Airline Highway

Charlene Baldridge
Photo by Ken Howard

No Longer in the Pink

ion theatre's

Airline Highway
at 10th Avenue Arts Center

Opening night, Sunday, Aug. 14

Miss Ruby reigned over New Orleans’ faded Hummingbird Hotel in its heyday, long past. When the building's color was still pink, she held sway over its sundry residents as well, dispensing love and advice. Now she is nearing death, and even though she doesn’t really remember doing so, she’s asked the residents to hold her funeral before she dies so she can enjoy it.

In various states of existential extremis, the current residents have asked the former residents to join in. The entire first act is devoted to gathering cold cuts, beer, paper plates, and chips, and to gossiping. For instance it’s rumored that former resident Bait Boy (Richard Johnson) is coming from Atlanta. He does indeed, with a 16-year-old named Zoe (high school junior Natasha Partnoy) in tow. He's changed hs name to Greg now as an indicator of his success.

Zoe, a bright girl and a good student at her Atlanta high school, is doing a  project about subcultures and has identified the residents of the Hummingbird as her subjects. She is so refreshingly naïve she doesn’t realize these people are all fading strippers, prostitutes, recovering drug addicts, and con men, and that her friend Greg is merely a con man too.

Kevane La’Marr Coleman plays the part of Sissy Na Na, the adorable, indefatigable transvestite that cares for the long unseen Miss Ruby (Elaine Litton). Glenn Paris portrays the building manager,  and Rhys Greene, his chain-smoking handyman. Important others are Krista (Dana Fares), Tanya (Beverly Baker), and a resident poet on a bicycle named Francis (Tim West).

There is definitely a culture here, even though it is sub. The playwright and the preaching of Miss Ruby seek to convince us that every human life, no matter how sub, is worthwhile (Yep, I get that), and that there is a supportive fellowship for all, and furthermore, we should care for this play; but I was, at length, unconvinced, caring human though I am, beset by too much cigarette smoke (I don’t care if they’re herbal and non-tobacco!) and too many words. It was real stinky, baby, and my eyes still smart.

Richard Johnson romances his former flame, played by Dana Fares
with Glenn Paris in the background
Photos by Daren Scott

Company members aloft
with Rhys Green and Fares in foreground

Director Claudio Raygoza’s scenic and sound designs are excellent, with a plundered, broken-down automobile on stage. The play is performed in clear cinematic “takes," lighted by Karen Filijan. There's even a plundered-for-parts red clunker parked in one of the empty slots in front of the two-level Hummingbird. 

The subculture clothing is created by costume designer Janet Turner Pitcher, and Michael Mizerany provides a bit of celebratory choreographer for the girls’ number, “Oh, Daddy, Love Me Good.” Braulio Fernandez, Jose Galvan, Steve McLaughlin, Leo Slocum, Nicole Sollazzo, Andrew Stone, Tomia Taylor, and Kaitlin Williams play hordes of former denizens. God bless them all.

By the way, The Tenth Avenue Arts Center has never looked so good.

Airline Highway

Directed by Claudio Raygoza

7pm Wednesdays; 8pm Thursdays-Saturdays; 2pm Sundays through September 3 at Tenth Avenue Arts Center,

930 10^th Ave. (Just south of Broadway)

$32 with discounts for seniors, military, students and groups.

www.iontheatre.com or 619-600-5020.

[manhandled] at 82

Charlene Baldridge

Photo by Ken Howard

Get ‘Manhandled’ this Weekend

Choreographer Michael Mizerany, artistic director of Compulsion Dance & Theatre, further explores the realm of [manhandled] in the most titillating evening of dance so far in Diversionary Theatre’s Cabaret Series. But you must hurry to witness it. [Manhandled] plays only through the weekend, with performances tonight at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, and Sunday at 2 and 7pm at 4545 Park Blvd. www.diversionary.org/manhandles or 619-220-0097. Tickets range from $15-$35, and you know the drill: the neighborhood is filled with restaurants and watering holes, and so you must allow lots of time for parking.

