CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

Weekend Picks!

Ballet dance, barn dance. Opera film, phantom film. And a few tasteful nudes.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jul 23, 2010 at 12:00PM 1 Comments

Uprising! of OBT
Sat-Sun 7pm Chamber-folk veterans Weinland and Laura Gibson will fuse their reedy croons with the swoops and leaps of ballet dancers from OBT, to elevate both art forms into a swoon-inducing crescendo. While these folk-fusion events are myriad lately in Portland—in the world, they are relatively rare. Get over to The Aladdin Theater and catch one while you can.

Here’s soom footage of a prior Uprising! event, which featured the music of Horsefeathers:

Sauvie Island Barn Dance
Sat 5:30pm If the aforementioned ballet-folk-fusion proves too “cityfied” for your down-home style, take a short scenic drive to Sauvie Island, for the Annual Barn Dance. This time-honored summer event provides a live hootenany band (think fiddles, banjos, possibly some washboard/jug-type claptrap) and all the hay-bale authenticity you can handle. Can’t dance? Not to worry. They’ll have a competent square-dance caller, to help you do-si-do it.

Filmusik: Gulliver’s Travels
Fri 7pm The cheeky opera-kitschfilm collab is back, this time syncing not only song, but also voice acting and Foley (aka, film noisemaking) to the 1930’s animated feature film. Originally penned as a parable about bureaucracy and small-mindedness, this story has taken on a more whimsical life as a fairy tale. Filmusik will likely lighten it up even further.

Backspace Gallery
Through July 31 There doesn’t have to be good art on the walls, for me to enjoy my coffee. Coffee shops know this, and so often when they see me coming, they whisk all the good art off the walls and tack up something unremarkable. However: yesterday as I happened into Backspace, I noticed several starkly beautiful pieces by Alexandra Becker-Black. Large expanses of white space, with delicate splashes of monochromatic watercolor, combined for surprisingly fresh depictions of the most classic subject: the female nude. Part of a show that will disappear at the close of July, these works seem worth visiting, even if you aren’t looking for a latte.

Fred?
Sun, 11:30am According to its creator, brand-new stop-motion film Fred will premiere at the Living Room Theaters this Sunday at 11:30 am. But when reached by phone, the box office could not confirm the screening. LAIKA (Coraline) alum Misha Klein, whose credits also include Celebrity Deathmatch and Robot Chicken, spent 10 years tinkering with the film, but wrapped it in at Portland’s Studio 13 last winter, and then allegedly took a long-deserved nap on the floor. The lead puppet, Fred, is a reluctant stage performer, harried by an angry boss and riddled with his own self-doubt. With the comic pathos of a hobo clown, Fred anguishes over his stage-fright and awaits his cue. Will the show go on?

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Tags: Art, Theater, Dance, Weekend Plans, Film

Weekend Picks

Sand, strippers, pastry, and playwrights!

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jul 16, 2010 at 12:00PM 3 Comments

Dude, sand castles are so 1954. We can do better.

Sand In The City

There may be no better symbol of summer than the sand castle. Whimsical, natural, golden, and temporary, the sand castle is a classic metaphor for momentary splendor. Your kids will be inspired when they see Pioneer Courthouse Square transformed into a summer wonderland by 450 tons of sand, expertly shaped into sculptures. Your $3 donation benefits Impact Northwest.

Live Girls, Gypsy

Perhaps you want your stripteases a little more theatrical than Sassy’s. Maybe you want your theater sexier than Pericles in the park. Well, this weekend you get lucky, because two theaters offer stripper-themed plays that promise to be provocative in every sense of the word. Coho Theater’s Live Girls bills itself as an expose of the psyches and motivations of the modern pole-straddler. For more classic burlesque ooh-la-la, The Lakewood Theater presents Gypsy, a wink-and-smile musical that will peddle you a flash of flesh, and leave you wanting more.

