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EXIT THE KING

Presented by Top Drawer Productions and the Actors' Gang, Hollywood, CA.

Directed by Patrick Murphy.

With: Molly Bryant, Ezra Buzzington, Evie Peck, Jason Reed, John C. Reilly, Michael Rivkin.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

By F. Kathleen Foley

"The kingdom lies in ruins, a pitifully reduced scrap of its former glory. The fallow Earth trembles in continual paroxysm. Mars and Saturn have collided, the sun is burning out, and the Milky Way has commenced curdling.

  Yet none of these cataclysmic portents penetrate the comically callow consciousness of the King (John C. Reilly). Once omnipotent, the King has lost his powers over the elements - but as long as he feels, sees and breathes, life remains sweet. However, the prospect of self-annihilation, the sure and certain knowledge that he is going to die, sparks a last-ditch resistance as furious as it is ineffectual.

  Eugene Ionesco's 'Exit the King,' a co-production between Top Drawer Entertainment and the Actors' Gang at the Actors' Gang Theatre, is a side-splitting yet poignant portrait of individual hubris and universal futility. For Ionesco's solipsistic King, now reduced to laughable insignificance, the end of his own life really does signal the collapse of the known universe.

  An epic of gallows humor, Ionesco's lengthy classic presents challenges not evident in his more famous and pointed one-acts    - how, after all, to sustain a joke over more than two hours. This production features a crackling translation by Charles Marowitz and Donald Watson, which mitigates any potential turgidity, and keen direction by Patrick Murphy, who extracts comic gold from Ionesco's absurdist rabbit hole.

  As in the case in any rabbit hole, it's all a question of digging and delving - for the precise pacing, the right subtext. In this endeavor, the performances range from the inspired to the merely industrious. Using his scepter as a crutch for some of the funniest pratfalls since Keaton, the baby-faced, hilarious Reilly plays the King with a trembling lip and a calculation eye, gauging possible escape routes as inexorable Fate closes in.

  Jason Reed's Guard is an amiable doofus whose clockwork movements have just the right fillip of playfulness. And Ezra Buzzington, in his turn as the harried Juliette, the kingdom's sole remaining factotum, brings down the house with his simple line, 'I polish the parquet floors' - brilliantly effective internalization, and not bad timing either.

  Molly Bryant projects regal grace as Queen Marguerite, the King's domineering first wife, but Evie Peck plays his sex-kittenish second missus with an unvaryingly strained grimace, while Michael Rivkin never adequately plumbs the possibilities of the Doctor.

  Still, this is a near optimum realization of Ionesco's slapstick Armageddon. Considering his own obsessive preoccupation with death, Ionesco's humorous take is touchingly gallant, a clear-eyed wink in the dark and a nudge in the ribs of catastrophe that both amuses - and humbles."

BACKSTAGE WEST/DRAMA-LOGUE

By Madeleine Shaner

"Although the Absurdists' message is that there is no message, or that the play means anything you want it to mean, director Patrick Murphy's production of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King might well carry the tagline 'the tedium is the message.' Tedium as it applies to life in general, and death in particular - specifically in the attenuated death of a king who has spent an absurdly long life, give or take a few hundred years, avoiding life and delaying death. Tedium also in the sense that the final unraveling of the self-absorbed despot takes an exceedingly long two acts before the final crash and burn.

  John C. Reilly takes an interesting route through the final hours of Berenger (the Chaplinesque protagonist of three of Ionesco's plays: He's a bourgeois in Rhinoceros, a compromiser in The Killer, and a monarch here). His is a variegated performance, intensely physical and magnetic, that works, and doesn't work, on as any levels as the total production works and doesn't work. Molly Bryant is superbly controlled as Queen Marguerite, Berenger's austerely wronged first wife, the only one left at his side when he's stripped of power. Jason Reed is a royal treat as the last guard left in the dacaying palace, his job description reduced to the robotic issuing of ridiculous bulletins to a non-existent nation about the king's final countdown, as well as taking in the buckets from the roof leaks. Ezra Buzzington is brilliant as Juliette, the all-purpose servant who stands in for the downtrodden of society - the "little people" who are used, abused, and generally ignored by its movers and shakers. Evie Peck, as second wife and 'first beloved,' Queen Marie, is a pretty pouter pigeon, as decorative as she is devoted.

  Michael Rivkin rounds out the cast as the royal doctor whose schedule only allows him the allotted time for a dying; overtime is not covered by his mandate. Music co-composed and performed by Alix Hester and Stephen Hodges* lends humorous punctuation to the slightly bizarre goings-on in Berenger's mythical kingdom.

  But as a two-act play, Exit lacks the diamantine brilliance of such short, hilarious and sharp-pointed pieces as The Chairs, The Lesson, and The Bald Soprano. Despite fine acting, good use of the large playing space, and an accessible translation by Charles Marowitz and Donald Watson, the play's one-note repetition in the first act, and the quieter, internal moments of the second, allow director Murphy too much leeway for languor - enough to make the most patient theatregoer think about an exit."

  ( * - writer error: Alix Hester designed costumes and had nothing whatsoever to do with Hodge's brilliant music - Ezra.)

VARIETY

By Robert Hofler

"Death scenes are tricky in the theater, especially when they go on for close to two and a half hours. Ersatz heartbreak is so easily replaced with genuine impatience.

  Eugene Ionesco's 'Exit the King' is one long death scene, and under Patrick Murphy's lethargic direction, this absurdist classic about a dying king who refuses to expire on cue inspires not so much existential comtemplation as dire thoughts of murder. So die, already!

  As the kingdom around them crumbles, Queen Marguerite (Molly Bryant) coaxes the King (John C. Reilly) to his natural termination, while the loving Queen Marie (Evie Peck) begs him to hang on for old time's sake. Ionesco wanted his tragi-comedy to be performed as a Punch and Judy show, which would seemingly indicate a certain speed of delivery and - no pun intended - execution. Early on, the realist Marguarite says, 'We haven't the time to take our time,' and promises that the king will be dead in 90 minutes. Half an hour later, she gives us an update: 'In one hour and 24 minutes, you're going to die.' For the audience at the Actors' Gang Theatre, this time lag presents a genuine existential dilemma, albeit not the one Ionesco must have had in mind. 'Exit the King,' which is often performed in one act, gets an intermission this time out. The weary will use it wisely.

  Some talented actors have been assembled here, although they may as well be performing in different productions given the huge playing space at the Actors' Gang Theatre. Ionesco borrowed heavily from classic comedies of the early American cinema, and there's a reason why so many of those farces and screwballers were set in the cramped quarters of trains, ships and hotel rooms. It's that Punch and Judy thing again. (But let it be said that with regard to wordplay, this playwright is no S. J. Perelman.) As the sentimental queen, Evie Peck is appropriately simpering; later on, she achieves genuine poignance in her remembrance of things past. Ezra Buzzington's droll turn as Juliette the Maid provides occasional bursts of much-needed energy. Jason Reed and Michael Rivkin, in their comic bits as the Guard and the Doctor, respectively, are effective, if isolated, from the general proceedings. If only live theater came with fast-forward control.

  Regarding its two leads, the production scores and misfires. John C. Reilly's king, who rules over a country that is 'shrunk, all scrunched up,' begins as an impeached Bill Clinton and ends up like a doddering Ronald Reagan talking about his pet cat. On the subject of death, he knows which side of the funeral to attend: 'It is better to miss one's friends than to miss oneself.' Throughout, Reilly is at his most comically touching whenever he's making perfect nonsense.

  Molly Bryant is lovely to look at and, under more fortunate circumstances, must be a fine actress. But she remains seriously miscast in the role of Queen Marguerite. As the play's moral force, she simply lacks any real force. It's like putting Nicole Kidman, whom she resembles, into a role that begs for Kathy Bates. In age and appearance, too little separates her queen from that of Peck's.

  Set designer Steve Mitchell provides the aforementioned basketball court, punctuated with a few pieces of worn-out contempo living room furniture. On a more classic note, Alix Hester's costumes borrow from a 'Lion in Winter' production somewhere. Stephen Hodges is responsible for the musical direction and sound effects, which emanate from behind the audience, creating the odd effect of being in competition with the actors, who are occassionally drowned out by all the noise."

THE L.A. WEEKLY

By Lovell Estell III

"It's doubtful that a sharper, more intelligently staged, funnier production of Eugene Ionesco's farce will be seen in town anytime soon. Directed by Patrick Murphy, the play follows the final hours of a once great King (John C. Reilly), now reduced to a state of ludicrous decrepitude. The palace is crumbling, there is a crack in the sky, 'no central heating,' hardly anyone left to work, and the pall of death is everywhere. Joining him in a throne room that resembles a homeless encampment are a guard (Jason Reed); a shriveled maid, Juliette (Ezra Buzzington); a doctor (Michael Rivkin); and queens Maria (Evie Peck), who like the King refuses to accept the inevitable, and the steely black-garbed Marguerite (Molly Bryant), who, having a grasp of the situation, counsels resignation. 'We must never forget our ultimate fate,' she tells him asw he rants and raves like a child. Musical director Stephen Hodges provides some hilarious sound effects, and his ensemble's woozy renditions of 'Faith of our Fathers' and 'Rock of Ages' are comical mood-setters. But the force here is in the director's playfulness and steadfast simplicity, and actors who act and know how to be funny."

