ASF: "Hamlet"

An uncut production of Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play, would last over four hours in performance, so virtually every modern production is significantly edited, even though Kenneth Branagh's film purports to render a complete text...so director Brian McEleney's two-and-a-half-hour production at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival is no exception. Though one could debate the merits of specific editing choices here, McEleney retains most of the plot details as well as the famous soliloquies. He also gender-switches a number of roles -- Polonius, Rosencrantz, Horatio, Osric are here played by women -- and again, one could argue the success of such casting. 

It is staged on the same multi-leveled set as Ken Ludwig's Sherwood, and features the Sherwood actors in Hamlet's supporting roles. -- The acting cohort can be found all over the height-width-depth of the Festival stage as well as various locations throughout the "house", often shouting their dialogue over the vast distances between them... choices that alienate the audience, but are better balanced in the more intimate scenes.

Written at the turn of the 17th Century, the ASF production signals its curious updating to a 1930s setting with Alexa Behm's lush costumes, and a snippet of Marlene Dietrich's anthem "Falling In Love Again" at a cocktail party surrounding a baby grand piano located center stage. The hosts are the new Danish King Claudius [Stephen Thorne] and his bride Gertrude [Kanoa Sims], the widow of the recently deceased King Hamlet. Their regal stature is undeniable.

The King's chief counsellor Polonius [Greta Lambert] asks permission for her son Laertes [Alfredo Antillon] to leave the court and return to France, later offering parental advice to him while her daughter Ophelia [Jihan Haddad] -- Hamlet's love interest -- lectures her brother on his behavior. There is some curious modernizing vocabulary in her speech [for example: "husbandry" is changed to "thriftiness"; it keeps the meter but sacrifices the gravitas of the words]. This domestic scene shows a family dynamic familiar to everyone.

Clearly, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark": not only is the Norwegian army a nearby threat, but the former king's Ghost [Christopher Gerson] appears to his son Hamlet [Grant Chapman], accuses Claudius of murdering him, and charges Hamlet to exact revenge. Hamlet swears to secrecy his best friend Horatio [Han Van Sciver] and the guards who witnessed the apparition, and says he will feign madness by putting on an "antic disposition" in order to pursue the Ghost's charge to him. Mr. Chapman's energy is admirable, though it could be reined-in to earn audience empathy sooner than he does. 

With the arrival of friends Rosencrantz [Shelley Fort] and Guildenstern [Tobias Wilson], called by the King to discover the cause of Hamlet's strange behavior, things come to a head. Polonius thinks Hamlet's madness is love-sickness for Ophelia, but can't be sure. And Hamlet sets out to trap his uncle by having some traveling players enact a scene similar to his father's murder. 

The plan works: Claudius shows his guilt, Gertrude chastises her son, Hamlet kills Polonius by mistake, Ophelia goes mad from grief and dies [Ms. Haddad's mad scenes elicit our pity], Hamlet is sent to England but discovers a plot to have him killed and returns to Denmark, Laertes returns to avenge his mother's death, and a fencing challenge between Hamlet and Laertes ends in many deaths, leaving only Horatio to tell the whole story to the world.

Elizabethan audiences are known to have gone to the theatre "to hear a play", whereas modern audiences go "to see a play"; and it is a treat to our collective ears that most of Shakespeare's text is delivered with confidence and clarity that communicate meaning, intention, character, plot, and emotion all at once; listen attentively to the poetic nuances especially from Ms. Lambert, Mr. Gerson, Mr. Chapman, Mr. Thorne, and Ms. Sims that communicate levels of meaning to the words; and watch their physical comfort as they use minimal and controlled movement that can rivet our attention by staying still.

WOBT: "Junie B. Jones Toothless Wonder"

Junie B. Jones, the central character in a series of children's books by Barbara Park, has been a controversial figure since her creation. An outspokenly rude, entitled, narcissistic, manipulative child shown from early childhood through the First Grade, she is nonetheless a popular character.

And in Allison Gregory's stage adaptation of Junie B. Jones Toothless Wonder, currently on offer at Prattville's Way Off Broadway Theatre, she more than lives up to the hype in Katie Register's unabashed characterization. Taking center stage for its hour and a half duration, audiences either love her or hate her -- and perhaps that's the point.