JAW: A Playwrights Festival

“JAW” used to stand for “Just Add Water,” but these days, it just stands on its own as a hotly anticipated preview of new plays in their rawest form. Seasoned playwrights get to jaw about their process. New playwrights get to cut their teeth. And audiences get to chew over new content, before it hits a more formal stage. This weekend features readings by Oregon playwrights Ebbe Roe Smith and Sara Jean Accuardi, which deal with, respectively, male and female latter-life anxieties.

The Big Busk

If you set foot downtown on Saturday, odds are you’ll stumble over some busker toes. The Big Busk, a coordinated effort to bring 30-odd musical acts to downtown locations, will be staging a curbside cacophony on almost every close-in Southwest block. Although these acts are part of a curated event, the usual protocols prevail. If you like what you hear, stay and pay. If you don’t, walk on by, because there’s a new musical surprise around every corner.

Bastille Day Block Party

Portlanders, I know this day is tremendously relevant to us all. While Pix Patisserie lets us enjoy a jubilant clamor of local bands, devour a decadent puff-pastry tower, and stumble through wine-addled lawn-sports— surely we all go to show solidarity for a free France. In exchange for as much free France as a Portlander could possibly handle, Pix asks that you bring two canned food items to donate to the Oregon Food Bank. (Seems only fair while you’re stuffing pastry in your face, to share the wealth.)

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Tags: Theater, Events, Weekend Plans, Music

Weekend Picks

Culturephile presents two blushing performance-art quinceañeras, a far-out Gypsy excursion, and a lawn-chair space odyssey

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jul 09, 2010 at 12:00PM 4 Comments

We still haven’t found the 4-H tent at the Oregon Country Fair.

PICA Turns 15
A woman in stylish safety goggles, calmly and methodically breaking glass. Children cutting adults’ hair. Beat-boxers, light-boxes, ukelele-wielding trannies—these are some of the many-spirited spectacles that have been brought to us in the last 15 years by PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art) most notably at its annual Time-Based Art Festival (aka, “TBA”). Tonight at Holocene, with the hotly anticipated TBA a mere two months away, double-drum electronica duo Deelay Ceelay help celebrate this arts brainchild’s coming-of-age.

Conduit Dance
Look out, PICA—you’re not the only arts organization playing quinces princess. Conduit Dance also celebrates the big 15 this weekend, with a showcase of local luminaries including Conduit founder Linda K. Johnson, Oregon Biennial 2010 artist Tahni Holt, and former OBT dancer Gavin Larsen*. Conduit Benefit Performances: 15 hopes to help top off the coffers, so Conduit can continue moving contemporary dance forward.

Oregon Country Fair
Though Oregon Country Fair is held in the country (in Veneta, Oregon, outside Eugene) you can dispel any notions of country fare. Nowhere a 4-H ribbon, nary a cow or plow. It’s actually more like visiting a Gypsy enclave, where dusty paths wind through shady woodlands, dotted by makeshift curio shops and traversed by troubadours and elaborately-dressed denizens of various fairytale kingdoms.

Trek In The Park
You’ve probably heard of Shakespeare In the Park. And you may have caught wind of the odd Star Trek Convention. But have you ever thought of a grand convergence of the two? Never fear; Portland’s Atomic Arts is on it. As if beamed in by teleporter, Kirk, Spock and company will materialize in the Woodlawn Park amphitheater and perform the classic Trek episode “Space Seed,” best known for introducing Trek supervillian Khan and seeding the soil for future blockbuster The Wrath Of Khan. In this story, the Enterprise discovers a ship containing hibernating human specimens, and wakes their leader, Khan, who then seduces one of the Enterprise’s bouffanted crew beauties and attempts to kill Captain Kirk.

Portland Piano International
Pianists, if you can pry your eyes off the sheet music for a moment, heads up! Portland Piano International kicks off its week-long intensive, with performances, films, dinners, and master classes that promise to explore the whole dynamic expanse of ebony and ivory.

*According to one of my ballet sources, Gavin Larsen has some of the most beautiful hand positioning ever witnessed on stage or in studio. “When she makes a gesture, it’s like she’s balancing God on her fingertips.”

