September 5, 2012 | in Rogue's Gallery
September 5, 2012 | in Rogue's Gallery August 24, 2012 | in Rogue business, Rogue's Gallery Leave your restraint at the door. Excesses are rampant in Xanadu (book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar), the recent smash musical based on the 1980 film of the same name. The Michigan premiere at Meadow Brook Theatre presents a dizzying camp calliope, in which director Travis W. Walter couples controlled artistic proficiency with shamelessly fun comic entertainment.
Hearkening back to a 30-year-old source whose story deigns to borrow from ancient mythology, the past-upon-past framework makes the production feel doubly dated, in a good way. In 1980s Venice Beach, California, pedestrian artist and unfortunate cutoff shorts aficionado Sonny (David Havasi) draws a mural straight out of his dreams and summons seven muses of Greek mythology to inject the creative spirit into the modern age. Praise is due costume designer Liz Moore for conjuring divine togs through the visage of 80s fashion, in its monstrously garish synthetic ruffled wonder. Similarly, Kristen Gribbin’s scenic design draws on a classical aesthetic, offering a semicircle of Greek amphitheater seating right onstage for viewers who want to be part of the action, but with a concerted dappled faux-finish feel. In concert with Reid G. Johnson’s carefully portioned go-for-broke disco lighting, the design gives equal credence to classical and long-since-“modern,” engendering a hokey fondness that stays at the forefront of the production.
Dramatic writers are rewarded for making their characters dabble in subterfuge or rash decision-making, to the tune of pages upon pages of discoveries and repercussions. Infinitely more challenging to write effectively — let alone stage — is a rational dialogue undertaken by parties with transparent motives. In the latest entry in its late-night series, Planet Ant Theatre presents the world premiere of playwright Margaret Edwartowski’s The Do-Over, a sensible look at a pair of old friends faced with an opportunity to rediscover their former closeness and the warring temptation to rekindle something deeper. This production marks the professional directorial debut of BoxFest Detroit 2011 honoree Kelly Komlen-Amadei, who tackles this heady setup by reaching for the affection and tension hibernating inside of bloodless deliberation.
If friendships have life spans, then Facebook is their respirator, artificially reinstating and preserving intimate connectedness among people long separated by time, distance, life events, and philosophies. Here, social media has instigated the real-life reunion of college friends and paramours Bernadette (Karen Kron) and Ben (Jon Ager). She’s the mayor of a small Arizona border town, he’s an architect in New York City, but when a weekend mayoral conference brings her right to his neighborhood, they arrange to meet up — absent spouses and kids — and hang out at her hotel. Collectively, the production design hits just the right notes of hotel-suite anonymity: set designer Seth Amadei’s glut of pillows and legally mandated exit route map speak a familiar language, and Patrick O’Reilly’s ever-generous mini bar becomes a playground for college-hearkening revelry. In concert with scenic transitions scored by Komlen-Amadei, stage manager Alexandre Bleau’s lighting design abruptly hits on that disturbing acclimation to an unfamiliar setting at first light. Indeed, the reunion spans the entire weekend, equal parts sincere and tenuous, as it grows into a treatise on navigating that killer supposition: What if…?