To the art

Viewers who adore the male body are amply rewarded. [manhandled], subtitled a provocative evening of dance, is indeed that, a moving art gallery, especially in the title work, choreographed by Mizerany, with music by Alaskan Tapes and set on dancers Andrew Holmes and Nicholas Strasburg, who is a veritable fountainhead of thwarted desire as the manhandler in question.

Strasburg and Bradley R. Lundberg, as I’ve stated many times over, are my absolute favorite male dancers. Each has pliant qualities of masculinity that may be sprinkled with humor, sensitivity and command as needed. In other words, they express the full spectrum of what it is to be manhandled or to manhandle.

The darker implications of that are breathtaking when called to the fore in Mizerany’s 2015 Man Clan, which pits Strasburg and Lundberg, opposite one another with compelling intensity, juxtaposed the gentler expressions of Martin Anthony Dorado and David Woronovitzky.

The Company
Photos by Sue Brenner

The program features two women. Nikki Dunnan, one of the co-founders of the late Eveoke Dance Theatre, dances opposite Lundberg in his 2015 work Tous les Memes, and the award-winning Brittany Taylor performs Mizerany’s Via Dolorosa, ordinarily performed by a man.

One must extend kudos to lighting designer Curtis Mueller who so beautifully illuminates the entire evening, and to stage manager Jon Huckaby who keeps things moving breathlessly. Or is that just Charlene the voyeur at 82?

A Scene from [manhandled]

According to Mizerany, [manhandled], his Man Dance Series – the larger, five-part, evening-long work – will be complete next August.

JUNK Not at All

Charlene Baldridge
Photo by Ken Howard

JUNK: The Golden Age of Debt

Regarding JUNK: those expecting light entertainment should go see a musical.

JUNK Company
all JUNK images by Jim Carmody

Saturday night (August 6) playwright Ayad Akhtar stood in the Mandell Weiss Theatre lobby after the final act of his epic play, JUNK: The Golden Age of Debt, which is produced in its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse through August 21. I wanted to tell him how much a burned-out friend loved the play, which he’d seen earlier in the week. My friend reported it had restored his faith in theatre after he’d seen too many bad plays of late.

The line to shake Akhtar’s hand* was just too long, so I came home, mentally fatigued after having endured the instructive moments in his play, which concerns guile, greed and the unrelenting drive to succeed no matter the cost, no matter the risk.  These qualities are possessed by movers and shakers of the 1980s-era. Events in the play surround a hostile takeover and are based on no one person or situation in particular, but are conglomerates. They give us insight into the kind of market machinations that led to current conditions, the depression of 2008, and attitudes towards Wall Street, as well as social, political and financial practices. The scary part is the question that hangs in the air at the play’s end: who among us can resist selling out if the money is right?

Armando Riesco, Josh Cooke and Matthew Rauch

The 17-person company, a few of whom (Tony Carlin, Jason Kravits, Hunter Spangler, and Sean McIntyre) play multiple parts, is superb. The playwright happily gives numerous midlife men a chance to shine on stage rather than in television cops and robbers series. 

Akhtar writes women exceptionally well, too, and his women here (Annika Boras, Zora Howard, Jennifer Ikeda, and Zakiya Iman Markland) have an opportunity to display their characters’ grit and brains.

Major characters on the takeover side are Robert Merkin (Josh Cooke), Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch),  Raul Rivera (Armando Riesco), and Boris Pronsky (Jeff Marlowe), who target Thomas Everson’s (Linus Roache) Everson Steel, in the family for three generations. 

Josh Cook as Merkin

David Rasche as Tresler and Jennifer  Ikeda as Judy Chen

Among Everson’s allies are Jacqueline Bount (Markland) and Maximilien Cizik (Henry Stram). Both sides enlist the aid and funding of various others, a plethora of stunning characters that include the Everson ally, wealthy private equity manager Leo Tresler (David Rasche), whose seductive scenes with seemingly incorruptible investigative journalist Judy Chen (Ikeda) are among the play’s best, at least in this romantic’s eye. Others in the company, impeccably directed by Doug Hughes, are Benjamin Burdick and Keith Wallace.

To say the audience was rapt throughout might be putting it too strongly. Some left after Act I, others after Act II, and still others sat through both intervals and complained loudly to their companions.