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Tags: Theater, Dance, Events, Weekend Plans, Music

RENT

Stumptown Stages gives Broadway classic a new lease.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 28, 2010 at 02:00PM 3 Comments

There are two types of people in the world: those who love RENT, and those who despise it. It’s melodramatic. It’s idealistic. It’s angsty. It’s maxed out with poetic double meanings that have since worked their way into the pantheon of cliche. If these are not deal-breakers, then we’re okay—and there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy Stumptown Stages’ production, the musical’s post-broadway regional debut. Culturephile caught yesterday’s matinee. Here’s what stood out:

Best Assets: Ensemble chemistry and choral blend. The scenes where everyone is singing together onstage, are undeniably strong in this production, and the cast seems to genuinely like each other.

Most Riveting Solo Moment: Strong soloists, of course, are a given for RENT, so this almost doesn’t bear mentioning. But the tiara and sash would have to go to Maureen’s performance of “Over The Moon.” Though you’re supposed to laugh at this scene, Maureen (Alina Ziak) is so mesmerizing, she’ll make you believe. A master mind-trick, by an excellent performer.

Best Love Chemistry: Angel (Tyler Andrew Jones) and Tom (Jerrod Neal). Very warm, protective vibe. Not rip-roaringly sexual, but that makes sense for the dire straits the characters navigate.

Strongest Held Note: The second syllable of “Nightmare,” from “Will I?”, in act one, revealed the production’s Steve (Travis C. Patterson)—who doesn’t get tons of solo time—as a vocal standout.

Most Solid Harmonies: Mark (Clay Neal) and Roger (Stephen Miller).

Most Puzzling Problem: Roger’s inability to stay on key when singing solo, despite hitting pitch-perfect harmonies every time he sang with either Mark or Mimi (Heather Harlan). Hmm.

Best Physical Performances:

• Mimi’s hair-flipping gogo-dance routine. In electric blue sparkly spandex, she delivers the whole she-boom-boom.

• The ensemble’s rowdy cluster-hump in “La Vie Boheme,” shows off the cast’s group fluidity and chemistry.

• Angel’s last gasps, which conjure palpable pain.

Secret Weapons:

• Casting: The confines of a small stage demand extra subtlety. You can’t put anything over on an audience that’s that close. For the most part, actors honor their archetypes, with nary a soulless showboat in the mix.

• Lighting: This may seem silly to mention, but having recently attended a few shows that may as well have been held in gazebos, I really appreciated this lighting, designed by Director Kirk Mouser, which artfully supports season and mood, and beams intense, heavenly rays off Angel at the play’s dramatic climax.

• Band: Tucked away in the back hallway, piped through the PA, their live presence went unnoticed by the audience until the show was over. “Gosh, look, a band,” several people said, as they exited. (The fact that their performance was taken for granted, probably attests to their skill.)

A couple shortcomings:

• Aiming high: Three or four times (which isn’t bad, considering the material’s challenging vocal lines) a singer went for the super-high note, and choked. It would have been wiser for these mezzos (who probably know who they are) to aim for a tone closer to home, even if it meant deviating from the written melody.

• Not updating the wardrobe: Hm. Shared housing? Poverty? The pursuit of art? Are these topics the property of the New York 90’s? It seems like they’re just as pervasive in Portland, right now.The production no doubt chose to keep RENT in 90’s garb, for tradition’s sake. But it would have been more sporting, and equally on-message, to hop across the street to Belmont Stumptown and snatch modernized boho togs right off the patrons’ backs.

• Theatre! Theater! ‘s total online obscurity: Although the production company for this particular play has a decent web presence, I defy you to casually google the Southeast Belmont venue, Theatre! Theater!. Resolving this may fill more seats. C’mon, guys, help us help you.

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Tags: Theater, Reviews

Weekend Picks

Pick your poison—NoPo or Lake O; chamber music subtlety or Broadway flair.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 25, 2010 at 12:00PM 5 Comments

No. Fest
These days, the North Portland/ St. Johns neighborhood is all over the place. Is it the new gay district? The latest plum to ripen for PDC plucking? The last close-in outpost for blue-collar, and “keeping it real?” In the throes of an all-engrossing identity crisis, NoPo, like any healthy adolescent, wants to party. This weekend marks the first annual No. Fest—boasting an eclectic, ambitious schedule, a compilation CD, and headline Bhangra bangers Anjali & The Incredible Kid. Click here for more info and complete schedule, and behold, below, a preview of Culturephile’s top pick, multimedia music/animation duo, ** Billygoat:

Dioscuri Part II from Billygoat on Vimeo.

