ASF: "Ring of Fire"

Few singers have as legendary a life and career as Johnny Cash, "the man in black" who bridged country music, rockabilly, and gospel, and whose songs told the several stories of his life and loves, his hard drinking and regrets, his rowdiness and his 'turn to Jesus, his concern for the poor and those who suffer indignities imposed by war and social injustice.

Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, is a tribute to this icon. Showing at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, over 35 signal pieces from the Johnny Cash songbook are performed by four principals -- Trenna Barnes, Allison Briner, Jason Edwards (who also directs), and Johnny Kinnaird -- whose impressive talents are joined by a band whose members -- John England, Walter Hartman, Scott Icenogle, Brantley Kearns, Jeff Lisenby, and Brent Moyer --play an assortment of instruments while doing double duty as characters who help tell the stories.

Their collected talents create a sometimes joyous, sometimes angry, sometimes contemplative, sometimes nostalgic, but consistently engaging and crowd-pleasing evening in the theatre. And because Cash appeals to almost all musical tastes, there is something in it for everyone.

Some time is spent with narrative links to Cash's upbringing and the major public events of his life, this is not an attempt to impersonate the man -- rather to celebrate him and his music. And while the featured actors/singers physically and vocally resemble Cash and June Carter, the focus is on the music and the story-messages in the songs.

So audiences eagerly clap their hands and stomp their feet to an energetic rendering of "Daddy Sang Bass", "Jackson", or the title song "Ring of Fire" that ends the first act, or laugh at the antics of novelty numbers like "Egg Suckin' Dog" or "A Boy Named Sue", or reflect on the import of "Folsom Prison Blues" or "Man in Black", or are touched by the simple declarations of faith in "The Far Side of Jordan", what is ultimately revealed is a man whose complex life is told with compassion and humor, and respect.

A welcome respite from the heat of Summer, Ring of Fire helps restore a sense of worth and allows us to reflect on our own values. Simple things are often the most redemptive; we succeed by struggling; and home and faith give a solid foundation to our lives...and music can make the journey worthwhile.

Wetumpka Depot: "Noises Off"

The Wetumpka Depot Players have another hit on their hands. Director Kim Mason's tight acting ensemble brings the antics of Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off to a rousing laugh-fest in a show that has become an international staple in professional and community theatres since its 1982 debut in London.

As farces go, Noises Off is replete with fast action, slamming doors, sexual dalliances, trousers dropping, and silly props. Frayn complicates this by including a play-within-a-play as an inept theatre company rehearses and then presents an admittedly terrible play called Nothing On, and we view their frustrations with the demands of this convoluted script and their own personal lives reflected in the play they are performing.

Though not essential for general audience appreciation, theatre people might be especially tickled by the all-too-familiar challenges of rehearsing a farce: timing of entrances and exits, eccentricities of actors, timing, manipulation of props, timing, assorted responsibilities of stage managers, timing, the authority of the director, and -- oh, yes -- timing! -- All credit is due the Depot company for keeping the action moving and for excellence in timing the action both as it is rehearsed with mistakes that must be corrected and also in the corrected versions where we witness how it is supposed to be done.

The setting of Nothing On is an old English house that is available to rent while the owners are abroad in Spain; it is being looked after by the housekeeper, Mrs. Clackett, (played  by an actress named Dotty) [Kristy Meanor], whose phone conversations provide background while she attempts to handle the phone, newspapers, and ever-frustrating plates of sardines. When Roger (actor Garry) [Lee Bridges] brings Vicki (actress Brooke) [Sophia Priolo] to the house for an affair while pretending to be a client to rent the house, and is interrupted by the unexpected return of the owners Phillip (actor Frederick) and Flavia (actress Belinda), hilarity ensues. Add to this mix a Burglar (actor Selsdon) [Bill Nowell] an old absentminded actor who has a drinking problem, and a put-upon stage manager Poppy [Elizabeth Bowles] and harried stagehand Tim [Austin Thompson] -- and the fact that there are numerous secrets within the group -- and predictable mayhem soon dominates the scene.

