Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold - Page 21

For its fall offering, the New England Regional Theatre Company mounted an ambitious and stirring production of Man of La Mancha at the Orion Performing Arts Center in Topsham, Maine. The sixteen-person cast and twelve-musician ensemble invested this touching revival with passion and intelligence. Directed by John Willey, the 1965 Dale Wasserman-Mitch Leigh-Joe Darrion musical based on Miguel de Cervantes' epic novel, Don Quixote still burns with intensity, idealism, and a much-needed antidote in a chaotic modern world - the courage and hope to 'fight for the right' and follow the quest. Willey strikes the right balance between comedy and drama, and he handles the musical's framing device - that of Cervantes recounting his tale in a prison of the Inquisition - with visual and theatrical aplomb. He keeps the entire cast on stage for the duration and uses the exceptionally wide Orion space inventively, so that the action flows naturally and his musical staging is completely organic. Moreover, he elicits from his actors a fervent luminosity that proves inspiring.

Portland's Good Theater has mounted the Maine premiere of Jeffrey Thatcher's wacky, wickedly funny comedy, Mrs. Mannerly, a two-character spoof of the obsession with politeness, manners, and surface polish which often disguises truths. Set in the 1960s in Steubenville, OH, Hatcher tells the tale of a character (bearing his own name) who takes on the challenge of trying to achieve a perfect score in the etiquette class of the fearsome Mrs. Mannerly, long a town institution. Jeffrey's quest leads him to crack the facade of Mrs. Mannerly's presentation and past, and in so doing to discover that inner and outer reality frequently have little in common.

Lewiston's Public Theatre opened its 2014-2015 season with the excellent choice of A.R. Gurney's comedy of manners, The Cocktail Hour. Assembling a fine, experienced cast and creating a tasteful production, this performance reminds us of what an American treasure Gurney is as a playwright.

South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company opened its 2024-2015 season with a riveting revival of Arthur Miller's 1955 tragedy, A View from the Bridge, which in the hands of this talented ensemble proves as relevant and wrenching as it was almost sixty years ago. Miller's family drama about an Italian-American longshoreman struggling to make not only a living in the shadowy world of the Brooklyn waterfront, but also to make some sense of his life, which has been turned upside down by the arrival of his wife's cousins. As in all of Miller's plays, Eddie Carbone's tragedy is both an intimate, personal one and one with the monumental repercussions of a Greek drama,. Thus, brilliantly and idiomatically captured as it is by this brave little theatre company, situated on the rocky seaport coast of Maine some four hundred miles north of Brooklyn's docks. the fall of this 'little man' still resonates with mighty pathos and universal meaning.

Portland's Good Theater opened its thirteenth season with a radiant revival of N. Richard Nash's 1954 play, The Rainmaker. The production, perfectly cast, sensitively directed and acted, and capped by an attractive physical production, speaks volumes about the virtues of this little company. Nash's play, set in a western ranching town crippled by drought, is a bitter sweet tale of a young woman imprisoned in her self-image of plainness and of the charismatic con man who brings not only rain, but also the healing power of dreams.

Portland Players takes an adventurous step in opening its season with a grand production of the beloved Boubil-Schonberg classic, LES MISERABLES. Assembling a large cast and mounting an impressive staging, this eighty-six year-old company delivers a performance of passion and heart, if not perfection. And yet the flaws which emerge - sometimes the result of direction or casting, but mostly by-products of the limitations of the theatre space - cannot dim the impact of the performance.

Portland Stage opened its 2014-2015 season with a probing and poignant production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first of Simon's so-called 'Eugene Trilogy.' The 1983 autobiographical reminiscence tells the story of a Jewish boy growing up in a colorful, often dysfunctional extended family in Brooklyn during the Depression. That Simon's play retains so much of its original impact is a tribute to his gifts as a playwright, especially his ability to mingle humor and pain in the crucible of memory. Portland Stage has mounted an attractive, atmospheric production which owes no small measure of its appeal to Brittany Vasta's sprawling, multi-tiered set, comprised of small eclectically cluttered cubbies evoking the straitened family circumstances. Director Samuel Buggeln makes imaginative use of the space as he draws taut, expressive performances from each of the seven actors, who are all virtually note perfect in capturing the Brooklyn accents.

South Portland's Lyric Music Theater opened its 2014-2015 season with a stylish, saucy production of the 2003 Tony award-winning musical Avenue Q. The Lopez-Marx-Whitty show is an unconventional, politically incorrect parody - a parable which chronicles the coming of age of eleven Sesame Street generation young adults on Brooklyn's Avenue Q.

As has been the tradition for quite a few seasons, Theater at Monmouth ends its season with a production of one of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operettas. This year's choice, The Sorcerer, is a frothy, pleasant entertainment enhanced by the strong vocal merits of much of the cast. The pristine neo- baroque gem of a theatre in Cumston Hall is the perfect venue for singing. The acoustic - unmiked - is crisp, clear, focused, and allows for the ringing delivery and coloratura fun of Sullivan's music.

In the last of its 'Peek Behind the Curtain' series, Maine State Music Theatre presented a lively talkback which highlighted the company's final production of Footloose, as well as touching on the intern program, a review of the 2014 season and a preview of the coming 2015 lineup. Broadway World local editor Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold interviewed Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, Audience Services Manager Susie Sharp, Resident Sound Designer Colin Whitely, Footloose principal David Ruprecht, and MSMT 'Angels' Judie Lemons and Bill Heaphy.