Lake Oswego Festival of The arts
If the above description tempts you to run for the hills, point your warrantied wheels south toward Lake Oswego, for another Festival Of The Arts. They’ve been hosting theirs for 47 years, thank you—so they’re willing to offer some guarantees, including accessibility to everyone, several art exhibits, a Craft Faire, and a juried art show.

Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival
Attending a chamber concert is like taking tea with the Queen—simultaneously intimate and grand; punctuated by quiet throat-clearing. Chamber Music Northwest’s 40th summer festival landed its first bow-strokes this last Monday, but will string the festivities out for four more weeks. Click here for complete schedule and ticket information, and whet your appetite with this Bostonian version of one of the weekend’s featured pieces, Adagio For Strings .

RENT
Whether you measure it in minutes, cups of coffee, or torrid, twentysomething love*—the enduring success and relevance of RENT can hardly be denied. The Pulitzer-winning musical that opened in 1996 and dominated Broadway stages ‘til 2008, styles itself as a vivid snapshot of the edgy lives of seven friends in New York’s East Village. But it clearly offers something more universal: a diverse set of characters and a varied spectrum of passionate, complex emotions. At Theatre! Theater! through july 25th.

*Culturephile wonders, should that be calculated in volume, or density?

**Coming up on Culturephile: 5 questions with Billygoat!

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Tags: Theater, Weekend Plans, Music, Festivals

Weekend Picks

Pride parade, courtroom drama, and circus hijinks

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 18, 2010 at 11:00AM 3 Comments

This villainous chap is just one of the characters you’ll meet at the Wanderlust Circus. Photo by Alicia Rose

Wanderlust Circus presents The Rose Rush
Time to bust out your bustier and untangle your fishnets, for the monthly vaudevillian freak-fest that is Wanderlust Circus. For The Rose Rush, Wanderlust’s intrepid collective of acrobats, aerialists, and sharp-tongued carnival barkers, puts its talents to a tale of Northwest conquest, “in which a cunning captain of commerce comes gunning for the creme de Cascadia.”

Portland Pride 2010
Grand Marshaled by Grande Dame Darcelle XV, the annual Portland Pride Parade will fill the streets with gay merriment, and then converge at the waterfront for a whole weekend’s worth of music, pageantry, and queer-friendly vending. (Parade begins at 11:30, followed by scheduled events from noon on.) In the immortal words of the Glenda the Good Witch: Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Imago Theater Backs Like That
Best known for her animal stage spectacles, a la Frogs, Imago Theater’s Carol Triffle also pens the occasional people-play. Backs Like That, her latest wackily existential offering, features an original musical score by Imago composer Katie Griesar—and they’re giving it away! Make a reservation to see it for free.

NW Dance Project Summer Splendors
NW Dance Project celebrates a year in the Mississippi neighborhood, hosting a set of world premiere works from Northwest choreographers James Canfield (founding Artistic Director of Oregon Ballet Theatre) Sarah Slipper, Carla Mann, and Lauren Edson, in its intimate studio setting. “You’re drawn in differently,” says Slipper. “The dance, the sweat, the action is inches away from you … it’s almost how dance should be seen, up this close.” Tickets and showtimes available here.

Testimony: Equality On Trial
The Brody Theater presents a “courtroom drama” with pressing political relevance—a reenactment of real court transcripts from the recent hearings addressing Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to uphold the ban on gay marriage. Part of a national effort to bring the touching testimony of gay plaintiffs to the public, this piece, timed to coincide with Pride, is on a mission to humanize the movement.

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Tags: Theater, Dance, Weekend Plans, Festivals, Carnivals/Fairs

Weekend Pending

Your options are mostly family friendly, and weather-permitting

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 11, 2010 at 06:00AM 1 Comments

The Bard alfresco—like it was meant to be.

