drama

‘Misery’ still thrills at BCP

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By John Lyle Belden

In the years since Stephen King published his thriller “Misery” in 1987, there have been countless real-world stories of deranged fans stalking and even killing their celebrity obsessions. Yet this story is the most chilling, thanks in part to the William Goldman film adaptation, directed by Robert Reiner and released in 1990, starring James Caan and Kathy Bates (winning her an Oscar).

Goldman also adapted “Misery” for the stage, which Buck Creek Players now brings to life. Popular author Paul Sheldon (Mark Meyer) awakens severely injured in a remote house in the Colorado Rockies. The home belongs to Annie Wilkes (Lisa Banning), a nurse who rescued Sheldon from an auto wreck during a blizzard – and happens to be Paul’s “Number One Fan.”

Annie is obsessed with Paul’s novels about Victorian heroine Misery Chastain, and while caring for Paul reads his new non-Misery manuscript (which she hates), then makes her way into town to get the latest copy of his just-released “Misery’s Child.” She gushes over this new story, until she reaches the final chapter. Misery is dead?! Seeing this happen to her favorite character – her hero, practically a friend in her mind – enrages her beyond disbelief. Paul must write, and right this wrong!

As in the book and movie, this is an engrossing battle of wits. Paul, in a slowly-healing body, through his fog of pain, desperately seeks a way out of his entrapment. Meanwhile, Annie’s madness grows while sharpening her realization that there is only one way her and Paul’s story can end.

Aaron Beal completes the cast as Sheriff Buster, whose suspicions of what’s happening at Annie’s house grow with every visit.

Banning convincingly portrays Annie’s obsessive nature – at first fawning over Paul, later driving her to treat him like a misbehaving pet, at all times a little unbalanced – as well as her strict moral sense, with a sort of charming (at first) sense of eccentricity. It evokes in the best way the chilling transformation of Bates in the film.

Meyer tackles the role of Paul as a fairly nice regular guy who happens to have an exceptional talent for which he hides away in a mountain lodge to bang out a novel. This disruption to his routine has him forcing Paul to plot events in real life, which proves to be a lot harder than typing them to the page. His moments of pain are quite convincing – here’s hoping he wasn’t too “method.”

Jeremy Tuterow directs, and Susanne Bush designed an excellent stage set featuring Paul’s room isolated away from the more welcoming kitchen, with sight-lines that draw us in to Annie’s tightly controlled world.

Three performances remain of “Misery,” Friday through Sunday, April 4-6, at the BCP Playhouse, 11150 Southeastern Ave., Indianapolis (Acton Road exit off I-74). Get info and tickets at buckcreekplayers.com.

The wisdom of ‘Wizer’

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By John Lyle Belden

“The Wizer of Odds,” written and directed by local playwright Gabrielle Patterson, stands apart from most adaptations of the classic “Wizard of Oz” story by L. Frank Baum, best known from the 1939 MGM film. Rather than try to directly recreate the plot and characters (like in “The Wiz”) this non-musical allegory takes familiar aspects of story, character, and theme to build something both familiar and fresh, timeless and modern.

We start out near Kansas where Camile (Kelly Boyd as our “Dorothy” character) longs for more than what she feels her cornfield town and living with her Gran (Patterson) can offer her. She also wishes to reconnect – or connect at all – with her mother Evelyne (Alicia Sims) who abandoned her as a baby to go live in New York City.

Camile sets out on a road trip for the Big Apple, bringing along best friends Tiny (Cara Wilson) and Stephanie (Ja’Taun Tiara). First, she says goodbye to long-time friend Thomas (Jericho Franke), whose confession of love does nothing to stop her.

On the road, car trouble brings the girls to the shop of Ray Tinman (Bryan Ball), a memorable encounter but Camile doesn’t think much of the man in the oil-stained clothes.

Finally in New York, Evelyn isn’t as welcoming a host as they had hoped. She cares little for reconnecting and just wants to take Camile and her friends out to the hottest club – The Flying Monkey. The evening gets off to a rough start as Camile feels the doorman Leon (Richard Bowman) isn’t aggressive enough in repelling the advances of an obnoxious man (Lamont Golder). At the club, we encounter the charismatic Oz (Chris Shields), who may be just what our heroine is looking for – but how wise is that choice?

