play

‘Extreme’ measures test family in need

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By John Lyle Belden

In the wake of tragedy, we often have the wish that we could start over, have a new life, even a new house. For a select few, at least the latter happened, aired on national television. A desperate Texas family seeks to join that number in the drama, “Extreme Home Makeover,” by Makasha Copeland, presented by American Lives Theatre at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre.

The title references the ABC television show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” (using its common nickname to avoid trademark issues). The process of being chosen, among hundreds of applicants, involved making a video recording to audition by showing both the necessary home renovations and the worthiness of the homeowning family. Scenes here are frequently played to an unseen camera, putting the audience in the position of the mysterious producers who could decide the family’s fate.

Three generations are crowded into this Kingsville, Texas, home: Valentina (Sofia Salgada), her mother Guadalupe (Caroline Lee Sanchez), teen son Marco (Diego Sanchez-Galvan), and 10-year-old daughter Lupe (Laila Matuk). Valentina’s husband, David, recently died, leaving her struggling to keep the house and unable to afford its upkeep, including a broken toilet.

Guadalupe is not thrilled at all about this bid for televised fame. She sees it as yet another insult to the honor of a family who lived on the land since it was part of Mexico two centuries ago, since then being made to work it for the benefit of non-Latino owners. Valentina, however, is practically blinded by hope, insisting on getting the audition just right so that a new home can help rectify their tenuous situation. The children, eager to please both Mom and Abuela, try hard to do their part in the scheme. Marco applies for his first job, while Lupe – who talks to “Aybeecee” like a friend she’s trying to impress – seeks to prove she’s not as useless as she feels.

Local actor Carlos Medina Maldonado directs. He saw the play in development while a student at Texas Tech, noting it reminded him of his own family, with aspects we can all relate to. Intertwined with the themes of hard times and holding on to one’s culture is the universal experience of grief, made more intense when it is the family patriarch who is suddenly gone. Aside from some clothes and possessions, their principal reminder of David is a video of him at Lupe’s last birthday – his singing to her embarrassing then, but treasured now.

The cast’s familial chemistry, combining personalities that are distinct and natural, draw us into their world, feeling both their loving bonds and growing need. Even when they clash, each acts from their perspective of love. Salgada’s Valentina is driven, barely hiding her growing desperation while feeling it is up to her to make everything right. Sanchez’s Guadelupe is a bit of a curmudgeon but adopts a softer touch to help mend their growing crisis, coming through as only a loving grandma can. Sanchez-Galvan’s Marco feels the weight of man-of-the-house expectations, though he’s not feeling quite ready to grow up yet. Matuk, who is over twice the age of the girl she plays, maintains Lupe’s sweetness and innocence, along with a naïve grit of one who doesn’t know what she allegedly can’t do – showing that where there’s a will, there’s Google.

The stage, brilliantly designed and built by Carlos Teeters, has no visible walls and audience seating on two sides, showing the fishbowl environment brought about by private spaces being exposed to judging strangers. We see the floor plan, while the people upon it show what makes a house a home.

Note the dialogue is a Spanglish mixture that would be genuinely heard in a home like this, yet not too hard to follow for non-Spanish speakers.

An emotionally engaging and inspiring story of a family needing to make some changes, “Extreme Home Makeover” runs through Aug. 2 in the Basile black-box stage at 705 N. Illinois St., downtown Indianapolis. Get tickets at phoenixtheatre.org, and information at americanlivestheatre.org.

The District calls on ‘Genêt’

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By John Lyle Belden

Indianapolis native Janet Flanner was a unique personality, one of the most famous Hoosiers you likely have not heard of. This was likely in part because her writing focused on those around her as she faithfully avoided writing in the first person.

The spotlight gets overdue placement upon this literary icon in the world premiere of “They Call Me Genêt” by D. Paul Thomas, performed by Jen Johansen at The District Theatre. Writing her “Letters from Paris” for the newly established New Yorker magazine from 1925 to 1975, she received her nom de plume from New Yorker editor and co-founder Harold Ross, who mistakenly assumed it was a French variant of “Janet” (the word actually refers to a broom plant with yellow flowers, or a cat-like animal native to Europe and Africa).

