Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold - Page 6

Portland Stage's revival of John Cariani's ALMOST, MAINE, a play which premiered with the company in 2004, represents some of the very best work this theatre can produce. The exquisitely poetic series of vignettes about love and loss framed within the uniqueness of the Maine context, offers an evening of virtually pure perfection and unlimited delight.

In the Good Theater's delightful winter comedy, the play is the thing to rescue the moribund town of Popcorn Falls from the clutches of a greedy, self-serving villain who would turn its main street into a sewage plant. The citizens, led by their mayor, hatch the improbable solution of creating a theatre company and a play to win grant money needed to revitalize the town. James Hindman's multi-character drama, played by two actors, seizes on this premise and imbues the situation with breathless comedic wit and zany antics, punctuated by moments of touching poignancy.

In remounting playwright Joe Landry's live radio play version of the beloved classic IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, Portland Stage serves up a family friendly show filled with all the sweetness and nostalgia that make the holidays memorable. The production, directed and designed by Anita Stewart, tells the tale of George Bailey with warmth and humor, underscoring effectively the messages of kindness, gratitude, and integrity without ever becoming saccharine.

Each year Portland's Good Theater presents a holiday musical revue, written and directed by Brian P. Allen, and dedicated to celebrating a decade in American musical theatre history. Allen's show this year is devoted to the 1940s when so many of the geniuses of the a?oelegitimatea?? musical theatre style reigned supreme. The revue he has created is ambitious and comprehensive featuring twenty-five performers, including several Broadway actors, and covering the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill, and the Gershwins, together with many lesser-known writers. Performed with the intimacy and informality of a cabaret setting, Broadway at the Good Theater offers a nostalgic and delightful musical evening.

As evidenced by the breadth of nominations for Broadway World's Annual Audience Choice Awards, Maine's theatrical landscape seems to grow and flourish with each new season. For a state as remote as we are, we boast two prestigious regional theatres now in their second half centuries a?" Maine State Music Theatre and Ogunquit Playhouse a?" which are leaders on the national regional scene and which have become destinations for travellers from far flung places. Add to these an array of countless other companies of every size and philosophic bent, and you have a colorful, rich artistic arena that grows more interesting each year. I am privileged to get to sample these performances as Broadway World's Maine editor and to be able to compare many of them favorably with shows I see across the country, in New York and London. These are my personal choices of the best in Maine for 2019, grouped by theatre company and show.

Portland Stage presented the world premiere of a work they brought though their prestigious Clauder New Work Competition, READ TO ME. The play, selected among 170 scripts, is written by Brendon Pelsue and directed by his brother Rory - both Yale Drama School Graduates. The result9ng work is ambitious and fully in keeping with Portland Stage a?oemagical realism a?oe them for the season. The subject of READ TRO ME is potentially well chosen a?' filled with deeply searing drama- a child dying in a children's hospital with adults trying to make sense 0f this absurdity. The subject matter is dense with possibility, which, regrettably in tis production is never fully realized.

The Good Theater's production of Jule Selbo's BOXES offers a taut psychological study of manipulation and longing, misconceptions about self and love, all carefully crafted into a thriller with rapid twists and turns that compels the audience's attention for its brisk ninety-minutes. The boxes of the title are literal props used in a clinical psychological research study, but they are really metaphors for the constraints that shape our views of selfhood and for the inscrutable containers of dark secrets.

The Good Theater opens its season with Joshua Harmon's powerful and persuasive drama about class and race, aspiration in America, and the complexities of navigating a world where nothing is black and white, no matter how much one wishes it so. ADMISSIONS is a stunningly astute choice for 2019, though it was written long before recent headlines and made its Lincoln Center debut in 2018. As Executive/Artistic Director Brian P. Allen expands the Good's season to five main stage plays and four second stage shows, this Maine premiere of Harmon's play represents Allen's keen sense of the moment and what is excellent drama.

The cast of characters in Sarah Ruhl's THE CLEAN HOUSE, which opens the 2019-2020 Portland Stage season, leads anything but tidy lives. The 2004 play, which received its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre, is a metaphorically absurdist exploration of neuroses, obsessions, and the quest for laughter and love. The drama which employs a kind of a?oemagical realisma?? brings together five quirky characters who only find their humanity as their neat little lives unravel and they allow chaos, passion, empathy, laughter, and tears to fill their souls.

a?oeA very, very merry, merry, happy, happy endinga??.a?? sings the colorful cast of human beings and sea creatures as they celebrate the wedding of Prince Alexander and Melody in Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark's musical version of THE LITTLE MERMAID. And, indeed, this final 2019 Maine State Music Theatre production in the Pickard Theater proves to be just that! The third Theatre for Young Audiences show which closes another season of spectacular theatre for the Brunswick-based theatre is one of the most ambitious, completely realized productions created by MSMT's intern company.

a?oeFor nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart; and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashiona??..a?? These words from L. Frank Baum dance across the screen during the overture of MSMT's stunning new production of THE WIZARD OF OZ, reminding the audience of the perennial appeal of this beloved story. And as the curtain goes up, the audience is treated to arguably the largest, most lavish production in MSMT history with a cast of fifty (that includes twenty children and a dog), dazzling technical elements, staging and choreography to blow one away, and performances to melt the heart. a?oea??When I saw Marc Robin's production at the Fulton in 2016, I said, a?oeWe have to do this at MSMT. THE WIZARD OF OZ had not been on this stage since 1961, and it was time to give it a new life,a?? says Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark. Clark is one of the large panel, which also includes Marc Robin, Travis M. Grant, Carolyn Anne Miller, Susan Cella, Ian Knauer, and David Girolmo, who have come together in conversation with BWW's Maine Editor Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold in MSMT and BWW's final season collaboration of PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN at the Curtis Memorial Library on August 14th.

