out a loan from Krogstad who now threatens to reveal to Torvald what she did (as women were forbidden from conducting financial activities then, plus there was a li’l forgery involved as well). Torvald will soon be in charge of the bank where Krogstad has worked, which will ease the Helmers’ financial situation, so such a revelation must be prevented. As this plays out, Nora, the “doll” of the title one could say, develops a sense of self which leads to her famous exit.
There’s more, involving Kristine and Dr. Rank, friends of the Helmers, and Herzog has wisely streamlined Ibsen’s original script, collapsing wordy dialog into more modern phrasing and paring down, though not wholly eliminating, a good deal of exposition.
While such trimming (of nearly a third of the script) is admirable, ironically, when stripped of some of Ibsen’s linguistic excesses, the play seems a tad soap opera-y as secrets come tumbling out at a too rapid clip; if this Doll’s House wasn’t so well done it would verge on parody.
Fortunately, however, Director Jana Mestecky and her cast of six leaned into the material and gave their characters complexity and depth that provided for a gripping two hours which completely held the audience’s attention as the dramatic tension ramped up.
As Nora, Elizabeth Newcomer began the play with a bubbly, almost superficial manner. This, however, masked a wiser woman as we would soon discover; in retrospect, it appeared to be almost performative airheadedness. By the end, as Nora struggles to define her own personhood, Newcomer’s bone deep seriousness made this Nora a symbol for all who would stand up and fight for self-determination.
Sure, Torvald acts condescendingly towards Nora; he may be an imperfect prig but however much we may find how he treats Nora offensive, he’s a man of his time, not an inherently bad person. Michael A. Newcomer (Elizabeth’s real life husband) insured that Torvald never came off as clownish despite Herzog’s portrayal of his clearly antediluvian manner. Numerous seemingly serious lines of Torvald, rendered with utter sincerity by Newcomer, elicited undeserved laughter…which, on the other hand, wasn’t all that inappropriate.
Doug Spearman resisted playing Krogstad as merely a villain as he can sometimes come off as. Instead, he showed this troubled man’s humanity as much as possible and made him out to be both bad and pitiable.
Elizabeth Newcomer and Doug Spearman in A Doll’s House (photo by Brittney Werner)
Sue Jin Song, with her deliberative way, kept us guessing as to Christine’s motives as she rekindled her romance with Krogstad (does she really love him or is she just doing this to help out her pal Nora?); if one could’ve asked for a little more chemistry between her and Spearman, given that the embers of their relationship are just being stirred up after many years, we may have to wait for A Doll’s House, Part 3 for that to occur.
Douglas Scott Streater as the cuddly yet doomed Dr. Rank and Rachel Whitman Groves as the Helmers’ unassuming housekeeper Anne-Marie gave worthy performances, though one wishes Herzog had given them a little more to do.
I didn’t see the Jessica Chastain production on Broadway, for which Herzog’s adaptation was created, but, from what I can tell, Mestecky follows that revival’s stripped down (no props, same costumes throughout, etc.) approach which, given the script, made sense. M. Newcomer’s appropriate scenic design, wooden beams that gave the outline of a house, left the details to our imagination, but clearly there is no warmth in the Helmers’ home. Still, I’d be curious to see how Herzog’s script would work with a detailed/realistic design scheme.
Zak Lanius’ stark lighting, aided by Amara Skinner’s unnerving sound design, made the demarcation of scene changes dramatically effective, tho occasionally, within scenes, someone seemed to be unintentionally in shadows; whether this was due to the actor not hitting his/her mark or a shortage of lighting instruments, I’m not sure.
Other than Francine curtailing this Doll’s House’s run, one other tragedy is at play here. To the best of my recollection, in the past 22 years, and possibly even longer, there have been just three other productions of Ibsen here, A Doll’s House (excellent) and Hedda Gabler (which I was out of town for) performed over consecutive weekends at UNO in 2018, and Cripple Creek Theatre Company’s worthy An Enemy of the People in 2008. What about Ghosts? Rosmersholm? The Master Builder? Brand?
As Crescent City Stage’s outstanding production proved, Ibsen remains as relevant today as he was in the 1800s.
[Crescent City Stage’s next production will be A Christmas Carol running Dec. 5-22. More info at https://www.crescentcitystage.com/a-christmas-carol-2024]
Varla Jean The Errors Tour at Café Istanbul
Brazenly capitalizing on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Varla Jean Merman brought her Errors Tour to Café Istanbul recently. It was a case of deceptive advertising as it contained not a single error, boo-boo or oopsy, just 90 minutes of brilliant wit, joyous entertainment, and, new for Varla, truly touching self-revelation.