Though not a musical, we get brilliant soliloquies in hip-hop poetry for nearly all characters to elaborate how they feel. The straw-colored man, the one who works with machines, and the presumed coward each state their case for how manhood and one’s value are not just what a person presumes, and are worth a better look.

In our three generations we get women who are each intriguing in their own way. Boyd as Camile is smart and likable, but has her gaze too far over the rainbow to see what is at hand, to her own peril. Patterson’s Gran, who also goes by Glinda, has a great deal of wisdom, enough to know she can’t force a willful girl to listen, and to be there with kindness when the lessons are learned. As for Sims as Evelyn, she is a study in dysfunction and self-centeredness – still, as Wendy pointed out, the sight of her “party” outfit may be worth the ticket price alone.

So many good performances in this show. Wilson presents a sweetly true companion (Patterson told me Tiny, like Steph, are analogous to the Munchkins, but I see faithful aspects of Toto too), while Tiara gives us that fashion-obsessed pal who will still drop that designer bag to join you in a fight. Ball easily radiates strength in his roles, and his Tin Man is sturdy. Shields, as Oz, smoothly gives us that outwardly noble man who can go from kissing your cheek to slapping it in a dark instant. Bowman – like the other men, playing more than one role – has the most contrast between his characters. His initial appearance cuts the line between funny and creepy so thin it’s barely visible; however, his lion roars with one of the bravest spoken passages. Franke is charming as Thomas, a man who (like his archetype) is smarter than he looks.  

An entertaining story salted with some hints and Easter eggs for traditional “Oz” fans, with that reliable lesson that there’s no place like home, “The Wizer of Odd” has two more weekends, April 4-6 and 11-13, at IF Theatre (home of IndyFringe), 719 E. St. Clair St., Indianapolis. Get tickets at indyfringe.org.

Mud Creek drama worth the ‘Wait’

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By John Lyle Belden

One thing that tends to be tricky in live theatre is suspense. This is why the thriller “Wait Until Dark” by Frederick Knott is a popular choice for community companies, like the present production at Mud Creek Players, directed by Andrea Odle.

A pair of ex-cons are searching for a particular priceless doll – valuable not for its porcelain face or music box, but for also containing a highly valuable stash of uncut heroin. The woman bringing it into the country passed it to an unsuspecting photographer, Sam (Zachary Thompson), and her accomplices Mike (JB Scoble) and Carlino (Trever Brown) are in his lower-level apartment searching for it. However, the person who called them to be there is Mr. Roat (Kelly Keller), who has smoothly taken charge of the entire caper.

Sam’s wife Susy (Lexi Odle-Stollings) comes home and our criminals note that she is blind, so they can easily evade her. She hears something, and notices furniture has been moved, but blames it on Gloria (Evelyn Odom), the bratty girl who lives upstairs and often comes down to do errands for her.

Preferring finesse to violence (for now), while Sam is away on a bogus assignment, Mike pretends to be his old Marines buddy to talk Susy into divulging the location of the doll. Carlino plays a detective, and Roat adds two roles to the ruse, as the tension builds and their patience wanes. This is set in 1963, so a phone booth just down the block is a vital plot element. As Susy’s necessary attention to details starts to clue her in on what’s happening, how will she get out of this situation? Note the play’s title.

The cast also includes Sidney Blake and Thomas Burek.

Odle’s own attention to detail aids the atmosphere, taking advantage of the fact that the Mud Creek Barn isn’t a large venue, aiding our trapped feeling with lower than usual lighting. Jennifer Poynter is assistant director, and Amy Buell is stage manager.

Odle-Stollings delivers an excellent performance of a woman familiar with fear as she had been blinded only a couple of years before, still, knowing she must rely on her own strength and wits – every day to get around, and on this night as a matter of life and death. She received help from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to effectively and respectfully portray an unsighted person.