We meet Flanner at the end of her time as an ex-pat in Paris, preparing to depart for New York, where she would live with her long-time lover, publisher Natalia Danesi Murray. She packs while struggling to write her final “Letter” for the magazine, and reflects on her various life experiences and the famous (and infamous) people she knew along the way.

Johansen delivers a flawless performance as the woman who would apparently mock the self-indulgent nature of a one-woman show. Aided by an appropriate wig (design by Andrew Elliot), she bears a close resemblance to photos of Flanner, who was fully aware of her plain features, remarking here that she has “the face of an old Pope.” Director Chris Saunders gives us not just a fascinating first-person biography, but also, as he notes, a thoughtful meditation on where the observer fits in among the celebrities she observes.

Among the historical figures she encountered, Flanner wrote about Hitler during his rise to power (a bitter I-told-you-so years later for those who dismissed her prescient profile) and had more pleasant relationships with luminaries including Hemingway, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein. Past notables of art and letters, she remarked, included “the most interesting Paris-ites.”

As for her personal life, Janet is unapologetic while employing her gift of creative language to apply appropriate euphemisms, such as her preference for “the sorority side.” There is a little trepidation at rejoining American society, returning to the post-Vietnam/Watergate country she sees churning towards a sort of “self-betrayal.”

The look and atmosphere are completed with costumes by Guy Clark, set by Josh Morrow, and props sourced by Jan White – including a charming compact typewriter. Rick Northam is stage manager, and Georgeanna Smith Wade is the understudy.

A bit of a wildcat, a shining golden flower, and ever intriguing – get to know Ms. Flanner in “They Call Me Genêt” in performances Thursday through Sunday, July 23-26, at 627 Massachusetts Ave., Indianapolis, presented in partnership with Indy Pride.

There will also be a benefit event, A Parisian Dinner and Garden Party, following the 4 p.m. Saturday performance. For details and tickets to all shows, see indydistricttheatre.org.

Cops are up to something (very) funny at Center Stage

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By John Lyle Belden

Lebanon’s Center Stage Community Theatre presents a wild episode of law and disorder with “Unnecessary Farce,” a comedy by Broadway actor Paul Slade Smith, directed by Nicole Amsler.

In a motel at the edge of town, Eric (Hunter Nuzzie), a young police officer needing to prove himself, and partner Billie (Lauren Lotzow), who somehow got a badge despite failing nearly every academy test, are setting up an undercover sting. In the room next door, the new city accountant, Karen (Lisa Anderson) is to meet Mayor Meekly (Ron Pittman) and get him to admit to embezzling millions in public funds. However, while preparing for this, Eric and Karen have developed feelings for one another. To complicate things further, the Mayor has a devoted chief of security, Agent Frank (Matt Anderson), who notices (almost) every detail in the room.  

With hijinks aplenty, mad misunderstandings, and doors to slam, we get a raucous comedy with a smidge of thriller as the workings of the local Scottish mafia – “the Clan, with a ‘C’” – are revealed, bringing on the feared Highland Hitman, a killer known as (dramatic pause) Todd! (Kevin Shadle). Then eventually, the Mayor’s wife, Mary (Julia Wallyn), comes looking for her husband.

Amsler has the good fortune of a great cast for this kind of show. Lotzow has been excellent in various roles over the last two years and definitely has a knack for comedy. Lisa Anderson gets to cleverly upstage her more practiced husband, Matt, both being masters of going with the madness (even if it means losing one’s pants) without being too over-the-top.

While most characters appear to understand the seriousness of the goings-on (no matter how absurd they’re becoming), Pittman effectively plays the Mayor as blithely oblivious, even though he was the one who proposed this suspicious event in the first place. Shadle, a treasure of Central Indiana community theatre, boldly presents another memorable character – bagpipes, thick accent, and all. Wallyn brings her own sort of disarming charm

To our surprise, this is Nuzzi’s first theatre role. His handling of scenes ranging from slapstick to romantic to standoff at gunpoint shows a natural feel for the material and solid comic chops.

As always, credit is due to the all-volunteer crew. Assistant director is Heather McKee and Stage Manager is Ava McKee. Amsler takes on many other tasks, including excellent set design and decoration with Christy Summersett – two connected hotel rooms with eight doors and good sightlines. Amsler also did costumes (including a kilt) with Heather McKee, as well as props.