THE EARL ROBINSON CELEBRATION  

Presented by the Pioneer Square Theatre Seattle, Washington Directed by Lyn Terrell With: Ezra Buzzington, Suzanne Irving, Victor Morris, Nancy Nolan, Gwen Overland, Wesley Rice, Earl Robinson.  

CAPITOL HILL TIMES
By Clay Martin

  The folks down at Pioneer Square Theatre are currently dishing up a heaping helping of the Genuine Article with their raucous, rousing revue, The Earl Robinson Celebration. The aforementioned Genuine Article is none other than Earl Robinson himself, the Seattle-born songwriter/composer/performer returning to his native Northwest after nearly 50 years in New York and Los Angeles.
  Robinson's name may not ring any bells, but his songs are familiar to everyone through recordings by some of America's top artists, including Frank Sinatra's version of "The House I Live In," Peter, Paul and Mary's "Hurry, sundown," and Joan Baez's rendition of "Joe Hill."
  Although his is most famous for his folk songs, Robinson has also composed love songs (the hauntingly beautiful "My Fisherman, My Laddio, My Love" and the comically tragic "My True Love, or Martian Love Song" are featured in PST's production) as well as cantatas based on writings by such luminaries as abraham Lincoln and Carl Sandberg. He received an Academy Award in 1947 for writing the score for the film "The House I Live In," but had his movie composing career cut short by McCarthy era blacklisting.
  Backing up Robinson is a cast of seven very talented actor-singers. Claiming the privilege of age, Robinson spends most of the show seated at the piano while the company swirls abort him, performing production numbers and solos.
  Wesley Rice provides many of the comic highlights of the show, particularly during his outrageous rendition of "El Salvador." Indeed, the success of that number has far more to do with Rice's brilliant comic inventiveness than with the simplistic lyrics. In the snappy production number "I'm No Communist," Ezra Buzzington demonstrates his wide-ranging talents, including a fine voice and a great tap-dancing technique.
  The only quibble I had with the cast was their occasional tendency to stand around the piano and faze just a mite too adoringly at Robinson, as though he were some precious but quaint museum relic. There were also a couple of speeches that bordered on gushiness as the actors expressed their fervent gratitude for the privilege of working with the composer. PST has done a fine job of assembling and presenting this revue, and should realize that audiences don't need to be told to appreciate it.
  The Earl Robinson Celebration is more than just an exciting and inspiring revue. It is a lesson in American history and government.
 
 

THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
By Joe Adcock

  The Earl Robinson Celebration is something like a Christmas celebration (songs, hope), a Hanukah celebration (courage, loyalty), a Purim celebration (humor, passion for justice) and a Thanksgiving celebration (gratitude, generosity). Let's hope The Earl Robinson Celebration which opened last night at Pioneer Square Theatre's Firststage, also has something in common with an Easter celebration (rebirth, renewal).
  Robinson is 79. He has written some 500 songs - mostly just the music, but lyrics also on occasion. He has written for TV, movies, radio and stage. Artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary and Three Dog Night have performed his works.
  Robinson was born in West Seattle, and after decades away he moved back there last spring.
  The appealing musical revue Pioneer Square Theatre has put together using two dozen Robinson songs is tinged with nostalgia. Marienne O'Brien's costumes have a '30s and '40s look. But the songs and stories are not essentially quaint. Robinson's passion for freedom, love, justice, peace and equality are as timelessly human as our hunger for bread and music.
  Robinson himself sings, plays the piano and tells stories during his "Celebration." His amiable efforts are supported by seven singer/dancer/actors: Ezra Buzzington, Victor Morris, Gwen overland, Jo yang, Suzanne Irving, Nancy Nolan and Wesley Rice.
  Rice is particularly funny as a theater janitor giving Ronald Reagan advice on El Salvador: "The show is a turkey. Fold it. Or take a write-off."
  Nolan has an extraordinarily vibrant voice, which is both caressing and passionate in a love song, "All the Words Are New."
  An unusual thing about most of Robinson's love songs: though passionate, they don't have much to do with gender. they could work woman to man, man to woman, woman to woman or man to man. This does not apply, of course, to the torch song, "My True Love," sung by a Martian lady (played by Jo Yang), whose man has proved unfaithful. Her consternation is understandable. He had "24 dimples on his chin," and these dimples were especially remarkable because "dimples usually go in."
  The show has a folksy, home-made quality. Director Lyn Terrell has a nice way of balancing exaltation and pensiveness. Robinson is a punchy pianist, but as a singer he draws on our indulgence.
  The indulgence is there for him partly because of his mystique. This is the man who wrote the music for "Joe Hill," a ballad about a 1915 Industrial Workers of the World martyr ("Don't mourn. Organize."). Joan Baez revived the ballad 20 years ago. It has taken on a legendary quality.
  Robinson sings a couple of Joe Hill's own songs - "Casey Jones" and "Pie in the Sky." Then, backed by his fellow performers, he sings his ballad. The effect is thrilling. History becomes more alive than TV news' Top Story.
  A sense of lively legend also occurs when Robinson uses passages from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address or Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence as lyrics.
  But my favorite song in the show relies on neither indulgence nor mystique. It's called "Animal Kingdom." I had never heard it before Thursday night. Abetted by funny choreography by Jim Lortz, the performers compare the dumb animals, who don't "kill one another for pleasure or profit," with the smart species that has mastered those skills. You know the species we're talking about.
  The song is amusingly satirical as it bounces along into post nuclear holocaust post mortems. And here we have what is unique about The Earl Robinson Celebration.
  It is hard to imagine theatre without fear and hatred. Fear and hatred supposedly keep us interested. But Robinson entertains without them. He was blacklisted - banned from his profession - during the McCarthy era as an un-American radical. Yet he seems to be without vindictiveness. His only swat at the witch-hunting mentality is a satirical take on New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia's words of reassurance, "I'm No Communist."  Ezra Buzzington, as La Guardia, heightens the sense of silliness with a nifty little tap dance.
  Elegantly turned-out songs of hope, courage, loyalty, humor, justice, gratitude and generosity are worth celebrating. A rebirth and renewal of these qualities is passionately to be desired. And two hours of effective adult entertainment that doesn't exploit hatred and fear is a rare and joyous experience.
 

    ENDGAME

Presented by The Splinter Group Chicago, Illinois Directed by Marc Rosenbush  With: Robert Brueler, Ezra Buzzington, Frank Farrell, Lucina Paquet.  

CHICAGO READER
By Justin Hayford

  It takes a touch of genius to sum up Beckett, the gloomiest of modern playwrights, in a laugh. But Ezra Buzzington does just that in the first minute of Splinter Group's heartbreakingly funny Endgame. His laughter, after peering out the window at the desolated earth where he sees "zero, zero, and zero." expresses all the mournful exaltation that gives Beckett's relentlessly bleak masterpiece such cataclysmic sublimity.
  And Robert Brueler finds within the blind, consumptive, wheelchair-bound petty tyrant of Clov's nemesis Hamm the nearly stilled heart of a poet. Brueler understands that Hamm, who keeps his parents in garbage cans, systematically degrades anyone in his presence for the most pathetic reason: he needs to convince himself that he matters. Desperately clinging to the remains of a once-elevated sensibility, pronouncing a word like "lumbago" as though he were reciting classical verse, Breuler makes the heartless Hamm endearingly human. Under Marc Rosenbush's gentle direction, this Endgame brings the Buckets O'Beckett festival to an exuberant close.
 