Much Adoe About Nothing

Original Practice Shakespeare, or OPS, is committed to keeping it old school—meaning sixteenth century. In its kickoff weekend, the group presents Shakespeare’s Much Adoe About Nothing, the way it would’ve been done in the day of the Bard: in the open air, with a fast-paced, irreverent flair. Saturday, Gabriel Park; Sunday, Esther Short Park; 2 PM, free.

School Of Rock: Talking Heads

Look out, gradually maturing hipsters—a youth rock army is mobilizing for world conquest, via a recent explosion of organized camps, classes, and seminars. The musical ideals that you cultivated through precious private obsession, have now been condensed into coursework that fast-tracks school kids into the rock ‘n’ roll spotlight! And according to my sources, School Of Rock delivers exuberant, shockingly skilled performances. So, go ahead and tender your resignation at The Hawthorne Theater Saturday afternoon, when School Of Rock tackles Talking Heads.

Bert Jansch

Neil Young has some pretty nice things to say about recent tourmate Bert Jansch; most notably, “He’s on the same level as Jimi Hendrix.” Now, does Neil Young seem like the type of guy who’d lie? Saturday, Mississippi Studios.

Alice In Wonderland

This variation of the classic, penned by U of P’s Conor Eifler, features Venetian masks, puppets and stilt stunts, and the script apparently plays up the original story’s existential twist. Interstate Firehouse, Friday through Sunday.

Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade

Floats may be the purest form of spectacle value. Extravagantly giant, garish, and slow, they drift along like gaudy cumulus clouds. Line up beside your fellow Portlanders for the annual mass-hypnosis. Here’s Sunday’s parade route.

R. Crumb’s Book Of Genesis
Cartoonist provocateur illustrates the Good Book. See Graham Bell’s preview here.

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Tags: Theater, Events, Weekend Plans

Weekend Picks

Last chances, last dances, and an all-around hoot.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Jun 04, 2010 at 10:30AM 2 Comments

OBT’s Bolero

“If you want to see OBT perform this summer, you’ll have to buy a plane ticket to Korea,” warns artistic director Christopher Stowell. While that may be an option for some, it’s probably easier to catch the season’s last dance, Bolero, this weekend at the Keller. For this program, Ravel’s passionate masterpiece is juxtaposed with the exuberant Russian classicism of Raymonda and the delicate harp-accompanied intimacy of Hush.

Siren Nation’s Dolly Hoot

Tonight, Siren Nation presents its fifth annual Dolly Hoot fundraiser, a Dolly Parton tribute show in which Portland music’s creme femmes (Rachel Taylor Brown, Stephanie Schneiderman, etc.) bring their own interpretations to the iconic smart blonde’s songs.

Best Of The 36th Annual Northwest Film And Video Festival

If you missed last November’s Northwest Film And Video Festival, don’t despair—a new rainy weekend ushers in another chance to go in for some of the Fest’s best entries. And, who knows; a diverse barrage of ideas and themes, may prove a perfect distraction from the same old rain.

Educating Rita
Bag & Baggage Productions’ season closing play, the My Fair Lady-like story of a working-class hairdresser seeking help from an English professor in a quest for refinement, explores the meaning of higher education.

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Tags: Theater, Dance, Weekend Plans, Music, Festivals, Film

Between Theater and Bar

Two comedic productions span the gap.

Posted by: Anne Adams on May 31, 2010 at 08:00AM 2 Comments

Drink in the drama.

This last Sunday and Wednesday, I went to the theater—or, rather, I went to bars that were hosting theater productions. And I learned that these are not the same thing. Bar-hosted theater inhabits the hazy badlands between regular theater, where actors have something to prove and everybody feels their pain, and your neighborhood bar, where you’ve got nothing to prove, and everybody knows your name. Can the difference be split? Audience turnout and enthusiasm say “yes.”

Hot Gun is a multimedia musical/movie screening, featuring footage from the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, with the floating heads of actors from the live production, edited into flight-scene close-ups. The projected footage is interspersed with live rock covers and choreographed dance numbers.