The fact that Keller is such a nice guy offstage helps make his turn as ruthless Roat all the more disturbing. His villainy is enhanced by his own sense for detail and preparation. Scoble and Brown add a bit of humor to the mix, but we come to see the hardened criminals they play take this all very seriously.

Odom, already quite active as a Mud Creek volunteer, is also a natural on stage, playing the kid who, despite her attitude, truly wants to help – if that involves breaking things, all the better!

Suspense builds to the final scene. See what happens when the lights go out in “Wait Until Dark,” performances Thursday through Saturday at 9740 E. 86th St., Indianapolis. Get tickets at mudcreekplayers.org.

Beautiful, fragile ‘Glass’ on IRT stage

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By Wendy Carson

Memory is a funny thing. It can make things seem much better, or worse, than they were without you even knowing. This discrepancy is fully acknowledged by our narrator, Tom Wingfield (played by Felipe Carrasco), in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” at the Indiana Repertory Theatre.

This 1944 drama is the first theatrical instance of what is now known as a “memory play”. (A current example of the style would be the sitcom, “How I Met Your Mother.”) The point of view is how Tom (based to a degree on Williams himself) remembers these events. He gives us a glimpse of his home life in St. Louis with his overbearing mother Amanda (Julie Fishell) and slightly older sister Laura (Delaney Feener).

Tom is a dreamer who wishes to write poetry but dutifully slaves away at a shoe warehouse to support his family. Laura has been in ill health since her childhood; she also suffers from crushing anxiety, making it almost impossible for her to leave the house for any reason, let alone make friends. Amanda rightly worries about her daughter’s future as she notices Tom’s desire to experience adventures beyond what he sees at the movies every night.

Trying to inspire Laura, her mother drones on about her heyday as a debutante in Mississippi, fighting off the troves of “Gentleman Callers” with a stick. As things reach a boiling point, Amanda forces Tom to bring home a coworker to be a Gentleman Caller for Laura.

Enter Jim O’Connor (Sam Bell-Gurwitz), a former schoolmate who was destined for great things but fell far short. He shows ambition as he seeks to regain his “destiny.”

Director James Still does a beautiful job of making the tale resonate with the audience. While in true Tennessee Williams style, the story ends dismally, it also contains one of the most positive and beautiful scenes he has ever written, and Still keeps the dichotomy perfectly balanced.

Carrasco gives us an engaging narrator, despite his own warning of being unreliable. His Tom becomes wrapped up in the story with us, while his own personal agenda is overshadowed by a fateful evening’s events.

Feener brings to her essential role of Laura a sad sweetness with a degree of resignation to her life with her collection of delicate glass animals. She has a faint hope so impossible that it overwhelms her when it comes to her door, and will test her soul in the coming hour. Feener also has a visible difference that helps emphasize Laura’s feelings of separation from regular society.

Fishell gives Amanda a sort of bluster that thinly hides the fear that things will not work out the way she wishes. Bell-Gurwitz is loud in a more confident manner, yet his Gentleman Caller has experienced enough to yield some good advice.

See the fragile beauty that brought Tennessee Williams to Broadway on the intimate Janet Allen Upperstage of the IRT, 140 W. Washington St., in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, through April 6. Get tickets and info at irtlive.com.

NAATC ‘Stew’ – seeking comfort by making a meal

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By John Lyle Belden

Taking the obvious metaphor, the Pulitzer-finalist drama “Stew” by Zora Howard, presented by Naptown African American Theatre Collective at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, is a blend of various ingredients.

It’s a story of memory, aging, change, loss, womanhood, and family, simmering in the perspective of working-class Black life in late 20th-century America. It’s multi-generational, set in the home of Mama Tucker (Vickie Daniel), with her daughters Lillian (Dominique Moon) and Nelly (Clarissa Todd) and Lillian’s children – a girl known as Lil’ Mama (Tracy Nakigozi) and the boy, Junior, who should be arriving from a friend’s house at any minute.