A hilarious escape from the heat of summer, indulge in “Unnecessary Farce,” Friday through Sunday, through July 26, at 604 Powell Street in Lebanon. Get info and tickets at centerstagecommunitytheatre.com.

IBTC’s ‘Museum’ has much to show us

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By John Lyle Belden

Don’t be confused; “The Colored Museum” is not a static exhibit, but a theatrical work, a series of scenes that move with the rhythm of continuing centuries-old struggle.

Most surprising is that the show could be considered a museum piece itself: This play by George C. Wolfe hit Broadway in 1986. Forty years ago, yet it still feels so current, so “woke,” so “Black Lives Matter” – and as relevant as ever. It works as a companion piece to last year’s equally irreverent production of “Ain’t No Mo’” by the Indianapolis Black Theater Company. This year’s IBTC production of “Museum” is directed by local cultural icon Deborah Asante, leading an outstanding cast of local Black talent.

Performers include Empressnikia, Empress Marlena, Clarissa Michelle, PsyWrn Simone, Alicia “The UnCuT Diamond” Sims, John Singleton, Edward Strickling Jr., Tre’Vaughn, and young Anya C. Carlton as “The Future,” with audio contributions by Reno Moore and Rick Drumm, and on-stage percussion by Komoyaka King.

From the beginning, as the flight attendant of Celebrity Slaveship advises us that “shackles must be worn at all times,” we are in for one hell of a ride. Wolfe’s satire through the play’s 11 scenes is both sharp and hilarious. Examinations of Black life and culture employ sufficient absurdity to confront the surreal experience of being African American. We encounter archetypes including a Mammy, a disturbed soldier, a gay “Snap Queen,” and a singer who found fame and respect in France but must face what she left behind. Nothing is sacred, including the too-perfect models of Ebony magazine, and the award-bait Black roles in “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play.”

The look is completed with a neat set design by Antonio Burks that suggests an exhibit hall, complete with a turntable to display the next piece in the collection. Burks also contributed designs in the excellent projected visual elements.

Stunning both as comedy and thought-provoking theatre, “The Colored Museum” opens for four more performances, Thursday through Sunday, July 9-11, at The District Theatre, 627 Massachusetts Ave., downtown Indianapolis. Get tickets at indydistricttheatre.org.

Father and gay son face horrors of Holocaust

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By John Lyle Belden

I hope that this finds you shortly after I post it – so you can see – or this is shared before the next production – so you can anticipate – the important intimate drama of “A Pink Triangle” by Kirby Taylor.

The title refers to the patch worn by LGBTQ prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Holocaust histories typically mention the yellow Star of David worn by Jews while tending to note in passing others tortured and killed included Roma, Communists, other political prisoners, and homosexuals. While the effort to eradicate Jewish people cannot be understated, the Pink Triangles were held in lowest regard in the camps, their harsh treatment including horrific medical experiments.

In fact, there was a macabre rainbow of color patches for various prisoner classes, a reflection of the regime’s ruthless organization of cruelty.

Coincidentally, “A Pink Triangle” has a three-fold theme. The first, its setting, is the historical hell of wartime Auschwitz, portrayed in the gaunt, nervous, hungry actors in filthy, ill-fitting striped clothing we see before us. Second is the paranoid horror of their existence and the realization among us watching that so much of the context sounds like something familiar, even relevant to current events. Third, and most important, is that this is a tragic and poignant father-son moment.

Lars (Jim Melton) can barely walk, let alone be capable of literally back-breaking labor in the stone quarry, so he gets the ironic relief of working at his own pace literally shoveling excrement while awaiting a more horrific assignment to Block 10, where experiments are conducted. His pink patch has made him a pariah; even his father momentarily shows revulsion when he sees it.

Hans (Dave Ruark) works beside Lars, the guards apparently unaware they are related. His patch is green, indicating a criminal (possibly for his family’s black-market dealings; we find from their conversation that his wife remains free to secretly help their neighbors with food and essentials). In him we see what in hindsight we refer to the “Good German” who got along and even supported the Nazis until he, like the others he was willing to condemn, was seen as unfit. He has memories of the disastrous end of the first World War and accepted the propaganda of whom to blame for hardship. Now feeling no allegiance to Hitler, he keeps secret the fact that he plays trumpet even though that would grant him easier duty in a prison or military band.