Act One is a dress rehearsal of the first act of Nothing On that clearly demonstrates how ill-prepared they are to perform in front of an audience with the director Lloyd [Stephen Dubberley] rapidly losing patience with his cast and their constant questions and suggestions for improvement. And we see them both in their roles in Nothing On and the relationships of their off-stage lives.

Act Two brings the action backstage a month into the run of the play while the Act One of Nothing On we saw earlier is being performed onstage, and the relationships deteriorate as the actors attempt to settle their personal disputes while the performance must continue.

And Act Three, near the end of the run of Nothing On, becomes more and more outrageous as the actors sabotage and undermine the performances and try to save some semblance of order by having to ad lib their way through it.

Truly an ensemble piece played by veteran actors who bring all their skills to the fore, the Depot's production of Noises Off deserves the resounding responses it s receiving.

Cloverdale Playhouse: "The Last Five Years"

Guest Reviewer: Layne Holley

The Cloverdale Playhouse brings a new show to the region with Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, and audiences are smitten with this emotional roller coaster of an operetta.

In just 85 minutes, we watch five years in the lives of young New Yorkers Cathy and Jamie. Cathy's story is told from end to beginning, while Jamie's is related from beginning to end. We know immediately that the joy will be finite and that the pain will continue to resonate as we hear first Cathy (Jesse Alston) describe the loss of the relationship in "Still Hurting" and then Jamie (Jonathan Connor) on the mountaintop of new love in "Shiska Goddess". Lightning strikes for Jamie, a budding writer whose career takes off just as he and Cathy fall in love. But for Cathy, an aspiring actress, no such stroke of luck occurs, and she feels bound to live in Jamie's shadow; her fear of losing him to his dream becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What puts the backward/forward structure into the category of clever device is that it creates a two-person musical where the characters -- since they are only once sharing the same moment in time -- don't really interact with each other physically. Mr. Connor and Miss Alston handle well the considerable burden to convey their emotional connection without aid of a physical one.

The actors are required to display a wide emotional range with music as the main source of exposition, a challenging demand. Miss Alston particularly shines in "A Miracle Would Happen/When You Come Home to Me", which manages to be funny, pitiable, and angry at once. Mr. Connor moves easily from silly-sweet and encouraging in the wonderfully executed "The Schmuel Song" to villain in "Nobody Needs to Know". The music itself is difficult. Imagine Stephen Sondheim and Dave Matthews setting up shop in Brown's head and you have a good idea of the vocal dexterity required. And when they are able to master control of the music (which is frequent) and compete with the orchestra in the small space, Miss Alston and Mr. Connor are sublime.

Director/Music Director Randy Foster has guided the two young actors to a successful realization of very difficult material. He must also be applauded for paring down a typically large technical endeavor to fit nicely on the Playhouse's cozy stage. He cleverly replaces cumbersome scene changes with an unobtrusive slide show (made possible by James Treadway's projection design) that provides key points of reference in time and location throughout this gripping odyssey.

Red Door: "The Hallelujah Girls"

Ever since Beth Henley's 1979 debut of Crimes of the Heart at Actors Theatre of Louisville, a cottage industry of plays about eccentric Southern women has run rampant through the American theatre world. Several of them have been penned by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten; this trio's The Hallalujah Girls opened recently at the Red Door Theatre in Union Springs. Its colorful characters are drawn with bold strokes, affording little availability for character development, so it is up to the actors to create vivid personalities on stage.

Fortunately, director William Harper has an all-veteran seven member acting ensemble at his disposal to deliver the goods and lift the stereotypical characters and predictable plot from being just another study of mostly middle-aged Southern women coming to terms with changes in their lives into a laugh-out-loud romp.

Set in fictional small town Eden Falls, GA where everyone knows everyone else's business, and covering a year in the lives of a number of its residents, the characters' behavior and the twists of plot stretch credibility -- but Mr. Harper's actors somehow make it all work.