It’s that one day a year when folks get together at the local church and one thing that will be expected is Mama’s homemade stew. From the beginning of the day, a broken cup on the floor, everything seems to interfere with getting the food cooked on time. Lillian, visiting long-term (without her husband, who apparently won’t be coming after all) is trying too hard to help and frequently remarks on Mama’s health. Nelly, being 17, still lives there, but she has “a man” and a plan to get away; for now, though, she has endless chores garnished with maternal disapproval.  Lil’ Mama is at that middle-school age where every little thing is “sooo haaard” and her every answer is “I don’t knoooow,” but she’s still big Mama’s little girl, even when she lazily grabs the entirely wrong size cooking pot.

There are more than vegetables simmering in this house. Each one of these ladies has a secret. The least disruptive one is of Lil’ Mama auditioning for her school’s play, Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” This allows Mama to remind all that she was part of the church theatre league, and to recite the Bard’s expressions of a woman’s grief from memory.

Daniel, initially the understudy for Mama (Renee Lockett left due to illness), gives a commanding performance with the boldness of a woman knowing she has Jesus by her side and generations of strong Black women behind her. Ever maternal, she goes from scolding to tender and back in a heartbeat. This day’s changes and surprises test Mama’s resolve, sometimes severely, but we see her rising to nearly every challenge.

Moon gives us in Lillian the complexity of a woman dealing with a lot, including the state of her marriage and the lives of her children. Todd, on the other hand, portrays Nelly naively certain of how her life will play out, while knowing deep down it’s about to get a lot more complicated.

Nakagozi has mastered the art of playing an absolute brat – and not in a cute way, though she can be that as well. It’s apparent that Lil’ Mama largely can’t help being like this, and somewhere in all the frustration is a little girl who really does want to be good and helpful.

LaKesha Lorene directs, keeping “Stew’s” recipe at a low boil with plenty of humor and heart. She noted before our performance that a number of students in NAATC’s Education for All program worked on staff and crew for this production.

The struggles, laughter, shouts, and tears here are relatable to any of our families, though one aspect that will define this day, felt keenly by the Tuckers, is sadly too familiar. Come and savor what these women have to share. Performances of “Stew” run through March 30 at the Phoenix, 705 N. Illinois St., Indianapolis. Get tickets at phoenixtheatre.org or naatcinc.org.

While you’re at the show, order the new NAATC fundraiser cookbook!

Agape: True story of youthful resistance to a cruel regime

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By John Lyle Belden

“We are your bad conscience” – from Leaflet 4 of The White Rose, summer 1942

Agape Theatre Company established itself as exploring the conjunction of faith and the theater arts, and with “Why We Must Die So Young,” adds one of the darkest moments in human history.

Written and directed by local playwright William Gebby, this drama tells the story of The White Rose, a resistance movement of students at the University of Munich, roughly from May 1942 to February 1943. This would be during the height of Nazi Germany’s power and territorial gains; Munich is in Bavaria, southern Germany, at the time deep within the Axis powers’ empire.

Agape shows are typically youth productions, however, this play has an appropriate mix of young artists and adults which maintains a realistic look, aside from apt costuming and the jarring presence of Nazi flags at the corners of the stage. Another important aspect is that from the beginning the audience is alerted to the fate of the White Rose members portrayed: all, save one, will be executed. This, in addition to expressions of faith by the characters, gives the drama the aura of a Passion Play. We know how it will end and must deal with that growing tension, yet a theme is the perseverance of the expressed ideal beyond death.  

Sophie Scholl (Sofy Vida), whose family members see Nazi ideology as antithetical to Christianity, departs from their home in Ulm (directly west of Munich, just over the Bavarian border) to join her brother Hans (Joshua Lehman) at the University. There they, along with schoolmates Traute Lafrenz (Megan Janning), Christoph Probst (Codie Monhollen), Alexander Schmorell (Joey Devine), and Willi Graf (Thor Hunter) attend the lectures of Prof. Kurt Huber (Robert K. Fimreite), who openly yet cleverly expresses his disdain for the current regime. Moved by his increasingly un-subtle calls to action, the young men and Sophie secretly make and distribute their first anti-Nazi leaflet.

Being Hans’s girlfriend, Traute is kept out of the loop – which she resents, as she quickly figured out what’s happening. She thus soon joins and adds a loose network of like-thinking friends in other cities. Huber, once he is informed who wrote the leaflets (and that it’s not a Gestapo trap), also joins the White Rose, authoring one of its most powerful messages.

