Roy Berko - Page 31

On June 15, 2015, Karamu, the country's oldest continuously performing Black Theatre, will celebrate its 100th birthday.

On the surface, Greg Pierce's SLOWGIRL, which is now on stage at Dobama, is the tale of a teenager who finds herself living a real-life nightmare and her confronting the issues with her reclusive uncle, who has problems of his own.

Brian Zoldessy, one of the area's most awarded actors, seems to be making a career of bringing real people to life. He was Ned Weeks, the AIDS activist in Ensemble's THE NORMAL HEART, Sigmund Freud, the recognized father of Psychoanalysis in Actors' Summit's FREUD'S LAST SESSION, and now he's reincarnating the renowned physicist, Albert Einstein. He won both Cleveland Critics Circle and Times Tribute Theatre awards for the former two roles, and the odds are he'll be receiving similar recognition for his most recent portrayal.

Pat Ciamacco, artistic director at Blank Canvas, has a 'thing' for off-beat musicals. Sure, he produced 'Hair' and 'Godspell,' but it's more likely that what you'll see mounted on his stage are 'Beach Blanket Party,' 'Debbie Does Dallas,' and 'Texas Chainsaw Musical.' I'm surprised he's missed out on 'Bullshot Crummond,' 'Dance of the Vampires,' 'Expresso Bongo,' 'Hands on a Hard Body, and, of course, 'The Rocky Horror Show.'

Like retail stores, local theatres realize that they need a big December holiday season to make enough profits to sustain themselves for rest of the year.

The existentialists ask, 'What does it mean to exist? What is our purpose in being?' 'American Falls,' Miki Johnson's drama which showcases eight people living in a small town-six alive, two dead-is an existentialist exercise.

Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel is noted for crafting play scripts which impact directly on the lives of people. A review of her works illustrates that she writes about issues that need to be expressed (AIDS, sexual abuse, prostitution, degradation of the individual), she favors writing about emotional circumstances which she expresses in narrative structures, and her works contain theatrical requirements that make for better viewing, than reading.

Little did I realize as I stood many years ago, as an extra, in front of Higbee's Department Store in downtown Cleveland at 3 AM, that I was participating in the filming of what would become one of the most popular winter holiday movies of all times.

The holiday season is upon us. Many local theatres are geared to make your days merry and bright. Curtains have or will shortly go up on the likes of 'A Christmas Carol,' 'A Christmas Story,' and 'Santaland Diaries.' Even The Key Bank Broadway series is ringing in the season with a holiday musical, 'Irving Berlin's White Christmas.'

There's a moor, a diabolical hound, a maiden, a man who dies of a heart attack (well, maybe), a butler who carries around a tray of plastic food and wears an obvious fake beard, an attempt to perform CPR on an obvious stuffed dummy, men in a sauna wearing towels over their suits, men dressed as women, and lots of doors slamming.

From 1981 until about 2000, Cleveland audiences were enchanted with Dennis Nahat, the then artistic-director of Cleveland Ballet, later the Cleveland San Jose Ballet' s version of 'The Nutcracker.' Often starring the wunderkinds of the company, Karen Gabay and Raymond Rodriguez, the production was filled creativity, gorgeous costumes and scenery, enveloping story telling, and general wonder.

'The story is told in verse, densely packed with rhyme, which has to be spoken so that it sounds like natural language.' 'Much of the play concerns a battle between angels and demons.' 'There is little action in the play, just a series of monologues.' The descriptions are vivid, 'fingernails pierce an eyeball and drain it of fluid, a knife slices into a woman while she's having sex. A body implodes beneath the tires of a truck.' 'The play is filled with vivid, vulgar verse.'

Baldwin Wallace is a powerhouse in providing talent to the Broadway stage. In the past year, over a dozen of the program's grads have listed, 'a proud graduate of Baldwin Wallace' in their Great White Way 'Playbill' resumes.

New York City is approximately 500 miles from Cleveland. People from the North Coast often make the trek there to partake in the shopping, dining, but most often, the theatre. In order to keep the locals abreast of the Great White Ways offerings, I review some of the shows. Here is a sampling of what's new on Broadway.

C. Denby Swanson's 'The Norwegians,' now on stage at Dobama Theatre, centers on Tor and Gus, two Minnesota Norwegians, who are hit men who offer to 'whack' individuals who have 'done others wrong.' Olive, a former Texan, has been mistreated by her boyfriend. She meets Betty, who has hired Tor and Gus in the past to rid her of an ex- boyfriend. She is out to 'do in' another guy, but, for reasons which roll out later in the story, she doesn't hire Tor and Gus to do the job. Betty shares the Norwegian Mafia's information with Olive, who hires them, and the tale is off and running.