 

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
By Hedy Weiss

  Splinter Group Theatre's formidable Buckets O'Beckett Festival draws to a close this weekend at the Mercury Theatre, with its finest production of the month long series.
  Samuel Beckett, the playwright who expanded the possibilities of the stage even as he whittled away at the action that took place on them, may be best known as the author of Waiting for Godot. But the less frequently staged Endgame (1957), is very much a masterwork in its own right - poetic, grotesque, mysterious, tragic and, at moments, wonderfully, crazily funny. And director Marc Rosenbush, a co-producer of the Festival, has captured all these qualities in his beautifully paced, splendidly acted production.
  As in all of Beckett's work, the subject is life and death and how we spend the time in between - most particularly, the difficulty or perversity of human interaction.
  Endgame is set in a small room with concrete block walls, two grimy little windows reached only by ladder and a door that leads nowhere. A prison cell, a madhouse, a bomb shelter, a high-rise flat - it hardly matters. It's where life is conducted until the will to survive gives out.
  In this room we find two men. Hamm (Robert Breuler), whose home this is, is a great hulk of a man. Bloody, blind and confined to a wheelchair he may, as his name and manner suggest, be a former actor. Clov (Ezra Buzzington) is his servant, his codependent companion and surrogate son - unable to sit down and unable to flee his situation. "Why do you stay with me?" asks Hamm. "Why do you keep me?" responds Clov.
  Also in the room are Hamm's aged parents, Nagg (Frank Farrell) and Nell (Lucina Paquet), who live on frail memories, the residue of love, and the rare biscuit Hamm sends their way. Confined to trash cans, they cannot touch, and when Nell dies, Nagg soon follows.
  The terror of loneliness and the hell of coexistence; the craving for continuity via the next generation, and the horror of it; the fear of death, and the simultaneous yearning for it: all of this comes through in Beckett's odd, despairing, blackly comic vision.
  In a revelatory performance, Breuler, both gross and magisterial, uses his voice in phenomenal ways - yawning as if he were asleep in the underworld, gasping for breath, distorting the sound of words and yet always unveiling Beckett's meaning. He is matched by the winsome Buzzington, a pale, thin clown with remarkable physical control, who probably will need a chiropractor when these performances are over. With a face and haircut that recalls both Beckett and Stan Laurel, a stooped posture and a skittery, nervous walk, Buzzington is both pathetic and biting - a post-apocalyptic Little Nemo.
  Nagg brings out something special in the craggy-faced Farrell. he and the doll-like Paquet are perfectly cast as the throwaway seniors (watch their hands and facial expressions). And Rosenbush has made them hugely poignant, rather than just broadly comic in this production that reveals all you need to know about Beckett.
 
 
 
   THE FABULOUS '50'S

Presented by Larry Shields and Ray Horvath New York City, New York Directed by Arthur Howard With: Ezra Buzzington, Angeles Echols, Nanette Gordon Phillip Hoffman, Ray Horvath, Nancy Johnston, James Lally, Deborah Rhodes, Scott Robertson and Steve Sterner.

THE NEW YORK POST
By Marilyn Stasio

  Jai-alai isn't the only art form that thrives in Bridgeport. that booming metropolis is also the home of the American Cabaret Theatre, which originated The Fabulous Fifties, a wonderfully silly sendup of '50's pop-music styles now playing at the No Smoking Playhouse on West 45th. St.
  The giggly revue is basically a songbook of the dumber songs popular in that innocent era, but Claude McNeal's book has adroitly ordered the atrocious material into two distinct and equally clever parts.
  The first half is a deliciously cruel parody of Your Hit Parade, complete with dancing cigarette packs ("Yes, friends, it's smart to smoke!"), celebrity guests (Roy and Dale whinnying "Happy Traaaails to You"), and in-house singers fighting to maintain the magic of songs that have been on the show for 47 consecutive weeks ("Shrimp Boats are zzzzzzzz").
  The singers appear properly anaesthetized as they grimace through such horrific selections as "Istanbul" and "C'mon-a My House," and the off-camera crises are hilariously dealt with by Ray Horvath, as the show's hapless director. The endearing Mr. Horvath also keeps the second half of the revue glued together as a "hep" d.j. presiding over a dance hop at John Foster Dulles High School, where the music in enlivened by Elvis singalike contests, celebrity guests, and the sneers of the house band.
  The extravagantly talented cast (wearing bee-hives and greasy d.a.'s and dressed with vicious accuracy in ballerina skirts and two-tone shirts) obviously appreciates the lyrical subtleties of "Sha-boom," "Mr. Lee" and "Yakkety-Yak." And the brief appearance of Frankie and the Fabrications is memorable. I especially admired Angeles Echols for her commitment to "Maybe" and Ezra Buzzington for his brilliant impersonation of several of my old boyfriends.
 
  HAIR

Presented by Evergreen Theatre Company Seattle, Washington Directed by Michelle Blackmon With: Thomas Arthur, Mike Barber, Ezra Buzzington, M. Nicholas Cimino, Pamela Comstock, Shirl De Nault, Kip Driver, Sheryl Drummond, Joseph Goodrich, Michelle Ruth Greenwood, Susan M. Lee, Contance Pagliasotti, Dorothy M. Rosenthal, Lizanne Schader, Novel Scholars and Annik Stahl  

THE SEATTLE TIMES
By Karen Mathieson

  Who needs a time capsule? Hair does just as well. It's only two decades since the "American Tribal Love Rock Musical" first hit the stage, but it seems from a distant era - and virtually from another planet.
  I'd guess that most of the cast of Evergreen Theatre Conservatory's production were hardly out of footed sleepers in 1968, but that doesn't hurt their involvement. Ably directed by Michelle Blackmon, they yell the passwords of the time ("peace" and "freedom," and of course "s---" and "f---") with genuine gusto.
  It is fitting that the Age of Aquarius they portray comes across as an age of innocence. The young faces in Blackmon's ensemble are eager, not jaded with foreknowledge. The reasons for rebellion against authority then were as easy to enunciate as a mantra, the solutions simplistic and doomed. As Pogo would say: We have lost this generation, and they are us.
  For the hours one is surrounded by Hair, those days are back in force. Unstinted sex, drugs and self-indulgence did take their toll but not now, not here where everyone is "Walking in Space" on a psychedelic trip. Some technical limitations aside (won't someone please give ETC $3,500 for a new lighting control board?), the action shifts fluidly from one zonked-out scene to the next.
  While most of the "tribe" look as if they just finished using shampoo and conditioner, Ezra Buzzington as Claude has a harried split-ends air that makes his tortured confusion over the military draft much more believable. Buzzington is a strong, secure actor, and is well cast beside M. Nicholas Cimino as the jaunty Berger and Michele Ruth Greenwood as Sheila, the woman who shares their life.
  Greenwood's clear voice rings true in "Easy to be Hard," in which Sheila wonders if people who "love" the human race but not "a friend in need" really do care for anyone at all. In this song, and in moments such as the discreetly executed nude scene at the close of the first act, Blackmon is careful to show the darker side of the musical's nonchalance.
  Joseph Goodrich is Woof, an enchanting boy with a passion for Mick Jagger. He has several short, brightly executed solo passages, beginning with "Sodomy." Dorothy M. Rosenthal, Thomas Arthur and Shirl De Nault are others among the flower children with particularly solid preparation.
  The choreography is by Alan Pietsch, who puts the cast through cosmic jumping jacks in keeping with the youthful tenor of the show.
 
 

THE SEATTLE WEEKLY
By Greg Beatty

  A half hour before the show was scheduled to begin the cast was still wandering around dreamily, singing and talking to themselves, a few smelling flowers. Their actions and ragged dress made the audience off balance and uncomfortable, like some piece of '60's protest theatre. Which was perfect, as they were setting the stage for Hair.
  The ensemble wandered through an innovative set that sprawled out to use the entire space ETC provided. In the form of banners and wall hangings it reached up to include the stage lights, and sent tentacles of platforms to embrace the musicians' area. Using posters and lava lamps Darren McCroom gave the audience a set to enjoy, and the choreographer a great space to play with.
  And choreographer Alan Pietsch came through. He used the dances of the period to date the piece and provided original dance work which actually added to the performance (unlike the dancing in many musicals). Pietsch was especially adept at portraying the altered states of consciousness of the various drug trips in the piece.
  Unfortunately the entire production had no more structure or continuity than a dream or hallucination. And, like watching someone get drunk while you stay sober, it quickly becomes fatiguing.
  What Hair needed was a director. Michelle Blackmon was given an excellent and enthusiastic cast, set and score; she should have given more in return. This sprawling web of a script never really comes together, and whole sections are so loosely connected that they could be dropped without the audience realizing it. Key relationships, like between Berger and Claude, are developed late or not at all. While this may be an accurate portrayal of portions of the sixties, it makes for an aimless spectacle on the stage, not drama.
  But the cast did not let the play go without a fight. Ezra Buzzington was supremely professional as Claude, and did his damnedest to pull the show together. His body language was excellent, allowing him to claim the stage at will. His otherworldly yet human presence was perfect for the alienated hippie drug-using draftee he played.
  M. Nicholas Cimino was flamboyantly alive as Berger, and worked well enough with Buzzington to make one wish for a more demanding director to take charge of them. Cimino used his wild gesticulation to make his character larger than life, and to reach the audience.
  The rest of the ensemble stays largely anonymous, but a few tribe members do stand out. One of the first people I saw upon entering the theatre was Thomas Arthur slinking his dancer's body gracefully across the stage with chest bare and hair done ala Hendrix. Michelle Greenwood (Sheila) did her pair of solos with a pleasant voice (though her acting had no real edge to it). Lizanne Schader had only a supporting role but proved adept at directing audience attention to the scene's focus.
  There were, thankfully, no cast members who should not have been there, but, once again, direction was sorely lacking. Many had small but definite areas that needed to be tightened up.
  There were some nice choices made in the production, though. The audience interaction was almost as disturbing to this conservatively dressed crowd as it would have been in the sixties. The frank sexual gestures and homoerotic touches (as in "White Boys") were nicely handled, and the nudity at the end of the fist act which silenced the audience so effectively had an appropriate feel of ritual to it.
  On the whole I recommend Hair despite the flaws, mainly because it's fun.