Mac Williams and Agape founder Kathy Phipps play Hans and Sophie’s conscientious parents, with Julianna Britt as younger sister Inge. Hannah Schwitzer is Gisela, one of the kids’ friends in Ulm.

We also meet Chelsea Jackman as Prof. Huber’s wife Clara; assistant director Leslie Gebby as intellectual Frau Docktor Mertens; and Matthias Neidenberger, Candice Clorinda, Albert F. Lahrmann III, Nathan Rakes, Doug Rollison, and Ruth Bowen in other roles.

The story moves at a steady pace through numerous short scenes, the small underground movement progressing while its participants maintain near-impossible optimism, feeling at times fraught but carrying on aided by youthful recklessness. There is only slight lag in the transitions; I wonder if a future staging with a large three-side turntable of setpieces might improve the flow. We get not only the growth of the White Rose’s reach, but also the more persistent and desperate search by the authorities to shut it down. Our young agitators knew the risks, but that doesn’t reduce the impact of inevitable tragedy.

Vida is simply inspiring as Sophie, earnest and faithful. Lehman takes to his role like a committed soldier (which Hans also was) showing his bravery is not bluster. Monhollen gives all aspects of a complex character – Probst being concerned for both the safety of his wife and children, and the fate of his nation. Our father figures – boldly shown by Fimreite and Williams – are stalwarts as well, willing to stand up to unjust authority in a dangerous era.

Important history which could be seen as inspiration during current events, “Why We Must Die So Young: The story of the White Rose Resistance,” has three more dates, Friday through Sunday, March 14-16, at Arts for Lawrence’s Theater at the Fort, 8920 Otis Ave., northeast Indianapolis. Get tickets at artsforlawrence.org.

Southbank: It truly is all relative

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By John Lyle Belden

Very few people can know what it is like to be Albert Einstein – arguably, one – but did he understand, or care, what it is like to be the rest of us?

In “Relativity,” a drama by Mark St. Germain presented by Southbank Theatre Company, in December 1949 Einstein (Anthony Johnson) receives a visit from a young reporter, Margaret (Morgan Morton), at his home on the Princeton University campus. His housekeeper/secretary Ms. Dukas (Miki Mathioudakis) doesn’t approve, but the lauded genius welcomes another opportunity to talk about himself and his contributions to physics.

However, since his decades of research, discovery, and scholarly work had been written about numerous times already, Margaret maneuvers the interview to other topics, such as Einstein’s two marriages, and his children. What’s there to say, Einstein says, reciting the publicly known facts.

But she has also interviewed Albert’s son – now things get serious.

In this imagined incident, employing Einstein’s own quotations and writing, one of the greatest intellects of the last century is probed to explore the nature of relationships, family, and what is important. We confront the burden of genius: what it owes the world, and what we owe to it.

Director Ronn Johnston said what we see on the stage is so much more than what one would read from the script. He worked with our highly-talented trio to bring life and dimension to these characters – two we don’t know and one we can only presume to – to give a more genuine, relatable conversation between one leading with the heart and another from his unique brain.

This comes at a time when Einstein, who felt he had brought order to our understanding of the universe, explored the new frontier of quantum theory, reconciling the unpredictable with his predictable cosmos. But where in this universe does a child fit in?

Johnson nicely embodies the walking contradiction of the serious intellect with the wild hair, relaxed suit and quotable sense of humor. Incomprehensibly complex equations calm him, while discussion of close relations brings on a darker countenance and mood. Morton seems to combine the aspects of a strong woman and questioning child into a single irresistible interrogator.  Mathioudakis portrays a tireless defender feeling she may be the only one to truly understand the man, including his flaws.

Energy and matter, or the people who matter – explore “Relativity” Thursday through Sunday at Shelton Auditorium, 1000 W. 42nd Street, Indianapolis (Butler University campus).  Get info and tickets at southbanktheatre.org.

Belfry blesses us with ‘Little Women’

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By John Lyle Belden

“When you feel discontented, think on your blessings.”

