play

A difficult ‘Winter’

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

Being a caregiver for a parent with Alzheimers or a similar condition is one of the most difficult jobs imaginable. With every struggle, you tell yourself, “It’s not about me!” yet you are in your own kind of pain.

In “Blackberry Winter,” playing through Nov. 19 at Theatre on the Square, Vivienne (Gari Williams) speaks to the audience about her caring for a mother who once made the world’s best coconut cake, but in these days would hardly recognize the kitchen.

The play is by Steve Yockey, whose dramas “Octopus” and “Wolves” have played on Indy stages. Those works dealt with stresses of fear and distrust in regards to intimate relationships. In this show, relationship struggles involve memories, objects and beloved family members.

Yockey’s style of including fantasy elements with animal metaphors also comes into play here, as Vivienne occupies her mind by coming up with a “creation myth” for Alzheimers. As the disease has no happy ending, she warns, don’t expect one to her story.

To embody the myth/fable, two of the main animals of the forest come to the stage: Gray Mole (Dan Flahive), who finds happiness simply by digging in the dirt, and optimistic, idealistic White Egret (Chelsea Anderson) who is sure she has found a way to make life better for all the denizens of the woods – at least the ones she sees above ground.

Their story is told in three parts, as Vivienne weaves in more of her monologue. She speaks of how in the mental clouds of this disease, what is real and true becomes blurred by confabulation and “comforting fictions.” We learn the significance of the scarves, the iron, the horse and the trowel, and why Vivienne is “a terrible person” – it’s not just because she fills the swear-bank.

And we see how White Egret’s wonderful idea goes horribly wrong.

This play is thought-provoking and challenging, especially if a relative with dementia is in your life. But in that case, this can also be comforting from shared experience as the spotlight is firmly on the caregiver’s role. Directed by Lori Raffel, this is an excellent glimpse into a difficult subject, with great performances delivered with gentle humor by the on-stage trio.

Find TOTS at 627 Massachusetts Ave., downtown Indianapolis; call 317-685-8687 or see www.tots.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

Finding secrets among the clutter

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

The Phoenix Theatre in downtown Indy presents a new approach to the haunted house story with “Static” by Phoenix playwright-in-residence Tom Horan.

The setting is a cluttered home laden with a collection of collections, gathered over time and rendering the space forever a place belonging to the past. Time and space blend with past scenes of aging couple Walter and Millie (Rich Rand and Jolene Mentink Moffatt) and present scenes of young couple Emma and Owen (Chelsey Stauffer and Ben Schuetz) occurring in the same space and, occasionally, at the same time.

Walter was a compulsive collector, constantly bringing things home for Millie, who used to appreciate them, but she became haunted – frightened mute and locked in a pattern of searching by a loss no object can make up for. Walter also collected sounds, putting them on dozens of cassette tapes. He eventually also started collecting thoughts, including his worries for Millie and concerns that he might have recorded ghosts.

Emma compulsively bought this old house in her home town, planning to renovate and resell it. But she finds the old tape recorder and cassettes, and, listening to them, realizes this is the home from a tragic local legend. She is amused by Walter’s collection of noises around the house, until she hears his worried entries and realizes she must know the whole story – but one of the tapes is missing.

Rand tugs our heartstrings as a man whose creed is, “I can fix it,” but struggles with things he can’t seem to make right. Moffatt displays a different aspect of her immense talent. In contrast to recent brash and funny roles, she excellently delivers a sad, disturbed soul. She almost never speaks, yet communicates volumes. Stauffer believably portrays the transition from simple enjoyment of a project to unshakable obsession, while Schuetz wrestles with growing impatience with the woman he loves. Eliot Simmons completes the cast as a younger version of Emma, in a scene that hints at deeper connections.

The play is more suspense than horror, with supernatural elements – lights flickering and locks rattling, etc. – but the full nature of the haunting stays elusive. I don’t want to elaborate for fear of spoiling the plot’s surprises, but while it’s appropriate that some aspects of the mystery stay with you long after viewing the show, the resolution of this story felt incomplete. Still, Horan’s drama is an interesting examination of loss and to what degree we own our possessions or they own us.

“Static” plays through Nov. 20 at the Phoenix, 749 N. Park Ave. Call 317-635-7529 or visit phoenixtheatre.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

Doesn’t seem so “Dirty” these days, does it?