 
  I'M A STRANGER HERE, MYSELF

Presented by CabarEggs Seattle, Washington Directed by Rob Cole With: Ezra Buzzington, Raylene Ewing, Theresa Holmes and Kala Kaminsky  

THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
By Joe Adcock

  Though they've been dead for more than 30 years, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill are still a lively song writing team. It's the way their work leaps upon experience that keeps it vital. Brecht/Weill songs burrow into greed, violence, infatuation, nostalgia, power, revenge and cynicism.
  The songs and the songwriters were among the many wonders of Berlin between the world wars. A sampling of their output is offered Friday and Saturday nights at Eggs cetera restaurant. Two singers, a singer-instrumentalist and a singer-pianist serve up astringent selections from Weill and Brecht's works.
  Included are songs from their shows "The Threepenny Opera" and "Happy End," bits of poetry and prose by Brecht and songs that Weill wrote in collaboration with other writers.
  The songs come off well. "Surabaya Johnny" and "Pirate jenny" have been deeply etched with sulfuric bitterness in recorded performances by Weill's widow, Lotte Lenya. But Kala kaminsky sings these perverse elegies with her own intensity and conviction.
  "September Song" and "The Ballad of Mac the Knife" have been worked over by countless male singers. But Ezra Buzzington makes them sound new.
  Director Rob Cole is not always as fortunate with spoken material as he is with songs. A snippet from Brecht's play "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" is idiotic, and a scene from "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" is perplexing.
  A speech from "The Life of Galileo," about a conservative peasant view of the universe, however, splices elegantly into the haunting wonder of the final selection, "Lost in the Stars."
  "Lost in the Stars" is the title song from a musical written by Weill and Maxwell Anderson. It opened in 1949 on Broadway. The song is the most recent of the pieces included in the CabarEggs show.
  The earliest selection is from 1918, an eerie song with words and music by Brecht, "In Memory of Marie A." ("Over us in the fair summer heavens/ Was a cloud that fleetingly I say,/ Very white and terribly far above us,/ And as I looked up it was there no more.")
  At best, the pieces have a combination of emotional toughness and sensitivity, a political radicalism and a rowdy humor that renders them perennially fresh.
  Adding variety to the presentation are Raylene Ewing on piano and Theresa Holmes on recorders and guitar. Both help color the musical tapestry by lending their voices at strategic moments.
 
 

THE SEATTLE TIMES
By Karen Mathieson

  Compassion, truth and cock-eyed humor are among the hallmarks of Bertolt Brecht's work. To these add another: an immediacy that plays particularly well in the environs of a small cafe.
  Combine Brecht's drama, lyrics and poetry with the witty, yearning harmonies of Kurt Weill and you have the materials for a successful evening of cabaret - hardly a new idea, but one that is filling Torrey's Eggs Cetera each Friday and Saturday night.
  Director and compiler Rob Cole has avoided the stop-and-go character of many revues in which narration is just tacked on. Instead, he lets the show create its own context. the songs, dramatic excerpts, and scraps of poetry - performed by Ezra Buzzington and Kala Kaminsky, with support from pianist Raylene Ewing and guitarist/singer Theresa Holmes - have a compelling flow.
  Brecht writes of pain and acceptance, of a nation torn with war, of love evanescent as a cloud, of the simple rootedness of life, and of its perversions. Even in translation - there's just one touch of German, suitably in "The Ballad of Mac the Knife" - the language is direct and visceral.
  Weill's scoring is joined not only to Brecht's lyrics but to those of the American playwright Maxwell Anderson, whose political convictions heavily colored the effect of "Knickerbocker Holiday," "Lost in the Stars" and other works.
  Early in the show, Buzzington sings "September Song" with a perfect touch of grief and tenderness. That tone of weltschmerz complements the raucous sarcasm of "The Army Song," as well as the didactic force of Kaminsky's narration in "The Parable of the Burning House." What entertainers. What teachers.
 
 
 
CAPITOL HILL TIMES
By DJ Darrins

  CabarEggs, a cabaret at Torry's Eggs Cetera on Capitol Hill, has been staging well-received revues since last fall. The current show, I'm A Stranger Here, Myself, features works by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill. It's a knockout production that deserves its sellout crowds.
  Kala Kaminsky and Ezra Buzzington are both perfect for Brecht and Weill. The many excerpts from "The Threepenny Opera" are beautifully delivered. Other classic material - "September Song," "Bilboa Song" - and lesser known titles - "Madam's Song" - add a refreshing scope to the evening. Excerpts from Brecht's plays, letters and diaries give the show a unified flow. The show was compiled and directed by Rob Cole, co-artistic director of the Northwest Shakespeare Ensemble.
 
 
 
  LET'S MISBEHAVE

Presented by CabarEggs Seattle, Washington Directed by Rob Cole With: Ezra Buzzington, Therese Diekhans and Raylene Ewing.  
 

THE SEATTLE TIMES
By Misha Berson

  For a Cole Porter revue called Let's Misbehave wouldn't you expect the singers to be decked out in the kind of elegant evening wear which, as Porter put it so aptly in "Top Hat and Tails," simply reeks with class.
  The performers in CabarEggs' new show do get around to donning tails and cocktail dresses - eventually. But part of the pleasure of this nimble compendium of tunes, and much of its mischief, comes in the surprises it pulls on you - via offbeat costume changes and ever-shifting moods.
  The show contains 25 standard and obscure tunes by one of the great composer-lyricists. The first surprise is the opening segment, with actors Therese Diekhans and Ezra Buzzington bounding out in loud, ragged clown duds and funny noses. (Hers is a red sponge-glitter affair, his has funny glasses and a mustache attached.)
  At first their moldy old jokes and vaudeville shtick seems like the polar opposite of Porter's sophistication. So it is. but the dissonance is handled quite cleverly.
  The vivacious Diekhans and Buzzington manage to get you laughing at their ancient puns, and the songs clustered here ("Friendship," "But, in the Morning, No," the terrific "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" and pianist Raylene Ewing's chipper rendition of "I've Still Got My Health") are among Porter's most sprightly and playful.
  At just about the right moment, though, director Rob cole shifts tactics. The tiny stage area darkens, and Buzzington returns alone in a black-leather jacket to sing a direct, deeply felt "In the Still of the Night." Now we're back in classic Porter land (except for the leather jacket), where every suave exterior conceals a breaking heart.
  From there things keep hoping. Diekhans and Buzzington enact a telescoped love affair that begins and (maybe) ends at a swank cocktail party. "You'd be So Nice to Come Home To" is sung by Diekhans so mournfully it's almost a blues. Later there's a silly fashion show with everybody (and I mean everybody) parading in slinky dresses to "Is It the Girl, or is It the Gown?"
  The sunny final portion flirts saucily with "Let's Misbehave" and "Let's Do It" - the vintage Porter sex manual which begins with birds and bees and continues on to ladybugs and "Argentines without means."
  The revue contains a few mis-steps - an abruptly downcast ending, for instance (The "How strange the change/ From major to minor" line in "Everytime We Say Good-bye" rings awfully true.)
  For the most part though, this musical soufflé is both light and flavorful. And much credit goes to Diekhans and Buzzington, who are ingratiating actor-singers with a fine comic and romantic rapport.
  Both bring to mind an earlier era of musicals. With her pixie haircut and impish grin, Diekhans has a worldly-wise gamine appeal - the old Pat Haney/Shirley MacLaine type. Buzzington really sells his songs, and his offbeat looks and easy charm recall the young Fred Astaire as he swirls Diekhans around gracefully.
  The only thing in Let's Misbehave lacks is a program identification of where these tunes come from. It took some real sleuthing to find out that "Did You Evah?" was written for "DuBarry Was a Lady." Now the question is whether is was Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman or Betty Grable who sang it...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
By Joe Adcock