This mother’s advice to her four daughters lends a theme to Louisa May Alcott’s classic autobiographical novel, “Little Women.” The Belfry Theatre, as part of its 60th season, presents the book’s adaptation by John Ravold at First UMC in Noblesville.

In December, 1862, we meet the Marsh sisters in their modest Massachusetts home: headstrong tomboy Jo (Emily Haus); kind, nurturing Meg (Emma Gedig); proud, self-centered Amy (Natalie Piggush); and shy “Mousie” Beth (Lizzie Schultz). Jo (patterned after Alcott herself) is also a writer, and leads her siblings in rehearsing a melodramatic play with an audience of supportive mother Marmee (Mary Garner) and young neighbor Laurie (Gideon Roark) who has brought his slightly-older tutor John Brooke (Samuel Smith). Slipping in at the back of the parlor is the very strict, proper, and wealthy Aunt March (Christina Burch).

This play-within-the-play involves some brilliant “acting” by the girls, including Jo in a wild mustache, providing a scene of comedy that alone is worth your ticket to the Belfry show. But moods soon change as a telegram arrives from Father (away at Washington, DC, as a chaplain to the Union Army), and Marmee must depart to be with him.

The second of three acts (intermission comes between II and III) gives the bulk of the original novel, including the arrival of Father (Rob Lawson) and another bit of awkward comedy as Meg and John sort out their feelings for each other. We also get a hot-tempered clash between Amy and Jo, and Beth’s tragically declining health.

The third act, set later, includes part of the “Good Wives” second part of the novel and introduces Professor Bhaer (James Semmelroth Darnell), Jo’s German friend arriving from New York.

Directed by Barcia Alejos, assisted by her son, Daniel Alejos, this production is charming and beautifully presented. Haus is outstanding as Jo, bringing all the aspects of a young woman ahead of her time, yet very much in the spirit of new ideas endemic to mid-1800s New England and changes brought by the Civil War era. Gedig, Piggush, and Schultz also bring life to their archetypes, helping us feel for their individual struggles. Roark is good-natured and Smith dashing, even the characters seeming content to be supporting roles in this feminine world. Garner and Lawson make parenting almost look care-free. As for Burch, her stoic portrayal reflects a woman who has learned only one way for a woman to be strong in their society, and dares not let her nieces stray from it – still, we get hints that there is a heart under that rigid corset.

The story we see does differ a bit from Alcott’s writings, resulting in unfamiliar scenes. Unfortunately, Ravold’s liberties in adaptation also include a couple of anachronisms. They can be ignored, and shouldn’t take away from the excellent work of cast and crew.

“Little Women” has another weekend of performances, Thursday (with special pricing) and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., at 2051 Monument St. (enter at Door 2 on the north side, not main church entrance). Get tickets at the thebelfrytheatre.com.

‘Four Women’ face horrors with song

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By John Lyle Belden

Oh, “To be Young, Gifted, and Black” – then to have it all be suddenly taken away.

This was the fate of four girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, when it was bombed by members of the KKK on Sept. 15, 1963. Among the thousands who were compelled by this incident to take action for Civil Rights was the outspoken Black singer and songwriter Nina Simone.

In “Nina Simone: Four Women,” the play by Christina Ham on the mainstage of the Indiana Repertory Theatre, we see the entertainer at her piano on Sept. 16, struggling to channel her rage into a new song – “an anthem,” she insists – to focus the feelings of all who hear it.

In dark imaginings presented in the exceptional stage design by Regina Garcia, Simone (Akili Mi Mali) is just a few steps from the ruined church floor, with charred pews askew and scattered remnants of toys, before the church’s lone surviving stained-glass window. And she is not there alone. Sarah (Jamecia Bennett), a middle-aged woman in housekeeper’s dress and apron, examines the scene. She recognizes Simone and encourages her to sing a hymn rather than an angry tune with objectionable words. Nicely-dressed Sephronia (Ariel Williams) also appears, ratcheting up the tension even more as she, being lighter-skinned, faces disdain from darker-hued folks – though, as she points out, all the Whites outside see is “another Negro.” Eventually, we meet the fourth woman, Sweet Thing (Precious Omigie), a sex worker holding proud to what dignity she can muster.