Though this is thoroughly researched, including visits to Europe – Taylor admits she had only heard of Pink Triangle victims a couple of years ago – she emphasizes this is primarily a story of a father and his son making contact, seeking some sort of understanding in what could be the last time they see each other. As a result, she has scripted an incredibly natural hour-plus conversation. Its rough flow is not primarily to communicate to us (which cleverly it does) but rather as two people who share both an intimate bond and immense pain, each felt caused by the other. Issues unresolved and unresolvable are verbally danced around yet must be confronted: Why Clara is still free; feelings about older son/brother Freddie, who served and died for the Fatherland; who betrayed Lars to the Gestapo. Helping stitch these frayed threads of discourse are odd familial touchstones, like past meals, or an ugly yellow couch.

In her directing debut, Holocaust historian Amy Grove of the CANDLES Center in Terre Haute (founded by survivor Eva Kor) keeps the story firmly grounded in its living hell. Death literally stalks these men, and all others held there, which we hear in the bursts of nearby gunfire that occasionally punctuate the scene. It’s also in the eyes of those before us. Melton, who also masterfully applied hollowing makeup, gives Lars the darting expression of a trapped rodent. His moments of feigned bravado and apathy, spiced with black humor. are his sole defense against madness, as fatal resignation battles for hope in his battered psyche.  In Hans’ expression, there is a secretly defiant watchfulness that manifests its hope in constantly looking for ways to work any system he’s in. Apparently, even if he does not survive this – his frequent cough making this more of a possibility – it will literally be on his own terms.  

Though these are fictional characters, they represent real people. Thousands were sent to concentration and death camps under an anti-gay law that predated the Nazi regime but had been strengthened and strictly enforced. The current production of “A Pink Triangle” at The District Theatre includes an exhibition of prints from Pink Triangle Portraits, a project by artist Bryan Sharland to document in paintings every queer victim of the Holocaust of which there is an available photo (including more recent pictures of survivors).

A necessary and overdue examination of a dark chapter of LGBTQ history – and human history – remaining Indianapolis performances of “A Pink Triangle” are 7:30 p.m. today (as we post this) and 4 p.m. Sunday (June 27-28) on the intimate Brian Payne Theatre (second stage) at the District Theatre, 627 Massachusetts Ave. Get tickets at IndyDistrictTheatre.org.

Epilogue opens entertaining ‘Present’

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By John Lyle Belden

When it comes to the demands and frustrations of celebrity, with problems often of one’s own making and fueled by ego, the setting could be any era and major city – such as 1930s London. There, in the main room of a legendary actor’s luxury flat, we find Noël Coward’s “Present Laughter,” presented by Epilogue Players, directed by Catherine Mobley.

The title comes from Shakespeare, which isn’t significant to the plot but is the kind of indulgence that the main character – inspired by Coward himself – would appreciate.

Forty year-old West End star Garry Essendine (played by Brandon Wentz) has been quite busy. While preparing for a theatre tour of Africa, he extends assistance to young fans like Daphne Stillington (Breanna Helms) who has “lost her latchkey” and needs to spend the night at her place. You’d be surprised how often this happens. She emerges conveniently from the spare room – in his pajamas – to request breakfast from unfazed butler Fred (Jim Gryga) and the Swedish Spiritualist chain-smoking housekeeper Miss Erickson (Katherine LaTour).

We meet Garry’s inner circle, starting with long-suffering secretary Monica (Danielle Blair) and wife Liz (Veronique Duprey) who is happier living separately and keeping their relationship strictly business. There is also his manager, Morris (Gregory Roberts), and his producer, Hugo (David Shaul), whose hot wife Joanna (Shaun Ancelet) seems to have ambitions of her own.

A careless “sure, I’ll look at your play” has resulted in the appearance of obsessed, aspiring playwright Roland Maule (Ryan Moskalick). In addition, Lady Saltburn (Cathie Morgan) will arrive for what turns out to be a very eventful appointment.

These characters combine for a wild series of events that actually has someone asking, “Am I in a French farce?” Whatever you want to call it, this play presents us with a lot of opportunities to laugh.