  Concert halls in New York and London have scheduled gala performances during the coming month to mark the 100th anniversary of songwriter Cole Porter's birth June 9.
  Pop idols like David Byrne, Sinead O'Connor and Neneh Cherry - some of whom weren't born yet when Porter died - have released new interpretations of Porter standards.
  And Seattle?
  Seattle is offering an intriguing, atypical array of Porter tunes at CabarEggs, a revue venue located in a little restaurant, Torrey's Eggs Cetera on Broadway.
  Porter lived in the posh Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan from 1939 until his death in 1964. His piano is still there. He wrote some two dozen Broadway shows. He was elegant, sophisticated, suave, witty and celebrated.
  Let's Misbehave, the CabarEggs revue featuring his work, is a surprisingly jagged sampling from Porter's smooth oeuvre. The show is both farcical and gloomy. Director Rob Cole and musical director Raylene Ewing emphasize the giddy and somber elements in Porter's work, the extremes that don't fit into the accepted Waldorf bon-vivant image.
  The two CabarEggs performers, Ezra Buzzington and Therese Diekhans, make their initial appearance in clown costumes. She's not just wearing a red nose, she's wearing a glitter-encrusted red nose. his tie provides a blue background for plastic fried-egg pins.
  Buzzington eventually gets around to donning the obligatory Porter singer's black tie and tails. Diekhans eventually appears in a magenta-with-white-polka-dots cocktail gown. But the performers are not suavely formal. They bop around between raunchy and remote.
  Buzzington is moody for "In the Still of The Night." Diekhans is cynical for "Love for Sale." Ewing, who accompanies at the piano, lends her voice to make a mocking trio for "Gentlemen Don't Like Love" ("they're not profound, they just kick it around").
  In addition to finding novel slants on familiar material, Let's Misbehave ignores some of the most famous Porter pieces: "Begin the Beguine," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "What Is This Thing Called Love?," "Anything Goes," "Just One of Those Things," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Blow, Gabriel, blow," "Wunderbar" and "True Love."
  The show does, however, bring to light some obscure Porter curiosities: "The Physician" (who praises the parts but not the whole), "Cherry Pies Ought To Be You" (a rhyming dictionary in song form), "Is It the Girl, Or Is It the gown?" (made funnier by a boy in a gown) and "Wow Ooh Wolf" (an ironic editorial about predatory sex).
  For "Please, Don't Monkey With Broadway," CabarEggs director Rob cole offers revised lyrics that bring the street in question 3,000 miles west. the performers open the window blinds and sing before a living background of Seattle's Broadway (which fronts the restaurant) in all its lurid glory.
  Sometimes Rob Cole persuades his performers to find enigmatic drama in the facile songs. They suggested interpersonal dynamics in a party sequence that includes "Well, did You Evah?," "Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please" and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" are vague and murky.
  The brooding finale, however, is clear and startling. Revue finales are not generally brooding. They are usually mad frenzies of noise and hats and canes and kicks. Buzzington sits shrouded in gloom and sings pensively, "Everytime We Say Good-bye."
  The moment is poignant, but a bizarre downer in terms of show-biz wisdom. Then Diekhans comes on, back in clown uniform, complete with glitzy nose. Slowly she brings a decisive but quiet cheer into the picture.
  It's like Fellini magic.
  The magic is appropriate. Let's Misbehave shows off old favorites in a new light.
 
 
 
  THE MOUSETRAP

Presented by Circa '21 Playhouse Rock Island, Illinois Directed by Dennis Hitchcock With: Lora Adams, June Barr, Erin Brady, Ezra Buzzington, Michael Cupp, Claude Devareaux, Aaron Milgrom and John Sundine  

THE ARGUS QUAD-CITIAN
By Charles H. Sanders

  Agatha Christie was the undisputed "Queen of the Mystery Novel" in the English language, turning out some 60 masterpieces most often centering on detective Hurcule Poirot or Miss Marple.
  But, she also was master of the mystery for stage, penning about a dozen gems, such as "Ten Little Indians," "Witness for the Prosecution" and "Appointment With Death."
  And, then there is the masterpiece, The Mousetrap, still running in London after opening November 25, 1952 and showing no indications of ending in the near future.
  The Mousetrap has a splendidly constructed script, suspenseful from the start when a radio on the darkened stage reports the murder of a woman in Paddington.
  And, unless you've seen the play before, you just might be tricked as usual in any Agatha Christie mystery into picking the wrong person responsible for the dastardly crime.
  The Mousetrap, the 20th production at Circa '21 in downtown Rock Island, comes off delightfully. At each intermission it was interesting to hear various guesses as to whom the murder is. None were right.
  Miss Christie gives one clue late in the first scene, but, like all her clues, it is easy to miss. So, everyone goes from Major Metcalf to miss Casewell to Mr. Paravicinni to Christopher Wren to Mollie and to Giles for the possible suspect. It's jolly good fun trying to outguess Miss Christie.
  Dennis Hitchcock directs The Mousetrap with a tongue-in-cheek lightness that makes each character a bit larger than life, but in so doing creates amusing situations in which only the British could be involved.
  The cast is excellent, especially Ezra Buzzington as the foppish Christopher Wren, whose exaggerated movements draw the most suspicion. Lora Adams is appealing as Mollie Ralston, who with her husband, Giles, played by Aaron Milgrom, run the guest house 30 miles outside London.
  June Barr is crotchety right as Mrs. Boyle, and Claude Devareaux is stuffy perfect as Major Metcalf. Erin Brady is masculine enough as Miss Casewell.
  However, Michael Cupp is a bit too unreal as Mr. Paravacinni, and John Sundine played Detective Sergeant Trotter with a lack of self assurance.
  But, the play is the thing, and with the dozens of entrances and exits from four doors and a window, things are rather hilarious.
  The one-room set is done in style, and Circa's excellent lighting adds just the right moods for various acts of intrigue.
  This mousetrap snaps.
 
 

  OKLAHOMA

Presented by Circa '21 Playhouse Rock Island, Illinois With: Erin Brady, Ezra Buzzington, Paul Diamond, Ray Gaspard, Gene Hodges, Allison Ivins, Pat Jeffery, Kim McGuire, Jennifer Powderly, Frank Siano, John Sundine, Joy Thorbjornsen and Michael West.  

QUAD CITY TIMES
By Jim Arpy

  Though it has been around for almost four decades, time hasn't dimmed the ever-popular appeal of Rodgers and Hammerstein's happy musical, Oklahoma. Audiences at the Circa '21 Playhouse might have been viewing it for the first time, so enthusiastic was their response.
  Exceptional sets, quick scene changes, colorful costumes maintain Oklahoma's fast pace and air of innocent hilarity. Then there are the songs, many of which have become American classics, the title song, of course, and such toe-tappers as "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," "Surrey With the Fringe on Top" and "People Will Say We're In Love."
  The cast is so well-balanced that it is difficult to pick any for special recognition, though Kim McGuire, as the irrepressible Ado Annie Carnes, the gal who can't say no, steals more than one scene, conveying humor as much by movement as expression and delivery or her lines.
  The musical and songs center around two  at times rocky romances, one involving good-old-boy Curly (John Sundine) and Laurey (Jennifer Powderly), and the other ado Annie and Will Parker (Ezra Buzzington).
  Sundine, who has a major role, handles his acting chores well and exhibits a strong and pleasing singing voce, effectively demonstrated in the opening "Oh, What A Beautiful Morning," and in several others, including "Surrey With the Fringe on Top," "People Will Say We're In Love" and the title song.
  Miss Powderly, whose more genteel, lower-key portrayal of Laurey is a nice contrast to Curley's exuberance, displays her singing prowess in several duets with Sundine.
  The various characters in Oklahoma are gathered, around the turn of the century, for a box social at the ranch of Aunt Eller, played with her usual zest and comfortable style by Pat Jeffery. The cowboys and the newly-arrived farmers, who are fencing the land, observe an uneasy truce, broken occasionally by fisticuffs.
  Curly moons after Laurey, but he has a rival, the sullen and mysterious Jud Fry. Ray Gaspard, in one of the standout performances, makes this a brooding, ominous, yet strangely sad character, an out-of-place outcast who, i his crude way, longs for love and focuses his unwanted attentions on the beautiful Laurey.
  One of the musical's best scenes occurs when Curly tries to convince his love-rival, Jud, that he can receive the recognition and attention he craves by hanging himself, and the two join in a funny, tuneful rendition of "Poor Jud Is Daid."
  Allison Ivins and Gene Hodges dance in the hauntingly beautiful dream sequence, representing dream figures of Laurey and Curly, an abrupt change of mood from the rough hilarity throughout most of Oklahoma.
  The appearance of the peddler, Ali Hakim (Frank Siano), to whom the fickle Ado Annie tries to give her heart (as long as there is a marriage license attached) adds more wild humor. He sounds, much of the time, like Groucho Marx, and his rendition of "It's a Scandal! It's and Outrage!" is one more happy happening.
  He's on his way to the altar more than once when Ado Annie's pappy, Andrew Carnes (Paul Diamond) levels his trusty shotgun at him, but managees to save his skin and hand Annie over to Will, played with aplomb and effective body language by Ezra Buzzington.
  Another high point of the musical comes when Curly sells all of his possissions to beat the surly Jud out in the bidding for the box lunch Miss Laurey has brought to the social. Their next encounter ends in tragedy for Jud.
  Cindy Bowers, Susan Lundy and Randy Yackle provide musical accompaniment for Oklahoma's 15 songs.

