ASF: "The Play That Goes Wrong"

Buckle-up, Montgomery! -- A raucous laugh-a-minute farce launched the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's 2026-2027 Season on Friday night to a large responsive crowd. -- The Play That Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields has been performed in theatres worldwide since its London debut in 2012, and ASF director Quin Gresham's detailed iteration demonstrates both the play's infectious charm and it's ability to provide an antidote to the cares of the world around us.

It's all in the title: a well-intentioned yet mediocre English theatre company is producing The Murder at Haversham Manor [a whodunnit in the manner of Agatha Christie], but they are so understaffed and underrehearsed, that just about anything that could go wrong actually does. Even before the curtain rises, we see the company making last-minute repairs to the set, and hear an apologetic curtain speech that begs us to be kind to their efforts.

So, it's pretty much an extended one joke show that we watch disintegrate before our eyes. Never mind. No details or spoilers are required. The mad-cap energy and the multiple surprises in the plot are enough. A lot will go wrong.  Just let yourselves follow the unpredictable silliness and laugh till your cheeks hurt. 

All the conventions of an old fashioned murder mystery are there, but complications increase as actors mess up their lines and invent dialogue on the spot while props, costumes, and set pieces fall apart. Yet, "the show must go on".

The skills it takes to pull this off are admirable, with rigorous demands and mutual trust of the entire company both on stage and off: the acting ensemble are as adept at slapstick as they are at comic timing [they make it look easy, even the dangerous parts]; the set design and it's numerous working or not-working parts sustains a lot of abusive treatment; the lighting and sound scores are spot on; and the wizardry of the Stage Management team and running crew deserve the applause they receive at the curtain call.

Thanks to ASF for an excellent start to the Season.

Theatre AUM: "The Mercy Project"

Here's Theatre AUM yet again pursuing "educational theatre" at its core by showcasing an important little-known American female pioneer: a Colonial-Revolution Era poet, playwright, satirist, historian, epistolographer, and political activist named Mercy Otis Warren [1728-1814]. 

Director Val Winkelman has curated and devised several of Warren's works into what she has titled The Mercy Project, mixed them with period songs and dances, and engaged her cohort of nine actors and four musicians to show the remarkable breadth of Warren's output, and to allow them to resonate across the centuries with her concerns about tyranny and liberty, the role of women in public life, and a necessary balance between the rights of all people and the dignity of government. 

Performed in stunning period costumes and largely in a presentational declamatory style, the veteran and neophyte actors give life to Warren's words and ideas, and conscript audiences to find their own connections to them; all in less than an hour's stage time.

Some biographical details are scattered throughout the production: she had little formal education, but learned side-by-side with her brothers who were tutored at home; she was admired by such notables as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; she was a leading promoter of opposition to British rule [her brother once said that "Taxation without representation is tyranny"]; in 1805, she authored the first History of the American Revolution; her home became a hub of revolutionary activism.

Perhaps it's time to investigate Warren's output and encourage productions of her plays. -- Perhaps it's also time in our current political climate to take her advice to become better informed on real issues, to demand honesty and accountability from our elected representatives, and to restore the ideals that will allow us to truly celebrate our 250th Anniversary.

Millbrook: "The Addams Family Musical"

"It's just a simple dinner...what could go wrong?" -- Quite a lot, it seems, in the Millbrook Community Players' delightfully antic production of The Addams Family Musical. 

When teenaged "Goth" Wednesday Addams [MaryBella Pemberton] invites her "normal" boyfriend Lucas Beineke [Gabriel Miller] to dinner so their families can approve of one another before the young couple announce their engagement, and Wednesday conscripts her doting father Gomez [Connor Sparks] to keep it a secret form her mother Morticia [Maggie Kervin]..."What could go wrong?" indeed.

The characters that Charles Addams created in print went on to a popular television program, and this 2010 Broadway musical has become part of the standard repertoire in American theatre ever since, both for its nostalgic family driven story and its charming musical score. 

Millbrook's opening night audience instantly responded to the characters depicted authentically by its talented ensemble actors. -- In addition to the aforementioned, there are the masochistic younger sibling Pugsley [Analeigh Silas], dottering Grandma [Paiton Lamb-Doyle], a naively romantic Uncle Fester [Nick Warman] who falls in love with the Moon, and the almost silent butler Lurch [Alac Dixon]...all of them instructed to be on their best behavior to welcome Lucas and his "normal" parents Mal [Ben Holland] and Alice [Julianne Hansen]. And, by the way, there's a 10-member chorus of Addams Ancestors, ghostly specters who help keep the action moving.