Wentz makes Garry a rather likeable rogue who, while resisting middle age, shows some self-awareness of the consequences of a lifestyle he can’t help enjoying while also taking his vocation and status seriously. With a knowing smile, Duprey maintains Liz in the calm eye of whatever storm is whirling around, understanding her husband better than anyone. Likewise, Blair makes Monica a little jaded while cleverly keeping her boss in line. Helms and Moskalick keep things hilariously lively, each being persistently problematic in their own way. Ancelet makes Joanna devilishly appealing.

Effective set design by Andy Burnett and Melody Burnett makes the most of the intimate Epilogue stage. Mobley is assisted by Laura Duvall-Whitson; Jenny Braun is stage manager.

One weekend remains of “Present Laughter,” Thursday through Sunday, June 25-28, at 1849 N. Alabama St. (corner of 19th and Alabama), Indianapolis. Reserve tickets at epilogueplayers.com.

Grand Griot invites you to meet his ‘Folks’

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By John Lyle Belden

To engage in the theatrical journey that is “Folks,” written and performed by Josiah Ray McCruiston, we must understand a single word: Griot.

It comes to us through the linguistic filter of colonialism, indicating a way of life going back centuries in western and central Africa. The role of the griot in society is a rich gumbo of responsibility and privilege, like what you might call a bard, minstrel, mediator, officiant, historian, shaman – and above all, storyteller.

In the past, a Griot would preserve the history of a village or be advisor to a King. (Consider the role of Rafiki in “The Lion King.”) Reflecting his company’s name, Grand Griot Productions, McCruiston appears as a New World version of this calling. The African Diaspora in the U.S. is his village, through which he travels along a spiritual Underground Railroad.

This storyteller carries the wisdom of more than a century, so he has many tales to tell. “Stories are like cooking,” he says, and he’s struggling to get the recipe right. If the telling is acceptable to the spirits of old – the Griots who have gone before – then sacred aspects are unlocked, completing a crest that will open the gate so “we may be free in the soul.”

We hear the subjects of old stories told in new ways, interwoven with familiar songs. The legendary John Henry is celebrated not for how he died, but how he lived, working “against systems.” There is the hunter who was lost, then found by his children. There is a perspective of Brer Rabbit you’ll never hear from Disney. We meet High John, who challenged the Devil. We hear about the world’s most powerful creature – of which there is likely at least one just a few feet from you now. We learn that with the help of the Griot, captive souls remember how to fly.

Fascinating, enlightening, and rich with meaning, these “Folks” tales are a wonder-full experience for all, no matter how many generations you are removed from the continent where humanity started. McCruiston presents it all in the relatable manner of a one-person show, with deep respect for the storytellers’ art and an uncompromising view of history.

Created as part of the Flanner Fringe Lab, in partnership with IF Theatre and the Flanner House Arts Stage Academy, performances of “Folks” are Friday through Sunday, June 26-28, at the Basile Theatre at IF, 719 E. St. Clair, downtown Indianapolis. Get tickets at indyfringe.org.

For Wilde fans, Wilde’s ‘Fan’

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By John Lyle Belden

If you are not familiar with the Oscar Wilde comedy “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” you still might know popular nuggets of Wilde’s wit that are contained within the play – lines such as:

  • “I can resist everything, except temptation.”
  • “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
  • “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Of course, there is far more to its substance than cool quotes.

4th Wall Players gives us this drawing-room comedy of manners with its piercing satire of Victorian London society, directed by Josh Gibson. While many zingers still land, and the cast share their enjoyment of its narrative, the story’s oddities are not quite as wild (pardon the expression) as in Wilde’s later classic, “The Importance of Being Earnest.” This absurdity here is derived from casual injustice.

Gibson invites us to see this examination of rumor and reputation through our perspective as social media addicts, constantly told what friends and strangers are and aren’t doing. After scrolling through a thousand posts and videos about shame, scandal, and misogyny, we look up at the stage to see the problem didn’t start with the i-Phone – it’s always been there, in society, inside us.

While Lady Margaret Windermere (Lizzie Schultz) prepares the celebration of her 21st birthday, she is visited by the Duchess of Berwick (Rebecca Brelage), who informs her that her husband has been seen frequently going to the home of Mrs. Erlynne, a woman of low reputation. The Duchess, who sees infidelity as natural to men, advises her to take her husband abroad to set his intentions right.

