Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold - Page 22

Maine State Music Theatre hosted its second talkback in its series, 'A Peek Behind the Curtain,' on July 2, 2014, at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. The six-person panel moderated by BWW's Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, was comprised of Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, Advisory Board and 'Angel' member Lee Gilman, Costume Rental Supervisor Amy Mussman, and actors James Patterson (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain), Kathy Voytko (Fannie Chamberlain), and Sam Weber (Tom Chamberlain) explored the experience of creating the revival of Sarah Knapp and Steven M. Alper's musical, Chamberlain A Civil War Romance. The near-capacity crowd at the Morrell Reading Room was treated to a lively exchange among the panel members and audience, laced with the warmth, camaraderie, and obvious affection for the company and the work.

Assembling a stellar cast and creative team, the Ogunquit Playhouse has mounted a powerful production of the Elton John-Lee Hall 2005 musical, Billy Elliot. Based on the 2000 film, both directed by Stephen Daldry with original choreography by Peter Darling, Billy Elliot movingly tells the story of a Yorkshire working class boy who discovers his unlikely passion and talent for ballet and who must win his coal miner father's acceptance for his chosen vocation. Set against the background of the bitter 1984 mining strike which pitted the workers' life and death struggle against Margaret Thatcher's push to close the mines, Billy's discovery of his artistic gift becomes his ticket not only to self-fulfillment, but also to escape from his family's bleak existence.

Maine State Music Theatre's second production of the season, a revival of the Knapp-Alper 1996 musical Chamberlain A Civil War Romance, proves to be a grand and glorious theatrical experience, an endeavor of epic proportions that delivers spectacle, emotion, and inspiration in equal measure. Spanning more than fifty years in the life of Brunswick's legendary Civil War hero, Maine governor, and Bowdoin college president, Joshua L. Chamberlain, and focusing on his relationship with his passionate, mercurial wife, Fannie Adams, the musical, in this brilliantly executed new production, directed and choreographed by Marc Robin, offers both epic sweep and touching intimacy. Large in musical and dramatic scale, lavish in production values, and cast with a first rate ensemble of singing-actors, Chamberlain dazzles the ear and eye and warms the heart.

I sat there alone on the storied crest, till the sun went down as it did before over the misty hills, and the darkness crept up the slopes, till from all earthly sight I was buried as with those before. But oh, what radiant companionship rose around, what steadfast ranks of power, what bearing of heroic souls. Oh, the glory that beamed through those days and nights. Nobody will ever know it here! - I am sorry most of all for that! The proud young valor that rose above the mortal, and then at last was mortal after all.... When she read these lines written by Civil War hero and Maine Legend Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain more than eighteen years ago, lyricist/ book writer Sarah Knapp became convinced that she and her husband composer Steven M. Alper had to write their 'memory play.' The musical, commissioned by Charles Abbott, then Artistic Director of Maine State Music Theatre, became one of the greatest successes in the company's history, selling out before it even opened - ('it was the only show where they were scalping tickets on the lawn,' Knapp recalls). Now almost two decades later, Chamberlain A Civil War Romance will receive its first new production since that world premiere in 1996, once again at the Maine State Music Theatre in Brunswick, the hometown of Chamberlain and his wife Fannie. Speaking with the composer and writer just days before the opening, they shared their palpable excitement at the prospect of this revival.

'Some see her as an instigator and a handful, and others think she was ahead of her time. She was smart, well-read, appreciated literature and poetry, and was a strong woman - not a good thing for the time!' Actress Kathy Voytko is speaking about the latest role which has brought her from Broadway to Brunswick, Maine, where she will portray Fannie Chamberlain in Maine State Music Theatre's second season production of Sarah Knapp and Steven M. Alper's musical, Chamberlain: A Civil War Romance. Voytko is clearly intrigued by the challenge of portraying this fascinating Civil War character whose life and that of her husband, legendary soldier, governor, and Bowdoin president, Joshua L. Chamberlain, was inextricably bound to this coastal Maine town.