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

It seems few people give a thought towards Mae West these days. After all, she was a star of the black-and-white film era, a Vaudeville player. She was curvy when ample curves were cool, but sexy when the mere hint of sex – let alone making “Sex” the name of your play – could get you in trouble.

But she deserves a closer look, not only for how she confronted those troubles and withstood them, but for how she was an advocate not only for sexual freedom but for LGBT rights.

This life is explored in the play “Dirty Blonde,” which has one more weekend (today through Sunday) at Buck Creek Players just southeast of Indy.

We meet not only West (played by Sonja Distefano) and the men in her life (portrayed by Jay Hemphill and Michael Patrick Smiley), but also Jo and Charlie (Distefano and Hemphill), two West fans who meet in the years following West’s 1980 death at her tomb. Charlie had actually met the siren in her later years, an encounter that deeply affected him.

We see the progression of West’s career: from Vaudeville struggles; to controversy with Broadway plays “Sex,” its follow-up “The Drag” – centered on homosexuality – and her hit “Diamond Lil;” to success in film; and finally her stubbornness in insisting on staying in the spotlight and doing things her way to the very end. The scenes are interspersed with the growing relationship of Jo and Charlie, as the line between wanting to know Mae and wanting to be her blurs.

Distefano has the voice and gestures down, but struggles with the charisma of her larger-than-life role; she is far more appealing as Jo. Hemphill and Smiley do great work, but the pacing and overall feel of the show gave a sense that something was lacking. Still, it is a good effort and an enlightening look at an American icon.

Find the Buck Creek Playhouse at 11150 Southeastern Ave. (Acton Road exit off I-74). Get info and tickets at 317-862-2270 or www.buckcreekplayers.com.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

CCP brings fun in the ‘Park’

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

Some days, all you need from a stage play is just an easy-going fun comedy. Maybe something by Neil Simon? Then head on up to the Carmel Community Players stage in Clay Terrace for its production of Simon’s first hit, “Barefoot in the Park,” playing weekends through Oct. 16.

In the winter of 1963 in New York, a free-spirited new bride, Corie (played by Lauren White Hall), has chosen an oddly-shaped fifth-floor walkup for a first apartment for her and her husband, Paul (Nicholas Barnes), a rather straight-laced young lawyer. It’s not what he would have wanted, but out of love for Corie, Paul tries to make do with the living arrangements – broken skylight and all. Making the situation even more interesting are visits by Corie’s mother Ethel (Bridget Schlebecker) and eccentric upstairs neighbor Victor (Will Pullins). A horizon-expanding evening with the four enjoying drinks and a dinner out proves fateful for all.

Hall is effervescent and charming, and Barnes ably plays the more reserved but still likeable half of the duo, making it believable that these two opposites did attract one another. Schlebecker and Pullins are natural scene-stealers in two of the more fun roles of the Simon repertoire. And Joe Meyers hits the right note as the telephone repair man whose timely advice helps fix more than a broken line.

Director Lori Raffel (also executive director at Theatre on the Square) found a fun solution to the problem of the set change between the first two scenes – a time-consuming transformation of the apartment from bare to fully-furnished. Under half-light, the cast brings out the bed, tables, couch, etc., to a dance routine. Raffel said she even got help from a member of Dance Kaleidoscope in arranging the actors’ steps with minimal improvisation. The result is almost as entertaining as the play itself.

As for the play, “funny,” “romantic” and “satisfying” are words too easy to throw around, but they fit so well here, to the greatest extent of their meaning.

Put on your shoes and head up to the top of Carmel. Info and tickets at 317-815-9387 or www.carmelplayers.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

Altogether ‘Ooky’ fun

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

You know it’s going to be fun when the orchestra starts the theme and the audience joins in on the “snap-snap”s.

In “The Addams Family: A New Musical” at Footlite Musicals in Indianapolis, the familiar “mysterious and spooky” characters from the Charles Addams comics and popular TV show and movies are brought to the stage with all the macabre oddities fans have come to expect.

However, in this story daughter Wednesday is now a young woman, and in love. It seems her beau and his family are “normal,” but that facade wears thin during a wacky meet-the-parents dinner.

Excellent performances all around by Ivy Bott (Wednesday), Michael Davis (Gomez), Kathleen Clarke Horrigan (Morticia), Bryan D. Padgett (Uncle Fester), Marie Beason (Grandma), Xavier Wilson (Pugsley), Trenton Baker (Lurch), Joseph Massingale as boyfriend Lucas and Darrin Gowan and Carrie Neal as his parents. There is also an entertaining chorus of ghostly Ancestors – once an Addams, always an Addams.

