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.