After the death of their friend Vonda Joyce, some local women join Sugar Lee Thompkins [Kim Mason] as she tries to turn her life around and fulfill her dreams -- something that Vonda Joyce did not manage to do. Sugar Lee has bought a decaying church and plans to turn it into the Spa-Dee-Dah! day spa...with the help and support of her friends Carlene [Elizabeth Roughton], Nita [Jaymee Vowell], Mavis [Janet Wilkerson], and Crystal [Valerie Sandlin], all of whom are in need of makeovers and new directions in their lives.

Carlene has buried three husbands and thinks of herself as a jinx, and she is being courted by Porter [Mr. Harper] who is the only likely candidate for marriage and an admitted mama's boy; Crystal escapes reality by revising Christmas carols to suit any occasion and dresses in progressively outrageous costumes to suit every annual holiday; Nita is in complete denial of the fact that her son bilks her of money and property, and escapes through romance novel plots; Mavis hardly ever speaks with her husband and is at the brink of divorce, but covers her hurt with comically caustic comments about marriage; and Sugar Lee is reluctant to admit that her broken romance with Bobby Dwayne [Stephen Dubberley] -- a handyman who unexpectedly arrives to help renovate the building -- has turned her into a mistrustful person who avoids confrontation with witty remarks.

Enter Bunny [Leigh Moorer], a wealthy snob whose superior attitude grates on everyone, and who wants to turn the church building into a monument for herself and will do most anything to secure it.

So, these intertwined plot elements will work themselves out for the best: the good will be rewarded and the bad will be punished -- but not without a lot of obstacles that must be overcome.

And the acting company work as a fine unit and create some comically memorable characters, with some standouts among them. -- Ms. Wilkerson's sharp-tongued Mavis is done with such confidence that the audience eagerly awaits her every appearance and are rewarded by unexpected comic delivery of the clever dialogue she is blessed to have been given. Ms. Vowell shines in her evocation of over-the-top romance novel prose, and captures Nita's sense of denial with brutal accuracy. Ms. Moorer's spiteful holier-than-thou creation of Bunny makes her a character we love to hate and applaud her defeat.

As so much of the plot centers on the relationship between Sugar Lee and Bobby Dwayne, Ms. Mason and Mr. Dubberley must carry the day. As they thrust and parry for control, we see them gradually accept each other on their own terms, and trust in their mutual love and respect by admitting the wrongs they did to each other in the past. Tentative at first meeting and awkward in several others, the development of this relationship is fated to bring them together, and in the hands of these two experienced actors, we believe them and share their happiness.

All in all, The Hallelujah Girls connects us to characters we can all relate to at some level, and provides a lot of laughs along the way.

ASF: "God of Carnage"

French playwright Yasmina Reza came to international prominence in 1996 with Christopher Hampton's translation of Art, a play in which three friends argue about the purchase and the artistic value of an all white painting that becomes an excuse for personal attacks and affords Ms. Reza a chance to assess the nature of friendship.

Mr. Hampton, a distinguished playwright himself, is arguably one of today's most accomplished translators, whose adaptations into English capture Ms. Reza'a satiric bite and social commentary in deceptively simple language, giving actors ample ammunition to fire at one another and leave audiences ruminating on her serious issues while they might see themselves reflected on stage and catch themselves laughing at the savage behavior of seemingly civilized characters.

Ms. Reza's multi-award winning God of Carnage -- in Mr. Hampton's astutely acrid translation -- is being performed in an uninterrupted 90 minutes by a quartet of actors whose superficial civility towards one another degenerates into ludicrous comical and vicious attacks. Under Susan Willis' sharp direction in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Octagon Theatre, the intimate performance space enhances audience involvement.

As the play opens, two couples are calmly discussing what they should do about a schoolyard fight between their two sons -- who is to blame? should they intervene? should the boys work it out on their own? -- If only their children could act the way their parents do: reasonably, moderately, exercising the "art of coexistence". As if!