In a nutshell: Junie B. Jones draws all attention to herself, whether it's about her loose tooth, her friendships [and enemies] among her peers, her position in her family, or her not getting an invitation to a classmate's birthday party. How she handles matters is questionable, and audiences are eager to see her responses and whether any life lessons can be learned.

Director Melissa Strickland's able cast [most of them playing both children and adults], create recognizable characters through broad physical and personality traits that give them individuality. Elizabeth Bowles, Bre Gentry, Chace Harris, Lynn Parker, Josh Register, Tori Ward, and Gavin Winn comprise the ensemble supporting Ms. Register. -- They're especially adept at mimicking childlike innocence and honesty.

Lessons about sharing and caring for others, and being open to learning how to be a better person, are ones both grown-ups and children could benefit from.

Though scene changes could be more efficient, the time passes quickly due to the energetic actors on stage, whose commitment to their roles and to the storytelling are excellent.

Millbrook: "And Then There Were None"

Much of the enjoyment of witnessing a traditional murder mystery is for audiences to figure out "whodunnit", and the current production of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None by the Millbrook Community Players, Inc. keeps them guessing for almost two and a half hours.

Christie's novel set the standard for the genre, and she penned the stage version in 1943, but Millbrook director Kaden Blackburn has chosen a 2005 update by Kevin Elyot that keeps the essences of the original, but changes the "Ten Little Indians" poem references to "Ten Little Soldiers". The rest has largely been retained.

For the uninitiated: a number of people who are strangers to one another arrive at an isolated island off the coast of England in response to an invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Owen to spend the weekend there. Husband and wife servants inform the guests that their hosts have been delayed but that all is in order for their visit. -- Once all the guests have arrived, a recorded message accuses each one in turn of heinous crimes with threats of retribution. And we watch as they are murdered mysteriously, one by one.

With no one else on the island, and no way to leave, each one is a suspect. The culprit is narrowed down with each death, and most of them either admit to their wrongdoings or express some kind of guilt. 

How it turns out won't be revealed here...go see it and try to figure it out yourself.

The ensemble actors comprise Millbrook stalwarts and some newcomers [Matthew Givens, Michon Givens, Maggie Kervin, Aiye Kioni, Mark McGuire, Gage Parr, Dana Smith, Laura Smith, Michael Snead, Rodney Winter] each one holding his or her own in the group with individual character embellishments.

Mr. Blackburn maintains the suspense throughout, though some varied pacing might create a more credible tension. And reining-in much of some of the actors' shouting would improve the clarity of their dialogue.

The craft of Christie's plot and the talents of Millbrook's able cast are good reasons to see this version of And Then There Were None.

Theatre AUM: "Blood at the Root"

AUM provides numerous opportunities for its Theatre students, the latest being for Senior Tiara Staples as director of Dominique Morisseau's Blood at the Root, her first time directing a full production.

Based on an incident at a Louisiana high school, Blood at the Root is a fictionalized account of the ramifications of an assault on a gay White football player by a number of Black students...but it is also a study of relationships, racial double-standards, a [probably] biased legal system, and the impact of the incident on the lives of teenagers coming to grips with the confusing and changing world around them. -- The title references the poem/song "Strange Fruit" made famous by Billie Holiday, and an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.

It is told in a series of short scenes and monologues on an open stage with minimal rusted set pieces that suggest several locations, and performed by a six member ensemble: Grace Brennan, Sean Godfrey, Grayson Hataway, Bri Myers, Atticus O'Banner, and Michael James Pritchard. -- In its uninterrupted hour and twenty minutes, much of the dialogue is directly addressed to the audience, challenging us to empathize with the characters and their internal and external conflicts.

Ever so gradually, their individual and collective stories intertwine as we follow their changing relationships due to the assault, as they question the assumptions that test friendships, mutual trust, territorialism, and challenges to the status quo.

Ms. Staples directs her cohort in a steady pace that offers a few heightened moments. And there is no doubt in her and her actors' sincerity in inhabiting the characters with naturalistic integrity. This approach has its merits, but too often sacrifices vocal clarity and more precise energy to start and end each scene to optimum effect.