Davis pulls off the patriarch role with proper panache, and it’s good to see Horrigan stepping down from her usual post at the Footlite director’s chair to inhabit “Tish”s slinky dress. They command every scene they’re in – her more than him, of course.

Bott can go from flat deadpan to dark-edged emotion and back, all in character, in no time flat. Massingale plays the most mellow character in the cast (aside from Lurch), but when he gets to the love song “Crazier Than You,” we believe it. Neal’s emotional powderkeg performance is award-worthy.

There are lots of ghoulish touches that add to the fun, including appearances by Thing and Cousin Itt, making this a perfect pre-Halloween treat.

Find the Addams Mansion on the Footlite stage at 1847 N. Alabama, downtown Indy, through Oct. 9. Info and tickets at footlite.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

How an orphan became a legend

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

The Phoenix Theatre in downtown Indy starts its season with the local premiere of Tony-winning play “Peter and the Starcatcher” – based on the book by humorist Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson – a prequel to the popular adventures of Peter Pan. The production is not a musical, though a few strains of song figure into the plot, and while maintaining panto-esque silliness, is not a roll-in-the-aisles comedy. Consider it a fantasy that refuses to “grow up.”

Fortunately, the Phoenix has a couple of regulars seemingly blessed with eternal youth: Nathan Robbins as the Boy without a name – at first – and Phebe Taylor as Molly, the girl who turns out to be the other half of the play’s title. They are easily the most complex characters, with the Boy’s justifiable distrust of adults and whimsical wish to always remain a child, and Molly’s intellect, desire for adventure and devotion to her noble eccentric father, Lord Aster, played by Paul Nicely. They also stand out as all other characters are mostly caricatures.

Being broadly drawn is just fine for our villain Black Stache (known by a more familiar name eventually), played with grinning gusto by Eric J. Olson. Other notable performances include Dan Scharbrough’s faithful and scene-stealing Smee; John Vessels Jr. as the “beautiful” Mrs. Bumbrake; Michael Hosp as simple and smitten Alf; Tyler Ostrander as Prentiss, the young “leader” no one follows; and Ian Cruz in multiple roles, including an unusual island native chieftan.

It felt to me at times the show tried too hard to be funny, especially with modern references sprinkled in which felt dissonant with the 19th-century setting, but overall the show is sure-fire entertainment, sure to make your heart and imagination soar.

The play runs through Oct. 23 at 749 N. Park Ave. For info and tickets, call 317-635-7529 or see phoenixtheatre.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

It’s ‘only’ a hit

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

Rarely has a play dared me so strongly to write a bad review of it.

“It’s Only a Play,” by legendary playwright and librettist Terrance McNally, is on the main stage at Theatre on the Square through Oct. 1, opening the 2016-17 season. In this comedy, a nervous playwright, Peter Austin (played by Dave Ruark) nervously awaits the reviews after opening night of his Broadway play.

All action takes place in a guest room at the home of the play’s rich producer Julia Budder (Afton Shepard), where Austin’s best friend, TV star James Wicker (Adam O. Crowe) tries to relax, glad that he turned down the lead role in the play – though he won’t tell Austin; scandal-plagued lead actress Virginia Noyes (Kathy Pataluch) and acclaimed “genius” director Frank Finger (Thomas Cardwell) each go to get away from the party crowd downstairs; reviled theatre critic Ira Drew (Jeff Maess) seeks someone to take on the play he secretly wrote; and coat-check boy and aspiring actor Gus (Jacob Swain) comes in to deposit coats and accoutrements worn by various celebrities.

The play is loaded with Broadway references and swipes at critics, and teases us with a cliffhanger at intermission. At the end, things get almost groaningly meta. Need I mention that the first version of this play closed during previews (according to Wikipedia)?

Yet, here, it all works.

Yes, even critics can take a joke – and I and another scribe in attendance could even think of someone who the play’s zingers better fit. The discussion of stage legends like Patty Lupone is mixed with more-recognizable celebrities like Lady Gaga, so references to the party downstairs never go flat. “Hamilton” even gets name-checked (and coat-checked).

And the mixture of dysfunctional characters we are presented with – Budder keeps butchering popular quotes, Noyes wears a court-ordered ankle bracelet, and Finger’s insecurity over his incredible success manifests as compulsive kleptomania – are very funny and well-presented by actors far more talented than the poor hacks they portray.