The MEthod by Lisa Wells, is a mock-self-help seminar, complete with name tags that diagnose personal mental maladies (“Hi, my name is Lonely”), a screening of a MEthod mock-infomercial, a tongue-in-cheek “keynote speech” and a slideshow. Last Sunday, the piece was presented as a split bill, with Wells running the first show, and the second act furnishing a mock-AA-confession, mock-dance therapy, and a mock-hypnotist. (Gee—mock much?)

Partially due to the logistical scope of each piece, both productions weighed in on the rowdier, sillier, sloppier side of theater standards. Both contained moments of confusion, stalls in momentum, flubs and messups. Nevertheless, in both rooms, the performers hammed valliantly, and the crowds went wild. Here’s the key: each of the bars that hosted these shows (Hot Gun, Dante’s; MEthod, The Woods) has a “scene.” You can say it ain’t so, but you’ll see the same people there all the time.* And in each case, the cast was down with the scene in the bar, as much as the scenes they were playing out onstage. They knew their audience—literally.

To be sure, there was some universal humor (Hot Gun’s delivery of the gayest original Top Gun lines, in the gayest possible way; Wells’ assertion that everyone can have a two million dollar home if they just ask the universe) but the laughs were loudest with the in-crowd. The novelty of seeing friends dressed funny, and/or comically incorporated into video footage, was the bulk of the fun.

Hot Gun director Jeffrey Wonderful (Chariots of Rubber, Rose City Rollers, Portland Organic Wrestling) was candid in his opening speech: “We don’t give a f**k what you think of this show,” he announced. “This is community theater.” Wells seemed more primed to court the public; she kept character throughout, and seemed to be workshopping glitches out of her show at a friends-only dress rehearsal, in preparation to go wider-scope in future performances.

But what does my week in bar theater mean to you, the consumer? Connoisseurs, consider it caveat emptor: this is gonzo, and only the bartender is there to serve you, so no toffee-nosed elitism will be tolerated. To make the most of bar-theater, adopt the “when in Rome” axiom. Show up a little late; you’ll still be early. Either bring friends, or make them. Laugh at all jokes, but first and foremost: drink.

*Full disclosure: post author sometimes moonlights as The Woods’ doorman. (In addition to this column, post author has many moonlight pursuits.)

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Tags: Theater

Gracie and The Atom

Catholic school musical thoroughly redeems itself

Posted by: Anne Adams on May 24, 2010 at 01:00PM 4 Comments

When I was 14, I went to a religious boarding school—and last week, I went back, via Artist Rep’s whip-smart and bittersweet Catholic schoolgirl musical, Gracie and The Atom.

But before I say more, a confession: I underestimated this play. As I skimmed the glowing local reviews, I thought maybe the Portland press was indulging longtime PDX musician and newly-minted playwright McKinley. I imagined Gracie actually playing out as a self-pitying Catholic Annie, with all of the hard knocks and none of the life—or, as a plaid-skirted, pubescent Britney Spears redux, flaunting forbidden fruit under a short hem. I now renounce my cynicism. And if my penance is convincing you to catch this winsome, uplifting play, then it’s a small price to pay.

Gracie and The Atom begins as a newly-parentless Gracie (Beth Sobo) stumbles into the auspices of Our Lady Of Peace, the aforementioned Catholic girls’ school. The story that unfolds, follows Gracie’s emotional trajectory through resistance and rebellion, to eventual acceptance and inclusion. (Mercifully, Sobo plays the lead role very straight, free of any hint of trivializing cuteness.) Meanwhile, all the other (slightly sillier) denizens of Our Lady, struggle to reconcile the tenets of faith with the principles of science. In the words of Gracie’s physics teacher, Sister Lidwina (Emily Beleele), “If atoms are made of mostly space, and everything we see is made out of atoms, we live in a world made of mostly nothing!”

The principles of physics, it turns out, are a rich and expansive source of metaphor. Comments about positive and negative charge, as well as energy, motion, and momentum, are interspersed in the dialogue both as physics lessons, and as winking hints at character motivation. The effect is sometimes goofy, as when the hormonally-charged Angela (Brooke Markham) passionately explains subatomic attraction; and sometimes heartrending, as when the grieving Gracie tremblingly confronts her father’s fate: “Once you burn a log in the fireplace, you can never unburn it.”