In almost the first line of dialogue, with her husband Michael's [Ian Bedford] support, Veronica [Jennifer Barnhart] sets thing rolling by claiming that their son 's injuries were inflicted by the other boy "armed with a stick"; the implications of that language get Alan [Anthony Marble] and Annette [Michelle Shupe] on the defensive for their son, and within a few minutes of holding on to the social niceties, sleeves are rolled up and the fight is on in earnest, each couple defending their son and with small personal revelations, showing their true colors.

Though the children never appear on stage, their parents describe the brief skirmish in increasingly barbed language -- armed, hooligan, savage, etc.; in contrast, the extended passive-aggressive "art of coexistence" expressed in reasonable and moderate terms disintegrates to figurative and actual nausea and metaphorical bloodletting, in essence more damaging than a couple of minor bruises. -- For all of their education, material success and outward sophistication, they are pretty shallow people, types we might come across in real life. -- And we laugh at them because what they do is so familiar; people behaving badly doesn't happen only on reality television.

The acting ensemble on the Octagon Stage is so fine-tuned that it's almost as if the audience was eavesdropping; their speech is completely natural and behavior so nuanced that each discovery emerges credibly at these couples' first meeting: it is a get-to-know-you exercise that changes to a no-holds-barred slugfest leaving everyone wounded and helpless.

Mr. Marble depicts Alan as an obsessive workaholic lawyer whose cellphone conversations interrupt the action so frequently to the consternation of the others; it is easy to see how his impolite behavior and aggressive demeanor with the callers has impacted both his marriage and his son; but we can;t help but laugh at his expense.  -- Ms. Shupe makes a striking debut on the ASF stage as Alan's uptight wife Annette who is in "wealth management" whatever that is; but after more than a few drinks, the gloves come off much to everyone's delight. In vino veritas...for all of them.

As Veronica, Ms. Barnhart exudes a social liberal's confidence: an art lover who is also writing a book about the genocide in Darfur, and whose furniture is upholstered in animal skins reflected in a giant Darwinian "survival of the fittest" painting that dominates the scene and serves as a metaphor for the play's content. Completely befuddled by other people not sharing her passion for social justice, her blindness to the real needs of others and Ms. Barnhart's exquisite comic delivery make these contradictions palpable and outrageously funny. -- Mr. Bedford appears at first to acquiesce to almost anything as Michael, and his vacillation  is contagious as each couple's stance is tested and shifts of allegiance rule the day. A "soft hardware" salesman with a vulnerable side that comes across on occasion to hearty laughter from the audience, his manner catches us off guard.

With each small personal revelation that peels away any protective wall, they find ways of bonding -- husbands and wives switch allegiances, the men bond with each other as do the women, taking sides, playing trump cards, and using tactics to win at all costs -- but have to remind themselves periodically of the purpose of their meeting: their kids.

Alan's claim that "the god of carnage has ruled since the dawn of time...it's kill or be killed" is fulfilled in Ms. Reza's script as this foursome inflict damage to fragile egos, entitlement, greed, and pretentious disregard of the effects of their actions. -- Not a compliment to society as we live in it. Reflecting the "nanny state" of America, these seemingly well-intentioned combatants remain unaware of the effect they have on their children who, left to their own devices, would probably have already moved on from their schoolyard spat.

ASF: "Around the World in 80 Days"

Sometimes all you need is a family-friendly rollicking good time in the theatre, just what the Alabama Shakespeare Festival is offering up in Mark Brown's lively adaptation of Jules Verne's sweeping adventure-filled "extraordinary voyages" novel, Around the World in 80 Days. -- Seven actors play a total of 34 roles in the ASF production that traces Phileas Fogg's [Kurt Rhoades] fictional 1872 circumnavigation of the globe in what was then a record time in order to win a bet based on his mathematical certainty. "The unforeseen does not exist" he says by anticipating obstacles along the route he takes through Europe, Asia, and America, and back to London.

