Max Gallagher

Kids face difficult climb in Mathews play

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By John Lyle Belden

Once again, author and former journalist Garret Mathews draws from the deep well of his upbringing to bring us the new play, “No Hope Rope,” based on people and experiences in his high school in the 1960s in rural western Virginia coal-mining country.

Uber-nerds Rayburt (Max Gallagher) and Titus (Christian Perez) have only each other as they are popular with no one else in Dungannon High School. Rayburt is fascinated with words; Titus is fascinated with everything math, tech, and space – he was STEM long before that became a thing. Rayburt gets by, by laying low. Titus prefers to obnoxiously live in his own world, constantly consulting his imaginary computer and giving loud updates to NASA. One thing they share, though, is a lack of upper-body strength. This presents a problem in their senior year as it is announced by the principal, persuaded by football Coach Alexander, that all boys must complete the 40-foot rope climb to graduate.

For our young subjects, that rope in the corner of the gym may as well be 40 miles high.

Rayburt feels doomed, but Titus has a plan. The school weight room is open to all students, not just the athletes, and if they can learn to lift The Heavy Objects, they might be able to lift themselves up before the school year ends. On their first day, as Titus addresses the issues of cool nicknames and proper grunting, they encounter the quarterback of the State Champion Roughnecks, Charley Alexander (Austin Helm), prize son of “Coach Daddy” who is likely assured a scholarship with a Michigan college.

In this funny and heartwarming G-rated look at teen life in the Heartland, we see this is about more than climbing a length of rope. Climbing hand over hand to the top is easy for some, but not for many when the coal mine is a long way down. For the women, maybe they’ll marry the man who becomes foreman or works above ground. Rayburt wants out, likely to a career in journalism, but he feels the gravity. Titus sees his escape as a pathway to the stars. Charley is content working on small engines or his “funnies” – inspired by the comics on the Ed Sullivan show – but his choices bear the weight of family and community expectations. Our young actors embody the characters perfectly, hinting at bright futures themselves.

Mathews, who supplies the adult intercom voices, says the characters are based on himself and people he knew – he can name the know-it-alls he lovingly mashed up to make Titus – but especially for those of us who know rural America (I like to think of the culture of Mathews’ stories as “Hoosier adjacent”) we can all relate.

Aaron Henze gladly directs this production, hoping that works like this (and Mathews works like “Jubilee in the Rear View Mirror” and “Opening Hank Williams”) find a wider audience. As we post this, there is still time to catch “No Hope Rope” at the District Theatre, 627 Massachusetts Ave., Indianapolis, today at 2 and 7 p.m., or tomorrow at 4 p.m. (Oct. 14-15). Get tickets at indydistricttheatre.org.

Bard Fest: Humor and History with ‘King John’

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This is part of Indy Bard Fest 2022, the annual Indianapolis area Shakespeare Festival. For information and tickets, visit indybardfest.com.

By John Lyle Belden

When most of us last saw or even thought of King John of England, he was still a Prince, frustrated with the antics of Robin Hood.

However, while Robin is legendary, there was a real John. Those taxes the Merry Men resented were a literal king’s ransom to rescue King Richard the Lionheart, his Crusading brother, and once John did ascend to the crown himself, his big achievement was getting badgered by the nobility to sign the Magna Carta. It didn’t help his reputation that he lost most of England’s lands in modern France, and that with historians he is overshadowed by one of the most awesome women of Medieval Europe, his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Can even William Shakespeare rehabilitate the image of this man? His “The Life and Death of King John” reads more like a complex cautionary tale with its twists of fate, as well as digs at the expense of France and the Catholic Church to keep Elizabethan audiences happy.

Now it is in the gentle hands of local director Doug Powers, who brings the Indy Bard Fest production of “King John” to The Shelton Auditorium at Butler University. His handling of the text brings out the humor in this history play, borne of the constant shifts between belligerence and brokered peace. The flow of the plot goes like: We’re at war! Now we’re not! We’re at war again! We’re… where were we…? There’s a dry, almost Pythonesque feel to some of the scenes, eliciting several chuckles from the audience.