  .   PROJECT: ALICE

Presented by The Fabulous Monsters Los Angeles, California Directed by Robert Prior  With: Ezra Buzzington, Victoria Byers, Bill Callaway, Marissa Chen, Daniel Lynch-Millner,  Robert Navarett,  Robert Prior, Bennett Schneider, Indira Stefanianna, Mary Tomlinson, KirkWilson

LOS-ANGELES TIMES
By Phillip Brandes

  Why not begin a stage version of Lewis Carroll's "Alice" saga with abstract equations? Carroll was a mathematician, after all. With his penchant for puns and paradoxes, his books require intellectually mature readers.
  No wonder Robert A. Prior and the Fabulous Monsters aimed their twisted, campy and elaborately staged "Project: Alice" squarely at an adult audience, transforming Highways' performance space into a mental playground for mental cases. They postulate Alice's adventures as the hallucinations induced by Carroll's experimentation with opium, in which the full-grown author (a very funny Bennett Schneider) assumes the role of his prepubescent heroine.
  By skirting (literally) the compromised cuteness of more familiar- and familial - versions, the troupe taps a wellspring of quirkiness in the original text. It's more than sufficient to fuel their witty parallels to '60's psychedelia - complete with black lights and a rendition of the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit (sung by Ezra Buzzington) - though some of their anachronisms (getting back to the "Woodstock" garden or a burst of surf music) prove overreaching. If the Monsters have a weakness, it's a tendency to undercut their more profound psychological probing with a retreat into whimsicality. As a result, the more disturbing aspects of this darker Wonderland never fully surface.
Assuming multiple roles, the Monsters employ elements of puppetry, dance and song, as well as more traditional stagecraft in their striking visual characterizations.
  Perhaps the best is Bill Callaway's frenetically phonetic Mad Hatter, equally adept at delivering his lines forward or backward. The gaunt, white-faced Prior supplies some of the most bizarre portraits - the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen's Executioner. Ezra Buzzington is a suitably uptight White Rabbit, and Indira Stefanianna makes the Mock Turtle's song memorable.
  Engaging and creative as this adaptation is, the territory isn't uncharted. Santa Barbara's Lit Moon Theatre Company staged an "Alice" with remarkably similar techniques, though it envisioned the story as a little girl's fall from innocence rather than a drug-induced dream. Which only goes to show how many lively rabbits still wait in Carroll's fertile mad hat.
 
 

DRAMA-LOGUE
By Polly Warfield

  Project: Alice is an homage to the mystery, power and beauty of a strange literary masterpiece and a tribute to its author, the Oxford mathematics lecturer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.  Its playwright, director and co-producer Robert Prior thus effectively discharges his deeply felt debt of gratitude for a work that has fascinated him since early childhood. As Prior announced on what should have been its opening night but was instead a final tech rehearsal, this is "a big and ambitious piece." It also remains at this point a work in progress.
  Prior, who has established beyond question the right to be called "multitalented"; designed the play's setting and its stunning costumes and is originator and artistic director of the three-year-old Fabulous Monsters, an innovative ensemble of dedicated theatre artists who join him wholeheartedly in bringing Project: Alice to fruition.
  Black curtains surround the space anchored by a floor of black-and-white checkerboard squares, with ladders, an easel, a trampoline and, off at stage left, a dusky area containing the small musical ensemble. Kirk Wilson as a round eyed, bemused professor in a bright yellow coat, with a wild coiffure, somehow resembles a young Bud Cort in his air of touching vulnerability. He is actually an aspect of Oxford don Dodgson, who gives the play's essential equation: "X equals Lewis Carroll, who equals Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. A equals Alice. U equals the Unconscious." The unconscious is what this is all about.
  Slender, fine-featured Bennett Schneider is a perfect amalgamation of Dodgson and the little girl he so admired. As Dodgson, in his dressing gown, he is urged by Robert Prior, as colleague and narrator Duckworth, to lighten up. ("A little ecstatic vision might be just the pickup you need.") So go ahead, smoke this hashish in this water pipe here. What are friends for? Thus, Dodgson becomes Alice, and she and we are in for a fantastic psychedelic trip.
  Most of Alice's characters are here (but no Tweedledum and Tweedledee, no White Knight.) Prior's fertile imagination provides insights and corollaries but never veers from the verities of the text. The creatures are bizarre but not grotesque. Like Alice, like most of us, they are adrift in a bewildering world and trying to make the best of it.
  Alice, and Schneider who plays her, earns our admiration as a well-brought-up, exceptionally self-possessed child who minds her manners but won't be browbeaten by bullies. She is a heroine to emulate. She's played by a man, we wouldn't have it any other way; gender has no bearing here.
  Ezra Buzzington is the high-strung White Rabbit who lures Alice down that rabbit hole. He also sings a rendition of The Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" like a rock star in a fine tenor voice. Bill Callaway is outstanding as the erratic Mad Hatter host of that awkward tea party; Kirk Wilson is the fidgety March Hare and Buzzington is the drowsy Dormouse. Victoria Byers, Marisa Chen, Robert Navarret and Mary Tomlinson appear in various guises (some as Alice spin-offs.) Prior is an awesome many-armed Caterpillar and a grinning Cheshire Cat. Daniel Lynch Millner is a beaked Gryphon who shares a great little scene with Indira Stefanianna as an inconsolable Mock Turtle in a gorgeous costume, weeping copious mock tears and warbling the "Soup of the Evening" aria. Lovely-looking Stefanianna composed the show's music. Musicians are Greg Chun, John Lacques and Regina LaBorg. Andrew Yeater is responsible for the aural design and sound. Puppet design and execution is by Cynthia Orthal.
  Costumes are fabulous, soft sculpture props and fanciful and strange characters are brought forth faithfully from the collective unconscious. A fine ensemble effort this is, and surely Lewis Carroll would be pleased.
 
 
 
  The Roar of the Greasepaint -

The Smell of The Crowd

Presented by the Sacramento Theatre Company Sacramento, California Directed by Jack Parkhurst  With: Julie Anchor, Natalie Armstrong, Ezra Buzzington, Erika Davis-Marsh, Gretchen Eiferle, Diane Kelber, Doug Lawson, Rod Loomis, Eva Lukkonen, Jennie Stephenson, Alexander Storm and Wayne Wallace

BACKSTAGE WEST
Reviewed by Barry Wisdom

  Yeah, baby, yeah!
  With the nation's renewed interest in the koo-koo, nutty, swinging '60's - typified by the Rat Pack, Burt Bacharach, and martinis shaken, not stirred - it would seem that the Sacramento Theatre Company knew what it was doing in resurrecting The Roar of the Greasepaint - the Smell of the Crowd.
  The Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley musical - an allegory on the struggle between society's "haves" and "have nots" - opened on Broadway in May 1965 to mixed reviews but big advance sales. Interest soon dwindled, however, despite a popular and universally acclaimed score and six Tony nominations (though no Best Musical nod). Less than seven months later (and no Tony wins - it was the year of Fiddler On The Roof, for goodnes sake), Roar went out with a whimper after 231 performances.
  The opportunity to see this challenging, socially conscious, and seldom-produced child of the 1960's is reason enough to recommend a ticket. Unfortunately, despite a few standout performances and that great Bricusse/Newley score ("A Wonderful Day Like Today," "The Joker," "Who Can I Turn To"), STC's season closer doesn't really swing as it deserves to.
  Sir (Rod Loomis) and Cocky (Ezra Buzzington) are adversaries in the game of life, with the monied Sir happily making up the rules as they play. At Sir's side is the Kid (Diane Kelber), an eager disciple looking for bits of "wisdom" who earns her keep by helping keep Cocky down. Loomis' Sir is all about control - control over Cocky and control over his own emotions. Director Jack Parkhurst and Loomis have taken this point a bit too far, all but removing the deliciously Machiavellian joy from the role and turning Sir into a one-note devil. There should be more delight on Loomis' part if Buzzington's Cocky is going to work.
  As it is, the humorless humiliation of Buzzington's Cocky - in work and love (the latter represented by the Girl, played by Alexander Storm) - is so unpleasant that by curtain there's a palpable rage in the audience at Sir's behavior. And that's after taking into account the show's rainbows-and-lollipops upbeat ending.
  In addition to the leads' slyly mocking interplay, another of the show's inherent strong points that gets self-destructed here is its cool, brassy score - a victim of under-orchestration. Spare enough as originally conceived, what with its uni-set and minimal cast, it's hard to accept just a quartet as accompaniment (especially with such a weak link in the horn department).
  Buzzington, Kelber, and Loomis serve the score well with their vocal instruments (even if Loomis' limited range is uncomfortably evident in "A Wonderful Day Like Today").  Buzzington absolutely shines in "It Isn't Enough" and other numbers. Kelber's tap solo (one of the show's few dance bits) is noteworthy, as well. The seven-member "Urchin" chorus is a definite plus to this production - energetic and animated, though for the most part very young.
  Odd and interesting, albeit confusing and imperfect at times - like an episode of another hip 60's British import, The Prisoner - The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd is no Fiddler on the Roof. But there's a lot to be said for casting out tradition in favor of the unfamiliar.
 

SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW
By Dana Gage
 

  I have a pet theory that singers shouldn't write their own musicals because when they do, you get material like The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd. There, now I've said it, though there are many opinions to the contrary. People love this musical; it has Web sites galore. I'm just not sure why.
  In 1965, Anthony Newley, wo never could decide if he was a singer, actor or director, collaborated with Leslie Bricusse on Greasepaint. This was on the heels of their successful Stop The World, which produced the heavily recorded "What kind of Fool Am I." Together, the team of Bricusse and Newley are better known for film scores such as Goldfinger, Dr. Doolittle and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
  Unfortunately for the Sacramento Theatre Company - whose incredibly talented cast is not to blame for the deficient material Newley and Bricusse gave them - Greasepaint is little more than a conceit, a sketch.
  It's an allegory of sorts, a journey story told on-stage. You have Sir (Rod Loomis), Cocky (Ezra Buzzington), The Kid (Diane Kelber) and a half-dozen "urchins." The locus of the production is Cocky's effort to play "the game" with Sir and win.
  A tortured metaphor for life, the stage is slightly raked so the audience can see a brightly chalked hopscotch-type game. Sire represents the moneyed, successful "haves," who call all the shots and control the game of life. All the rest of us, Nietzsche's bungled and botched masses, are represented by Cocky, who stumbles through existence and mostly loses out to the Sirs of the world. The Kid represents all the suck-ups who'd like to become Sirs.
  The whole production hangs on its standout song, "Who Can I Turn To," which is a great song, but not good enough to prop up a musical for 33 years. The updates in the show are fun, though. The original production featured Cocky lugging around an enormous book, in which he was expected to record all the new rules that Sir devised. In STC's show, Cocky carries a laptop computer.
  The performances are outstanding, particularly Buzzington's Cocky, who bears a resemblance to the inventor character from Blade Runner ("I made them; they're my friends") and is much too good for his shallow role.
  All in all, it sounds like a great one-act. But it's not; it goes on. Still, Greasepaint remains incredibly popular. Decide for yourself.
 

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO - KXJZ
By Jeff Hudson

  In Sacramento, musicals basically come in two sizes. There are the touring behemoths that visit the cavernous Community Center Theatre, with truckloads of costumes and enormous sets in tow. In order to reach the customers way up in the balcony, these shows use elaborate sound systems, cranked to a decibel level once reserved for rock concerts, to imply a closeness and excitement that isn't necessarily real.
  Then there are the cozy little musicals staged by community theatre groups, which are sometimes charming and can be a lot of fun, but seldom feature what you'd call professional singing or acting.
  The Sacramento Theatre company's new show, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, could be described as that rare bird: a mid-sized musical. It's got professional actors in the leads, but they're working in a theatre with around 300 seats, where you can actually see the expression on their faces. And the show is by and large unplugged, to borrow the MTV parlance, with the singers and the band performing with little or no amplification. And it's a pleasant surprise to encounter a musical with this caliber of cast in an acoustically natural form.
  The Roar of the Greasepaint was written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley in the early 1960s. This was shortly before Andrew Lloyd Webber took over the realm, which is to say that the music in this show reflects a measure of craft and finesse that you don't always find nowadays. The songs, including "The Joker" and "On A Wonderful Day Like Today," are unlikely to ring a bell with anyone under 40, but on opening night they clearly chimed for the audience of mid-life professionals to retirees that seems to b the Sacramento Theatre Company's target demographic group.
  The story, insofar as it exists, has to do with "Haves" versus "Have-nots," presented in the allegorical context of "The Game," a charade in which an imperious character named "Sir" is forever pulling the rug out from under an unfortunate named "Cocky." The London audience for which this show was originally written would undoubtedly have seen the musical as a poke at the British class system, but in this production the concept has been semi-rearranged - "Sir" is a corporate exec with a cell phone, while "Cocky" is a hapless office worker. "Sir is played with an intriguing mix of charm and vinegar by Rod Loomis, who talks his way through several songs a la Rex Harrison, though with a bit less style. Ezra Buzzington uses his flexible face, slender frame, and a lot of physical gestures to conjure up sympathy for "Cocky." Rounding out the cast are Diane Kelber as "Sir's" sidekick, plus Wayne Wallace, a handsome young local who makes the most of his cameo role, and Doug Lawson, a reliable regular in character parts. There are also seven young women who play "Urchins" - director Jack Parkhurst basically deploys them as a chorus of latter day go-go dancers, a somewhat dated usage, but perhaps that's the point. As a group, they sing well, in any case.
  Now of course there are some problems. On opening night, the band could have used a little more rehearsing, and the first act got slow toward the end, as the constant manipulation of "Cocky" wore thin. The second act was shorter, smoother and brighter. As musicals go, Greasepaint asks for a bit more extension than usual on the part of the audience - it doesn't just lay everything out for you, cuddle up in your lap and say "Love me, baby!" But in spite of the script's quirks, and the production's various little shortcomings, it's rather refreshing to hear an acoustic musical with professional leads, and the show's concept works most of the time, at least for me. It's a little different, to be sure, but in the all-too-often predictable world of musicals, that's not an altogether bad thing.
 
 

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT
By Sarah J. Slater

  This month, Sacramento Theatre Company wraps up a season crammed with memorable performances with a disappointing sojourn in musical theatre. The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd is a satirical look at the corporate world and, in a broader sense, class struggles. Set to music, the themes of this play walk a thin line between challenging and trite.
  "Sir" (Rod Loomis) is the corporate lord, repeatedly luring "Cocky" (Ezra Buzzington) into a game Cocky repeatedly loses. Each time Cocky takes a few steps toward winning the game, Sir changes the rules and sends Cocky back to the starting line.
  Watching the game in progress are The Kid (Diane Kelber), Sir's sidekick and scorekeeper, and a slew of "Urchins." Cocky falls in love with a fair damsel (Alexander Storm), defeats a dragon in the guise of Uncle Sam and "murders" a stuffed suit.
  The play is so crowded with symbolism that Sir, Cocky and their friends become two-dimensional caricatures - their fear seems just as convoluted as their sentimental jubilation.
  Bricusse and Newley's play holds its greatest flaw in the final scene. After counting on the audience's mental engagement - expecting them to muddle through a mountain of metaphors, the play's final song lays out the message in an "a,b,c" style so simple a child could understand.
  If this production could be saved, Ezra Buzzington would be its savior. his charisma and talent make Cocky the only link between the play's overwhelming symbolism and a reality the audience can identify with.
  David Potts' stage design is versatile and appropriate: a graffiti-laden alley is made stage-friendly and interesting with multiple levels and a row of pipe ladders bound for nowhere.
 

THE APPEAL-DEMOCRAT
By Forrest Hartman

  Director Jack Parkhurst describes The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd as a production that presents challenges to its audience as well as its performers. His analysis is 100 percent correct.
  Now running at Sacramento Theatre Company's McClatchy Mainstage, Parkhurst's take on the mid-60's musical is fast-paced and energetic, but it's also thought provoking. The show can't help it. After all, it was written as a metaphor for a rather broad subject:  life.
  After an opening musical number, the audience gets a look at the main characters: Cocky, who represents an average guy looking to improve himself; Sir, who represents the people trying to keep the common man down; and The Kid, who represents the people who want to be like Sir. Fortunately, Parkhurst spells all of this out in the show's program, so we don't really have to start working until the dialogue begins.
  When we meet Sir, played brilliantly by Rod Loomis, he is confident, even arrogant; and the Kid (Diane Kelber) is trailing him like a puppy. Cocky (Ezra Buzzington), on the other hand, is obviously just trying to survive. He arrives limping and struggling to stand as he drags Sir's luggage across the stage.
  Yes, Cocky is beat already, but Sir wants to play a game - the game of life. Painted on the stage is a line of colored squares that decrease in size as they spiral inward, forming a circle. This, the audience discovers, is the game board.
  If the show sounds deep, that's because it is. Like Shakespeare, you'll enjoy it more if you've seen it a few times or, better yet, read the script. Metaphors are the rule, and Parkhurst was kind enough to leave some of them for our own interpretation.
  Primarily, however, the show is about Cocky's attempts to better his life, physically, financially and emotionally - he is one of us - while Sir does his best to keep him down - Sir is one of them. Does Cocky overcome? For that answer, you'll have to buy a ticket.
  Despite the heavy subject matter, Greasepaint clips along at a rapid pace; and some wonderful song and dance numbers keep the mood surprisingly upbeat. Loomis, Buzzington, and Kelber each turn in strong performances, especially Buzzington who performs several stunning solo numbers.
  A few of the Urchins, who act as a choral and dance ensemble throughout the production, lack the polish of the show's stars but this doesn't detract a great deal form the overall impact of the production.
 