On June 13, 2014, Maine State Music Theatre inaugurated the first of a new series of talkbacks, called 'A Peek Behind the Curtain,' designed to share with its audiences the ingredients which go into putting together a successful theatre season. Broadway World local editor, Carla Maria Verdino-Sullwold, was invited to interview a panel comprised of actors, creative and administrative team members from their current show, The Buddy Holly Story, after which the floor was opened to the audience for questions. The event, held at the Curtis Memorial Library, drew a large and enthusiastic crowd, and the exchange was informative, entertaining, and in many ways, an inspiring tribute to the work the company does and to the theatrical profession these artists hold dear. The panelists were Stephanie Dupal. MSMT Managing Director, Kyle Melton, Props Master, Matthew J. Riordan, who plays Niki Sullivan and Tommy Allsup; Lore Eure who portrays Vi Petty, and Chari Burdick, Secretary of the MSMT Angels, a volunteer support group for the theatre.

'I have crammed so much into the two years since I started in this business. I am sprinting because everyone around me has been doing this for decades and can enjoy their work at a nice peaceful saunter. I am playing catch up.' The tall slim twenty-one-year-old actor-musician smiles humbly. Soft spoken, with a quiet charm and subtle sense of humor, Andy Christopher, the star of Maine State Music Theatre's current production, The Buddy Holly Story, which is garnering rave reviews in its latest production in Brunswick, Maine, is talking about his whirlwind two years as a professional actor and the long, sometimes circuitous, often serendipitous route which has brought him from Texas to New York and onto the national stage.

To witness an entire audience on its feet, joyfully clapping, singing, and dancing into the aisles, one might have imagined rocking at Woodstock rather than in picturesque college town of Brunswick, ME. But, indeed, the exuberance and energy that filled the Pickard Theatre on the Bowdoin campus was a tribute to the triumphant production of The Buddy Holly Story with which Maine State Music Theatre opened its 56th season. The jukebox musical which recounts the last three years in the life of rock legend Charles Hardin 'Buddy' Holly is, in many ways a perfect vehicle to showcase this company's strengths and its new optimistic and visionary artistic direction. Buddy features a largely youthful and hugely talented cast of music theatre singer-actor-musicians, dazzlingly production values, and demonstrates the company's ability to forge an intense connection with its audience.

South Portland's Mad Horse Theatre Company ended its season with a poignant and ambitious production of the Tony-award-winning musical, Grey Gardens. A musical is a bit of a departure for the small theatre company and its tiny black box space, but they acquitted themselves with both substance and aplomb. Premiered in New York in 2006 with music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie, and book by Douglas Wright, the play tells the heartbreaking story of Jacqueline Kennedy's reclusive aunt and cousin, whose eccentric lives descend into disarray and squalor. With a script that is part Long Day's Journey into Night and a score that is part Stephen Sondheim, Grey Gardens is laden with pathos and a bittersweet humor. The lyrics are mordant; the music through composed as an extension of the dialogue, it is a theatre piece which calls for sensitive singing-actors and a director who can plumb its depths. Fortunately, the Mad Horse Theatre has both!

Lewiston's Public Theatre ended its 2013-2014 season with Ron Hutchinson's slapstick sendup about the script writing of Gone with the Wind, Moonlight and Magnolias. Premiered in 2004, the play imagines the tense week in which the legendary producer, David O. Selznick, effectively kidnaps his new writer, newsman Ben Hecht, and director, Victor Fleming, demanding that the trio rewrite and rescue his floundering epic picture. The ensuing antics in this broad and boisterous comedy are wild and frenzied - almost a Three Stooges routine with barely a moment to catch a breath.

Portland Stage closes its 2013-2014 season with a sharp production of Evan Smith's saucy, yet serious comedy, The Savannah Disputation, as play which examines the foibles of faith and the thorny issues of religious dogma. Smith's 2009 play, set in his native Savannah, recounts the story of two aging sisters, Mary and Margaret, whose devout Catholicism is challenged by the visit of a fundamentalist missionary, Melissa. Engaged in a dialogue against their will, the sisters soon find themselves plunged into a full-fledged theological disputation, which prompts them to call for reinforcement from their parish priest. The ensuing heated and hilarious conversation tests the tenacity of each of the character's beliefs.

