Patrick Kramer News

Jason Robert Brown's musical about a young Jewish boy making the move from New York to Indiana, 13, is among the highlights of Circle Players' 61st Season as one of Tennessee's oldest community theatre companies. Circle board president Jim Manning made the announcement of the new season's offerings prior to curtain of the 60th Season's To Kill a Mockingbird last week.

So what's the problem with Moon Over Buffalo? Oh yeah, despite all the good stuff, Ken Ludwig's script is also leaden, filled with cliches and one-dimensional characters, with enough convoluted situations to render the play stupefying. With the Towne Centre Theatre production, this is clearly a case of eight fine actors and one competent director in search of a much-better script. No matter how hard they work and how thoughtfully they approach the material, if that material is inferior there's not a lot they can do to save it from mediocrity.

A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Kramer earlier this season directed Circle Players' revival of Noises Off. And as accomplished as he is as a director, he might best be known as an actor, tackling some of the most sought-after roles for some of the area's finest theatre companies. For Boiler Room Theatre, he's played Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Sparky in Forever Plaid, Harry Witherspoon in Lucky Stiff and Eddie McCuen in The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.

Ludwig's play focuses on the lives of George and Charlotte Hay, itinerant actors performing Cyrano de Bergerac and Private Lives in repertory during the heyday of the 1953 theatre season in Buffalo, New York. Charlotte dreams of becoming a Hollywood star, while George is happy on the stage, considering live theatre far superior to film. But when word comes that famous Hollywood director Frank Capra is coming to give George one last shot at film stardom, all manner of hilarity ensues as miscommunication runs rampant backstage - and onstage.

The inspired lunacy of Michael Frayn's Noises Off is a good choice for any theatre company seeking to offer a glimpse into the wacky antics of life on the boards and Circle Players continues its 60th annual season with a largely successful production that features the aforementioned stellar performances of Maggie Pitt and Jeremy Maxwell in the roles of Poppy and Tim (the techies in Frayn's show-within-a-show structure). Pitt and Maxwell deliver disarmingly natural performances amid all the hilarious hijinks taking place in Frayn's wonderfully funny farce and they very nearly-actually, they do it outright-steal the show.

Opening Friday, October 16, at Nashville's Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, and running for three weekends, the plot of Noises Off focuses on a 'highly dysfunctional theatre troupe as it puts on an unfunny farce called Nothing On,' explains Regine McClain, Circle's public relations director. 'In Act 1, the audience gets to see a dress rehearsal that is not going well. In Act 2, the cast performs the first act as the audience watches from the backstage perspective, where things are getting out of hand. The final act shows the play after two months of touring, when the show has deteriorated into a total disaster, yet a delightful one.'

Michael Frayn's Noises Off is the next production of Circle Players' 2009-2010 season, running October 16 through November 1. Frayn's comedy is a play with a play, filled with door slams and physical gags as a dysfunctional cast and crew attempt to open a new theatre production to tour the British provinces.