So, who cares if McNally didn’t get a(nother) Tony for this – for TOTS, this romp is “only” a winner.

Find the stage at 627 Massachusetts Ave. in downtown Indianapolis. Call 317-685-8687 or see www.tots.org.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

The Farce is strong with this one

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NOTE: As the Word/Eagle is in flux with the renaming and corresponding change in official website, John is putting his reviews here — for now.

By John Lyle Belden

Today’s political climate has much that is ripe for ridicule, especially Indiana’s present chief executive, who could become America’s Number Two. And if the thought of Gov. Pence as “number two” has you giggling, have I got a theatrical experience for you.

Khaos Company Theatre presents its second play in the “Pence Wars” series, “Mike Pence Strikes Back,” a Star Wars-themed parody in which Indiana Emperor Pence finds himself losing the election for governor of the Hoosier Planet – every ultraconservative ploy to gain favor with the masses seems to backfire. But an unexpected shot at being Vice President of the Galaxy changes everything.

You don’t have to have seen the first play, August’s “Attack of the Homos,” to get into the flow of this one. The story is presented as a play by director Kaylee Spivey Good, with additional scenes by Robert Broemel and Ed Ramthun, and interludes of poetry by Cher Guevara (a/k/a Eagle contributor Walter Beck).

David Malloy is entertaining as Pence, giving the state’s Dark Lord a dastardly cartoon villain voice and posture. Guevara is impressive as Donald Trump – especially as the actor looks nothing like him – but with big hair, big suit and big, boorish attitude, he pulls it off. The supporting cast of Michael Maloney, Lauren McDaniel, Bridget Isakson (who plays Tolkein’s elf Arwen, because, why not?), Heather Bartram, Chloe Farhar, and even Good for a scene, all make multiple contributions to this farce.

The trick to enjoying the show is to keep your expectations as low as your opinion of Trump and Pence, and just go with whatever is happening. Pence Wars has the style and humor of SNL or MadTV with the special effects of a kid’s birthday party. Yet while situations get a tad immature, the content is not for children.

While the scenes are played for laughs, the recited verse is serious and thought-provoking, reminding us that this is the future of our state and country we’re joking about here.

There are just two more dates for this chapter, 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday – note that Friday is pay-what-you-can admission – and the trilogy’s conclusion, “Election 2016, A New Hope,” is scheduled for Oct. 7,8, 14 and 15. For information and tickets, see www.kctindy.com.

John L. Belden is Associate Editor at The Eagle (formerly The Word), the central-Indiana based Midwest LGBTQ news source.

IndyFringe: Spaghetti Western 3D

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By Wendy Carson

Welcome to Javelina, Texas, and the 47th annual Javelina Town Pageant. It is celebrated on the anniversary of the release of the famous movie made about the town, “The Promised Land.”

The four spunky ladies of our troupe are here to reenact a, thankfully, abridged version of the film (in 3D!). Sadly, this does mean that they have to cut the “flying armadillo scene” but the remaining offering is delightful, nonetheless. Near the beginning, a box of spaghetti is paraded across the stage in just the first of many, many, visual gags predominant throughout the show.

Lest you think this is all just silliness and kooky humor, the show provides us with numerous important facts: Lesbians were invented in 1852, and “sociopathic” is the true definition of masculinity, just to name a few.

An overall hilarious show that will have you laughing and singing along, despite yourself.

Remaining performances are Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 27-28, at the Indy Eleven Theatre. Info and tickets at indyfringefestival.com.

IndyFringe: Haul & Oatz

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By Wendy Carson

Let me start by saying this, there is nothing serious to see here. No deep message, no political agenda, nothing to reflect on. “Haul & Oatz: Time-Traveling Detectives” is just sheer fun and silliness for its own sake: A reflection on the tragic clothes, music and tropes that defined the ’80s music scene, as well as a terrific send-up of ’40s detective movies.

That said, if you are looking for a lot of laughs, this is the show for you. From the opening number (“The Exposition Song” done in the B-52s style) the show lets you know that nothing is safe nor taken seriously. The double entrees fly fast and freely as do the song lyrics (example: the police officer keeps saying, “Don’t stand so close to me”).

As I said after I first saw it, this is a strong contender for the funniest show of this year’s fringe. Miss out on it at your own peril.

Performances are Friday and Sunday, Aug. 26 and 28, on the Phoenix Theatre main stage. Info and tickets at indyfringefestival.com.