Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold - Page 18

Attempting a production of the complex and heart-wrenching Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Next To Normal, in a small theatre in Maine is in itself a bold bit of programming, but to pull it off with such dazzling aplomb is absolutely extraordinary! This is precisely what Biddeford City Theater's Artistic Director, Linda Sturdivant and her excellent ensemble has achieved in a compelling, moving account of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's 2009 Tony award-winning masterpiece. The deceptively 'small' rock opera - only six characters and five musicians - was blessed on Broadway with an incomparable original cast, who seared the songs and story into theatre memory. Stepping into those iconic shoes requires the kind of talent in evidence on the City Theater's stage this March.

Portland Stage's latest production of Tammy Ryan's 2009 play, Lost Boy in Whole Foods, offers a thought-provoking encounter with several extremely topical issues, among them the impact of immigration, the obligation to refugees, the clash of cultures, and the meaning and motives for good deeds. Mounted with the company's customary excellent production values and cast from strength, Ryan's play delivers a number of stirring theatrical moments.

From August 16 - September 4 this summer, two of greater Portland's leading theatre companies will combine forces in an exciting and news-making endeavor that is sure to enrich Maine's arts landscape. Both prestigious Equity companies, Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage Company, have announced a co-production of Frank McCourt's runaway hit, The Irish and How They Got That Way, at Portland Stage in the weeks following MSMT's regular summer season in Brunswick and before the opening of Portland Stage's 2016-2017 season in late September. The 1997 play with music chronicles the emotional and spiritual journey of the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic and features melodies, originally arranged by Rusty Magee, that range from traditional Celtic folk tunes to Thomas Moore ballads, George M. Cohen favorites, and the more contemporary sounds of U-2.

The tiny Footlights Theatre in Falmouth, ME, has a hit on its hands with the endearing new comedy, Leonora Rabinowitz, I Love You, by local writers Hal J. Cohen and Amanda Painter, a sweet, funny, and often moving play about a widow and her daughter's exploration of their troubled sexual experiences, the journey this therapy takes them on, and the heartwarming outcomes of their respective searches.

Portland Stage's gleeful, wickedly funny send-up of the Sherlock Holmes classic, Hound of the Baskervilles, as adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, makes for a perfect antidote to the winter blues! Mounted with breathless energy by director Daniel Burson and brought to life by an agile, inventive, endearing trio of actors, this irreverent take on one of the best loved tales of the Holmes canon will keep you chuckling long after the curtain falls.

Brunswick's Theater Project has mounted a sparkling production of David Ives' version of Pierre Corneille's The Liar, offering the audience a rare treat to be able to enjoy this seventeenth century comedy in Ives' witty, linguistically rich "translaptation." Not only is the choice of such a sophisticated play to be applauded, but the professional company does the work proud!

Another chapter in the thirty-seven year history of Paul Portner's interactive comedy, Shear Madness, has opened on the stage of Portland's Good Theater, and the side-splittingly funny, quick-paced murder mystery which Brian P. Allen and his excellent cast serve up is not to be missed!

Golf is a game which requires patience and strategy, and in many ways, so does Norm Foster's 2014 comedy, The Ladies Foursome, mounted by Lewiston's Public Theatre. Directed by Judith Ivey and cast with a fine ensemble the four-character play about the secrets and sharing of a quartet of friends yields rewards for those who wait.

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd with its complex through-composed score and dark ironies is an ambitious undertaking for any company, but South Portland's Lyric Music Theater rises to the challenge in an economical and electrifying performance that keeps the audience riveted to its seats.

Rose Horowitz's artistic and educational journey has taken her from lobsters to masked ball gowns to Maine State Music Theatre – a decidedly unique and adventurous path for a high school senior! Horowitz, ranked number one in her class at Topsham's Mt. Ararat High School, is currently working on her Capstone senior project in the Costumes Rental Division of the theatre company, under the mentorship of Rentals Manager Amy Mussman and Rentals Coordinator Travis Grant.

The annual Christmastime musical revue which the Good Theater presents has grown incrementally bigger, more complex, more sparkling, and more striking each season. This year's two-hour songfest, written and directed by Brian P. Allen, is dedicated to the musicals of the 1930s and with some dozen performers and an excellent musical combo, the evening proves a delightful tribute to the great American songwriters and a cheerful way to ring in the holidays.

The theatrical scene continued to be lively in Maine this year, with the Portland-area theatres presenting a number of stunning world premieres and the musical theatre scene gloriously vibrant. These are my personal choices of the best in Maine, grouped by theatre company and show: Because their repertoires are so vastly different, and because both companies produced outstanding seasons, my vote for highest honors goes to both Maine State Music Theatre and the Good Theater.

South Portland's venerable community theatre consistently presents ambitious and stylish productions of the standard Broadway canon, but in undertaking that most iconic of American musicals, The Music Man, it has demonstrated its extraordinary mettle and risen to the challenge with excellence. Mounting any production of Meredith Willson's beloved tale must inevitably confront legendary performances and productions of the past and, if it is to succeed, must find its own way into the piece, while still paying tribute to the musical and emotional values of a bygone era. Moreover, the company must command considerable creative resources to achieve the impact of this grand show. Director Charles Marenghi brings the classic story to life with warmth, heart, and hometown charm.