For the next month Portland Stage will be transformed into the Fats Waller Harlem Club where five performers and four musicians rock the stage each night recreating the sounds and sensations of the Harlem Renaissance era in music. The spectacular, soul-gripping show is AIN'T MISBEHAVIN', the musical dedicated to the work of the legendary Fats Waller, presented in a powerful co-production by Maine State Music Theatre and Portland Stage at the Portland venue. Directed by E. Faye Butler and choreographed by Kenny Ingram, this fourth collaboration between these two leading Maine theatres is an entertaining, moving, and enlightening theatrical experience.

To stage the beloved cultural icon that is THE WIZARD OF OZ offers any theatre company a herculean challenge: one which requires stretching the imagination to the limits to create a universe where reality is redefined and fantasy is fulfilled. In short, it demands stunning stagecraft and brilliant artistic vision. And it is just that kind of theatrical magic which Maine State Music Theatre's new production co- directed by Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark boldly and beautifully realizes.

a?oeIn the musical they all learn that the thing they believe is missing is already inside of them. We all have within us everything we think we are deficient in a?" everything we need to become the person we are supposed to be.a?? Actor David Girolmo is speaking of the lesson his character, the Cowardly Lion, learns in the stage version of L. Frank Baum's iconic classic THE WIZARD OF OZ, which runs from August 7-24 in a spectacularly fantastical production co-directed by narc Robin and Curt Dale Clark at Maine State Music Theatre.

Maine's Theater at Monmouth appropriately celebrates its 50th season by mounting a spare, strong, intense, and updated production of the play often thought of as the pinnacle of Shakespeare's achievement: HAMLET. Set in 1958 in Chicago and loosely inspired by MAD MEN and the African-American publishing giant John H. Johnson, this attractive, elegant, and intimate take on this quintessential domestic drama scores many poignant an powerful moments.

When actress Carolyn Anne Miller utters that iconic line on the Pickard Stage next week a?" a?oeToto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,a?? it will have an added resonance for the Midwestern native, who makes her Maine State Music debut in THE WIZARD OF OZ. The Chicago born and educated Miller cut her professional teeth at, among other theatres, Music Theatre Wichita, before moving to New York City and on to star as Dorothy in MSMT's fantastical new production of the stage version of that perennial classic based on L. Frank Baum's stories, directed and choreographed by Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark.

a?oeSuperstara?? is the title of the final number in Maine State Music Theatre's third concert staging, THE MUSIC OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER, but the designation seems to apply just as easily to the aspirations and abilities of the young artists who brought this sensational evening of theatre to life. Each season MSMT, as part of its Educational Fellowship Program, presents a fully staged concert performance created completely by these young professionals in training, and, each year in recent memory, the offerings have grown more complex, the talent more dazzling. Last night's performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's music bears witness to that phenomenon, offering an evening of inspired staging, strong solo and ensemble performances, and spectacular vocalism and dancing.

a?oeHELLO, DOLLY! is the classic American musical,a?? affirms its star Charis Leos. And her colleagues and cast mates on the panel, Lauren Blackman, Matt Gibson, and Jason E. Simon, enthusiastically concur. Not only does it have a perfect score, a heartwarming book, colorful characters, and a healthy dose of irresistible comedy, but it is also infused with some messages of lasting significance. It is these takeaway meanings that these cast members are eager to discuss with BWW's Maine editor Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold at MSMT's PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN on July 24 at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick.

Just as Dolly Gallagher Levi makes a stunning entrance to the unforgettable strains of her signature song, so MSMT's new production of the Jerry Herman classic HELLO, DOLLY! takes command of the Pickard stage with a joie de vivre and heartwarming tenderness and delivers an evening sparkling with laughter, love, and life. In a production directed by Donna Drake, choreographed by Rhonda Miller and performed by an ensemble of true stars, HELLO, DOLLY! offers the audience a magnificently memorable score, daring and dazzling dancing, and a cast of embraceable characters whose story unfailingly tugs at the heartstrings.

"There's a quote from Thornton Wilder that I love. He writes, 'Anyone can make a comedy which is cruel; it is very hard to make a comedy which is kind. To give a fellow feeling between young and old - that's art. HELLO, DOLLY! is one of those old gems. It has some of the best of the best material in all of musical theatre." Actor Matt Gibson is enthusing about his upcoming performances as Cornelius Hackl in Maine State Music Theatre's HELLO, DOLLY!, which runs from July 17 - August 3 at the Pickard Theater in Brunswick. "He might be my favorite character in the traditional canon," Gibson says of the innocent young man from Yonkers. Gibson has played the part twice before at the Virginia Music Theatre and Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatres, and he is thrilled to revisit the role in Maine, where he is just finishing a run of TREASURE ISLAND, playing the ill-fated sailor, Mr. O'Brien.