For all their idiosyncrasy, the Addams family are actually pretty normal; we watch parents and children, husbands and wives, with normal concerns for everyone's welfare, and reliance on trust and love to carry them through. And the Beineke family, for all their "normalcy" have a few secrets themselves. -- And we get caught up in their problems and cheer them on to find appropriate solutions when the dinner party gets about as chaotic as it can when they play the game "Full Disclosure", and we trust the outcome will be happy.

Director Kaden Blackburn keeps the action lively, though lengthy scene changes slowed the pace, and trusts his cohort to inhabit their characters fully. And they are up to it: the personifications are spot-on, the movement is energetic and purposeful, and the singing is excellent.

With Kat Barlow's effective choreography, Julianne Hansen's excellent character-driven costumes, and Steve Pennington's fine music direction, audiences are taken on an enjoyable ride in one of Millbrook's most solid productions.

Way Off Broadway Theatre: "Wait Until Dark"

Now and then, almost everyone enjoys a good "scare", especially from the comfort of a darkened theatre...and Wait Until Dark is a reliable conduit.

Written in 1966 by Frederick Knott [he also wrote Dial M for Murder], and adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, it his perhaps best known for the 1967 film starring Audrey Hepburn, and the Prattville Way Off Broadway Theatre iteration as directed by Lily Farnworth ticks a lot of the boxes of the genre in her two-hour production. -- It's been a while since the River Region has been treated to this compelling play [2009 at Faulkner University and 2013 at the Cloverdale Playhouse], so a re-visit is worth the effort.

At its center is Susy [Tye Terrell-DeVore], who had been blinded in an accident, and whose war veteran photographer husband Sam [Evan Scott] goes away on an assignment, leaving her alone in their Greenwich Village basement apartment, a place she can maneuver easily as her other senses have been heightened by her blindness. Gloria [Ava Northington] is a neighbor child who reluctantly runs errands for Susy and looks in on her whenever Sam is away.

Of course, there's a problem: a dead body in a closet that must be removed, and a child's doll "given" to Sam by a stranger that contains a fortune hidden in it, and a trio of criminals who will stop at nothing to find the doll. The ringleader is Harry Roat [Eric Arvidson at his evil best], and his henchmen Carlino [Chase Massengale] who pretends to be a policeman, and Mike [Michael Moseley], allegedly Sam's soldier buddy who ingratiates himself with the trusting Susy.

The three criminals are constantly in and out of the apartment to interview Susy about a recent crime in the area, but actually to get Susy to reveal the doll's location. -- Susy gets suspicious about their behavior and figures out the trio's elaborate "signals", and as their threats become dangerous, she conscripts Gloria to assist in her determination to outwit them.

There is a lot of suspense that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, and the climactic moments with all the apartment's lights out are riveting [too bad that the WOBT stage was not plunged into total darkness]. -- Ms. Farnworth's ensemble actors inhabit their roles fully, enabling audiences to get involved in their lives. Well done.

Wetumpka Depot: "Don't Dress for Dinner"

"Too many cooks" might well "spoil the broth", but not so in a wildly improbable farce. -- Robin Hawdon's deft adaptation of Don't Dress for Dinner, one of a number of collaborations with playwright Marc Camoletti [see Boeing, Boeing, for example], which opened on Thursday to a small but appreciative audience at the Wetumpka Depot.

With its sharp dialogue and fast action, any of the improbabilities of the plot get thrown out the window as audiences' laughter keeps them from anticipating the action, and generates even more laughter as the characters attempt to extricate themselves from each turn of events.

Director Kim Wilson [formerly Mason] guides her six ensemble actors through the rigors of farce that includes mistaken identities, infidelity, slapstick, elaborate lies, and coverups.

Bernard [Will Webster] plans an intimate catered dinner and assignation with his mistress, a model named Suzanne [Dani Lowery], while his wife Jacqueline [Amber Chapman] is away; but when Jacqueline decides to forego her visit with her Mother, Bernard conscripts his friend Robert [Brad Sinclair] to rescue him. When the cook Suzette [Sydney Broach] before Suzanne gets there -- and both are called "Suzy" -- well, imagine the confusions that build over time. -- It's all good-natured sophisticated fun, with a rescue in the nick of time by Suzette's husband George [Jason Sizemore] serving as a kind of deus ex machina to unravel the truth.

Opening night jitters perhaps slowed the action a bit as actors often took too long to respond to cues and needed more purposeful movement; hopefully these matters will be remedied as the run of the play continues. Regardless, Don't Dress for Dinner is a mirthful escapist romp: something we all need these days.