Director Austene Van said this encounter with the scene and these three archetypes of Black women of the era help Simone to process this change in her life and career, from singer of popular tunes to an activist with her own emotionally charged songs. With some humor, music including many hits from Simone’s repertoire, and frank discussions, we see the struggle from those who had to live it – and arguably still do.

The “fifth” woman is music director Morgan E. Stevenson who accompanies on Simone’s piano as needed.

Ni Mali beautifully brings Simone to life, in looks, bearing and voice. The others get to sing as well; Bennett’s bold rendition of “His Eye is On the Sparrow” had inspired reactions from the opening night audience.

As Simone herself might point out, this is about more than her. The girls who died that Sunday are ever in the characters’ minds – unlike the newspapers of the day, they say the victims’ names. The song that emerges from this event, “Mississippi Goddam,” widens the focus from a single city to the entire American South and includes the murder of Medgar Evers that year.

“Nina Simone: Four Women” runs through March 2 at the IRT, 140 W. Washington St. in the heart of downtown Indianapolis. Get info and tickets at irtlive.com.

Poolside play with deep issues

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By John Lyle Belden

“Here is a man…”

In the opening scene of “Red Speedo,” a new drama by Lucas Hnath presented by American Lives Theatre, Peter (Alex Oberheide) is extolling the virtues of his brother Roy (Cody Miley), an Olympic-level competitive swimmer to his Coach (Drew Vidal). Peter, who is also a lawyer, has endeavored in addition to represent Roy as his agent – including working out an endorsement deal with Speedo, the famous global swimwear brand.

Our star athlete who (in this narrative) out-swam Michael Phelps in a club event and made headlines by taking a year on a “spiritual journey” to the desert, is overjoyed at his success while anxious about the Olympic trials that weekend. One moment he doubts, the next he explains the sea-serpent tattoo on his back leaves no doubt which swimmer people are watching. He also wants part of the design’s tail that would be under the suit etched across the leg of his special-edition red Speedo.

However, there is an issue: Performance-enhancing substances have been found in the Club locker room. While a fellow swimmer is implicated, Peter knows that suspicion could fall on everyone, Roy in particular.

Events are further complicated with visits by Roy’s ex-girlfriend Lydia (Paige Elsse), who lost her license as a sports therapist for an unrelated drug-misuse case – an event when Roy and especially Peter were not helpful.

“I wanna be a real person,” Roy laments at one point. But that is not to be. He is a swimming machine with no other skills and an education hindered by spending every spare moment at the pool, putting it all on the line with the singular goal of Olympic medals and the marketing riches that follow. A dancer with Dance Kaleidoscope, Miley does well as an actor in a role requiring a lot of speaking and emoting – his other skillset only displayed by his mostly-visible well-toned body. It’s hard to portray one who may not have quite the wisdom or intellect of those around them without devolving into stereotype, and Miley manages this with minimal “dumb jock” vibes. His odd life carries real consequences, as we witness his struggle for some sort of “normal” he can live with.

Oberheide nimbly portrays a man of noble intentions but slippery morals, swiftly finding his plans on the edge of collapse just as he (and Roy) are about to make it big. Vidal’s Coach is a bit more principled but finds himself tested as well – especially when his own future is on the line. Elisse’s Lydia is the good person who justifies doing bad things for those who she loves, including an interesting twist on two wrongs maybe making a right.

ALT founder Chris Saunders directs, giving us a thought-provoking examination of ethics and human behavior that happens to involve a swimming pool. Speaking of which, a real water-filled pool is set up at the front edge of the Russell Theatre main stage in the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre (set design by Matt Mott). It mostly provides the appropriate setting atmosphere, though does feature in a couple of important moments. As Saunders reassured us, there is no “splash zone” for audience members to be concerned about.

Shout-out as well to artist Phoenix Woods for Roy’s “ink.”

“Red Speedo” runs through Feb. 16 at the Phoenix, 705 N. Illinois St. Get tickets at phoenixtheatre.org, info at americanlivestheatre.org.