Margaret becomes distraught, having experienced nothing but devotion from her husband in their two years of marriage – they even have a baby boy. She then finds evidence of the relationship and confronts Lord Windermere (Jy’Ierre Jones) about it. In turn, he objects to her snooping, states that there is nothing improper, and even insists on having Mrs. Erlynne (Adriana Menefee) invited to the Birthday Ball.

We see the event open with Lord and Lady Windermere welcoming their guests. The Duchess brings her daughter Lady Agatha Carlisle (Kristen Paarlberg), who catches the eye of Australian Mr. Hopper (Joshua Roberts). The Duchess’s jovial brother Lord Augustus Lorton (Nelani Huntington) wouldn’t miss this social occasion. Also arriving are socialites Mr. Dumby (Nathaniel Taff), Mr. Cecil Graham (Amanda Horcher), Lady Plymdale (Isabel Moore), Lady Jedburgh (Amanda Amos), and the handsome and witty Lord Darlington (Omar El Jordi) who, knowing the rumors, sees an opportunity to woo Lady Windermere, whom he has always fancied. Lastly, Mrs. Erlynne arrives, chatting up the various men in attendance, who seem charmed by her – especially Lord Lorton.

The presence of the “other woman” drives Margaret to drastic action, which in turn spurs her alleged rival to take measures of her own. The events of this night, of which the hand-embroidered fan carried by Lady Windermere becomes an issue, could affect the rest of their lives.

To complete the cast, Fred Margison and Tyler Gibson play attentive servants Parker and Robert.

Schultz is wonderful in a role that allows a bit of melodrama yet has a real sense of inner turmoil. Jones handles a different complexity well – his Lord Windermere bound by social norms to keep so much within him and to only see things as those mores allow. Menefee brilliantly manages her role as a cypher not only to keep us from the spoilers, but also to maintain the social highwire act that means the difference between security and destitution, potentially life and death for a single woman in the 1890s.

Supporting roles maintain both the humor and the social strictures that drive the plot. El Jordi’s Lord Darlington makes the most of being Wilde’s proxy in the play, clever lines and all. Paarlberg manages to work within her character’s limits, communicating so much with an eye roll. The gentlemen present familiar Victorian archetypes, from Huntington’s roguish Lorton to Horcher’s posh Graham.

Stephan Taylor is assistant director, and Kelli Gibson is stage manager. Exquisite costumes by Katherine Gibson and Zoe Renee help set the scene. “Lady Windermere’s Fan” has performances Friday through Sunday, June 19-21 (if you see this shortly after it posts, there is also one Sunday afternoon, June 14) at Backlot Makerspace and Venue at 5635 Bonna Ave., Indianapolis, in historic Irvington. Get tickets at 4thwallplayers.org.

Epsilon presents a weekend of ‘Tuesdays’

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By John Lyle Belden

Any day is a good day to feel alive.

Epsilon Theatre Company, which usually showcases the talents of youth, has the grown-ups take the stage for a production of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” by Jeffrey Hatcher with Mitch Albom, based on his best-selling book.

Local performer and ETC board member Afton Shepard directs. She said she first saw the show shortly after high school and had since wanted to work it herself. The two-person cast are J. Charles Weimer as Albom and Scott Stockton as Morrie Schwartz.

Mitch Albom established himself as a sportswriter and columnist in Detroit covering major sporting events including the Olympics and Wimbledon, but many years earlier had been a student at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, taking every sociology course that Schwartz taught. Mentorship became friendship and, upon graduation, Mitch promised to keep in touch with Morrie. He did not keep that promise.

In 1995, Mitch was surprised to see Morrie on television’s “Nightline,” and even more surprised to find the professor was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), and didn’t have long to live. At first to ease his conscience, Mitch went to visit Morrie at his home, on a Tuesday. He returned the next Tuesday, and then every week “until the end.”

Indulging their impulses – Mitch’s as a journalist, Morrie’s as a teacher – the visits became a sort of course on living and dying, with lessons for all of us.