With the snow finally off the ground, birds returning home, and the beaches beckoning, it is once again summertime in Maine. With the major professional companies ending their seasons in late May, Maine's numerous summer theatres soon go into full swing with an exciting lineup of summer theatre. Here are some of the highlights of the 2014 season:

Portland's Good Theater closed its season with a highly original and poetic premiere of Stephen Underwood's multi-media performance piece, Underwater Guy. Underwood's play uses video, music, lights, scenery, and a single actor/narrator to recount the protagonist's lifelong obsession with diving, underwater exploration and photography. Part documentary, part dramatic monologue with movement, the rapid shifts in the modes of communication prove stimulating, sometimes surprising, but always engaging. For in Underwood's play, water is more than a habitat or a passion; it is a metaphor for his life's journey, and as such, the piece takes on a deeper significance and resonance.

With its new production of Cinderella, the Maine State Ballet, one of only a handful of professional classical dance organizations in the state, proved the saying that 'everything is beautiful at the ballet.' Linda MacArthur Miele's staging of the Prokofiev classic played to sold out houses, comprised in good part by rapt youngsters, awed at the magic of the timeless fairy tale.

Portland Stage's production of Nina Raine's 2010 play,Tribes, offers a thoughtful exploration of the bonds forged by communication. The play, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London and later Off-Broadway, is a scathingly funny, warm look at a dysfunctional family and their interaction with their deaf son, Billy, who has not been raised in a deaf culture, but rather by his hearing parents and his siblings.

Noel Coward's 1930 romantic comedy is a perennial pleasure, but one which requires an impeccable sense of period style and elan. The stylish new production at Portland Players rises to this challenge with an elegant, witty, well-paced rendition of this sendup of warring couples inextricably bound by both attraction and skirmish. Directed by Claudia Hughes, this five-character comedy of manners becomes a stylish romp with physical farce punctuated by Coward's scintillating verbal wit. Hughes imparts a gleeful air of insouciance to the production. Assisted by Paul Drinan in the fight sequences, she blocks her actors with balletic precision and perfect timing, as well as an excellent ear for the inner rhythms of the piece.

The tiny Mad Horse Theater in South Portland, Maine, has proved once again that it is capable of and committed to producing provocative, exciting, even difficult plays and doing just that with consummate style! Its latest endeavor, a gut-wrenching production of Lyle Kessler's 1983 Drama League Award-winning play, Orphans, is the most recent case in point.

In presenting the world premiere of Tom Coash's play, Veils, the winner of the 2012 Clauder Competition for New England playwrights, Portland Stage has introduced audiences to a brave new work which addresses the thorny crosscurrents of cultural identity. The company, as always, has mounted this moving piece about two college students at the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolution in Cairo with bold conviction.

Lyric Music Theater has mounted a dazzling new hit to brighten the waning days of winter. Under the direction of Raymond Marc Dumont, the venerable South Portland community theatre has put together an energetic, sophisticated, and compelling production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods that is, quite simply, one of the season's best efforts on any stage!

In undertaking Bernard Pomerance's 1977 play, The Elephant Man, the Studio Theatre of Bath delivers a remarkably thoughtful performance of the poignant period drama. The play, well known from its London and New York runs and subsequent film and television versions, fares surprisingly well when returned to its roots in a small venue -(the New York premiere was at the York Theatre in St. Peter's Church) - and to a gritty, old-fashioned ambiance. Using the black box Curtis Room of Bath's Chocolate Church Arts Center, the company creates the dingy, often repressive world of late Victorian London, a world caught in the throes of ideological struggle between science and faith, Darwinism and Christian morality. Pomerance raises serious questions about the existence of a Creator, who would permit such overwhelming suffering, and without offering the consolation of an answer, he is still able to have his tragic hero, John Merrick, affirm that 'the mind is the standard of the man.'