THE DAVIS ENTERPRISE
By Marilyn Mantay

  When you go to the Sacramento Theatre Company's production of The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, go for the music.
  You leave the theatre humming "Who Can I Turn To?" or "A Wonderful Day Like Today," but all evening long you've been uncomfortable about the book. Although it's interesting to see a musical you've not seen before, this piece suffers because it's so dated, and because there's so little in the story to involve the feelings.
  It takes nerve to produce, here and now, a musical with such an odd book as Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote for The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd. One can say that "the haves versus the have-nots is a universal theme," as STC does, but the long wait through Act I for something - anything - to happen makes the theme seem less universal than eternal.
  In this book, having and not having are allied closely to a somewhat foreign notion of inherent superiority and inferiority. Still, the development of the have/have-not theme in terms of class might work if that's what we knew we were seeing. Instead, director Jack Parkhurst uses adaptations for a contemporary American audience, and they merely serve to confuse.
  Is "Sir" the "have," supposed to be the Lord of the Manor, King, CEO, the Chairman of the Board, or perhaps God himself? As played by the impeccable and assured Ron Loomis, Sir edges toward being Lord of the Only Manor There Is. All those add-on American power allusions just muddy the character.
  Although Ezra Buzzington's Cocky, the Everyman figure, clowns in an astoundingly limber and clever way, the conviction that he never will rebel - no matter how atrociously he is treated - is so dispiriting that one can hardly laugh. Would that this jester were clever enough to be a trickster.
  Sir has a helper, The Kid, adequately played by Diane Kelber. She is onstage most of the time, as is the ensemble of Urchins, played by eight talented and agile women. They sing usually in a purposefully brash and boyish manner, and seem to have almost nothing to do with the plot.
  Three short solo appearances - Alexander Storm, as The Girl; Wayne Wallace, as The Man; and Doug Lawson, as The Bully - are very appealing. Storm's duet with Buzzington arouses sympathy for the first time during the evening. Wallace has the wonderful "Feeling Good," and Lawson, while he is a silent presence, has an appearance that really does make one feel good.
  The plain set, with ladders and stair steps, is enlivened by a great backdrop that resembles the machine-inspired work of Leger in bright colored period. The set is by David Potts. The verve of the piano/trumpet/drum combo, and its balance with the singing voices, is the evening's consistent feel-good aspect.
 

THE CHARMICHAEL TIMES
By LeAnne Byham

  The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, book, music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley is a fun production to the the season of Sacramento Theatre Company. Basically it represents the Game of Life. The main characters are: "Sir," played by Rod Loomis. Sir runs the game and makes up the rules as he goes. Ezra Buzzington plays Cocky, the down trodden player who has to keep playing the game in order to eat. Diane Kelber plays the Kid who is Sir's Go-for.
  As usual, all the cast is good. But I especially liked Ezra Buzzington's performance. His energy is boundless all through the play.
  The music is good and the whole play is a lot of fun.
 
 
  27 Pieces of Me

Produced by Non-sequitor Films Seattle, Washington Directed by Gerald Donahoe  With: Ezra Buzzington, Tina M. Denning, Rebecca M. Davis and Angelique von Halle

SEATTLE WEEKLY
By Mary Bradford

  The unfortunate thing about 27 Pieces of Me, a film by Seattle collaborators Gina Hicks and Gerald Donahoe, is that it might get pigeonholed as a lesbian movie. Not that lesbian movies are a bad thing; it's just that this low-budget film is so much more. Shot in black and white, and presented on videotape before an enthusiastic audience last week, 27 Pieces of Me is a story about fractured family ties. The fact that one of the sisters happens to be a lesbian enhances the plot rather than dominates it. As Tanya (Tina M. Denning) puts it, when discussing her recently revealed sexuality with sister Ramona (Angelique von Halle), "Now you're going to stop looking at me as Tanya, your sister, or Tanya, the artist, and start thinking of me as Tanya, the homosexual."
  Both sisters harbor unresolved issues. Ramona flees her shaky marriage and small-town Nebraska life to arrive unannounced, baggage - emotional and physical - in hand, at her sister's doorstep. "Since we're sisters, I thought she'd listen...you know...understand," she confesses to Tanya's curative studiomate, Bold (a playful, scene-stealing Ezra Buzzington). It takes a few more amusing "therapy" sessions with Bold before both sisters gain insight into themselves, and, yes, rediscover the value of sisterly love.
 

S.G.N.
By Terri L. Smith

  "Why does everyone get so weird when it comes to family?" asks Tanya (Tina M. Denning) in the new film by Non-sequitor Films, 27 Pieces of Me. But no one in 27 Pieces gets weirder than Tanya herself.
  When her younger sister Ramona (Angelique von Halle) arrives unannounced in Seattle to visit, Tanya bolts. Offering only her general estrangement from her family as explanation., she proceeds to ignore and avoid her sister - whom she hasn't seen for 10 years - despite the objections of her roommate (Ezra Buzzington) and her girlfriend Susan (Rebecca M. Davis).
  Tanya, it seems, has some big intimacy problems. Her walls are up and she's busy digging a moat. Yet all the while, she continues to assert that there is Nothing Wrong. And this is not just in relation to her sister. Coinciding with Ramona's arrival, tensions between Tanya and Susan come to a head, and Susan moves out. Tanya is left wondering why everyone around her is behaving so weirdly.
Ramona, meanwhile, is facing some major life decisions of her own. She has come to Seattle looking for answers, but hasn't completely figured out the questions.
  Bold, a dervish of exuberance, helps Ramona begin to examine her world and her life differently, when he encourages her to take a more artistic approach to her photography. "Artists just look at things in a different way," he tells her.
  At the same time, he tries valiantly to construct some sort of truce between the sisters (though he inadvertently endangers his own efforts when he blithely outs Tanya to her sister.) Tanya's walls do eventually come down and an accord is struck, allowing both sisters to start dealing with the parts of their lives that are painful.
  27 Pieces of Me is not a "lesbian film" in that is is not centrally about a lesbian relationship. It's not Go Fish. There are no big lesbian love scenes; the most you'll see is a couple of thoroughly chaste kisses.
  Recurring themes of art and individuality weave through the film (the title of the film is taken from the title of one of Tanya's pieces; both Tanya and Bold are artists but only Tanya earns a living at it - Bold works at an espresso stand) but what really makes 27 Pieces of Me work is the characters, and the strength of the performances.
  Even when Tanya is being difficult, Denning infuses her with enough humor and essential well-meaningness to make her likable. Buzzington (gotta love those ears) is a delight as the irrepressible Bold. And von Halle portrays Ramona's uncertainty and tentativeness without ever allowing her to bacome pathetic. The role of Susan is a small one, but Davis is a strong, earthy presence when she is onscreen.
  27 Pieces of Me is the debut feature for Seattle filmakers Gina Hicks and Gerald Donahoe. Hicks and Donahoe wrote the script (along with Jeanne Munro), Donahoe directed and Hicks did the cinematography.
  The film was funded primarily by Hicks, Donahoe, and associate producers Chip Phillips and Mara Smith. Phillips describes the process of financing the film as "running up credit cards and dissolving family estates." Despite the low budget, the quality of the production is very good.
  Besides featuring some familiar Seattle locations, the film also features some familiar Seattle musicians. The soundtrack includes songs by The Laura Love Band, Lisa Koch, the Tiny Hat Orchestra, and others.
  A legal problem with one of the songs prevented Non-Sequitur from beginning to look for a distributor for 27 Pieces, until the problem was resolved in August. The film, which has been screened in New York and Seattle, will likely be shown at a number of film festivals in the coming months, possibly as far away as London and Berlin.
  27 Pieces of Me is a beginning for Non-sequitur. Hicks and Donahoe plan to make a short film next spring, which will feature Peggy Platt as the emcee of an Ethel Merman look-alike contest. Then, later in the year, the pair will begin working on another feature film. Ultimately, Non-sequitur would like to be in a position where they can produce the work of other filmakers as well. For now, they are busy trying to show 27 Pieces of Me in as many places as possible, and trying to pay off those credit cards.
 

THE STRANGER
By K.B.

  First-time filmmakers embarking on a feature film, with rare exceptions, are a recipe for disaster. The results are familiar to anyone who's suffered through bad nights at the smaller film festivals. Lotsa talk, very little editing. High on camera noise, short on music. And lots of "huh?" scenes shot with "who's that?" ultra long shots. Luckily, 27 Pieces of Me avoids all those pitfalls.
  The film tells the story of two artists (played by jug-eared Ezra Buzzington and the husky-voiced Tina Denning, two local stage veterans) and the problems involved when a long-ignored family member (Angelique von Halle) shows up at their Seattle loft. Their conflict with this small town rube sends the two into a new angle on their lives and problems.
  While stagy at times, the film tackles difficult subject matter (fear of intimacy, strained family ties) intelligently, and with moments of moving insight. For a movie shot by someone with no film experience, it looks amazingly slick and professional, even with a $16,000.00 budget that forced them to use a skateboard as a camera dolly.
  Seattle has yet to produce a talent on par with Portland's Gus VanZant to garner the national exposure the local film scene needs, but Gerry Donahoe and Gina Hicks' debut film gets closer than any I've seen so far. While not an out-of-the-park home run, it is a solid base hit.