Employing “errors” to look back over her career gave Varla wide latitude to touch on not only her many highlights but challenging moments as well from which she now spins comic gold. And her “errors” turn out to be less due to any faults or regrettable actions of her own, than to illnesses, unknowing bad timing (moving back to New Orleans not long before Katrina), and forces simply beyond her control.
Varla may be the only person who can make a broken patella tendon injury funny, but she doesn’t dwell on Le Tic Tac Incident (after all, that got pride of place in her last outing) but her co-conspirator Brian Johnston does put in a wonderfully absurd appearance again as the orange Tic Tac box.
We did learn, however, about her network TV debut on All My Children where she played a hooker in a jailhouse scene. A seaman who passed some germs on to her, caused Varla to, nah, can’t say it, it’s too disgusting but thanks to super slo mo we got to see why Varla made such a memorable TV debut, a vision I doubt I’ll ever forget.
And then there’s Lucky Guy, the 2011 off-Broadway musical she starred in with Leslie Jordan that was to have been her “huge break.”. The two of them got great reviews (the NYTimes compared them to Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman as seen thru funhouse mirrors), the show not so, and it closed in 10 days leaving Varla with an empty engagement book for the busy summer season.
After some down-in-the-dumps days, encouraged by Jordan (“Bask in the glory of the debacle!” he advised) Varla wisely picked herself up and got back to work with a new, hurriedly conceived show that she brought to Provincetown, her happy place.
This led to an absolutely lovely tribute to Jordan, who passed away in 2022, the most genuinely emotional moment I’ve ever seen in any of Varla’s shows.
Looking like a red-haired Becky Allen, Varla offered more, much more from terrible puns (“I swiftly tailored the show for you guys.”) to Travis Kelce references (“tight end, loose bottom”) to discussions of her constitution (she had to give up her cheese spray routine when she became lactose intolerant). We also learned that “montage” is French for “a bunch of shit thrown together.”
Varla Jean Merman with Baby Jasper
Credit for Errors Tour’s success must be given to Varla’s endlessly creative writers Jeffery Roberson (her alter ego), Ricky Graham, and Jacques Lamarre, and director Michael Schiralli who keeps the pacing, er, swift, and has insured that only the most topnotch material is included with the result that Varla has more funny jokes per minute than most mainstream so-called “comedians”.
What separates Varla from the boys–as if–I mean, most other such performers is that her humor, while sharp as can be, is of the gentle, self-deprecating kind; there’s nothing mean about her. How refreshing in these nasty times.
Still, she wields that humor like a lethal weapon. A video tribute to women who didn’t behave, to the tune of Mariah Carey’s Hero, had me laughing so hard I nearly choked. And because it was a purely visual joke, I can’t even properly describe why it was so ridiculously funny.
Add in her singing (Don’t Wanna Be a Rockette with 36 high-kicking video Varlas was a highlight), dancing (even if more measured now after Le Tic Tac Affaire), brilliant props, and appearances by Baby Jasper, her adorable pooch, and Varla Jean Merman qualifies as a national treasure, undervalued perhaps (except by those in the know), but a national treasure nonetheless. Here’s to many more years of errors.
[Info about Varla’s upcoming dates can be found at https://varlajean.com/]
Wit & Wrath: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker at the WWII Museum’s Stage Door Canteen, Oct. 11-13
[Wit & Wrath: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker returns for three performances at the WWII Museum’s Stage Door Canteen. The following are excerpts from my November 2014 review of it.]
The epitome of cleverness could be found at a coffee shop on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard where Claudia Baumgarten held forth in Wit & Wrath: The Life & Times of Dorothy Parker. Smoothly directed by Diana Shortes, Baumgarten was a stylish guide to Parker’s life and career.
Claudia Baumgarten in Wit & Wrath: The Life & Times of Dorothy Parker
Stringing together the highs (first female drama critic in America (1917); biggest selling book of poetry ever published (1926)) and lows (victim of McCarthyism, suicide attempts) of Parker’s life with her poetry and stories, Baumgarten demonstrated that Parker has lost none of her bite, though some of her references can be a smidge obscure now.
As Parker’s blazing wit still holds up, W&W’s 50 minutes passed by very quickly, but her verses about love and yearning and hope and emotional desperation prove that Parker was more than just one of the Algonquin Table’s waggish geniuses.
[For tickets and more info, go to https://www.nationalww2museum.org/programs/wit-wrath-life-and-times-dorothy-parker]