Though heavily cloaked in Catholic habit, Gracie ultimately makes an exuberantly agnostic statement—not merely accepting, but actually celebrating the fact that we live in a vast, unpredictable universe, and there’s much that we can’t possibly know.

If heady explorations of quantum theory threaten to bend your Sunday bonnet, not to worry: This show also delivers rollicking rock, touching ballads, girlish flouncing, sisterly solidarity, and a litany of innocent laughs. The acting and singing are brilliant, and the live band expertly and tastefully keeps pace. The minimal staging also provides a nice fluidity and intimacy, although a couple more lighting effects would be welcome (most notably, lightning to accompany thunderclaps during a storm scene).

One final thought: even though teen and tween girls were well-represented onstage, there were very few members of the Glee generation in the audience, and that seemed a shame. Just saying: If you have a yen to take a young female friend to a musical, Gracie And The Atom is bound to generate a positive reaction.

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Tags: Theater

The Gray Sisters

Do not sleep through this elegiac tour de force.

Posted by: Alexis Rehrmann on May 14, 2010 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Gretchen Corbett in The Gray Sisters now onstage at Third Rail Rep.

The lights went down at the World Trade Center Theater last night. In the half light onstage, four formidable actresses took their places onstage. The lights came up center stage and we are introduced to Sarah, a feisty, Indigo Girls worshiping, a college aged woman in mid-conversation with her dad.

And right then, 90 seconds into the elegantly paced 90 minute performance, the man behind me started to snore. There are two points to make about this, first, he was clearly in some sort of ailing health, and OLD, and didn’t mean to be rude.

Second, it seems a particular shame, because The Gray Sisters, a current production from Third Rail Repertory, is not something that you want to sleep through. The greatest strength of the play is a collective tour de force from these four Portland actresses.

Written by Craig Wright, The Gray Sisters was created specifically for Third Rail—the company has had a fruitful, Drammy-filled relationship with the playwright’s work, starting with their debut production of his play Recent Tragic Events—and this play was made in a collaborative process between the actresses and the playwright. The process pays off. Stephanie Gaslin, Maureen Porter, Valerie Stevens, and Gretchen Corbett, deliver—across the boards—the most centered, emotive, absolutely connected, and fully committed acting that I have seen onstage in Portland. It’s a treat to watch bare-boned craft, under good lighting, in the good company of an attentive audience (except the sleeping guy, but again, not his fault).

The Gray Sisters tells the story of four sisters who are bound together by family history and a shared wound which roots in the center of their lives even as they push outward far into adulthood. Play is written as four interlocking monologues that span maybe ten years of time. As each woman’s story is layered onto her sisters’, time and its changes become clear.

The monologues are written as one side of a conversation. So while the sisters are central to our experience of the Gray family, the women that we get to know are often fighting for their right to be heard with the specters of husbands, fathers, children, and mothers who are unseen, but close at hand.

There is a stateliness to the narrative and the set, a minimalist grouping of benches and large black panels, brings a somber, elegiac feeling to the sisters’ tales.

This effect must be intentional, and there are many echoes to greek tragedy. The fates hover above the play, starting with its title, The Gray sisters are characters from a Greek myth, three beautiful women who share an eye and a tooth between them. These four modern sisters are similarly tied together for survival and well being. And as a group, they operate as a Greek chorus, standing backlit and silent as witnesses to the others.

Again echoing the Greeks, most of the dramatic action happens offstage and is narrated in monologue–in Greek tragedy, the out-of-breathe messenger delivers the news that Oedipus has just blinded himself offstage–and a similar structure operates here, as family deaths, weddings, and divorces are announced. This creates an unexpected emotional distance for the audience and is surprising, given the emotional, explosive nature of the story, and the unflagging strength of the performances.

But The Gray Sisters is kept firmly planted by the brave performances of its four lead actresses, and the localism of the story, which is set in Portland and hand-crafted for us by Craig Wright and Third Rail Rep.