There is no doubt that Akhtar’s play, possessing supreme and eerie resonance with current election rhetoric, is important and cautionary; however, there is a lot of it, and its intricacy is demanding to soak up. The closest thing to JUNK that I recall in my theatrical experience is Jerry Sterner’s 1989 Other People’s Money, produced at the Old Globe in the 1990-91 season. Also about a hostile takeover, that one had a great deal more humor and fewer characters, though I must say the manipulators in both plays are/were quite likeable. As someone remarked, they are just a bit more realistic than we Pollyannas.

Akhtar is recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his play Disgraced, author of the book American Dervish and co-writer of the 2005 film, The War Within, and playwright of The Who and the What, premiered at the Playhouse in 2013.

John Lee Beatty’s set is a keeper.

JUNK: The Golden Age of Debt continues at 7:30pm Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8pm Thursdays-Sundays, 7pm Sundays and 2pm Saturdays-Sundays through August 21. www.lajollaplayhouse.org or 858-550-1010

*Sunday night, I did have a chance to shake Akhtar’s hand. It was prior to the world premiere of Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower. Akhtar intends to keep working on JUNK throughout the run.

Beautiful

Charlene Baldridge
Photo by Daddy

Beautiful is as ‘Beautiful’ Does

The touring production of the 2014 Broadway musical, Beautiful, The Carole King Musical, had its critical opening Wednesday night (August 3) at the Civic Theatre, under the auspices of Broadway San Diego. The show, which received mixed reviews at the time of its Broadway premiere, has 25+ songs, a minimal book, a spectacular, colorful set by Derek McLane, and costumes by Alejo Vietti. My friend and I had a blast, and the audience response was enthusiastic. It’s interesting that the King role is played here by Abby Mueller, sister of Jessie Mueller, who received a Tony Award for the role, which she created on Broadway.

The technical elements are grand (lights by Peter Kaczorowski, sound by Brian Ronan), the songs are familiar and well performed, Josh Prince’s choreography is slick and appropriate, and I found Douglas McGrath’s book witty, impressionistic, and just what’s needed. I went in not knowing much about the singer/songwriter (b. 1942) and came out knowing enough to make me curious about her life in music; and I discovered I’m certainly familiar with her songs, many of which she wrote with her first husband, Gerry Goffin. I am also acquainted with the songs of the show’s other writing team, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. In the show, all write for the same manager, Don Kirschner at Aldon Music, at 1650 Broadway right across the street from the fabled Brill Building. It’s amazing I remember any of the tunes. My kids were pre-teens at the time (early ‘60s).

To name just a few of the songs in the show: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet,” “Locomotion,” “It’s Too Late,” Beautiful,” “On Broadway,” and “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling.”

Abby Mueller as Carole King
Photo by: Joan Marcus

With consistent vocal quality, Mueller and Ben Fankhauser are company standouts as King and Barry Mann. The other principal singers, Liam Tobin as Goffin and Becky Gulsvig as Weil, are equally good vocally and dramatically, and Curt Bouril is exceptionally likeable as Kirschner, a rather underwritten role. They are supported by a singing/dancing ensemble of 18, who play sister, mother, potential lovers, musicians, and members of the Shirelles, the Monkees, the Righteous Brothers, and the Drifters.

It’s a relaxing two and a half hours of terrific music, solidly performed and supported by an all-union orchestra comprising four traveling players, including conductor/keyboard/music director Susan Draus* (an insider tells me that Nick Williams is conducting this week), and eight locally based artists. Orchestrations, vocal and music arrangements are by Steve Sidwell. So smoothly is it handled and timed, one could swear the actors are really playing the traveling armada of upright pianos on Broadway.

Beautiful continues nightly through 6:30pm Sunday at the Civic Theatre, 3^rd and B Street, Downtown. www.broadwaysd.com or 619-570-1100.

Thu Eve	August 4, 2016	7:30P
Fri Eve	August 5, 2016	8:00P
Sat Mat	August 6, 2016	2:00P
Sat Eve	August 6, 2016	8:00P
Sun Mat	August 7, 2016	1:00P
Sun Eve	August 7, 2016	6:30P