Under Shepard’s guidance, Weimer and Stockton deliver a very gentle and human story, seasoned with appropriate humor. Morrie would be quick to laugh at his situation, and unafraid to cry when he felt it was needed. Stockton easily shares his brave optimism as well as a sense of his pain. His ailment is mostly physical, while Mitch’s is more of the soul. Weimer provides in his narration and performance a sense of honesty as both the character and we who follow along come to understand the significance of this journey.

Uplifting and life-affirming (a bit ironic, I know), “Tuesdays with Morrie” has performances Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (June 12-14) at Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E. 29th St., Indianapolis. Get tickets at epsilontheatricalco.org.

ALT: Heroic act has its own victim

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By John Lyle Belden

We know from our American history classes that four United States Presidents were assassinated. Wikipedia conveniently lists plots and attempts against about a dozen others, and that two who died of natural causes were suspected to have been poisoned. While interesting – this not being a review of the musical “Assassins” – it’s mostly beside the point here.

In “Arlington, or, Your Forgotten American Hero,” a play by Andrew Kramer in its world premiere by American Lives Theatre at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, the focus is on one of two notable attempts on the life of President Gerald Ford in California in 1975, particularly on the man who stopped a would-be assassin in San Francisco.

Oliver “Billy” Sipple was out for a walk when he came upon a crowd outside a downtown hotel. People excitedly said the President was staying there. He waited with the throng for a chance at a glimpse of Ford, trying not to bump into a middle-aged woman. When the President appeared, that woman drew out a pistol, fired point-blank – and missed. Having been a U.S. Marine who served tours in Vietnam, Sipple’s well-trained instincts were likely awakened by the report of the gun. With barely a thought, before the woman could fire a second time, he knocked the firearm from her hand while others tackled her to deliver her to Secret Service agents. This single brief yet heroic action would affect Billy Sipple for the rest of his life.

Directed by ALT founder and artistic director Chris Saunders, the play presents Michael Hosp giving an earnest portrayal of Sipple. We first meet Billy years after that fateful encounter with history, alone in his apartment easy chair watching television with a nearly empty bottle of whiskey, lamenting his life.

Suddenly, dead San Francisco LGBT icons appear around him: Writer/publisher/organizers Del Martin (Suzanne Fleenor) and Wayne Friday (Jonathan Studdard); “dangerous” gay activist Rev. Ray Broshears (Rob Johansen); first out gay political convention delegate and community organizer Jim Foster (Evan Wolfgang); and legendary gay politician – and Sipple’s close friend – Harvey Milk (Jay Hemphill). They alert a bewildered Billy that this is “a ritual of reclamation.” What follows recounts the story of one man’s undesired fame and the infamy he feared which followed.

Need I mention that Sipple was gay? This shouldn’t have mattered, except that this was the mid-1970s, which meant it very much did.

Hosp is outstanding as an ordinary guy not just thrust into extraordinary circumstances, but also seeing that story taken and told by others for their benefit, leaving him feeling used on all sides. His moment of respite with “the guy at the end of the bar” (Wolfgang) gives limited relief as it is that aspect of his life that makes what happens to him worse.

Seeing it as more of a boost to their cause than a betrayal, his well-meaning friends out him to Chronicle columnist Herb Caen (Studdard). Suddenly, Sipple transforms in the national press from anonymous to oddity: the “gay ex-Marine.” This will not go down well with his parents (Fleenor and Johansen) back in Detroit.  

Fleenor also plays his friendly and empathetic neighbor. Wolfgang nicely portrays Billy’s brother George, who eventually comes to his own understanding.

Hemphill has a gift for playing larger-than-life characters, and so makes a believable Harvey Milk, complete with activist fire and celebrity charisma. His presence almost seems too convenient to the plot to be real, but was indeed based on fact. Milk and Sipple, two men who each had their own moment involving a political assassination, were long-time friends.

Hero? Gay icon? Just a guy who did what was needed at the time? Billy Sipple was never sure. Today, him having his wish of being left alone (in the Golden Gate National Cemetery) leaves him nearly forgotten. At the end of the play, we get a perspective on its title, which provides us a more suitable memorial.

Get to know this more than ordinary man in “Arlington,” through June 7 at 705 N. Illinois St., downtown Indianapolis. For tickets, go to phoenixtheatre.org, info at americanlivestheatre.org.