Still, Blood at the Root and its themes is a relevant today as it was in its 2014 debut.

ASF: "Sherwood: the Adventures of Robin Hood"

After some weather related delays, prolific playwright Ken Ludwig's Sherwood: the Adventures of Robin Hood opened at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival last week. It's the third Ludwig play at ASF in less than a year, one that launched a kind of mini-repertoire that shares several actors and creative team members with the upcoming production of Hamlet that opens next month. -- And it appears to be an action-filled  comical audience pleaser.

The hero, Robin Hood, has been fascinating audiences for a long time, having been played on stage and both big and small screens by such notable figures as Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Richard Greene, Tommy Steele, Sean Connery, Cary Elwes, Kevin Costner, and Taron Egerton. -- He's the dashing figure who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor"; an iconic hero who fights for ordinary people whose very existence is being threatened by the rich and powerful.

Ludwig tells an often tongue-in-cheek version of the outlaw Robin [Ronald Roman-Melendez] and his Merry Men -- particularly Little John [Karak Osborn] and narrator Friar Tuck [Christopher Gerson] -- abetted by two "modern" women, Maid Marian [Ellen Grace Diehl] and Deorwynn [Regan Sims], each of whom can carry her own weight with the men, in their struggle against the nasty Sheriff of Nottingham [Tarah Flanagan], wicked Sir Guy of Gisborne [Christian Pedersen], and the flamboyant "would-be king" Prince John [Michael Doherty], who likes to take credit for everything, including quite a few lines from Shakespeare.

In it, Ludwig incorporates witty dialogue, clever disguises, assorted swashbuckling fight sequences, references to contemporary musical theatre, and some direct audience involvement in a big-hearted attempt to charm modern audiences; and it works through the combined efforts of the ensemble cast.

We all know from the beginning that it will end well -- it is, after all, a story that most of us have known from childhood. 

No doubt, we do need some diversion from the issues that bombard us every day, and director Laura Kepley wisely does not directly make references to them. Yet, it is near-impossible to ignore the correlations between what happens on stage and what is happening in the real world.

Wetumpka Depot: "Escape to Margaritaville"

You don't have to be a Jimmy Buffett fan to have a cracking good time at the Wetumpka Depot's production of Escape to Maragritaville. 

Thanks to insightful and prolific director Kim Mason, a terrific on-stage band led by Music Director Davis Whitfield, lively choreography by David Grant Harms and Adrian Bush, clever set pieces by Dana Alldredge, colorful costumes coordinated by Jenifer Hollett, and a multi-talented 18-strong acting ensemble, the two-and-a-half-hour production's energy is infectious, and culminates with many audience members singing along to Buffet's familiar tunes.

Plot is not this musical's strongest point. Three entertainingly predictable love stories lay the groundwork for stringing together many songs from the Buffett catalogue. -- A meet-cute between Tammy [Kaitlyn Lawless] who is having a girls trip to a tropical island [in part to escape from Jeff Glass as her demanding chauvinist fiancé Chadd] where she meets the hotel's bartender Brick [Caleb Beard]; a long-term testy relationship between the feisty hotel owner Marley [Taylor Finch] and JD [Jonathan Yarboro], a local drunk who has a few secrets; and one between Tammy's practical friend and scientist/environmentalist Rachel [Maggie Rowe] and the hedonist hotel nightclub singer Tully [Tony Davison]. 

There's never any doubt that these couples will work out their differences by the end. Opposites often do attract, and the play serves as a gentle reminder that people who resist change might miss out on valuable relationships, that we are frequently too quick to measure people who believe differently by our own standards, and that if we try to understand "others", we might learn about ourselves as well. 

All the principles are in good form, and are abetted by a fine-tuned ensemble who dance and sing with gusto.

Escape to Margaritaville is bright and cheerful, a welcome antidote to a chaotic present day, and though the lengthy denouement serves merely to fit in a few more songs, the smiles on audience faces are a clear indication that the messages have been received. Good show!

Millbrook: "Doublewide, Texas"

Tagged as a "Southern-Fried Trailer Park Comedy!" authors Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten's  Doublewide, Texas is director Cheryl Phillips's current offering for the Millbrook Community Players, Inc.

