Robert Encila-Celdran - Page 5

The script is clever, replete with snide banter befitting a satire of the Bard’s illustrious tragedy. We meet the usual suspects - the upright, the guilty, and the aggrieved - primed to settle a score or two. As they move through various gates and a chaotic mess of random earthly objects, actors are made to piece together a set of uneven stairs, a theatrical metaphor inspired by the work of Polish theater artist Tadeusz Kantor.

Even so, what sets her apart from fellow actors is the catalog of engagements she drums up away from the spotlight. Sam (as locals fondly call her) is a gifted, do-it-all thespian: a scenic designer who thinks like a director, a choreographer who innovates posthaste, and a handywoman with a soft spot for power tools. That's not all. A buoyant charm that conspires with a quicksilver pace makes Samantha Cormier the quintessential youth leader of many a theater camp, a role she relishes during the off-season. I'm not sure there's someone more absorbed in various aspects of the theater year-round.

'I see THE LION very much about what it was like for me to turn thirty, about how I became myself. When I began writing the show, in 2012, I was very much the-son-to-the-father. As of now, in London 2022, my wife and I are expecting our second child, a son. When I performed THE LION one last time (Southwark Playhouse, May 2022), it was the first and only time I've performed the show as a father. During that performance, I understood the character of 'Dad' in a very different way. I also realized that young-writer-me wrote Dad and Cancer as very similar characters; quasi-mythical external forces that controlled Ben and couldn't be reasoned with.'

While vacuous debates are brewing about Critical Race Theory, and noxious mobs are chanting Don't Say Gay, Chris Pena's play reminds us that America is not only a work in progress, but a fragile ship at risk of capsizing. Cries of Replacement Theory are a clear indication of America's Potemkin meritocracy, where political optics have a way to whitewash the squalor within. Beyond the cutural lessons of immigration and the endearing tale of a father and a son, HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN SON unveils a nasty old game, one that is rigged incesantly against the perceived minority in favor of existing power brokers.

The central allure of every iteration is Hornsby's self-absorbed protagonist, Rob Gordon, a 30-something owner of a vinyl record store who suffers from a deficiency of emotional refinement. The first-person narrative gives us a torrent of insights into Rob's pedestrian existence and relationship complications induced by his lack of accountability. Hornsby endows Rob with self-deprecating wit and a listless regard for social norms that we end up liking the guy anyway.

What's brewing at ATC is nothing short of providential. JUSTICE feels profoundly earnest in its development, and even as the piece is rendered concert-style we're left with a fierce sensation that Arizona's regional theater company has struck gold, albeit mining is still in progress. If Broadway is in the cards, don't be surprised and remember where it all started.

There's a lavish public appetite for musicals these days. Chalk it up, perhaps, to a creative vengeance after a stifling pandemic. In any case, it's great news to theater artists with a bent for collaboration. And when a musical takes on the urgency of the moment, the creator's inspiration becomes a genuine point of interest.

The Island of The Proud Circle floats merrily along on the open sea. It’s the microcosm of organic affluence, an idyllic home to settlers who live their simple lives “from the middle to the outside.” Babies are born in the center and grow old to retire on the waterline, where the sea awaits their first and final dive. 

In A MINISTER'S WIFE, the composer's collaboration with Austin Pendleton (book), and Jan Levy Tranen (lyrics) dilutes his influence on CANDIDA's transcription, relegating the audience to a compendiary version that eliminates, among other elements, Candida's businessman father - a staunch capitalist foil to her socialist husband, the Reverend James Morell. Just as well, I suppose, given the daunting task of mixing up politics with a love triangle.

In FOUR WOMEN, history reminds us there's no rest for the weary, and the call for racial justice is a collective effort requiring sustained vigilance. The irony here is not so subtle. Ms. Ham's play thumbs its nose at the growing political hysteria over which segments of American history should be taught in schools. It's a volatile nation that tiptoes between insight and shame as it reexamines its sordid past. Nonetheless, FOUR WOMEN is dauntless in its appeal to uphold historical reality amidst current grievances about a manufactured problem.

ADA AND THE ENGINE is a sprawling narrative that dabbles in the intersection of mathematics and a love triangle - and it does so eloquently while shedding light on the immortal shadow of a father's abandonment. It's a handful, but it's one way to alleviate the esoteric chatter of binary codes and algorithms. Given the playwright's prodigious gift in mixing it up, the upshot is a convoluted brew of scholarly discourse and ill-fated matters of the heart.

With HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, Johnson will remind audiences of his theatrical pedigree and style: edgy, innovative, controversial, and proud. The show is a shrewd piece to punctuate his timely comeback. A rock musical memoir by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask (directed by Shana Nunez), HEDWIG is the primal scream we need to take us out of a global nightmare. Ready or not, the electrifying musical will jolt people out of their Covid-induced stupor, courtesy of the rapturous genderqueer singer of a fictional rock and roll band.

IF ONLY I WERE TALLER is a devised collaboration with director/vocal coach and Broadway performer Ellyn Marsh (Kinky Boots, The Rose Tattoo, Pretty Woman: The Musical). Acclaimed pianist and musical director Drew Wutke leads a distinguished group of New York musicians to anchor Cracchiolo's repertoire.

It sounds simple enough, but not according to Veronika Duerr, whose journey to a viable pregnancy became a life lesson unto itself. In fact, she was so changed by the 'miraculous' experience that it spawned yet another gift: an original, one-woman theatrical performance documenting the challenges and joys of pregnancy.

Director Matt Bowdren helms this steady ship and fashions a piece of theater that strikes an impeccable balance between nuance and grandiloquence. With delicate adherence to Miller's sensibilities, actors never go out of bounds even as they achieve their bombastic heights; conversely, poignant moments are so intimate that one feels almost privy to a character's inner resolve.

It begins as a strained interplay between a fretful playwright/director and a high-strung, vulgar actress desperate for an audition. No sooner had they acknowledged their unsuitable chemistry than they found themselves enmeshed in a clever pas de deux that blurs our sense of reality. It’s an intellectual dance that unearths a primal game of sexual submission and domination, echoing what happens in the novel. A compelling point of reference: “Masochism” is a word inspired by the author’s surname.

Some folks can be ostensibly sanguine in the face of disquieting global crises. Take Mark Klugheit, for instance, who is certainly attuned to the tumult of the news cycle, but whose singular antidote to the world's chaos and gloom keeps him in sober perspective: his love for the theater.

In A SONORAN DESERT CAROL, Claire Mannle had the insight to adapt Charles Dickens' Christmas classic as a sacred homage to our native ancestors, but not without admonishing the predatory elites of our modern economic system. Dickens would likely approve the latter inasmuch as income inequality had become a chief ingredient of his social criticism.

No matter the competition, Gaslight remains a thriving enterprise -- an ironclad formula that keeps the house full, taste buds sated, music playing, jokes cracking, and business humming.

In MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY, Gunderson partners with her friend Margot Melcon and lends a righteous voice to Mary Bennet, the third child of the Bennet household in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the duo's amusing account, Mary comes of age in a way Austen enthusiasts ought to appreciate -- no longer the stodgy middle child consigned to a pedantic existence, but a woman of substance deserving of social recognition and romance.