Speed-the-Plow

Few playwrights fling as much malice toward women as does David Mamet. Yet his plays generally revile them from a male point of view, rarely capitalizing on the ugliness that can manifest between women — especially in the workplace, where codified inferiority and perceived competition breeds more adversaries than allies. Now, director Joe Bailey takes a radically different tactic with an all-female version of Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow. With biting performances that nurture curious discoveries, this swaggering one-act Hollywood fable at the Ringwald hungrily gnaws at the vituperative potential of a bitch-eat-bitch world.

The story — as intact as the names in this telling — provides just enough context for the various characters to bounce their principles and egos off each other. As Bobby Gould (Jamie Warrow) luxuriates in her first day as head of production at a major Hollywood studio, her “courtesy read” of a tedious novel is interrupted by the room-filling combustion of longtime associate Charlie Fox (Leah Smith). Charlie is armed with a bankable script, an unattainable star attached, and a 24-hour window in which to ink the deal; the two speak each other’s language well enough to know this is a career-making project. The ecstatic celebration between executive and sycophant eventually ropes in the timidly dewy Kathy (Kelly Rossi), Bobby’s temp assistant and a clear outsider whose childish scruples seem laughably out of place. Some combination of Kathy’s frankness and her eagerness to please makes Bobby hand over the novel, and what follows is a rollercoaster of shifting attentions and questions about what a person’s work says about her.

Click to read more ...

Elizabeth the Beautiful

Honoring the eightieth anniversary of the venerated Elizabeth Taylor’s birth, the Ringwald Theatre has concocted a two-production repertory package enthusiastically entitled LIZ-A-PALOOZA! Whereas one of the plays is old, the other is brand new: playwright Kim Carney’s Elizabeth the Beautiful, a one-act flight of biographical fancy. Featuring Joe Bailey in the title role and with direction by Bryan Lark, this world-premiere satire takes the form of an acrimonious skewering, a taunting walk of shame followed by an eleventh-hour scrabble for redemption.

The Elizabeth Taylor of this play is not the striking doe-eyed ingénue of the mid-twentieth century; rather, 1978’s incessantly divorced scandal maker is holed up in restorative seclusion, her relevance reduced to being cruelly mocked on TV. Bailey lays Elizabeth’s vitriol on thick, portraying a woman so far down that from her vantage point, her life seems like the lonely, worthless worst. Yet intervention arrives in the form of a bit of pastry in the windpipe — clearly, fate or something has conspired to teach her a lesson. Thrust into an ambiguous netherworld, Elizabeth the obstinate is greeted by her twice-husband Richard Burton (Mike McGettigan), an upright fall-down drunk and here a spirit guide of sorts through the many disappointing scenes of her romantic history.

Click to read more ...

Suddenly, Last Summer

Don’t be put off by the highfalutin’ title (Suddenly, Last Summer) or author (Tennessee Williams) of the latest Ringwald production. Far more telling — and accurate — is the collective screaming-mimi label LIZ-A-PALOOZA!, applied to the company’s current two-show repertory Elizabeth Taylor tribute. If director Joe Plambeck and company kid because they love, then this sidesplitting send-up of one of the actress’s iconic performances shows a campy adulation that knows no bounds.

This production is not drawn from the adapted Taylor film, but returns to the one-act stage play, a lightning flash that feels even quicker than its hour-skimming running time. Set in the flamboyant New Orleans home of lascivious eccentric Violet Venable (Lauren Bickers), the tawdry plot finds her plying a financially motivated surgeon (Mikey Brown) to help silence the rumors surrounding her beloved son Sebastian’s death while abroad. Yet this is no simple sweep under the rug: Violet’s own niece Catharine (Marke Sobolewski), Sebastian’s gorgeous traveling companion turned disturbed and manic after bearing witness to the event, will not be silenced by anything short of a lobotomy. Still, even shady Dr. Sugar has some compunction, and insists on hearing what Catharine has to say — with the help of some good ol’ 1955 medicinal truth-serum mumbo-jumbo — before determining her course of treatment. Even for all its inference, the filthy, lurid tale does not disappoint; mathematically speaking, it’s sensational to the power of awesome.

Click to read more ...

A Bright Room Called Day

The depth of playwright Tony Kushner’s kitchen-sink epic A Bright Room Called Day is matched only by its breadth. With a cast of ten, a frequently used historical narrative, a contemporary tie-in, and a penchant for venturing into the mysterious, director Joe Bailey has his work cut out for him. This Who Wants Cake? production is accordingly impressive in scope, and although the final product wants for a single unifying thread, its component parts are sufficiently intriguing and moving to prompt serious reflection and analysis.

The largest story revolves around Agnes Eggling (Jamie Warrow), a film actress living in early-1930s Berlin. From her apartment, the gathering place of choice for her friends, Agnes works with the Communist party — specifically, a duo of representatives (Michael Lopetrone and Matthew Turner Shelton) whose contentious bickering makes them a comic odd couple — against rapidly growing support of Hitler’s National Socialist party. In contrast to the ingénue Pulinka (Christa Coulter), whose opportunism is charmingly innocuous as she floats to those in power for the sake of her career, the initially fervent Agnes has confidence that the political climate will improve, rejects that things could get any worse, and must ultimately contend with her own wavering fortitude as opposition becomes tantamount to death. Warrow constantly and clearly processes Agnes’s evolving personal and political convictions, both alone and in the context of her friends’ actions — from her emigrant lover (Jon Ager), who recognizes the threat to undesirables based on prior experience, to a friend who gives herself over fully to activism (Melissa Beckwith). Costumer Vince Kelley is largely responsible for evoking the period; the lines and tones are exquisite, with not a hint of costume-y artificiality.

Click to read more ...

Returning productions — Holiday season 2011

Novemer and December in the theater world signals the return of favorite Christmas productions for all ages. As the Rogue has her hands overfull with new plays, holiday and otherwise, here’s a round-up of shows that played to audience and critical acclaim in previous years and return in 2011 to delight audiences anew.

Click to read more ...