The successful outcome is hardly in doubt, but much like life itself, the journey -- both around the world and of self-discovery -- by boats, trains, an elephant, and an elaborate sled with sails, and the setbacks along the way sustain the suspense and ensure some surprises, several adventures in exotic lands, and cliff-hanger moments, all done with imaginative staging by director Geoffrey Sherman on Peter Hicks' clever revolving set, and expertly performed by ASF's multi-talented ensemble actors.

Accompanying Fogg on his journey is his newly hired French valet Passepartout [Brik Berkes], whose occasional butchering of the English language belies his ability to adjust to most situations and to get them out of a number of scrapes.

To complicate matters, Detective Fix [Paul Hebron] believes with flimsy evidence that Fogg is the man who recently robbed the Bank of England, and doggedly follows him around the world determined to bring him to justice.

From the start, Mr. Rhoads presents Fogg as a mysterious sort who keeps to himself, has virtually no friends, and is a cipher to the other members of the Reform Club where the wager is made. However, he is generous and well-mannered, and when in India midway through Act I he rescues the lovely Aouda [Cheri Lynne Vandenheuvel], a budding romance begins and we see subtle changes in the man.

This foursome is at the center of Verne's delightful plot, but the catalogue of 30 other characters they encounter dazzles with quick costume and personality changes and broadly comical impersonations, so much so that one would think there were a lot more actors than just these seven. But, when we recognize James Bowen, Jordan Barbour, Rodney Clark, and Ms. Vandenheuvel and Mr. Hebron in each new role, these recognitions enhance the hilarity and the audience's approval.

It can't get much better than this. What with broadly drawn caricatures of recognizable English Music Hall character types, bright performances by the acting ensemble, transport breakdowns, run-ins with an assortment of global legal systems, an opium den, a typhoon, a snowstorm, an attack by Apache Indians, and that elephant, the action moves at a rapid pace and we are engaged from start to finish in Around the World in 80 Days.

Millbrook: "The Cemetery Club"

Murray, Henry, and Alec have been dead for some time, but their widows meet once a month at their gravesites to "talk" with their husbands -- a form of grieving that seems to get them through life's tough spots. -- With a combination of humor and pathos, Ivan Menchell's The Cemetery Club shows the attempts of each of these women to move on with their lives...or not...as they reveal some secrets and behaviors that touch matters many of us face.

The Millbrook Community Players, under the direction of Fred Neighbors, interpret Menchell's predictable and sometimes lackluster script with a degree of comfort that has audiences reflecting on the truths about human nature it depicts: petty jealousies and misunderstandings that can only be accepted and forgiven by long-time friends.

Lucille [Tracey Quates], reminiscent of Blanche Devereaux from television's The Golden Girls, is on the surface a self-centered sexpot bedecked in mink, unabashedly flirting with men and bragging of her conquests, while beneath this fragile veneer is a damaged woman whose husband cheated on her.

Doris [Pamela Trammell] finds solace in her frequent visits to her husband's grave, so much so that the others are concerned about her well being. While Lucille intends to resign from this "cemetery club" where "half the members are dead", and Doris is criticized for overdoing it on the fourth anniversary of her husband's death by grieving "as if it was yesterday", she refuses to move on; and she hides the fact that she is sick.

Ida [Margaret White], on the other hand, wonders if there isn't something more to life than tea parties or being a bridesmaid at her daughter's umpteenth wedding, so when long time friend and local butcher Sam [John Chain] shows up, she is inclined to take a chance with him, only to be thwarted by Doris and Lucille who don't want her to "settle for the first man who comes along".

Sam is a nice guy, and though he doesn't want to hurt Ida and backing off at the other women's insistence, he shows up at the wedding with Mildred [Vicki Moses] whose haughtiness drives the other women to drink.

Mr. Neighbors has his actors tell their stories clearly, and we do get involved in their lives. He wisely chose to not have them attempt New York accents, but a more purposeful and energetic pace, stronger vocal projection, and additional movement in staging the action might add some zing to the proceedings.