Wetumpka Depot: "Traveling with Truman and Nelle"

The Wetumpka Depot is featuring a limited run World Premier of Marianne Weber's Traveling with Truman and Nelle, in which she invents conversations between Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee as they drive cross-country in 1960 to Holcomb, Kansas where Capote will continue researching his non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood...recounting the brutal murders of the entire Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, then awaiting their trial.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird is awaiting publication, and though Capote already has some notoriety for "A Christmas Story" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's", neither of them has yet achieved the iconic status that future generations admire.

Friends since childhood in Monroeville, Alabama, and social outcasts from the start [his homosexuality, and her aggressively independent tomboy], and filled from their youth with concerns about inequalities, racism, hypocrisy, fairness, and loss of innocence, the play promises to present quite a road-trip.

Ms. Weber fills her script with countless references to their lives in rural Alabama that loyal fans will instantly recognize, though first-timers in the audience could benefit from a glossary of terms and references; for example: his childhood memories of Sook and Buddy flying kites and making fruitcakes, and calling a group of New York socialites "the Darlings"; her sponsors who bankrolled a year in New York so she could write, as well as her failed draft of Go Set a Watchman that became To Kill a Mockingbird. -- It sometime feels that she is trying too hard to include every possible verifiable detail to establish credibility, but it tends to distract from the point of their journey. -- And Nelle's breaking the fourth wall to directly address the audience close to the end that narrates the breakdown of their relationship might have greater impact by being dramatized.

It's Winter, and they stop occasionally in remote places to stretch their legs, smoke cigarettes, or have a bite to eat from a box of provisions they packed. But we never know precisely where they are till fairly late in the play when they are some "25-miles to Dodge City". --And along the way they reminisce and bicker over seemingly inconsequential matters, all in friendly and often teasing manner, while they argue about the bigger issues at hand, both for Capote's book and their own places in a society that is undergoing rapid changes: what causes people to act in some brutal ways? how should people react to those who are different from themselves? will this new society accept outcasts? can we ever actually walk in another person's shoes? do you actually want to be known forever for the success of just one book?

With mutual respect earned from a lifetime of closeness, and with the longstanding jealousies each has for the other, they do recognize the parallels in their writing about justice, morality, truthfulness, the nature of fiction and how it reflects actuality. And that it seems impossible to separate writers from the fictions they create.

Under Tom Salter's solid direction, David Shelnutt [Truman] and Cami Phillips [Nelle] inhabit their roles convincingly; their rapport appears comfortable, like old friends; and we travel with them willingly. Mr. Shelnutt reflects Capote's well-known mannerisms and speech patterns; and Ms. Phillips shows a fine determination as Harper Lee. Whether we know their personal story or their writings, we all can learn a lot about relationships through Traveling with Truman and Nelle.

Way Off Broadway Theatre: "Godspell"

The closing performance of Godspell at the Way Off Broadway Theatre in Prattville played to an enthusiastic almost-full house on Sunday afternoon. And it's one of the strongest productions this company has done in recent memory.

High marks to director James Henry and his ten-member acting cohort for presenting the updated 2012 version of the 1971 Off-Broadway hit without any sense of "preachiness" in recounting many of Jesus's parables found in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and for accomplished physical and vocal comfort and a remarkable sense of ensemble acting.

Additionally -- and other River Region theatres [professional, community, university, high school] take note -- the WOBT managed one of the best balances between the amplified actor's voices and the recorded musical score. The lyrics were clear and audible, and the music supported the voices; nothing distorted or shrill. It can be done. -- Thank you.

In Godspell, a motley group gathers to tell important life lessons. With Jesus [Chace Harris] as narrator and guide, and Judas [Delano Williams] as his companion and kind of alter-ego, the remaining ensemble ask questions and act out the parables' universal messages in contemporary jargon that give them a modern spin. -- The script intentionally allows each producing company the leeway to add references to their location as well as to that time's social and political content.  -- Here, the actors riff off one another with seeming off-handed remarks that add to the immediacy of each moment.

The Company : Ashlee Lassiter Davis, Magdalene Dyson, Dakota Fowler, Jessica Scott, Natali Jimenez, Micah Posey, Ash Shanks, Mark Sanders manipulate simple set pieces while telling the various stories/messages/songs with committed vocal energy.

So, we get "Lazarus and the Rich Man", "The Beatitudes", "The Prodigal Son", "False Prophets", "The Woman Caught in Adultery"...all leading up to Judas's betrayal and Christ's crucifixion. -- We hear memorable songs "Day By Day" and "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" delivered with confidence.

There were a few moments that indulged for too much time, and a lighting glitch (?) left Judas in dark shadow for the entirety of a song/scene in which he should have been a central focus. -- These notwithstanding, the WOBT production of Godspell gave audiences an inspired experience in the theatre.