Excellent casting helps: Zachary Stonerock gives John a sense of purpose, edged with frustration and notoriously quick temper. He strives to be a good ruler, while his mouth writes checks his army can’t cash. Gari Williams gives Queen Eleanor the regal bearing she held to her last days, her counsel helping keep John on task. Kevin Caraher portrays Philip of France as a monarch weary of war, but not relenting until his son Louis the Dauphin (Cael Savidge) and Duke Arthur (Max Gallagher), who has a claim to England’s throne, get their due. Star turns in supporting roles include Sabrina Duprey, who finds herself little more than a pawn in this game as Princess Blanche of Spain; Tony Armstrong as Hubert, a faithful servant with an impossible choice; and the brilliant Matt Anderson, first as a citizen of a besieged city who offers a crucial compromise, and later as Cardinal Pandulph, who acts with the Pope’s authority to excommunicate King John.

The top performances here are by Georgeanna Smith Wade in two fiery mother roles – most notably railing at all the politicking and half-measures keeping young Arthur from the throne – and by Taylor Cox as Philip “The Bastard” Faulconbridge, illegitimate son of John’s brother Richard, named a Knight in the King’s forces. Cox exudes a brash confidence that seems unearned at first, growing throughout as his role makes him both provocateur and chorus, giving many a sly aside or clever commentary to us watching.

Once again, Bard Fest has served up a Shakespeare work we don’t often see and makes it entertain and even enlightening when compared to the fickle nature of modern statecraft. Remaining performances are Friday through Sunday, Oct. 14-16 at the Shelton, 1000 W. 42nd Street, on the grounds Butler shares with Christian Theological Seminary.

TOTS: Bitter arguments in a ‘City of Conversation’

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By John Lyle Belden

In today’s political climate, many wonder how and when America became so polarized, with right and left (Republican and Democrat) in separate camps, each fiercely partisan and bitter. In the days of a more traditional Washington “establishment,” was it truly both sides talking to each other, or merely D.C. elites talking among themselves?

These questions and their accompanying history are played out with members of one Washington family in the drama, “The City of Conversation,” playing through April 29 at Theatre on the Square, 627 Mass. Ave. in downtown Indy.

In the late 1970s, a country in recovery from Vietnam and Watergate is being led by a Georgia peanut farmer with few friends in the D.C. Establishment. And Colin Ferris (Carey Shea) returns home from college in London, bringing his fiance, Anna Fitzgerald (Emily Bohn), to the Georgetown home of his mother, Hester (Nan Macy), and Aunt Jean (Forba Shepherd). A longtime liberal firebrand, Hester shares her bed with Virginia Senator Chandler Harris (Doug Powers), and the evening includes a dinner with fellow Sen. George Mallonee (David Mosedale) and his wife Carolyn (Anna Lee).

The ulterior motive of the gathering (and there always is in Georgetown dinners) is for the senators to discuss aiding Teddy Kennedy in his efforts to take the 1980 Democratic nomination and restore the glory days of liberalism to Washington.

But Anna, an economics student from Minnesota, gives her outsider view that the growing support for California Republican Ronald Reagan should be taken seriously – to Hester’s horror, Colin agrees.

A decade later, Colin and Anna are working for GOP officials, but their son, Ethan (Max Gallagher), is getting a different political point of view from his grandmother and great-aunt. As the hard-fought battle over the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court wages downtown, in Georgetown, Anna demands that Hester no longer have contact with Ethan, forcing Colin to choose sides.

The last scene takes place on the day of Pres. Obama’s inauguration, when adult Ethan (Shea) brings his partner, Donald (Bradley Lowe), to meet his grandmother.

This play is a conversation of its own, a conversation with us with our 2017 point of view, and a conversation starter to be sure. Macy is glorious, like a more-grounded Auntie Mame – well-versed in what she understands, but blind to what she doesn’t. Shea ably plays the complexity of being the kind of young person whose means of rebellion against his parents is to become more conservative, even while refusing to cut his long hair. Bohn’s Anna is very much like Hester in that she has to be always certain and in control of her world, which sets up their inevitable clash. Powers’ smooth voice and manner makes him well suited to playing the kind of politician used to compromise in a world where that is starting to become difficult.

The intimate feeling of the family living room setting is completed by inhabiting the intimate TOTS Second Stage. This also means seating is limited, so contact 317-685-8687 or visit www.tots.org.