Filled with an assortment of eccentric characters living in or nearby a small trailer park community facing either annexation into a local township or losing their property, they band together to thwart those attempts and demonstrate that even the downtrodden can overcome corporate greed by relying on family, good sense, and righteousness.

Considering that so many people today, especially the poor and powerless, fall prey to the rich and powerful, there are lessons to be learned, even through a raucous comedy.

Formulaic in structure, and with every character's oddities in full view, some clever dialogue propels the outrageous plot's twists and turns. Ms. Phillips's ensemble cast inhabit the redneck silliness with uninhibited glee. -- Many of Millbrook's reliable veterans take the stage: Vicki Moses. Karla McGhee, Rae Ann Collier, John Collier,  and Michael Snead are joined by Blair Berry, Mary Owen Wright, Shannon Hokum, and Josh Register to deliver brashness, bewilderment, cross-dressing, sexual innuendo, and a few surprises along the way.

On a set that hardly replicates a dilapidated trailer park [lengthy scene changes take us to a few locations that take place elsewhere], the numerous episodes push the mayhem to a satisfying conclusion.

We need a bit of levity today, and Doublewide, Texas fits the bill.  

WOBT Prattville: "The Crucible"

There's a through-line from 1692 to 1953 to 2025 in Arthur Miller's all-too-relevant The Crucible showing at Prattville's Way Off Broadway Theatre: the Salem Witch Trials, Senator McCarthy's Communist "witch hunts", and today's world events where autocrats wield indiscriminate power, are supported by underlings who refuse to challenge their atrocious behavior, and rule with abandon by equating accusations with truth and shift blame onto perceived enemies of the state. 

It is a cautionary tale that dramatizes how history repeats itself when people are deluded to trust profit-driven authority-figures who skirt the law by deflecting blame for their actions in order to retain power and influence.

Loud and repetitive emotional outbursts, religious fervor's appeal to a rigid interpretation of Scripture, and a refusal or inability to digest rational arguments in favor of conspiracy theories.

Though Miller's play is set in the late 17th Century, its conflicts, characters, and themes could have been lifted from today's headlines.

In theocratic Puritan Salem, Rev. Parris [Daniel Olm] discovered several young girls dancing in the woods one night, and questions their motives when his daughter Betty [Edith Tulibagenyi] lies comatose the next day; suspecting witchcraft from Tituba's [Tiffany Presley] influence on the girls, including his niece Abigail [Akex Rickerd], he calls for Rev. Hale [Gage Parr] to sort things out. 

When John Proctor [Josh Williams] intervenes, it comes out that he had had a brief affair with Abigail, one which she still thinks he wants to pursue, and is willing to go to great lengths to take his honest wife Elizabeth's [Bre Gentry] place, her method to divert attention by accusing many of the most beloved citizens of witchcraft and enlists the other girls to back her up.

Innocent characters have little recourse against the devious charges, which all come to a head with the arrival of Deputy-Governor Danforth [Ben Holland] late in the play. He is Miller's arch villain in the drama; his authority is not to be challenged; he refuses clemency, and interrogates with guilty verdicts already determined. But his imposing presence is diminished by placing him behind a table and off to the side for most of his stage time.

Director Tye Terrell-Devore has her acting ensemble tell clear story-lines and relationships, investing them with emotional relevance. But at three hours playing time, the scene changes could be made more swiftly, and some indulgent pauses and over-heightened interpretations of dialogue slow the action.

Nonetheless, Miller's intentions are clear, and are unmistakably provocative in our current political world. It's a play that cries out to be seen and heard; one whose lessons ought to be heeded.

Cloverdale Playhouse: "The Farnsworth Invention"

Opening night at the Cloverdale Playhouse's provocative production of The Farnsworth Invention [2007, Broadway] played to an appreciative full house as it told the fact-based story of a young boy-genius in his quest to get funding and then credit and patents for designing the first working all-electric television system.

Challenged and bullied for years by merciless radio mogul David Sarnoff [Chris Roquemore], Philo T. Farnsworth [Jason Grinstead] is the flawed but sympathetic underdog of the piece; but audience allegiances shift between the two combatants over the two-hour playing time due to convincing arguments for both sides.