The new production of Cabaret mounted by South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre together with Razer Entertainment, sizzles with tension and sears with emotion. The dark,edgy Kander-Ebb musical presented in this intimate space allows the audience identification in a manner so powerful as to make one feel he is seeing the work for the first time. Following on the heels of the hugely successful Grey Gardens, director-choreographer Raymond Marc (Ray) Dumont and the Mad Horse company have ventured for the second time this summer into musical theatre, and the results are stunning! Not only is it refreshing to hear a musical unmiked, but the fifty-seat black box allows for an experience that is up close, personal, and unsparingly gripping.

Early in the first act of the Tom Snow - Dean Pitchford 1998 musical Footloose, Ren declares his passion for dancing - 'I can't sit still' - and, indeed, by the end of the evening at the Pickard Theatre, the audience for Maine State Music Theatre echoes his mantra. They are cheering, swaying, and shouting to the music, and embracing the exuberant, touching message of this show. Directed and choreographed brilliantly by Patti Colombo (assisted by Karl Warden) and performed by a dynamic cast, this fourth and final production of MSMT's 2014 season dazzles and delights.

'So here I am, a preacher's son, playing the preacher!' smiles David Ruprecht. The renowned star of television, film, and stage muses about his latest gig playing the Reverend Shaw Moore in Maine State Music Theatre's production of Footloose, which runs from August 6-23. Ruprecht's affinities for the part and this production are numerous. It is, first of all, directed and choreographed by his wife, Patti Colombo, an experience he says he finds 'very interesting because I never have worked with her as a director before, only once long ago as a choreographer.' Then there is the role of the charismatic and troubled Texas preacher who forbids dancing to the townsfolk of Bomont. 'My dad was a preacher [a Lutheran minister] in Florida, where I grew up, and he was very, very charismatic. Naturally, he wanted his son to become a preacher, too. I had all the talents, but not the calling, so I did the next best thing and became an actor. After all, both actors and preachers put on costumes and speak to large groups or people, and both have a little wine after the show,' he jokes mischievously.

Doing justice to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, one of the most beloved and most often quoted plays in the repertoire, can be a daunting task, but the Theater at Monmouth has assembled a youthful cast and given the Bard's tragedy an honest reading - one which compensates for what it may lack in passion and abandon with sincerity and moments of striking originality.

'Dance is a metaphor for expression, for freedom. In Footloose we use dance to express ourselves when we have no words. [As characters] we are all closed off, and finally at the end of the story, we are loosened; we become individuals again.' Speaking is Kristen Martin, who plays Ariel in Maine State Music Theatre's final season production of Footloose, which runs from August 6-23. Her co-star, Eric Sciotto, agrees that his character, Ren, is 'on a journey to find himself after being abandoned by his father. Ren sees in Ariel a troubled soul who reminds him of himself. They recognize immediately that they are kindred spirits.'

The intern program at Maine State Music Theatre is one of the company's finest features, and what better way to showcase these talented 2014 performers than as the youthful, energetic ensemble in the Steven Schwartz/John-Michael Tebelak rock musical, GODSPELL. Billed as a concert performance, this production directed by Curt Dale Clark, is actually fairly elaborate in terms of choreography and musical-dramatic staging. Clark sets a compelling pace - ninety minutes of sheer joie de vivre - and he draws from these young actors highly individualized and detailed characterizations, at the same time that he inspires the kind of ensemble dynamic so crucial to this show: the sense of love and sharing that resonates with the play's message and communicates to the audience.

'It's the heart that makes it fun! The adrenalin gets going; we are all so engrossed in each other with different stories developing every night. There are always discoveries being made. This show is an adventure every single night!' The speaker is actor-dancer Carson Twitchell, who is talking about Maine State Music Theatre's latest hit, the Patti Colombo staging of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which opened July 17th at the Pickard Theatre in Brunswick, Maine. Twitchell is part of a six-person panel assembled at the Curtis Memorial Library on July 23 for the third Peek Behind the Curtain talkback. Joined by Barbara Whidden, MSMT's Director of Development, Kristen Thomas, House Manager, Leo Stagg, Technical Director, and fellow actors (Ruth) and Merill West (Dorcas), the panelists spoke with BWW's Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold about the thrill of this exuberant musical.

'I definitely have a choreographic style - much of what I do is ballet-based and athletic, but I was trained in the Jack Cole manner. My mentors, Ron Lewis, Ron Fields, were all Jack Cole people. I have a strong sense of jazz, true American jazz based in ballet.' The speaker is a petite, svelte, red-haired dynamo of energy and bubbly enthusiasm. Seated opposite me a few days before the opening of her latest theatrical endeavor, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Maine State Music Theatre, director-choreographer Patti Colombo talks about her Maine debut and her other award-winning theatrical projects - among them, On the Town, West Side Story, Mask, L'il Abner, Peter Pan, Seussical, which have taken her to Broadway and around the world.

For its third production of the season, Maine State Music Theatre has staged a dazzling revival of the beloved 1954 classic, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The company, under the direction of Patti Colombo, delivers a joyous, heartwarming, foot stomping, breathtaking extravaganza of brilliant dancing, convincing characterization, and first-rate production values.

'What I love that Patti [Colombo] is doing with this show is that she is not making it a sepia-toned romance,' declares Jarid Faubel, the actor who portrays Adam Pontipee in Maine State Music Theatre's new production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, directed and choreographed by Patti Colombo, which opens its three-week run July 17th. His co-star, Heidi Kettenring, concurs: 'Millie is one of the most challenging musical roles I have done of late. I am basing her character on a line early in the play where she says that she buried her parents on the Oregon Trail and finished the trek herself. She is feminine, but strong enough to have made that journey alone.'