Revisiting the traumas of the 1960s has been the subject of two recent plays which have debuted in Portland. After Rob Urbinati's monumental Mama's Boy at the Good, Portland stage is now presenting Katori Hall's poetic play about Martin Luther King, To the Mountaintop.

On a crisp October day a long line of eager people snakes around the block. For more than an hour now, a few excited customers have set up camp chairs to facilitate their wait. Shoppers at Hannaford across the street register curious stares. This is, after all, just a regular Saturday morning in the small town of Brunswick, Maine. So what has brought this clamoring crowd? It is Maine State Music Theatre's annual costume sale, a time when the company weeds out thousands of garments and accessories from its rental stock and sells them at minimal cost to the public. The event, which has grown steadily in the past four years since Costumes Rentals Manager, Amy Mussman first conceived the idea, seems to reflect the community presence, the popularity of the theatre's costume rentals business, and its possibilities for continued growth. 'The sale solves the practical needs of conserving space,' says Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, 'and what we gain in community good will is immeasurable.' Managing Director Stephanie Dupal concurs: 'There is such excitement about the event, and it is a great way to connect.'

In mounting the world premiere of Rob Urbinati's new play, Mama's Boy, Good Theater's Artistic Director Brian P. Allen has given Maine a great gift - one of the company's finest productions - some two hours of searing psychological drama, tautly directed and brought to life by a stellar cast. Urbinati's (Death by Design, Hazelwood) two-act play explores the complex, emotionally wrought family dynamics of Lee Harvey Oswald, his mother Marguerite, his wife Marina, and his brother Robert in the time just prior to and just after the Kennedy assassination. Though the play is rooted in history and evokes indelible memories in the communal consciousness, it is less about the tragic events of 1963 and more about the personal relationships of four damaged individuals desperately seeking some connection and meaning. At the epicenter of this dysfunctional family is Marguerite Oswald, thrice married single parent to three estranged sons, a fierce and tender woman who is sees herself as victim and survivor, a woman whose own emotional demands continue to cripple her children. Returning from his defection to Russia, Lee Harvey brings with him his bewildered young wife Marina and their first child, and Urbinati examines Lee Harvey's troubled year before November 22, 1963 as he struggles to support himself and his family, find an ideology, and take hold of his manhood by freeing himself from his mother. The playwright effectively probes Lee Harvey Oswald's increasing instability, as well as his conflicts with Marina and Marguerite. Though the play offers no answers to the many riddles of the JFK assassination, it does challenge the audience to view the characters as human beings and to realize that the dreadful events at Dealey Plaza claimed the Oswald family among its victims, as well as the beloved President, his family, and a grieving nation.

Some images are seared into the communal consciousness forever. The tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy and its tumultuous aftermath are just such indelibly tragic events which haunt memory. Playwright Rob Urbinati, whose new work Mama's Boy will receive its world premiere at Portland's Good Theater on October 29, 2015, was six years old in November 1963 and recalls seeing Lee Harvey Oswald murdered on television. It was an image which would resurface in his writing decades later. Urbinati's new play focuses on Marguerite Oswald, her two sons Lee Harvey and Robert, and Lee's wife Marina in the year prior to the assassination and in the days after, offering an unusual prism on the events through the eyes of Marguerite. The play, however, is not really an historical drama, but rather a domestic drama in which Urbinati, Actress Betsy Aidem, and Good Artistic Director Brian P. Allen have tried to imagine the family context from which the Oswald phenomenon emerged.

Lewiston's Public Theatre opened its twenty-fifth season with a finely tuned, engrossing production of Frederick Knott's classic thriller, Wait Until Dark. Presented in a well-crafted adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher which moves the action to the film noir world of the 1940s and directed by Janet Mitchko, this six-character drama retains all the spine-tingling creepiness of both the film and original stage versions.

Portland Stage opened its 2015-2016 season with a thought-provoking production of Irish playwright Brian Friel's award-winning drama Dancing at Lughnasa, a wistful memory play about a matriarchal family in County Donegal in 1936. Commonly considered Friel's masterpiece, the drama examines the narrow, restricted lives of the Mundy sisters, constrained by poverty, unfulfilled dreams, and the conventions of Catholicism, as recounted by Michael, the 'love child' of one of the sisters, Christina, who tells the story from the dual perspective of a seven-year-old child and a grown man three decades later.

Portland's Good Theater opened its 2015-2016 season with No Biz Like Show Biz, a stylish tribute to two legends of the Broadway stage, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, created and directed by the company's artistic director, Brian P. Allen. The one-hundred-minute arrangement of songs associated with these legends from the decades of the 1930s-1960s focuses on the work of iconic composers and lyricists such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman, and Stephen Sondheim and is performed by three delightfully talented and distinctive singing-actresses.