Director and Scenic Designer J. Scott Grinstead leads them and a 13-member acting ensemble, all of whom play multiple roles, through Aaron Sorkin's signature fast-paced dialogue inherent in such titles as The West Wing and The Social Network, on his brilliantly conceived multi-leveled and surprise-filled flexibly changing set that is enhanced by Sarah Kay Grinstead's atmospheric lighting.

A major challenge of Sorkin's script is making narrative structure and extended monologues dramatically interesting. Despite occasionally hesitant delivery, both Mr. Roquemore and Mr. Grinstead speak them with such significant conviction and commitment beyond just informational details, that we rarely hear only factual exposition.

And the dramatized episodes including an assortment of characters [family and friends, business associates, film stars, scientists, and hangers-on] complete the journey of Farnsworth's experiments, setbacks, and successes supplemented by Sarnoff's manipulation of money and influence to thwart his opponent at every turn.

The conflict between  a powerful moneyed media Goliath and a brilliant well-intentioned David resonates so pointedly today as we watch with frustration at the world we live in.

The Farnsworth Invention is thoughtful and challenging and has audiences talking long after the curtain comes down. Just what good theatre ought to do.

Pike Road Theatre Company: "Fiddler on the Roof"

With so much attention currently on the Ukraine/Russia conflict, it seems prescient that the Pike Road Theatre Company is presenting the award-winning musical Fiddler on the Roof set in a 1905 Ashkenazi  Jewish shtetl [small market town] named Anatevka during Tsar Alexander III's series of pogroms that either massacred or expelled the Jewish communities from an area that then included Ukraine. 

Director Mike Winkelman keeps his actors on a steady pace in the just-under two-and-a-half-hour running time. Choreographer Kim Isbell creates inventive and disciplined dances for the 30+ member company. -- And the score has so many memorable songs that enhance the drama and challenge the talented acting ensemble's vocal abilities -- among them, "Matchmaker, Matchmaker", "If I Were a Rich Man", "Sunrise, Sunset", and "Do You Love Me?"

Based on stories by Sholem Aleichem, the plot is focused on Tevye [a commanding Jon Darby], a dairyman whose sense of Jewish tradition is articulated in the show's opening number "Tradition" that outlines the accepted authority of parents over children as based on strict Torah law. -- Arranged marriages are the norm while love rarely comes into the picture, finding husbands who can provide a comfortable life for their daughters is expected, and marriage within the Jewish faith is required.

So there are two major conflicts in the play: the constant threat of a pogrom in Anatevka shtetl, and Tevye's predictably strong-willed daughters who dare to break with tradition in order to champion a more modern sense of marriage. -- Both conflicts are difficult for Tevye and his long-suffering wife Golde [Stephanie Coppock], as they try to find acceptable mates for three of their five daughters with the assistance of the matchmaker Yente [Angie Mitchell].

The eldest, Tzeitel [Kristen Vanderwal], is in love with a poor timid tailor Motel [Travis Clark] who is saving money to buy a sewing machine in order to build a business that will give him appropriate funds to provide for a wife and the courage to ask for Tzeitel's hand. But the parents arrange a marriage with an older richer man Lazar Wolf [Sam Wallace], and complications arise. -- To get out of the arrangement with Lazar Wolf, Tevye invents a "nightmare/dream" in which Grandma Tzeitel [Abby Wallace] and Frumah-Sarah [Grayson Hathaway] play the broadest comic roles.

Middle daughter Hodel [Ash Shanks] fancies Perchik [Kevin Mohajerin] a firebrand socialist who breaks tradition by dancing with Hodel at Tzeidel and Motel's wedding when the Constable [Nick Swartz] arrives with soldiers who trash the celebration with a warning that a pogrom is imminent.

And youngest daughter Chava [Bella Posey] falls in love with a gentile named Fyedka [Ever Moates]. And though Tevye capitulated in accepting husbands for the two other daughters, marriage outside the Jewish faith is intolerable for him and he disowns her...almost. This is the most heartbreaking sequence that cries out for more scripted stage time.