The Gray Sisters is onstage through May 23rd. Get there before its gone.

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Tags: Theater

On Stages: An Uplifting Melancholy, A Sorted Adventure

Melancholy Play at Portland Actor’s Conservatory and Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure at PCS

Posted by: Alexis Rehrmann on Apr 29, 2010 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure is now playing in the studio at PCS. Photo by: Owen Carey

Got a little free time this week while you’re waiting for the overly aggressive April squalls to clear?

Melancholy Play, in its final weekend onstage at Portland Actors Conservatory, is worth a peak between storm clouds.

The six-member ensemble, all talented and fun to watch, is made up primarily of students from Portland Actors Conservatory’s two year professional training program.

Breathing! Exploring! Feeling! Ah, life in art school is all-consuming and so magical, so dramatical!

It’s fun to watch these young artists making their way onstage. Their collaborative closeness and group cohesion (a state that blooms in the art school hot house), is used to neat effect in Sarah Ruhl’s witty Melancholy Play. Described as a contemporary farce, Melancholy Play it follows the trails and tribulations of Tilly, a bank teller who cries beautifully.

Played by the entirely beguiling Stacy Downs, Tilly is a waif-y beauty, whose melancholic disposition seems to be incurable, and pretty much irresistible, to all she meets, her psychiatrist, tailor, and hairdresser included.

On a stage hung with white window frames against a vibrantly lit backdrop that changes its color to match the mood, Melancholy Play is underscored by a (mostly melancholy) cello, with music composed and performed by Liz Byrd. But it really is, really funny, really often.

Lorenzo, the Unfeeling is Tilly’s psychiatrist. Played with panache by Jesse Klein, his happiness (and hair) is made increasingly wretched by his longing for Tilly. Frank, the handsome tailor, is Tilly’s true leading man and he is played with gentle good-humor by Robby Ciardi Lundberg. Frances, a reflective, hippie-ish hairdresser, and her partner Joan, a rather severe British nurse, have a love that oscillates between slapstick physicality, jealous rivalry, steamy seduction, and affection. The two actors, Katharine Barnes and Fernanda Stier respectively, find the humor and the absurd without ever loosing their emotional connection.

It is the great accomplishment of Ruhl’s play that its characters careen from tragically sad to overjoyed, for reasons that they can grasp at only glancingly. (Also, people turn suddenly into almonds, just a heads up). But life is like that, sometimes the mutability of emotions sending us tumbling down one rabbit hole or another. It is up to us, exhorts Tilly to go and get our friends if they get stuck out there in melancholy. This all-for-one-and-one-for-all joie de vivre is really satisfying delivered by a gaggle of actors who, I imagine, have been living that way for two years.

I hate to look forward towards the bittersweet moment of graduation, when all that beautiful training hits the slings, arrows, and skids of the wider world.

Here is where Mike Schlitt picks up. He is the writer and performer of Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure, which opened last week in the studio theater at Portland Center Stage.

At the start of his tale, Mike is 38. His theater school glory days at UCLA are gone. He has a day job, a wife, he wants a child, and he is paralyzed by his longing to Make Great Art.

When he is offered the opportunity to direct a schlocky Neil Simon musical for tour in India, Mike jumps at the chance. The one man show, told with a generous dose of self-aware snark, and the liberal use of video footage from his trip, tells the story of Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure, the ill-conceived tour, and the ill-conceived documentary plans to film around it.

The gig starts with a job offer from a shady producer (on video he is a hilarious character: a study in slick, tanned, buffoonery). The tour is financed by a mysterious Indian prince named Vikram (a compelling hotshot who is revealed late, and too briefly, but worth the wait).

The whole endeavor smacks of snake oil salesmen. Mike knows it, but he takes the gig anyway, and fools himself into thinking he can make it different. It’s a cynic’s move. I laughed, pretty often, in recognition of the pie-eyed self-involvement of art-making. And Schlitt is an engaging intellect and storyteller, but Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure never quite overcomes that first world weary bargain and his Indian adventure remains more his then ours.

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