Throughout the proceedings, Tevye has several "conversations" with God trying to assess each situation from all sides; his refrain "on the other hand" affords him opportunities to weigh the opposing views, and we feel his dilemma acutely and feel confident that he will do what is best.

When the Constable gives the townspeople three days to evacuate their homes, they grieve while they anticipate the next stage in their lives in foreign places. -- And audiences are left with a sense that they will survive [and perhaps we feel the plight of our contemporaries in Ukraine].

ASF: "The Watsons Go to Birmingham"

As its Black History Month offering, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival opened The Watsons Go to Birmingham on Friday night for performances that run only until February 23rd. Adapted by Cheryl L. West from Christopher Paul Curtis's prize-winning children's book, the story is compressed into less than 90 minutes running time by director Keith Arthur Bolden on the intimate Octagon stage.

Reminiscent of ASF's 2021 production of Shoebox Picnic Roadside that showed an extended Black family's road trip to the Jim Crow South, The Watsons... is a deceptively feel-good story of an ordinary Black family's journey from Detroit to Birmingham in the 1960s that is also a cautionary tale about racism both then and now.

Narrated by a recently traumatized middle child Kenny [Micah Hayles, who had appeared in Shoebox...], the family is headed by protectively well intentioned parents [Trisha Jeffrey and Christopher Brian Portley], and includes Kenny's siblings: Joey [a pert Caitlin Wright], and a rebellious eldest child Byron [Kal Winbourne], whose questionable behavior urged on by his pal Buphead [Cameron Williams] is the reason Mama and Daddy plan the trip for Byron to spend the Summer with Grandma Sands [Debra Walton], a no-nonsense disciplinarian who they hope will turn Byron around.

At heart, they're all good people whose love and trust in one another are the fabric of family; they do what is right, with the adults setting the tone of compassionate authority, and the children responding in kind. Especially telling are the heart-to-heart/man-to-man conversations between Kenny and Daddy.

While the children at first don't understand their parents' precautions along the drive to the South -- Mama plans everything from packing food to deciding which locations are safe by consulting the Greenbook guide for African Americans that lists safe and unsafe places for them en route, and Daddy avoids confrontations by driving though the night, and they are distracted from the dangers around them by listening to records -- they hear radio reports along the way and do learn that the color of their skin can be a trigger to rednecks and even the police.

Though Buphead may have been a bad influence on Byron, once the family arrives at Grandma's we quickly learn that Byron has "been listening" to his parents all along, and when he rescues Kenny from a whirlpool, the family bond is solid. -- On "church day" when Kenny accompanies Joey to the 16th Street Baptist Church, the trauma of the bombing and rescuing his sister brings the story full circle.

Black History Month is an ideal time to see The Watsons Go to Birmingham for important themes that impact us today.

Theatre AUM: "ART IRL [In Real Life]"

After a Winter storm delay, and for one weekend only, Theatre AUM presented a "showcase of student created written. visual, and performing arts" entitled ART IRL [In Real Life]. -- Its two dozen set of scenes, monologues, dances, poems, and visual projections lasted about an hour, and true to its title "showcased" the assorted talents of ten undergraduate students, each of whom was featured in several of the pieces.

Ranging from Classical to Standard theatre repertoire, interspersed with a few original selections, it was a mixed bag, indeed...if only there had been a few lighter or comic moments to relieve the ardent gravitas that dominated the selections.

Directed by Neil David Seibel [with student Assistant Directors Faith Roberts and Tiara Staples] on a bare stage except for two moveable scaffolds and a table and chairs, and a backdrop projecting titles and the featured performers/artists, each scene flowed smoothly from one to another, the neutral space accommodating the location of each scene.

Unlike a complete play in which actors have time to develop plot, conflict, and character, monologues and brief scenes presented out-of-context require full vocal and physical energy and commitment from the start. Unfortunately, far too many of ART IRL's selections were spoken too softly to be comprehended by the audience, and lacked animation and power from beginning to end.

AUM veteran actors Michael James Pritchard and Jay Russell served as models for the less experienced actors to follow; and special attention and appreciation to Meadow Lokey and Atticus O'Banner for following their lead by demonstrating vocal richness and interpretaions using clear textually dependent acting choices.